Hero_With_No_Fear

[ihateflying]

There are precious few decisions that are easy.

When it comes to decisions regarding Anakin, even fewer of them are easy. The decision to never tell Anakin that his 'jokes' about Anakin being the death of him aren't really jokes? As near to easy as they come.

The decision to tell Anakin that Padme is pregnant? More difficult than any decision to date - except perhaps leaving Satine to stay with the Jedi. That he had made that decision - had that experience - may be making the decision harder. He knows what the consequences of this can be, and likely will be, and-

And allowing things to play out would be much more comfortable for him, on a number of levels. It may also well be the right thing to do.

But he has decided, so it's time to act.

He makes time to find Anakin, and says with simple directness but utter seriousness: "We need to speak. In private."

Comments

[hero_with_no_fear]

To say Anakin was a gradually increasing disaster on two legs was an understatement. No sleep because every time he tried, he saw Padme dying, and he was no closer to finding a solution. He couldn’t think straight because whenever he was around Palpatine, fulfilling his duty to his ordered mission, the world seemed to tilt just enough to throw him off balance, and he couldn’t get out of this mission not for a lack of trying. And he was so damn frustrated with the Council, every time he was there to report it felt like nothing he said mattered so why wouldn’t they let him out of the mission?

He was on the verge of cracking.

But Obi-Wan was his friend and he would give him the time. “Uh, ya,” he said, not at all concerned with Obi-Wan’s seriousness because Obi-Wan was usually serious, did the degree matter. Anakin followed him to a meditation room and once inside, he said, “What do you need to tell me?”

[ihateflying]

Once they step inside, he stops and studies Anakin's face.

He second guesses himself, yet again, as he does so. Anakin is so clearly already under strain, even if his assumptions about the source of that strain are entirely wrong, that he isn't sure adding another thing to Anakin's plate is a good idea.

Not that keeping his nose out of it will change anything, but it may buy Anakin more time, before he has to deal with it.

...except Anakin shouldn't need his protection, anymore. They're friends. Anakin is a Jedi in his own right, not a student. And now he's outright asked.

He shakes his head slightly, glances away from Anakin and toward the door they'd just stepped through. "Padme... is pregnant."

[hero_with_no_fear]

Anakin’s brain to mouth filter was cagey at the best of times, and often that was from his own lack of effort. But right now, the metaphoric flood gates to every thought that crossed his mind were broken on the setting open.

So he said, “You know?” before he could consider the consequences of that implied confession.

Hearing what he said, that’s when his stomach sank and and his expression turned to one of guilt.

He looked away from Obi-Wan. “How do you know?”

[ihateflying]

He should probably consider Anakin's implied confession more deeply, along with the guilty expression.

He would do so - in a moment.

In this precise moment, he was incredulous and offended. He looked down at his Jedi robes and then back to Anakin. "I've no idea, Anakin. It is almost as if I might be inclined toward sensing things. Maybe a touch of force sensitivity no one quite routed out before now."

...Sorry.

[hero_with_no_fear]

“Well, you never noticed anything before!” Another uncontrollable confession.

And he saw how much trouble he was causing himself so he shut his mouth and scrubbed at his eyes, because he felt everything unraveling, and he just couldn’t stop it from happening.

But, no matter what, Obi-Wan was his closest friend. And if anyone would be understanding, it would be him. Right?

“Have you told anyone else?”

[ihateflying]

He'd... never noticed anything before.

Right.

Well.

He's just going to leave that one alone, though it wasn't nearly as much of a confession as Anakin seemed to believe it was.

In this context.

(He missed plenty of other things, though).

"Of course I haven't said anything to anyone else!" Anakin is his friend. That said: "Do you know what you're going to do?"

[hero_with_no_fear]

That was a relief, written all over Anakin’s face and the way his shoulders fell. He took a deep breath. Relief for now.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I really don’t.” And that was the honest truth. The further Padmé’s pregnancy progressed, the less sure Anakin felt since that night she’d told him.

“Padmé was planning on going back to Naboo, but now things are-” He wasn’t sure he should tell Obi-Wan about his visions, that didn’t go so well last time with his mother.

[ihateflying]

There was more than one thing he could have responded to there, but opted not to. He was relieved by Anakin's relief, and the direct answer and the first real admission of the discussion: that he didn't know what he was going to do.

