darkforcerising | OPEN POST

Anakin responded by holding Obi-Wan tighter. Maybe he shouldn't cling to him so much, but he was here now and letting go wasn't a concept he could stomach right then.

"What happened?" he asked. "What do you need?"

He nudged his forehead against Anakin's jaw, without looking up or moving much - though he absolutely responded to the tighter grip by relaxing physically, in a way that wasn't... forced.

"Exposure therapy, probably," he said, dry as the desert around them. "Probably restrained."

Obi-Wan relaxing triggered the same response in Anakin - if Obi-Wan was okay, or gradually becoming more okay, Anakin could do the same.

He choked on a small laugh.

With his head clearing again, now that he was breathing again (oxygen helped in that way) he knew that wasn't really an answer. The trigger needed to be named.

"What triggered you?" he asked quietly.

He did not want to talk about this.

He did not.

There was no level at all upon which he saw any benefit in talking about this, and spelling out what had happened.

Because he didn't want to.

He knew Anakin asking was for a reason, that it could help avoid it in the future - or diffuse it - but he didn't want to know it.

He actually growled under his breath at Anakin, not from anger but frustration. At himself. At the fact that he has to use something that is not exactly... approved, emotion wise, as leverage to talk.

"You grabbing my wrist."

Anakin thought about that, closed his eyes and tried not to get lost in the memories that explained to him why that would affect Obi-Wan.

"I'm sorry.... I should have known."

They needed more than each other. They needed someone to practice with who didn't bring with them horrible shared experiences that popped up like booby traps whenever they tried to move forward. But they only had each other right now.

"Can we try something?"

Anakin's apology and feeling self-recrimination, combined with lingering adrenaline and frustration at himself and his physical closeness to Anakin resulted in a completely novel experience for Obi-Wan.

For the first time in his entire life, he actually briefly considered biting someone.

He didn't.

He considered it very briefly.

"We can try anything you want."

There was a strange spike of... not quite irritation from Obi-Wan that Anakin dismissed, because he was very used to irritating people.

He unwrapped his arms from Obi-Wan and stepped back to give them room.

Anakin held up his right hand, palm up.

"Can I see your hand?"

He stepped back as well, though he did it with a very faint shiver that was barely there before it was gone.

He tilted his eyebrows up a little, but he did in fact give Anakin his hand. Facing each other, so his left hand to Anakin's right.

He lifted his left hand, but waited. "Can I touch your wrist?"

"I told you less than a minute ago that we could do whatever you wanted. That stands. Yes. You can touch my wrist."

He knew why Anakin was asking and appreciated it. Ironically holding onto each other wasn't a problem and if this hadn't come up in the context of sparring-- he wouldn't even think about it.

Now he still wasn't afraid of Anakin, but he was worried about it happening again. Which meant in spite of the almost caviler phrasing, he was... uneasy.

He ...was going to save that question for a bit, he decided.

Anakin would only do this with consent, which meant Obi-Wan should prepare himself for that question to be repeated

"Think about this as a diagnostic check on a droid's primary motivator. You're going to get annoyed with how many times I ask the same question, but humor me, okay?"

He didn't grab Obi-Wan's wrist, but just use his fingers first, followed by the palm to just rest on his wrist. He was avoiding the same way he'd gripped and pulled during that fight on Mustafar.

"How's that? How do you feel?"

He gave Anakin a flat look.

He understood the analogy. He understood what Anakin was trying to do pretty quickly.

"Annoyed."

Smart-assery as deflection? Obi-Wan? Never.

He closed his eyes and took a breath and self-assessed anyway, though. Fine. Fine.

"Very vaguely and very distantly threatened." That might explain the snark, too, actually. "But when I say very vaguely I mean extremely vaguely."

Anakin could smile at that.

"Systems are functioning normal, then."

He could be a smart ass, too.

He didn't change the position or force of his hand, just held it there, letting new, positive memories override older ones.

"That's good. Tell me when you're ready for me to move."

"Is there a version of this that won't take eternity? Maybe something where you just grab hold and snarl at me until I get over it?"

Because this was-

He wasn't impatient, he was uncomfortable and for multiple reasons. One of them...

"What triggered you?"

Because that rage was....

Bad.

"Nope," he said. "Forming memories is easy, organizing and processing them is difficult. Reorganizing them... more difficult... There are other methods. Eye movement and desensitization and reprocessing is another method, but you aren't very skilled yet at describing your own emotions, so that would more difficult for you, I think, and it's very exhausting. You have to vocalize the details you can remember of the traumatic event and all your emotions you felt during and after."

He moved his hand so he could rub his thumb along the inside of Obi-Wan's wrist.

"...Hurting you." For him, it was easier to tell Obi-Wan. He had more practice at this. But his voice did get quieter. "Realizing I was hurting you."

