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

[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."

[ihateflying]

"Yes," he agreed. "I can go with you to the ship, if you think I'll be more helpful than risk, but we also need to find a way to keep both of you safe."

He didn't know what that was.

He didn't even know if he could actually help.

But anything -anything- Anakin needed, he would give.

[hero_with_no_fear]

"Obi-Wan," Anakin said, catching how his friend only said 'to the ship.' "You're coming with us. Whatever we do, we won't abandon you."

[ihateflying]

"And I will not add to the danger that you are in. A danger my failures created." He's not actually thinking clearly, himself. He's more likely to be additional protection than not, but it just-

It feels wrong.

Not in the Force, in himself.

Something about guilt and intrusion.

"We can continue this discussion at the ship."

They need to get to her, first, regardless.

[hero_with_no_fear]

Anakin knew that arguing with Obi-Wan here would be futile, especially when he knew they could just do it on the ship where Anakin had already half won.

They left the ally, entering the crowd. Anakin knew not to head back to the ship the same way he came. They wound their way through the streets without talking.

But once Obi-Wan was back aboard Padme's ship, sitting at a table with a meal pack in front of him, Anakin started asking questions. "How did you survive?" He didn't mean to doubt Obi-Wan's skills, but the rest of the Order was gone.

[ihateflying]

He was glad to be sitting. He was less glad to be eating, but he was eating. He was just eating somewhat mechanically.

He took no insult at Anakin's question. The rest of the Order was gone, and they were also, all, highly skilled. Some much more skilled than he. There was no warning that attack was coming, because the Clones had no malice in them, they were just doing what Clones did and following an order. They were vastly out numbered and had no support.

He closed his eyes for a moment and took another one of those measured, slow, breaths and opened them on the exhale. "I was shot down from a rock ledge, after I finished Grievous. I have no idea if it was the concussion blast of the shot or I hit something on the way down, but I woke up under water. They looked for my body, but a re-breather and the current took me underground and away from the immediate area. I sneaked back and stole Grievous' ship."

Then left. Fast.

[hero_with_no_fear]

In theory, Anakin understood how this worked. All the Jedi knew the Clones had bio-mechanical passivity chips implanted in their brains. They were meant to make them better soldiers. But none of the Jedi thought they would do this.

But Anakin realized he should have. He was there when Tups' chip malfunctioned and he'd been mumbling about an 'Order 66'. Anakin had been there when Fives... he realized now that Fives was trying to warn them.

He scrubbed at his eyes.

"You made it back to Coruscant, though? Just to change the message?"

[ihateflying]

"Yes."

Anakin was, Obi-Wan realized, essentially debriefing him. Nothing too surprising there, really. They'd done this for each other before, even over food. It just wasn't usually so absolutely necessary to keep Obi-Wan's mind from wandering, or mental discipline from cracking.

He blinked a couple of times and he focused his eyes on Anakin. Intensely. Not in a way that is pointed or because he had a hidden mission, but because if he did not what he would see instead was the inside of the Temple.

"It was a trap for any Jedi who had survived, but more specifically a trap for you. I couldn't let that transmission continue. Senator Organa helped. He is an ally."

[hero_with_no_fear]

"I knew something was wrong with the message. After Chan-" he caught himself, it was habit to call Palpatine by his title. But that wasn't a title he deserved anymore, and if there was one thing Anakin was quick to do when showing defiance, it was dropping someone's title.

"After Palpatine's address to the Senate, it didn't make sense. He said the Jedi were enemies of his new empire. The Jedi wouldn't stay on Coruscant if that were true."

Anakin felt... useless. He'd been lightyears away when Palpatine had struck against the Order, he hadn't been there to help. If he was the Chosen One, he should have been there.

"There has to be more Jedi left," he said, but if pressed, he wasn't sure if he was saying that more to make himself feel better or from a genuine sense of hope.

[ihateflying]

"No," he agrees, voice and eyes going distant. "My concern was that Jedi would believe that they were being recalled to, if nothing else, try to get the children out of the temple."

He shuddered, hard, and had to grip the table and clench his jaw to stop before it turned into the convulsive shaking he'd done before Yoda had gone off to fight Palpatine and he'd headed to alter the transmission.

He would never get those images out of his mind.

"There must be more Jedi alive. If they were smart enough to survive this far, they'll be deep in hiding. For their sake, I hope they stay there."

[hero_with_no_fear]

"Stay there?" Anakin said, a sense of urgency in his voice. "We have to find them. We need to help them. And we can't let Palpatine just do..." Do what? Make an empire? Destroy the remaining Jedi? As a child of chaos, he rebelled against the former, as a man who'd felt the pain of injustice so many times in his life, he couldn't abide the latter.

"We can't do nothing."

[ihateflying]

"There is nothing we can do to help them right now without endangering them further. Palpatine wanted, and may still want you. He likely wants your children. He hates me. Personally. There is no way to find them without risk of it becoming the same sort of death-trap the transmission to return to the temple was."

He was quiet through that, though there was a tight strain in his voice. His voice broke around the last: "We need to wait."

He didn't want to wait, either. He just... could see no other way.