There was, however, one very pressing thing. "Things now are what? The war, or something else?"

[hero_with_no_fear]

Anakin wanted to trust Obi-Wan with his visions. Still Anakin held back. Once bitten, twice shy. Because wanting wasn’t the same as having trust. There were things he trusted with Obi-Wan - in a lightsaber duel, he knew Obi-Wan would always have his back. But attachments were a different kind of battlefield.

His hesitation was telling.

But he said instead, “She doesn’t want to leave until things in the Senate return to what they were before the war, and the Chancellor returns his emergency powers.”

[ihateflying]

The hell of it was, even with the hesitation, that was a perfectly plausible 'excuse'. It made sense for Padme, and especially within the state of... everything.

He nodded slightly.

"Would she be more willing to return if you went with her?" He had no desire to force her hand, knew she was stubborn as all get out, and could take care of herself. That wasn't, really, the point. Because there was more than herself to take care of.

[hero_with_no_fear]

“How would that end the war faster?” Anakin pointed out.

“And besides, if I go then...” he looked down. Why did he have to choose? He hated how afraid he was of losing Obi-Wan. “I’m not a Jedi anymore. I need to stay.”

[ihateflying]

"Anakin, you are my brother and I love you but to the war you are one man - your presence or absence will make no great difference one way or another." Even as powerful as Anakin is, even as a General, even leading his own troops. "The war does not need you. Padme and your children with her do. Your attention would not be divided, which would benefit everyone."

His expression and tone, as well as his stance, all softened. He doesn't want to lose Anakin, either, but that was not the point, either. "I came very close to leaving the Order once. I'm glad I didn't, but circumstances were different." Circumstances were better.

[hero_with_no_fear]

“No I mean, Padmé won’t just-” he started to say, but that last part stopped him.

“Wait- you almost left? When?”

[ihateflying]

Hindsight provided him with far more clarity than he appreciated.

The war had never been a war been the Republic and Separatists - it had been a war against the Jedi, and they had lost.

They had lost in a thousand ways, at a thousand times blinded to what was happening, but it was in becoming leaders of the flawlessly obedient clone armies. Baited to far flung corners of the universe by Separatists battles, when the order for clones to destroy the Jedi came through....

It wasn't a battle, it was a massacre.

A massacre that carried to the temple, to Jedi lured in by a return summons broadcast and the temple, and worse - through the halls of the temple, down to every archivist, teacher, healer, and child.

As far as he knew, only he and Yoda had survived.

He could only hope that Anakin, on Naboo with Padme, had been far enough out of the reach of Sidious to remain safe. That convincing Anakin to leave had saved his life.

But it wasn't until he'd fought his way through the temple with Yoda and changed the transmission being broadcast to a warning -just in case - and seen the butchered bodies of his fellow Jedi and left Coruscant for deep space that he sent a message to Naboo.

Even then, it was heavily, heavily encoded and nothing more than his own confirmation codes - Jedi ones - and a location.

It was Anakin. If he were alive, he'd have no trouble with it. To anyone else it would be little more than static. Whether he'd come, even if he were able, Obi-Wan did not know.

He headed for the rendezvous point on Risih. There, making liberal use of mental manipulation and sticking to the shadows, he waited.

He'd taken a beating fighting (and winning against, for all it mattered) Grevious. He'd nearly drowned. He spent days running, fighting, and hiding. His entire world had been burned to ash.

He still had hope.

If Anakin was smart, he wouldn't show up. If Anakin was Anakin, he just might be reckless enough to try.

He wasn't sure which would be better, but he. Hoped.

[hero_with_no_fear]

Padme hadn't agreed to returning to Naboo at first. But after a discussion, and a promise that once the babies were born - that was a whole side conversation, twins! She would return to Coruscant to continue her senatorial duties.

That voyage back to Naboo, Anakin slept for the first time in weeks without a single dream.

They'd planned a few days rest in Varykino to figure out how to break it to Padme's parents that she was not only married to a former Jedi, but also pregnant with twins.

It was just a few days of peace when the massacre of the Jedi rippled through the Force. Anakin had never felt anything like it. Like pieces of him were being torn apart. Something terrible had happened.

