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English
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Published:
2021-07-28
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875
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1/1
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What is gone

Summary:

Obi-Wan mourns.

Notes:

This is literally just because I'm sad after rewatching Revenge of the Sith.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

The baby cried once again behind Obi-Wan, his cries loud in the confines of the ship as the Jedi held the controls of the vessel a little tighter, his knuckles turning white with the force used. His head hurt, his chest clenching once more in the few hours that had passed since he left for Tatooine. 

The cause of the crying seemed to hurt him a little more, adding to the list of things that caused him pain at that moment. The baby had been fed, and Obi-Wan knew for sure he was clean and comfortable where he laid in the bundle of blankets that kept him warm from the cold of the space outside.

Anakin had been cold in a spaceship when he was nine too, he thought, a painful memory of that boy he met years ago, wrapped around blankets after leaving his home planet for the first time coming back to him and knocking his breath away, making him feel like it had happened a lifetime ago.

Obi-Wan hadn't cried yet, he hadn't had the chance to mourn everything he lost with all that was happening around him. There were tears unshed in his eyes, there was the urge to scream that had been with him from the moment he entered the Jedi Temple and saw the kids dead, but he hadn't had the time — not at the deaths, not at the hologram showing Anakin killing the children, not at Mustafa or the moment he found out Padmé was giving birth to twins. 

He felt like he was about to follow Luke in his cries now, in the calmness of that ship, with everything over and the weight of the losses of all those lives over his shoulders.

Luke, who wasn't crying because of hunger or discomfort. Obi-Wan knew the boy could feel it, the death and the pain caused by his father, because he felt it himself, looming in the air around him and choking him, making his shoulders heavy. 

All the time, Obi-Wan wondered where he had gone wrong, what he could've done to stop everything that happened. He remembered Anakin's eyes in Mustafa — Vader's eyes. He remembered the moment he realized Anakin was dead, and Vader had taken over like Yoda had said.

"There's still good in him, I know it," had been Padmé's last words, and they, too, loomed around him, making him wonder if he hadn't been wrong, if there was salvation for the man — the boy — he had to fight, if Anakin still lived in Vader, if he could've done or said something to bring him back.

Luke cried louder behind him, his throat forcing the screams out, loud and urgent and painful. Obi-Wan closed his eyes, lowering his head for a moment, hands so tight around the controls that made him afraid he'd break them on accident.

Everything hurt, and Obi-Wan understood then why Padmé had died, why, even being healthy, she had withered away after her children were born. This pain, the loss he felt, it drained him in a way he couldn't comprehend. But he couldn't die, he couldn't allow it to take him, not with Luke under his care and Yoda's words in his mind — Qui-Gon, he remembered, had something else to teach him after all.

It took him a few more seconds before he finally got up from his seat, the ship soaring in its path on its own as he walked towards the baby and picked him up. Luke screamed in his arms, small and defenseless against the pain he felt — against everything.

His hands escaped the confines of the blankets in his thrashing, small limbs flailing around helplessly as he cried, and when Obi-Wan touched them, he felt them cold. 

"Hey now," he whispered in the middle of the baby's cries, sitting on the ground with his legs criss-crossed, placing Luke over them now as he fixed the baby inside the blankets again. "You can't do that, Luke... You'll get cold."

The baby kept crying, Obi-Wan's eyes sad over him, wondering if Leia was crying the same way. He wondered if they felt the separation, if they knew the other was missing, so, so far away now as the girl stayed in Alderaan — Leia Organa now, not Skywalker like her father or brother, away from her family.

He wondered if they'd ever be together again.

The first tear fell down his face at the thought that maybe they wouldn't, that maybe they'd go their whole lives without ever meeting each other, without ever knowing who they were. His eyes raised to look at Anakin's lightsaber resting somewhere near, the only thing he had left of the other man, before looking down at Luke again. 

"He would've loved you," he muttered, his voice trembling, fingers brushing against the baby's cheek for a quick moment. "And she would've loved you too- Your mother… They both would've. I'm sorry..."

Luke screamed louder, Obi-Wan's eyes closing as he felt the clenching of his heart worsen, as a sob escaped his lips.

As the ship soared through space silently, Obi-Wan held the baby close to his chest, Luke's screams covering Obi-Wan's crying as he mourned what was gone, and feared what was to come.

Notes:

Comments and Kudos are appreciated!