That answer....

Told him so much about Anakin - his student, his friend, his brother, and in some ways his child's - mental state at that time that he....

Guilt, pain pure, raw, grief absolutely, powerfully, surged in and around him.

He tried to say something, and just couldn't get words out past the constriction in his throat. So he gently removed his hand from under Anakin's, so he could take both of Anakin's shoulders in his and pressed a rough kiss against Anakin's temple.

"I'll be back." He did manage to get out, but only barely.

Then he turned and walked straight out into the wastelands. He... needed something, and he wasn't sure what. Space was there, somewhere though, and at least one that wasn't in short supply on Tatooine.

Edited 2020-01-14 00:47 (UTC)

Stay with me, tried to reach through to Obi-Wan, but his friend was walking off before Anakin could think of something to say out loud that would make him stay. And he knew he couldn't run after him. Obi-Wan needed some space.

Watching him walk away was like seeing all the damage he'd caused to the galaxy represented in one singular person. He couldn't fix this no matter how much he wanted to. And then he couldn't watch anymore, he had to turn away and go inside.

Inside he didn't know what to do anymore than outside.

He just slumped against the door and slid down until he hit the ground. Tears were falling before he was down.

He knew going would hurt Anakin, but thought that staying would hurt him more. Especially since, in that moment, what he was grieving for would be something he could never explain to Anakin, or so he believed.

Because who he was grieving for, and why he was grieving....

It wasn't the fall of the order, slaughtered kids, the condition of the galaxy, or the loss of ten thousand Jedi.

It was just Anakin.

How do you explain to someone, who hated someone - even if they once were that person - that not only did you not hate them, but loved them. Not Vader - but Anakin. Anakin as he'd seen him from every moment of his life from the little boy Qui-Gon had introduced him to, to the man who'd seen him off to Upatu?

He didn't know how. He didn't think he could.

...Even at that last moment, Anakin enraged and hating him, he'd still loved Anakin and tried to save him. Down to the very last second when he had no more choices and had in destroying Anakin broken himself.

He walked for probably half an hour, sank down into a posture that mirrored the one of Anakin at the house, but put his head down on his uplifted knees to protect his face for the sun and cried until there weren't any tears left.

He didn't exactly feel better when he stood up to make his way home - his head hurt, his heart hurt - but at least he felt like he'd acknowledged the loss and sent his pointless apologies and regrets where they belonged - into the desert and force and nothing, instead of onto the shoulders of the man waiting at his hut.

When he finally got there he slipped quietly inside, and slid into the seat across from him. "Are you still on speaking terms with me?"

Edited 2020-01-14 01:20 (UTC)

After getting his own emotions out, he'd sat down at the table to work on his arm. It would keep him busy and maybe he wouldn't think about... anything. It delivered on the former.

He worried until he felt Obi-Wan's presence in the Force drawing near again. But despite what Obi-Wan was clearly thinking, anger didn't replace the worry. Just relief.

"Because you walked out into the middle of the desert without any protection?" Anakin asked, looking up at Obi-Wan, he didn't have it in him to be snarkier than that. "I'm just glad you did come back." And after a pause, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I should have taken a cloak. I wasn't thinking clearly at the time." It wasn't really snark, per-se, but it was engaging with Anakin's snark in a pretty mild way. "Though as you said your first night here, I always have the Force."

He studied Anakin's face for a moment, then sighed tiredly. "I think you may be the wrong person for me to talk about this with. And not because of any shortcoming on your behalf."

Anakin nodded. He could only accept that, trust Obi-Wan to know what he needed. He wasn't hurt exactly. Not the way Obi-Wan might think he would be. He'd be ecstatic if Obi-Wan did talk to someone about this. He just felt... useless and out of place. Like he said the night they first took out the lightsaber - the people of this universe deserved someone not him helping them.

"Do you want lunch?" he said, pushing himself up from the table.

He smiled, in a way that was at once both pained and sad. "What I'd really like is if you would hug me."

He wasn't great, but he was at least learning something and that was... Anakin's doing.

Of course Anakin would give him a hug.

He didn't say anything. He just rounded the table silently and pulled Obi-Wan close. And he left the duration of the hug up to Obi-Wan to decide.

He wrapped his arms around Anakin and hugged him warmly, and tightly, and with gratitude for his presence, for quite a while.

"Do you want to pick up where we left off? Inside and out of the sun?"

Because even when Obi-Wan quit -

He didn't quit.

"Sparring-?" Anakin asked, confused. Because this hut was not built for tumbling.

But then he realized what Obi-Wan meant and said, "Oh, right, the wrists, yes. We can. If you want."

He pulled the chair around so he could sit closer to Obi-Wan. He held out his hands, waiting for when Obi-Wan was ready.

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