When he'd left the Order, he'd been allowed to retain a comm that could access Jedi frequencies, and when he checked it, only one message came through - a singular transmission re-calling all Jedi to the Temple.

He was torn - he wasn't a Jedi anymore, but something had happened. But Padme's safety had brought them here, she and the twin were why he'd left. He didn't know whether to stay or go. Padme kept him from making a rash decision.

Chancellor Palpatine's address to the Senate was broadcast Republic-wide. He claimed the Jedi had attacked him and tried to overthrow the Republic. And now they weren't a Republic anymore - but an Empire. Padme was horrified. Anakin knew that message from the Temple had to be false.

But then it changed, or rather, someone changed it.

Now it was a warning. It took listening to the warning a few times through, but Anakin did catch the hidden message. He wanted to hope Obi-Wan was alive - who else would send out a message coded in such a way perfect for his senses? But maybe it was it just a blind belief that he would know if Obi-Wan had died.

He was prepping Padme's ship in the early hours of the morning, hoping she would forgive him. He just couldn't ignore that message. When she surprised him by taking a seat beside him in the cockpit. They argued, in the end Padme won.

The spaceport on Risih, the grimey streets familiar to him as a child growing up on Tatooine, though it was quite the tropical climate, but it was the last place he wanted Padme to be. Thankfully, she agreed to stay with the ship along with C-3PO and R2-D2 his first time out in the port.

Anakin didn't know where to start in the port city, but to just trust in the Force.

He found himself turning down a labyrinth of crowded backstreets, fending off a pickpocket or two. And he was almost ready to give up on this part of the city when an unassuming, brown cloak clad humanoid turn down a cross street and Anakin felt tugged in that direction. So he followed.

[ihateflying]

There was no outward indication that he recognized Anakin, even once he had. His gaze didn't linger on the younger man, his steps didn't slow, the speed of his steps and set of his shoulders remained the same.

He walked down increasingly grim streets and filthy alleys, showing no more sign that he was aware of being followed than he had recognition of Anakin.

He led them through the maze until it reached a dead end, in an ally that frankly reeked of garbage and misery, and turned to face Anakin. Thanks to being exhausted, a bit thinner than he had been, and the ragged state of his clothing, he fit right in.

He pushed his hood back looked at him for a moment and then closed his eyes. "Thank Force." He's never been so grateful. "I wasn't sure-" He couldn't verbalize the rest of the thought. "I thought you might have-" Or that one.

He was past crying - he'd cried more in the past few days than he had in the rest of his life combined - but for a bare moment it was a near thing.

[hero_with_no_fear]

"I knew you were still alive." Maybe he hadn't been sure, but seeing Obi-Wan's face was enough to make the claim retroactive.

Anakin, who was always more expressive than his master, didn't need any prompting to just cross the distance between them and try to pull the older man into a hug.

[ihateflying]

Obi-Wan was not a demonstrative man. He also did not cry, and kept his appearance very, very properly neat.

He had cried and was near tears again, now. He was far past being merely disheveled.

He didn't allow the hug - he returned it and he returned it tightly and fiercely, his whole body shuddering in the echo of the way he'd shook during his last meeting with Yoda.

"I may well be the only one who is. Is Padme -" Is she alive? All right? Here? He couldn't seem to finish sentences, but he meant all of those things.

[hero_with_no_fear]

Anakin could probably count on one hand the number of times Obi-Wan had let him hug him. He couldn't even remember the last time his former Master had returned a hug. And then there was the matter of Obi-Wan's overflowing emotions- it shook Anakin to see him like this.

"Padme agreed to stay with the ship, but she's fine. We were on Naboo when-" He didn't know how to finish because he didn't know what had happened.

He pulled back, giving Obi-Wan room.

"What... happened?"

[ihateflying]

He leaned back against the wall when Anakin released him, and rubbed his face with both hands.

"The Sith Lord we were looking for was Palpatine, and the War...." He dropped his hands away from his face to watch Anakin. "He engineered the war to give himself more power, and as a means of thinning our ranks and separating us. We walked right into it. The Clones - that I'm quite sure now he provided - turned on us in the field, and took the temple."

He tried not to see it all again. He managed - or nearly - but serenity was not what he was feeling.

