darkforcerising | OPEN POST

That Obi-Wan didn't pull away from Anakin's touch this time was heartening.

"Believe me when I say you're not worthless. That you deserve love, still. That you're not a failure. Let yourself heal from this- don't fight it. Don't try to do this alone. You deserve- have always deserved someone to be by your side."

Anakin wiped a tear away with his thumb, even if more still fell.

"Let me help you."

He... vaguely believed some scattered bits and pieces of various portions of that - an erratic, messy patchwork that was a long way from being complete.

If he could have flipped a switch and just believed it, he would have. Because he didn't want to frustrate or hurt Anakin anymore, and he was intelligent enough to recognize that... failing Anakin again wouldn't make up for failing him to begin with.

That wasn't really how belief worked, though, so it was more a matter of not arguing with the principals and not allowing himself to retreat from Anakin. To do the best he could to limit how much Anakin hurt, knowing that that involved not intentionally hurting himself more (and not letting what did show). Letting Anakin help.

...Yeah, he'd never felt more fundamentally worthless in his life, and he still didn't really regret it because Anakin was alive. He still couldn't let go of Anakin, either.

"Okay." He realized he was crying when Anakin touched him and after a couple of too-fast blinks managed to mostly stop himself. "We should get cleaned up and sleep. We're going to have to figure out what to do with this ship. Especially after that message you sent."

Anakin wasn't opposed to any of that. But he had to say first, "Next time you feel like crying, don't try to stop yourself. It's okay, let yourself cry for a moment. It really does help."

Then he dropped his hand to Obi-Wan's.

"Do you want me to join you, or wait until you are done?" This was one of the rare opportunities where the shower was big enough for the both of them.

Was he going to cry the next time he felt like it? Maybe, maybe not. Honestly if he noticed that he wanted to cry in time to actively prevent it, he'd be ahead of where he was no simply for having recognized the feeling.

"I don't have a strong opinion either way." He didn't particularly want to be alone. He also didn't particularly want company. He also didn't not want to be alone or not want company.

He just mostly felt... heavy and flat. Anakin touching him was a thing he was accepting again and found ... grounding and nice, even if he wasn't returning it. "I'm sorry."

"I know," Anakin said. Obi-Wan didn't need to explain what he was sorry for right now. Anakin would ask him later, when they talked more, just so Obi-Wan could acknowledge it.

Right now, he saw that Obi-Wan was putting a decision in his hands - and this reaction to falling and coming back, Anakin knew so well. After the Raiders, Anakin had been so paralyzed by his fear of making the wrong choice, he'd almost not gone for Obi-Wan on Geonosis.

Anakin made a choice for him.

He stood up, pulling Obi-Wan's hand with him, tugging him to stand up.

"C'mon. Shower and then sleep."

Don't make it an open ended question and not be prepared for an exhaustive answer.... He was sorry for a lot.

Including not having a real preference or knowing what to do with himself.

He stood up when Anakin did, before there was too much of a tug there, and followed him into the bathroom.

He turned the water on, then started stripping out of his clothes without any hesitation on that level. His desire to get clean he was at least sure of and he could get physically clean, at least.

"How did you get out of the interrogation room?"

While he stripped, Anakin said, "I took my arm off, then blew up one of the Inquisitor's lightsabers, and with that distraction, I used the pointy parts of my metal arm to stab the other Inquisitor."

You know, as you do.

He was fine with the subject change. They would work on Obi-Wan's mental health needs a little at a time. Rome wasn't built in a day, as the saying he knew went, and Jedi didn't fix their minds in a day either.

He stepped into the shower, grateful the water was already hot. He stepped in far enough that Obi-Wan would have room.

"I should probably find some disinfectant and soak my arm in it."

He really wondered sometimes how he'd become so completely Jedi, while also so completely failing at being what a Jedi was supposed to be.

He wasn't wondering much just then, too busy slinking into the shower and under the water, which... okay yeah, that felt really, really good. Good enough that breathing got easier, even if it had never really felt particularly hard.

"I didn't realize your arm had parts that were that pointy, but yes, if it's been inside an Inquisitor, I'd want to soak it, too. I'm sure there are supplies onboard. We can track something down after we nap." He liked these little mundane things. They felt... useful and achievable.

"Well, some parts, and anything is pointy when you stab with enough force," Anakin pointed out.

