darkforcerising | OPEN POST

Working together these past few weeks and being intimate together had developed in Anakin an awareness of Obi-Wan's presence and body in the Force he didn't have for anyone before he arrived. He hadn't questioned it the first time they came out of a fight with a scrape or two, just sharing that closeness in the Force seemed natural now.

Now...

It was chilling how vividly he felt that blast to Obi-Wan's shoulder and the slice across his body. He didn't need to see how the man's guard was down.

"Obi-Wan!"

They'd always approached these missions as clinically as possible - at least Anakin knew Obi-Wan did. Anakin still had his complicated emotions to contend with, but he tried to stay as present in the moment as he could and not let his memories of being Vader slip in. He was afraid of what that anger might make him blind to. While they planned their missions using his old memories, collaborating around the kitchen table was different from using those memories in the heat of battle. And he knew it limited his ability with certain skills.

But now- Obi-Wan couldn't die.

The battle had to end now. And if he just accessed certain memories...

He seized both Inquisitors with the Force, freezing their limbs and bodies and shoving them back into the group of stormtroopers. Then he reached out with his mind and found the thermal detonators on the utility belts of all the remaining stormtroopers and activated them. It was a horrible way to go, burning alive, he knew how that felt. But this was the fastest way he could think of achieving their need to end this now. He shielded the space around him and Obi-Wan until the blast energy dissipated.

When the energy was gone along with their opposition, he shoved his feelings and memories aside - deal with that fall out later - and dropped to Obi-Wan's side.

"Can you move?"

He wasn't sure what Anakin had done. He'd felt the intent, seen and felt the results, but he was too... distracted to be entirely clear on what any of it meant, beyond fire, not being dead, and this fight being over.

He had fallen, but he'd only fallen to one knee. That was a good thing - it made it easier to get up again. He looked up to make eye-contact with Anakin, nodded, then gritted his teeth and stood up. His vision immediately swam and grayed, but he didn't even pause.

He leaned pretty heavily on Anakin in the force. It was going to hurt Anakin in the short term, but he needed to stay conscious if they were getting out of here.

He headed straight back toward the ship they were headed toward, before their escape went to hell.

The second they were on the ship, though, he both collapsed again a wall with a strangled sounding, muffled, scream and started trying to shield from Anakin.

Anakin didn't flinch when Obi-Wan leaned on him, either physically or in the Force. This was reminiscent of old times. But this time they didn't have an army of clones backing them up. There backup was Goose.

"Get the engine fired up and get us off planet," he said to the droid. This was one of the reasons he loves those robots. The droid turned around without serious complaint.

Anakin felt Obi-Wan trying to shield himself from Anakin, but he refused to let Obi-Wan do that. He needed him conscious as long as possible.

"Don't even try that, Old Man. You have to stay with me!"

With the Force he opened the cabinet with their medical supplies and called what he needed to him.

He started tearing off Obi-Wan's tunic.

"Next time you want me to tear off your shirt," Anakin said, mostly to keep them both focused, and to keep his emotions somewhere else. "You just have to ask." He started opening bacta patches. He barely noticed the feeling of the ship rising.

He didn't protest having his shirt torn open, but he grabbed Anakin's wrist hard before he could start applying the bacta.

"Give me a minute, please," he said, as politely as it could be said through gritted teeth.

With the tunic out of the way, that wound was nasty. It wasn't quite bad enough to be lethal on its own (probably) but it was certainly enough to induce shock. Not eviscerated or cut in half, but not something they were likely going to be able to handle well on their own.

It was also bad enough that he actually needed the second to try to gain some kind of control of pain. His blasted (see what he did there?) shoulder was completely irrelevant in comparison and he knew Anakin had had much worse, but that didn't make him feel any better about it.

"I'm not going anywhere, just-" stay there and breathe.

"Obi-Wan."

Damn fool old man, always resisting help. But he didn't fight Obi-Wan's hand on his wrist just yet. Five seconds. He gave Obi-Wan five deep breaths before moving forward with the process of treating his wounds as best he could.

Five seconds, because if he had more time to think, he would think about what he'd just done to a group of people. Two Force users and almost a dozen stormtroopers.

"We need to get you somewhere with medical facilities," he said, getting back to work. "These won't heal you as much as you need. And I can't heal you myself." He was cursing himself for not thinking about this eventuality - the played with laser swords. They should have better medical supplies.

He took his five seconds of breathing and used it to move pain away from the front of his mind, so it would stop being all encompassing-

and ideally stop leaking into his close connection to Anakin.