[hero_with_no_fear]

It felt as if the ground had opened up under his feet and he was free falling into nothing, with no gear, and he couldn’t get his mind focused enough to arrest his descent.

“What?”

Palpatine was the Sith Lord?

Going into his mission to spy on Palpatine, he was told the Council thought the Sith was one of the Chancellor’s aides.

But of course now, hindsight was perfect and unforgiving. Of course it was Palpatine. A man he trusted like an uncle, he’d trusted that man.

But he found anger wasn’t the first emotion to come to him, but the deepest of shame. For not connecting the evidence sooner. For backing out of the mission and leaving the Order and not doing his duty. The mental fugue and exhaustion that had encapsulated his existence while trying to spy on the man completely forgotten.

“Master,” he said. “I’m so sorry I left. I should have stayed. I should have seen what he was sooner. I was so selfishly caught up in my visions I-I missed what-what I should have seen. I should have been there. I should have helped-”

[ihateflying]

He flinched slightly when Anakin called him Master - not for fear of his own safety but rather concern for Anakin's.

He did not take this time to correct Anakin, though, because whatever else he wasn't, he was Jedi and Anakin's friend. There were things here far more pressing. Like Anakin's shame and everything else Anakin had said.

He wrapped his arms around himself as he leaned against the wall behind him and gave a single, slight, head shake.

"No."

Force, he was tired. Not the sort of satisfying tired that came from exertion, and could be fixed with simple sleep. He was the sort of tired that dragged at his mind and heart as much as his limbs. Heavy, he thought fleetingly, was the proper word for it. It made organizing his thoughts and presenting them clearly far more a daunting prospect than he would have liked.

He took a breath, closed his eyes a moment and then breathed out slowly.

"No," he repeated in much more normal tone, as his eyes opened to find Anakin's and meet them. "You never should have been given that assignment. I do not believe your exhaustion and strain were an accident. Think. We know Dooku was Sith. We know now that Palpatine was Sidious. Remember the fight where you killed Dooku. He fought to engage you. He fought to kill me - and if not that, to get me out of the fight- as quickly as possible. It was not because I was the greater threat." So clear to him in hindsight. "Palpatine orchestrated his own kidnapping. He lured us in. He used you to execute his own apprentice. There are always two Sith - a Master, and an Apprentice. Who do you think he intended to take Dooku's place? Helping you leave was the only right thing I've done for you."

[hero_with_no_fear]

Grizzly puzzle pieces fell into place, filling in the greater picture of Palpatine's master plan. Every conversation Anakin had with Palpatine since the moment on the Invisible Hand, where Palpatine had hissed at him to kill Dooku... and Anakin had given into it, all those moments replayed like a holovid horror show.

Oh, and it went further back than that. This whole time, Palpatine was leading him to one terrible end.

"I wouldn't have..." he said, small and unconvincingly. The lack of veracity in his denial a confession of what he knew was the truth. Pretending that part of himself for so long was just a fluke - the part that slipped too close to the Dark Side when it was convenient. That one time when he'd actually given in, on Tatooine... No, he would have.

He took a step back, giving Obi-Wan distance if he wanted it.

"He was, you think he was doing that- making me-" Something clicked. "The visions, were they from...? But how could he get inside my mind?" The Jedi said the mind trick only worked on the weak minded, it was chilling to think how weak-willed he must be for someone to slip in and play with his thoughts.

[ihateflying]

He put his hand on Anakin's shoulder to keep him from going far. What could have been is of far less concern to him than what actually was, and what actually is matters most.

What is, is that Anakin was acting as though Obi-Wan would recoil from his presence and that is a situation he found unbearable.

"I think he probably intended that Dooku killing me would push you over the edge and was frustrated that it didn't. I don't think there's any way of knowing for sure whether the visions came from him mentally dominating you when you slept, or if they were real and he only capitalized on my failure to recognize how serious they were."

[hero_with_no_fear]

"But... either way..." Anakin said, adding two and two. "If he knows about the visions, that means..." Palpatine knew Padme was pregnant. And if he knew Padme was pregnant, she wasn't just a Senator thorn in his side, she was carrying Anakin's children. And if Palpatine had wanted Anakin as his apprentice, but couldn't secure that desire, molding a child was far easier than leading an adult to the Dark Side.

"We have to get back to Padme."