Yes, the hot water was more than good, even Anakin hadn't realized how good it would feel.

"Hey," he said, stepping closer. "Can I have a hug?" It was for himself, yes, but also for Obi-Wan.

He absolutely snorted at that remark about them being pointy enough with enough force. He was not okay but his appreciation for smart-ass remarks had gone nowhere and this qualified. It extra qualified because it was also true.

He blinked at Anakin coming in closer and he... pulled himself in, without actually moving before he entirely registered the question. Once he did he relaxed again, but - "You can have anything you want." From him anyway, but still - "Of course you can."

...He was just going to have to make contact first.

Not rejecting him outright was enough for Anakin, even if Obi-Wan withdrew as Anakin had stepped closer. Small steps. Anakin could make the first contact.

And he did, stepping closer still and slowly pulling Obi-Wan into an embrace.

Something in Anakin relaxed then that he didn't acknowledged he was holding in so tightly. It had started when Obi-Wan wouldn't let him get close when they were purifying the crystals. It was the fear that Obi-Wan would never let this happen again. Tears stung his eyes as relief washed over him and he didn't try to stop them. The shower was probably the best place to cry.

He wrapped his arms around Anakin and held him back. It felt... wrong - like he was doing something fundamentally wrong. The strength of Anakin's relief was too powerful, too clear, too directly felt in his mind, to be ignored.

He trusted Anakin more than himself, and that meant he just sort of shakily tried to push his own uneasiness aside and just held Anakin while he -- maybe cried? In the shower he really couldn't quite tell, and rubbed his back slowly.

"It's going to be okay...."

Anakin felt how Obi-Wan felt this was wrong and this is what broke Anakin's heart because it meant he had to do something that hurt.

Everything he touched turned out like this - wrong, broken, damaged, destroyed. He thought this time, now that he had control of his mind more strongly, things might be different. But he was wrong - he'd clearly broken Obi-Wan, not like before, in a different way.

Of course this was wrong - it went against everything the Jedi taught.

Attachments were bad; maybe, if you could use the Force, you just couldn't have them? Look what it had done to him? And now Obi-Wan? And every fucking Force user that ever fell in love. (Except Leia who seemed better at life than anyone.)

Anakin knew what he had to do.

"Obi-Wan, stop. I'm fine," he said, stepping back. "I'll wait until you're done. Then take my own shower."

Maybe, just maybe, the Jedi had a point about Force users - powerful, trained ones - not having deep personal attachments.

And maybe they were full of shit and just broke people to the degree that it made love and human connection feel like a thing to be apologized for.

Maybe the truth was somewhere between the two and it really didn't matter right now because there were no Jedi here.

"No."

One word, but hard as hell and flat and actually pretty angry sounding. Because he was still bouncing from one extreme to the other and couldn't find any ground in the middle and the options were broken and guilty and pissed off and afraid, but - Ok.

"Why?"

It was simple. “I’m not going to force anything on you that you think is wrong.”

And Anakin realized he’d unfairly used the mental connections they’d forged to get that information. It was passively done, but unfair all the same. He would have to draw back from that somehow.

"Oh, well, if we aren't going to do anything that feels wrong to me, I suppose we're going back to Tatooine and sitting there until we both die. Wonderful idea."

He paused, briefly, frustrated and angry and hurting but hurting because Anakin was hurting and he did not want Anakin to withdraw and nothing - nothing - felt right except being mad, and that was the thing he intellectually knew was wrong.

"You aren't forcing. You asked. I agreed. I wanted that hug. You wanted it. Now Come back here."

Anakin wasn’t afraid of anger, he understood it all too well, especially after a day like today; he was just afraid of how it was affecting Ovi-Wan.

He did step closer, but not exactly into a full embrace again.

“I think I’m going to need to hear you say out loud what you want for a little while. I don’t care if you yell it at me. I just need to hear that you’re okay with it.”

He definitely was afraid of anger, but at least being mad helped him be able to use words.

He reached out for Anakin with a very slightly shaky hand and pulled him back in and back under the water. "What I'm feeling isn't very reliable right now," he agreed, "the rest might get complicated. All I really want right now is you."

See? Even coming off the anger - (mostly, still mad under there, somewhere, mostly at himself right now) - helped him with the words.

