Ben Kenobi—Old Ben Kenobi, Crazy Ben, Wizard of the Wastes—stands as tall as he can, a pillar in the Force if not as imposing physically.

The more imposing figure by far is the mech-and-flesh abomination that wheezes in and out as it takes two, three, four heavy strides towards him, pauses, and issues a challenge.

"Strike me down," answers Ben, "and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

The Sith cannot imagine. Can never imagine. Sith cling to physical life like leeches, like parasites, willing to drain away almost anything else from anyone at all in exchange for a few more breaths. Anakin Skywalker once slaughtered a thousand of his own kind and strangled the air from a wonderful woman's lungs just to pursue his own life, his own victory. Darth Vader has executed thousands more, murdered a hundred weeping wives, sent a million soldiers out to die to continue that life of his. He clings to it as willfully and greedily as he holds the burning red saber in his gloved metal hands.

He raises it high and to the side. A simple and obvious pronouncement of what he intends to do. It is a mockery, a sneer written by a saber that his face probably mimics behind that gleaming mask. Vader declares I will kill you, he declares You are finished, he declares that I have always been stronger than you, Kenobi, and you can never hold me back ever again—all with a simple, almost clumsy motion.

He declares I still hate you, and swings.

The burning red scar of light descends in less than a second, but Crazy Old Ben is not afraid. He sees Luke, the shining golden child from the desert with his father's features and his mother's soul and Leia with her mother's image and her father's heart and none of their bitterness or weariness or selfish passion, and he sees stubborn Han Solo who does not yet know that he will never be alone again, never wish to be alone, and he sees other things too.

Ben sees Qui-Gon Jinn and Mace Windu and Luminara Unduli and Shaak-Ti and Even Piell and a thousand, million, billion others all wrapped up in the Force.

They are all, they are one, they are everything and they are none. Even though only a handful live who remember even just their names, they live on in a way the Sith willfully overlook.

And Qui-Gon—well. Qui-Gon was always so different, and he remains so. Where the others stand in the veil, he presses against it, a visible figure with the trace of a smile. His familiar voice has soothed the emptiness of the desert wastes for the Wizard of the Wastes for almost twenty years. He guides. He persists.

And he has taught Obi-Wan to do the same.

Luke is yelling, blasters are firing, the fate of the galaxy teeters on a knife's edge as it always has every moment of its existence, but Ben Kenobi is sure.

He smirks at Vader's empty transperisteel eyes and draws himself up to his full height—physically, not much, in the Force, a giant impressive enough to be a figure of legends.

The red saber burns for but an instant, and then a cloak falls to the floor, empty.

Obi-Wan Kenobi has gone home.

Something—

Something is wrong—

-wrong—

WRONG

Something is very, very wrong—

It feels as if he's being pushed deeper into the Force, painfully and cruelly, suffocating, bones breaking, body contorting in impossible ways, like he's being shoved into miles of dirt and sand.

It feels as if he's being ripped out of the Force, his midichlorians screaming in anguish as they are individually but heedlessly torn out of his shredded body, as if he is weightless, soaring through bottomless emptiness, tossed with malicious delight off a cliff into infinity.

This is not how it is supposed to be. He was supposed to stay and watch—

Watch the boy, the girl—

ANAKIN—

Ben blinks grit out of his eyes. He knows that that does not make sense—he understands that he should be one with the Force, the way his Master was, in it but not quite a part of it, enfolded but not lost, embraced but not as silent as his fellows, able to speak and appear from beyond the veil.

But he also fully comprehends, as if his former life was a dream, that he is only twelve years old, waking up after a long night of rest in the crèche, tired from a day of training and preparing and worrying over the fact that nobody, nobody wants him and it will soon be too late and he will be thirteen and sent away to farm or pilot or research for the rest of his days—and even now he knows that his days will be many more than he will truly want to live—even though he knows knows knows that he is meant to be a Jedi Knight. His eyes are gritty with sleep and with a few shameful tears that have long since dried into his pillow.

He is fifty-eight, and he is twelve.

He knows this.

Obi-Wan Kenobi itches—physically and somehow on another level too—and it hurts.

He has come unstuck, unglued, somehow, from the normal way of things. Has the Force done this? Or has Ben done something wrong and now, now all his hard work and tears and bitter waiting in the wastes have been undone, and Obi-Wan must now try and fix it all?

What is this?

What is he?

He doesn't know for sure, but his name is Obi-Wan again (he hasn't heard that name in a long time, long time, but also Garen mumbled it and goodnight less than eight hours ago, and he knows both of these things.)

(He knows a great deal too much for a twelve-year-old.)

(This will be a problem. He can remember how to be twelve because he is twelve, such nonsense. But also, what is it like to be twelve? The memories are so very hazy. It was Before Anakin, Before Qui-Gon, even, and his whole life sometimes feels like it has been spent shoulder to shoulder with and cleaning up after those two men.)

Morning comes, and Obi-Wan beams at dark-haired Garen and quiet wrinkled Reeft and sweet Bant, his dearest friends, distant memories, and thinks: Good morning! and at the same time How very small we all are!