[hero_with_no_fear]

Palpatine would hate Obi-Wan for taking away something he’d worked for years to obtain. And Obi-Wan was right, Palpatine would still want him and his children. He just hated waiting.

He stood up and started pacing, because if he couldn’t run out right this minute and do something recklessly heroic, he had to get rid of his energy somehow.

“We can’t stay here. But can we even go back to Naboo? And...”

So many terrible conclusions clouded at once in his mind. “Padme’s family isn’t safe, they need to be warned, too.”

[ihateflying]

He looked down at his hands as he put them flat on the table, preparing to stand.


He noticed without noticing that his knuckles were still scraped and scabbed from his fight with Grievous. It felt like a lifetime ago. Being turned on by his troops felt like it had happened today. It didn't make sense. One had followed the other near immediately.

He pushed himself to his feet, and then stood and tracked Anakin as he paced the room. "Padme has a very good reason to take a leave of absence, if she chooses to. "Being in the public eye may provide more protection for her; she is well loved. Her family may be safe enough, unless Palpatine believes that they can be used as leverage against you. I just don't know. You need to talk to Padme and make decisions as a family -and I need to leave before you do."

He had not forgotten that argument.

[hero_with_no_fear]

“What?” Anakin had briefly forgotten that argument, but he pick up right where they left off.

“You’re not going anywhere. You look... terrible.” He’d considered other words and phrases, but decided this was the most generous way to say it.

He pointedly looked him up and down. Obi-Wan never did pause to take care of himself physically, that always landed in Anakin to see to. Much like how Ahsoka did that for him- Ahsoka!

Before they’d returned to the Core to ‘rescue’ Palpatine, Ahsoka had made contact with him and Obi-Wan, and they’d sent her off to Mandelore with some of his Clones- did they send her to her death?

He wanted to believe that he would know, the same way he did with Obi-Wan, if she had died.

But, right, the wreck in front of him.

“Sit back down, I’ll bring you the med kit.”

[ihateflying]

He'd thought of Ahsoka. He'd thought of nearly everyone. She was one of the ones that bit the deepest. He hadn't been her Master, know, but Anakin was, and she felt as close to family as anyone ever had.

"I can't stay here, it's only putting two targ-" He broke off abruptly, and blinked. "He was trying to separate us and keep us apart before. There was a reason for that. Maybe I should stay."

He was trying very hard to use reason and develop a reasonable strategy, but thinking clearly at all required effort. Out-thinking a Sith Lord? Not currently possible.

He shook his head slightly at Anakin. "I don't need a med-kit." Yes he did.

[hero_with_no_fear]

Too late, Anakin was already digging in the mag-lock cabinets for the med-kit, which, when he found it, he promptly dropped onto the table and started rummaging through for something to start cleaning Obi-Wan's wounds.

"If I can sit, you can sit," Anakin said. He knew this routine, he had to get forceful to make Obi-Wan listen to medical reason. "And you're done with the med-kit when I say you are."

[ihateflying]

Maybe the reason Obi-Wan was so very, very rarely truly angry and even more rarely showed it was because he bled it off as constant, fairly mild, irritation and annoyance. Did that count as releasing anger?

At least it gave him a distraction from... everything else.

"Blast it." He flopped back into his chair though, because this was a familiar dance and he never won. He couldn't win because if he did, Anakin could leverage it against him, and that was not a thing he wanted to cope with. "If you're going to insist on helping, could you go find me some clean clothing." That would probably be too big on him, because the Force loves to surround him with tall people. "The worst of it's actually my leg. Do not try a leg sweep on a cyborg."

[hero_with_no_fear]

Anakin very deliberately placed in front of Obi-Wan the things he'd need to start fixing himself before getting up to grab a change of clothing. Nothing would fit right, because these were Anakin's clothes, and he'd shot past Obi-Wan in height years ago. But they would do for now. And it was just one more way to keep Obi-Wan around.

"Sounds like it made sense at that time," Anakin said, coming back with the clothes. "I'm sure he deserved his legs being swept."

[ihateflying]

There really is nothing seriously physically wrong, at least - mostly cuts, bruises, and a concussion, which honestly described his near constant state of being, especially since the war. Could have done without waking up after he'd half filled his lungs with water thanks to that unconscious swim, he supposes, but even so.

He's cooperating with using the med kit because it's a meas of starting to clean himself up and put himself back in order. That, far more than medical care for the sake of medical care, he does need.

"Shooting him made sense at the time, too, and he deserved that. You don't hear me giving you warnings about that, do you?"

So he's pretty methodical about doing it, and more thorough than necessary. He doesn't just clean and treat his scraped and bruised knuckles, he actually goes on to cleaning his hands and blood and dirt from under his fingernails.

[hero_with_no_fear]

Anakin sat back down. "I'm surprised you're not, given how much you detest blasters."

[ihateflying]

He shrugs. "First rule of war: Survive."

Which isn't really how he operates - that sounds more self-serving than he is, but sometimes they all need the reminder.

He pushes his chair back and stands up, slowly.

"I'm going to go change. I'll be back in five minutes, and we can continue to discuss what we're going to do - or at least where we're going to go and how to get a message to Padme's family."