darkforcerising | OPEN POST

"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.

He moved his chair around so the table wouldn't be between them, close enough that their knees were almost touching and gave Anakin his hand.

"Have you considered just... killing them."

Anakin picked up where they left off, the thumb on his hand gently brushing Obi-Wan's wrist.

"Uh, Palpatine and Vader?"

He had to think about that because the answer was different for both.

"I don't know if I could kill Vader... he's... me."

But Palpatine... "Things are more complicated with Palpatine- I don't mean I don't want him dead. I just can't kill him on my own."

The hand on his wrist made his fingers twitch and start to curl, the start of that same vague 'threatened' response.

Then he quite intentionally began to really focus on the physical sensation as physical sensation. It was actually.... nice on that level. And the rhythmic nature was something he could use as a focal point, so he did.

It wasn't entirely perfect, but changing the context of it? He could actively participate in and did.

"I could say several things, but I need more explanation first. If you can. What's the complication?"

Anakin slowed the pace of his thumb when he noticed Obi-Wan's response.

"Palpatine is..." He was unsure how Obi-Wan would take this. "His forces aren't just the Empire. Which is a lot on its own. But he's also expanded into the Unknown Regions and has resources for a whole second army."

"Of course he does," he murmured.

Anakin's thumb on the inside of his wrist was actually working to keep him calm when he was focused on it like this. He was using it in a way similar to how he might have used awareness of other Jedi in the force - in large numbers, rather than one. He wondered, briefly and idly, if that had something to do with why Anakin had always been so tactile.

"And I've known Anakin was going to kill me since he was 16, so that's an entirely pointless conflict if we want to be productive."

Okay. Luminara and killing a ship of people it was.

And Palpatine working on achieving immortality... But, you know, one thing at a time. Save the Jedi, save the galaxy.

He looked concerned. "What do you mean?" How did Obi-Wan know that?

He smiled, faintly. He didn't seem, and wasn't, particularly perturbed. "Around the time Anakin began having dreams of his mother's dead, not terribly long before the first battle of Genosis, I began having dreams of Anakin killing me. I've had them on and off since then, with increasing frequency and vividness."

Not a big deal.

Anakin got very quiet. It felt like he was doused with ice water. "Does it happen the same way, every dream?"

He was clearly right, but he'd already know that. What he hadn't realized, because he hadn't thought it through, was that Anakin would have no reason to have known this.

"It didn't always. It was always a lightsaber, but it only became consistent after Mustfar."

He wanted to apologize for upsetting Anakin.

Anakin didn't need an apology for something he'd done.

He focused on Obi-Wan's wrist for a moment.

"Maybe this time it won't happen," he said, still quiet.

He had been steady but the start of discomfort with the conversation ... evened out some when Anakin refocused and drew his own attention to simple, if intimate, physicality.

"It may not," he agreed. "The future is always in motion and more so with you here." A pause, to give Anakin a second, before he continues gently: "And if it does... it does. I'm just sorry you're stuck with the memory, either way."

"It was my choice. I could have made different choices."

Someday they would have a conversation that didn't bite one or the other. Someday.

"How do you feel about your wrist? Ready for a change?"

"No. Actually I rather get the impression that it will be my choice...."

They had those conversations. They just had a lot of history - and future/history - to unpack.

Then the wrist - he glanced to Anakin and nodded. "Probably was a few minutes ago, if I'm honest."

"Okay," part of him is grateful for something else to focus on than his past memories. "I'll go slow, but you tell me if you need me to stop. I'm going to just lightly hold your wrist." And he slowly moved his hand to do just that with as minimal pressure as he could manage.

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