darkforcerising | OPEN POST

Loving Anakin helped temper a lot for Obi-Wan - as did loving Luke. This was still really terrible for him.

And yet not as terrible as the entire sham of a war had been.

Certainly not as bad as creating Darth Vader.

"All right, then we'll need to make sure we are supplied for that length of trip as well as our visit. We can do more strategy and prioritization along the way itself, I assume? Will you be all right there? Or as near as it is possible to be?"

Anakin chewed on his lower lip. "I honestly don't know," and then he admitted, "It won't be easy. It just needs to be done."

He paused for a second, then added, "After this, he will know for sure I am here- in this universe. Things will... intensify for us, if we live. But I have some ideas, if we live."

"Are you sure you don't want to retreat somewhere and live an anonymous life?" Because that should be an option. Anakin had done this hellishness for one full lifetime already. Surely he deserved some peace, somewhere.

There were many reasons Anakin could do that, and Obi-Wan knew them all. They could rehash all of Anakin's guilt for the pain he'd caused and his drive to atone for it. There was the matter of Luke and Leia's future and how he couldn't fight for them to have something even better than what they got in his memory. There was just the fact that Palpatine needed to be stopped.

But Anakin didn't bring up any of that. There wasn't a need.

"You know me. I could try to live a quiet life, but I would fail miserably at it."

"I am more enraged by the injustice of you being forced to live this again than I am at the entire state of the galaxy," he says, though he says it without heat. "I know it isn't something you will do."

Just... quietly mad.

Anakin shrugged, "If I'd gotten it right the first time, maybe I wouldn't be here now."

He paused for a moment, mulling over a thought. It was one he'd occasionally considered since coming back. And it was something they'd have to address eventually given how it stood between them and their goal of ridding the galaxy of Palpatine.

"Do you want him back?"

"And if I'd gotten it right at all, maybe you wouldn't need to be." Which is not hard to say, but only because it's groundwork for what is incredibly hard. "I don't know. I loved Anakin. I clearly love you. I created Vader and Vader is Anakin but it is very difficult for me to... reconcile those things."

"You don't have to have an answer now," Anakin said.

He sighed, not at Obi-Wan, just about the subject matter.

"But we'll need to decide... if we survive Exegol."

"Yes. First things first."

And rather than let it seem he would continue to avoid it (he'd like to). "I will give it more thought, as we prepare to go and after we've survived."

No one is dying. He says so.

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