It was imperfect, but it was better.

"Contact Bail."

That he wasn't resisting that now said... a lot. Like adrenaline wearing off, allowing his blood pressure to drop, his complexion to pale and to break out in a light sheen of sweat.

In short, right on schedule, that was shock.

"He can send a ship with better facilities to meet us. This isn't your fault."

Edited 2020-01-26 01:05 (UTC)

Anakin nodded, no hesitation. He didn't care what it meant for him. Obi-Wan was the one that needed to live.

"We were going to have to tell him about the weapon soon anyways."

He placed the last bacta patch.

"I'm going to go send the message. I'll be back before you can get into trouble." the sooner he sent the message the sooner they would get to help. He leaned in and kissed Obi-Wan before standing and going to the cockpit.

He needed to be alive, conscious, and coherent in order to be able to keep whoever was on that ship directly from jumping to seemingly obvious conclusions. At the moment he was alive, two thirds conscious and maybe half to a third coherent.

As was evidenced by the fact that in spite of being on the edge of passing out, rather than doing some rudimentary healing on himself, by the time Anakin came back he was upright and trying to follow him.

Anakin clearly hadn't finished before Obi-Wan could get into trouble.

"Obi-Wan," Anakin said, concerned. He tried to sound stern but that failed. He was just one the verge of crippling fear of Obi-Wan dying taking over.

He reached for the man's shoulders, to help support him. "You need to lay down."

"I need you to stay with me. They're going to assume you did this, if I can't tell them otherwise."

He could feel the fear. He could feel the hands - and Anakin's hands felt warm to him, which was entirely wrong and the result of his skin being clammy, but still pleasant. "I'll lay down if you lay down and promise to stay."

"I was going to come back," Anakin said, redirecting Obi-Wan to one of the bedrooms.

Anakin had a sinking suspicion that they were going to think he did this no matter what Obi-Wan told him. He was already trying to think of what he could do to keep their focus on Obi-Wan's health first and foremost.

"I won't leave your side. I promise."

In the bedroom he pulled the covers back for Obi-Wan, not at all liking the way his skin felt clammy.

Obi-Wan locked his hand around Anakin's wrist - the left one. It wasn't tight around Anakin's wrist, there wast just something really desperately unyielding in it, regardless of his state.

"No. You won't."

He got into the bed, but it actually wasn't easy. His level of attention kept... wavering, almost fading in and out while he did it. By the time he was laying down he was breathing pretty shallowly and shivering but he was also holding onto Anakin, hard.

He was not at all afraid of dying.

He was absolutely afraid that someone was going to hurt Anakin.

"Do we have an ETA?"

Anakin was forever surrounding himself with people who weren't afraid to die. He wasn't afraid to die either, but that wasn't the issue. People in his life just kept dying. Or he was killing them. One of the two.

He pulled the blankets up around Obi-Wan, all while Obi-Wan still held onto his wrist.

"A few hours," he said. He wished it was sooner. "We have to make a jump to ensure no one was following us."

He laid down on the bed next to Obi-Wan, it was the easiest way to let him keep holding on.

"Obi-Wan, I can't heal you." The greatest joke the Force ever made was making its savoir incapable of healing anyone. "You have to go into a meditative healing trance."

Anakin laying down was good. It meant he could hold on without there being any pull at all, in any direction. More importantly to him in the moment, it meant Anakin was close and he could keep holding on.

"No one's good at everything," he murmured. Then tries to take a deeper breath, and get his head a little clearer. "If I can't maintain near here then I will. I may need your help. If I can't, even with help, I will, but I don't want to be unable to talk when they get here. And I don't know how easily I'll be able to rouse once I'm down."

He was not letting Anakin face more hostility by people who should be allies. Especially not alone. Especially not when that hostility could get him killed.

"If you're dead, then you won't be able to talk at all." And then it wouldn't matter because what could Anakin do at that point? He didn't know.

Anakin had a point.

It was a point Obi-Wan hated, but it was a point and there was only so far denial and stubbornness could carry him. He was already fighting off shock - it was trying to shut his circulatory system down. This didn't have to be this hard.

He was just terrified of something happening to Anakin while he was out.

Bright, clear, unshielded and unfiltered fear that he - had to put aside if he was going to stay alive long enough to do anything for Anakin, at any point.

"You'd better be here when I come back around."

He shifted his grip on Anakin's wrist clumsily, so he could clearly feel Anakin's pulse. That was what he used as a focal point when he closed his eyes and let himself drop.

