Two Halfs of One Warrior • Obikin/Vaderwan One-Shots

Make Your Siren's Call

• Summary: After a visit to check on young Luke, Obi-Wan spends the night in a cave nearby. He struggles to fall asleep, his mind reaching out into the Force, and is surprised by a visit from his old apprentice in his dreams.

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Obi-Wan had been to check on Luke again. There had been no real threats, no new news, and the desert had been blessedly quiet. His trip from home in the Jundland Wastes to the Lars homestead had been more for his own peace of mind than for any true necessity. He'd had a bad feeling, but what else was new in these dark times?

He studied the long, flat horizon from his position sitting on the lip of a cave, staring over the moonlit sand towards the points where the twin suns had recently dropped and faded from view. The wide, empty vista was beautiful, but Obi-Wan didn't appreciate it. It brought him no comfort or peace.

Visiting the boy was an essential reminder of why he was here, and what he still needed to do. That sense of purpose gave him hope. Whenever the echoing quiet of Tatooine night stretched out, the emptiness overwhelming, the shadows around filled with memories, and the Force was so dark without the light of his friends and family-whenever the ache was too much, he took the trip over to see Luke.

Luke was doing well.

Obi-Wan was staying in the cave where he'd first slept after coming to Tatooine, back when he'd felt the threat of the empire loom very large. It was too close to the Lars homestead, and Owen had demanded he move on as soon as he realized where he'd been staying. Obi-Wan had agreed to leave, but he had left a small flat mattress and some supplies in the cave anyway as a future precaution.

He took a small swig of water, just enough to wet his mouth, and set the bottle aside. It was long past time for him to try to sleep. He stood up with a quiet, pained huff and crossed the cool floor of the cave to the mattress at the back, the uneven texture of sand and stone under his bare feet. It had been such a relief earlier to get out of his hot and sweaty boots and feel air on his damp skin, and even now that it was growing colder, he felt no desire to put them back on.

He'd sleep under his cloak, and be covered enough.

His knees ached as he lowered himself to the ground, and his lips quirked up in a wry smile. The gray hair that was spreading beyond his temples and appearing more and more in his beard was a reminder of his age that he didn't often see, not given to looking in mirrors. He felt his age more than he saw it in all the small twinges and persistent, dull aches.

All of the damage of a lifetime of action, of years of war, had taken its toll, both in his body and his mind, and sleep did not come easy to him. It never did. His long training in meditation made him reflexively sit with the thoughts that came in a flurry as soon as he closed his eyes, and made him not push away all the excruciating memories that his heart shouted at him to notice, to resolve, as if he could.

All of the smaller traumas of his childhood and young adult life had haunted him too in the past, but usually sitting with the memories as they came to mind, seeing them without judgment and letting them pass away, had been sufficient to silence them enough for sleep.

This font of painful memories of the fall of everything and everyone he loved seemed almost eternal. It was never exhausted. It never ended. Obi-Wan was sure that he could sit with his past for a hundred years, and never see the end of the stream of disasters. All of the memories were burning red, the heat of the lava and the murderous glint in Anakin's eyes...

Anakin.

Obi-Wan exhaled and turned to lay on his side, breathing through the tight, twisting, stabbing feeling and letting it all go. He went through exercises he remembered being taught in the creche, and accepted the memories of the soaring hallways and comfortable rooms of the Temple of his childhood, his home, the floor had been littered with small bodies, all of them too still, cut down, Anakin's orange and yellow eyes-