darkforcerising | OPEN POST

"...I don't think you understand quite how far the gulf between what I academically understand and what I can reasonably empathize with goes. I care, but that doesn't mean I will ever really understand with Anakin, anymore than I did the other who became Vader. And I don't know what to do about it."

Because fuck all if he wasn't trying.

And Bail thought Obi-Wan was greatly undervaluing himself.

"No one is born knowing how to have a relationship with someone else," Bail pointed out. "Everyone has to learn it for themselves."

"That is very true, and of course every relationship is different." He paused and then got a bit more blunt. "I'm still behind the curve, possibly more than you realize. I know how to navigate relationships with other Jedi. I have never been close to the sort of relationship I am trying to have now; I was younger than Leia when I was given to the Temple."

"I see," Bail said, schooling himself so his personal judgment wouldn't carry through.

That put things into stark perspective. And he had many questions, but he wasn't sure what was respectful to ask and what wasn't. Like, did Obi-Wan even know who his parents were?

"Do you want this relationship?" Bail asked instead.

Bail had seen him hallucinating, vomiting, and in the process of dying. Bail had used Obi-Wan's own lightsaber to burn him - repeatedly - to help him focus. They were past the point of worrying about respect, as far as Obi-Wan was concerned.

"I'm more concerned with what's good for Anakin than what I want."

"Hmm, let's assume," Bail said. "For the sake of the argument, that you are, in fact, what's good for Anakin. We'll come back to that. Do you want this relationship?"

He blinked and tried not to feel like he was making some kind of inappropriate and nodded, slightly. "Yes."

He had to work to keep from it sounding like a question too. The result was a little... flat, but it was there.

"Good. That's a significant portion of what it takes to be in a relationship. The truth is, there is no age limit to learning how to have relationships with others." Now getting back to what was good for Anakin. "What does Anakin want?"

"I have no idea." That wasn't true but it wasn't something he could sum up neatly. Also - kind of protective of Anakin.

"He hasn't said, or done anything that gives you a general idea of what he wants?" Bail asked skeptically.

"That isn't what I said." Because he wasn't - "But be more precise. Are you asking if he wants this relationship? Yes."

Okay, fine. Pendandic, but Bail can work with that.

"Then that's where you start. That is the other most important significant portion of what it takes to be in a relationship."

He stares and then laughs, warmly. "I'm not that far behind the curve, I don't think." He was aware both people needed to want to be there, at least.

"You're even less behind than that," Bail said, giving Obi-Wan a sidelong glance. "Do you respect Anakin?"

"Of course I do." Though, in fairness, respect was a broad umbrella. There weren't many people Obi-Wan didn't respect on one level or another.

Just some of those levels were 'walking evil he'd like to kill'.

"Then you are ahead of a great many number of people, my friend," Bail said. "You're not undeserving of happiness."

"I'm not sure I truly believe that anyone deserves anything," he said, thoughtfully. "Not in the grand scheme of things. It would imply that life - the galaxy, the universe - was fair. One of the things I heard most from Qui-Gon was that life is neither fair nor unfair, it simply is. But of course it carried on to saying that it is up to us to make it so." He paused and then just - "I don't deserve anything, but I'm not going to throw my relationship with Anakin away, Bail. If I were going to do that the threat of losing him wouldn't have driven me to using the Dark Side."

Bail was going to counter with his own beliefs about who did and didn't deserve but Obi-Wan hamstrung any thought he was preparing.

"... What happened now?"

"Oh." He ... hadn't - "I didn't quite explain that directly, did I?" Just a lot of talk about the nature of the Force. "I didn't have the focus to use the 'Light' side of the Force when I found Anakin - too much emotion. I used what I could reach."

Bail blinked. Yes, their last conversation hadn't covered that.

"Forgive me if this question is rude, but... isn't that a bad thing?" He remembered their bonding trip very clearly, and Obi-Wan was quite a different person at the height of their ordeal.

"It is a terrible thing." He didn't consider the question rude, he just didn't understand how it was a question at all. "Anakin yanked me back, but that's a statement of him, not me."

Bail hesitated another second, because he remembered what they (him and Obi-Wan) had had to do to help Obi-Wan get through Zygoola.

"And you aren't using the Dark Side now?"

After he said that, he realized how ridiculous that question would be if Obi-Wan was still on the Dark Side.

"With all due respect, Bail, if I were I'd either be frantic or utterly unresponsive. I suppose there is a third option of lying through my teeth but nothing I've ever experienced makes me believe I could be that functional under the influence."

Which of course... could also be a lie, but still.

"Fair," Bail said, raising a hand in a gesture of retreat. That was good enough for him. Bail had seen Obi-Wan at his worst already, and Obi-Wan looked far from what he did on Zygoola.

"Is this why you think you don't deserv-" he stopped himself and corrected his question, "you shouldn't be in a relationship with Anakin?"

He accepted the 'retreat' without further commentary and was even reassured by it. The other thing made him go a little wry. "Not entirely, but mostly, yes."

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