His pulse gradually stopped being thready and became steady, if slower than it would have been in a normal state of awareness. His breathing followed a similar pattern. He gave Anakin's wrist a gentle squeeze, sent one final brush of light and wordless reassurance and then -

Dropped.

Well, well beyond awareness of anything - pain, Anakin, sound, contact through the force, anything.

He did not, however, unlock his hand from around Anakin's wrist.

Anakin didn't move from Obi-Wan's side while they were in hyperspace. Those few hours seemed so long and so short at the same time. Obi-Wan needed help as soon as possible, but even with this advanced technology, they could only go so fast. But if a few hours was all he had left with Obi-Wan, that was so unfairly short.

He hated his inability to tell time.

Eventually-suddenly- the ship dropped out of hyperspace and he heard Goose communicating with the other ship to verify their identity. Soon, they would begin docking.

"Obi-Wan," Anakin said, even though he knew just saying his name wouldn't wake the man. He reached into the Force to nudge him, shove him, grab him and bring him back. Obi-Wan, come back to me.

No one, absolutely no one in the entire galaxy, could have pulled Obi-Wan out of that trance. It had nothing to do with power, it was wholly based on the fact that Anakin was intimately familiar, known, and loved enough that even with as little awareness as he had at the start-

He gravitated toward Anakin's presence within the force, and followed the pull back to consciousness.

He was badly disoriented when he came up - not sure what or how or why - but even disoriented and with eyes glassy from (now at least better controlled) pain, he immediately gravitated physically toward Anakin. Let go of his wrist and tangled his fingers in Anakin's hair.

"Anakin." He knew other words. Had other questions like 'are we out of hyperspace?' and 'how long' and - He couldn't get them in proper order yet. Anakin's name? That was easy.

Anakin huffed out a breath that felt like he'd been holding it the whole time Obi-Wan was under. Even if he knew the man was not out in the clear yet. Just hearing him- seeing him back was overwhelming his feelings. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and then grabbed Obi-Wan's hand to kiss it.

"We're out of hyperspace, and in a docking sequence," he said, then waited for Obi-Wan to process that.

He tugged his hand free and frowned faintly, lifting his hand to swipe his thumb over Anakin's cheek.

"It's okay" Don't cry.

He'd given into instinct once. It seemed determined to take over again now - just slip away and back down away from pain and injury and impairment. Except that meant leaving Anakin, and staying with him was far more powerful, at least at the moment.

"You should help me get up before they board. We need to keep you safe."

“We need to get you medical care,” Anakin corrected. “I’ll be fine.”

It was with hesitation that he added, “You need to let them detain me.” Anakin saw this as the only way for this to go smoothly- as smoothly as was possible. Obi-Wan’s health was his first priority.

It was probably Anakin's best, only, chance to get Obi-Wan to agree to this. Not because he was talking sense, but because Obi-Wan was disoriented, groggy and in pain.

In that state, he defaulted to believing what Anakin told him.

Because he trusted Anakin.

And Anakin hadn't presented it as an option or question.

"This feels like a bad idea."

“You have to let them control the situation. I’m a threat whether you say I am or not because they don’t know the truth. And we can’t tell them the truth if they’re afraid.”

He sat up.

“Think about how hard it was to get through to me when I was afraid. We need to help them feel safe.” And he tried to send as much reassurance through the Force as he could, to help Obi-Wan not feel afraid about this choice. How much of his first life had been unfairly filled with fear, even after he was taken in by the Jedi? Palpatine knew it and used it to abuse him and had taken away his one chance at feeling safe. How much pain would have the Galaxy escaped if he had felt safe?

“I promise I’ll be okay.”

If he were truly capable of grasping that entire line of reasoning, he wouldn't need medical care nearly as badly as he did.

As it stood, he understood enough to understand the general themes, and to feel a profound amount of pride and sense of how very much this man was not the one who had become Vader.

No part of him liked this. He still accepted the reassurance.

"I love you." With you'd better be underlying it in the force. Not quite playful, but just that... edge of fear and worry that would not be soothed. Not an unwillingness to let go, but fear for Anakin.

Then he struggled his way to sitting up, mostly because Anakin had.

Edited 2020-01-26 05:00 (UTC)

Despite how serious this all was, Anakin couldn't help but but give Obi-Wan a smile.

"I love you, too." He should have said it sooner, but better late than never.

He stood up, back away from the entrance to the room, but still in plain sight.

"They have to see me."

Vibrations in the floors and walls told them the ship had landed. Goose rolled past to get to the hatch.

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