Anakin let Obi-Wan pull him back into an embrace, feeling relief again.

He didn’t want to move away from this. From Obi-Wan.

He wanted things to be better, to be right again - again, his natural impatience rising to the surface. Again, he told himself to be patient.

He wished they could stay like this forever.

But now would simply have to do.

He didn’t know what to say really, so he settled for, “Thank you for telling me.”

He managed to shrink some - or rather slouch and spread his legs out to stand a bit lower so he could use Anakin's shoulder as a place to rest his forehead. He just - he held on. "After this I want to go to bed - naked - and sleep. Please." There was a certain amount of pleading behind that, through the bond. He... really needed the reprieve. Desperately wanted it, but also Anakin.

Positive reinforcement worked for people too.

Anakin carded his hand through Obi-Wan’s wet hair and pulled him in thigh tee with his other hand on his back.

This was the first moment of peace all day. Anakin relaxed into it, hoping Obi-Wan would do the same.

And it helped get them to some level of functioning that they got through the shower without anymore miscommunication.

In bed, Anakin pulled Obi-Wan close, more like half over him. A hand moved slowly through Obi-Wan’s hair, the other resting on the other man’s arm. As many points of touch to help anchor Obi-Wan. Anakin’s plan was to not sleep because he knew this first attempt to sleep after today for Obi-Wan would be difficult for Obi-Wan. He knew because he’d been here before.

Anakin had been there, and Obi-Wan knew it. He also knew that him being there was probably one gigantic trigger for Anakin (hey, looked, he'd learned more words than 'fuck'). He felt bad about that - really, heart-brokenly bad - but he also knew that Anakin was probably the only person left alive in the galaxy that could help him.

Even if there was any other Force sensitive he would have been willing to let near him. Which, in truth, there probably wasn't.

Too much pressure to be fair to Anakin, but again: It's what was.

He managed to sort of relax into the peace and quiet in the shower, to physically and mentally unwind a bit. He stayed focused on Anakin and the process and the fact that he really did, near desperately, just want to go to bed and go to sleep.

He was tired, and sore, and neither of them had gotten any rest since Anakin had been taken. Anakin was injured. Sleep shouldn't be a problem. He didn't expect sleep to be a problem.

...sleep was a problem, and he was naive.

He kept one hand on Anakin's back, feeling him breathe as another point of contact and source of sensory input. He did not, however, go anywhere near meditation - he really, really, could not stand the idea. He was tired enough, physically, for his body to demand sleep, which meant that dozing off wasn't a problem.

Staying asleep was.

Because the second his mind started to slip consciousness and conscious control, memory happened. Violently, disturbingly vivid, memory. He gasped, tensed, and his pulse skyrocketed as he was jolted awake with a rush of adrenaline.

"How good are you at mental manipulation?" He wasn't joking. At all.

Anakin was awake and ready for Obi-Wan when he woke up.

But he wasn’t prepared for that request, though he realized he should have been.

“I’m not sure I should try without guidance,” is what he said. What he left out was that he could do it, because he’d learned how to do it as Vader, and all those times he’d used it he was essentially torturing someone. Changing those techniques so that he was helping Obi-Wan, not harming him, should take him some time to figure out.

But he tried to think of a solution for Obi-Wan, and he was kicking himself for not thinking of it sooner.

“We can go find you a sedative in the med bay. Something that will let you sleep.”

"No." It was confidently sure, but it was also gentle. He closed his eyes again, and turned a bit onto his side so he could wrap himself around Anakin a little more, and properly hold him.

"I don't want to get stuck in a... cycle of dependence." That applied to Anakin, too, but in Anakin's case at least there was a necessary gate keeper. He wasn't upset about it, though. "My mind will eventually catch up with my body." Probably, anyway. "Why don't you just talk to me. Do you have a plan for this thing?"

Anakin wanted to say that using sedatives once wasn’t a cycle of dependency, and that the nightmares just wouldn’t go away on their own. He still had nightmares of his own.

But it was Obi-Wan’s body, and his health wasn’t too impacted by not sleeping right now.

Anakin hooked a leg over Obi-Wan’s and held him close and talked into his hair.

“Well, it will need a crew. And a lot more fuel that the other ship. I have...” he wasn’t sure how to explain the idea he had in his mind. It might hurt Obi-Wan to hear it, which was why he was holding back.

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