Touch Starved

Chapter 8 - Kiros

WARNING: Depression (major depression), suicidal tendencies, slight (or more than slight) possessiveness.

~ Amina Gila

After a short debate, Obi-Wan and Anakin end up taking their fighters down to the surface while a platoon of clones comes down in a gunship. Anakin had been quite adamant, and with his mercurial mood, it had seemed best to just let him. It's not as if he's hurting anything by hurtling down to the surface in an insane nosedive that would make every other pilot sick, no doubt.

Including Obi-Wan.

He follows at a much more reasonable pace, and while the fighter travels faster than the gunship, it'll still take them time to reach the surface, time in which Obi-Wan has nothing to do but think.

Being next to Anakin, it was so easy for him to forget everything except how much he'd missed him, and how relieved he was to have his (son) former Padawan in his arms, safe. He could forget how guilty he feels over loving Anakin, even after everything he's done. This is why the Jedi warn about attachments, and if Obi-Wan was a better Jedi, he would have let go of his attachment as soon as he realized that it existed. In truth, he can't say when, exactly, he realized, only that, by the time the Clone Wars started, he was very well aware of its existence.

And he did nothing, because he wasn't the Jedi he pretended to be.

The galaxy has suffered so much as a result of his weakness.

A better Jedi would have killed Anakin on Mustafar. A better Jedi would not have walked away and left him to suffer. A better Jedi would have killed Vader on that nameless, rocky moon instead of leaving. A better Jedi would never have allowed his once Padawan to have so many attachments. But Obi-Wan is not a better Jedi, and neither is he a better man, because a better man would have kept his child in all but blood from feeling the way Anakin has all these years. A better man would have kept his child safe from the elderly politician taking a strange interest in him. A better man would never have overlooked his child's wellbeing in favor of something else. So, Obi-Wan is not a better man either.

He is... He doesn't know.

And he doesn't know what to do next, how to handle any of this. He has no doubt that the Council will want to imprison Anakin at the very least, and for good reason, but what if they want to go further? Obi-Wan promised Anakin that he wouldn't let the Council hurt him. It was a moment of weakness, a desperation to protect the young man that he'd already failed time and time and time again so very badly. He wanted to do better, to not repeat his mistakes of the past, but at the cost of the galaxy?

Would Anakin do that though? Would he continue his path of chaos and destruction? Obi-Wan doesn't know. He wants to trust Anakin so badly, but he's – he's afraid to. He's afraid to, because he trusted Anakin once and the Jedi Order fell because of that, because he was too blind to the darkness in his former Padawan to see what was happening to him.

Obi-Wan is a Jedi; he has always been a Jedi, and he's been trained to look at what is for the greater good. The greater good would demand that Anakin be restrained to keep him from possibly harming innocents. But – but he lost Anakin once. He can't go through that again. He can't. It would break whatever of him is left. Confronting Vader on that nameless moon had been a blessing in that it would have allowed him to try and make peace with everything that has tormented him for years.

It would have been a lie, but he would still have found some semblance of peace. Seeing Anakin here, in front of him, seeing the way that Anakin is still in there inside of Vader... Obi-Wan cannot simply take the easy way out, and that leaves him back at square one. He did that to Anakin. Everything he did against Vader, was also against Anakin. If he didn't care for him so much, it might be easier, but he loves Anakin dearly, and time hasn't changed that.