Obi-Wan Kenobi is different. His friends notice first. Their shared crèche Master next, then Master Yoda, and one by one the rumors spread.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is about to age out. Initiate Kenobi is unafraid. He is bright-eyed and solemn-lipped, he is quick-witted but thinks his actions through, he is not easily riled, he is compassionate to all and sundry and he knows just what to say to tall, intimidating figures like Mace Windu and Yoda and Saesee Tiin and Tahl Uvain, and they all like him so very much, and wonder about him too. He is strange and wonderful and nobody feels called to take him as their Padawan, and it's all very strange.

He spars with his classmates, and there's something going on with him, everyone can see it. He's struggling, but not for lack of skill.

Inside Obi-Wan's head, he is thinking very carefully. Where as a child (the first time around) he was too prone to anger and too rigid in his thinking, he later grew into an adult with his own core values, and the ability to carry them out almost always. He was not perfect—

-the increasing bitterness in the desert-child's eyes after Naboo,

the arguments over the next ten years that included everything from headaches to traces of tears to screams and objects hurled against walls with the Force,

the smile that lit up Anakin's face that never failed to light up Obi-Wan as well, like sunlight reflecting off a moon,

their arms around one another as they limped off battlefield after battlefield,

the way they struggled to say what they meant and what they meant to one another until finally—

I loved you—I HATE YOU—

No.

He is not perfect.

But he is fifty-eight and soon he will be thirteen, and he is only afraid that he will hurt the people around him. Right now, as he spars and tries to be clumsy enough to look the age he appears but also to be skilled enough to push back the trauma of war and slaughter and lightsabers wielded by former friends and allies trying to kill him, and one time (just one, just Anakin, only Anakin could ever come close enough) succeeding in lopping his head from his shoulders. These children (and even the adults, Knights and Masters of great renown) know nothing of Sith and Separatists and the tiny flecks of burning metal and wire that scattered through the air when a lightsaber severed a droid, and they knew nothing of battle tactics and planet blockades and villages trampled and the way men thrashed and choked as they died.

Obi-Wan focuses, because he must, and with all the strength he has in him he balances future and present as equally vital. All on the breadth of skinny twelve-year-old shoulders.

He is polite and charming and sometimes he gets very, very quiet and very, very still but he is kind and a little sad and there's something about him that just…pulls people in. Not a few Masters have an eye on the Kenobi boy, but still they say nothing. Yoda watches, and there's a sense of guardianship there, as if the ancient and revered Jedi is expecting something, and strangely Kenobi seems to expect it too. He is not afraid, he has no doubts, only convictions and occasionally a distant look in those ocean-colored eyes.

It's as if there's a cloak about the boy's shoulders that whispers, thank you, but no, I am waiting for another, they are coming for me, don't worry.

None of them can quite tell if the boy is projecting those feelings or if the Force itself has somehow stepped forward to guide this funny little boy to a very specific Master.

Nevertheless, when the day of the Tournament comes, Mace Windu looks down at Yoda and says, "Master, if no one else takes that boy, I believe I will."

"The warning surrounding him," Yoda says slowly, green ears tilted questioningly, "willfully ignore it, you do?"

"No, Master," the Korun Jedi replies. "I am willing to surrender to whoever this 'right' Master is, whenever they come along, but I will not allow the boy to be sent away. I cannot. He…"

There is a pause.

"The Force swirls and eddies around him," Windu continues slowly, eyes narrowed on the slight figure with hair like copper and wheat and eyes like the sea, "and he is a Shatterpoint in and of himself. His very self…he's important, Master Yoda."

As Kenobi dances his way with shocking ease around his opponent (made all the more shocking by how he clearly but subtly restrains himself, does not humiliate the wild-eyed and white-haired boy who so badly wants to thrash him) Windu adds, "And I like him."

"Like him, I do too," Yoda says softly, and his large glassy eyes are alight with amusement and suspicion and wonder and confusion all at once.

Kenobi wins his duel and gracefully stands aside.

His opponent uses a clumsy Force-thrust to lunge at the smaller boy, screaming with fury, eyes burning in his pale face.

Master Drallig springs forward, crying "Stop! Initiate Chun, cease, now!"

Obi-Wan Kenobi's face crumples not with surprise or pain, but with something like pity, and he dodges the brutal strike that Chun tries to land on him. Growling, the pale boy attempts what would be a last-resort (dishonorable, almost Dark) attack: he strikes at Kenobi's exposed neck.

Obi-Wan conserves his energy, his dignity, poise, and power by taking the smallest step backwards and flicking his own training saber directly upwards, stopping the (deadly, if it were a real saber) strike with practiced ease. He is unruffled by the violence of the attack. He says something—Well fought, Bruck, Windu interprets, and Chun howls with rage and drops his saber and marches away with an irritated and disapproving Master on his heels.

A young female Mon Calamari rushes towards Kenobi heedless of protocol and hugs him fiercely.

And now there is a bolt of surprise, even fear, in the boy's eyes. It is inexplicable and then it is gone as he smiles and hugs her back with the typical awkwardness of a pre-teen male, and he shrugs her off but walks away with her, pausing only to bow to the Masters watching and to the supervising instructor.

(Obi-Wan is breathing evenly and smiling sweetly at Bant and fighting to contain under layers of shields far beyond the skill of his peers the memory of a much older Bant lying on her back in the Halls of Healing, her saber feet away from one outstretched hand, stretched on the floor in front of a bed containing a dead Knight with a blaster hole in his chest, and Bant has a vicious x carved across her abdomen with burnt edges, the marks of a lightsaber, and someone had betrayedthem and slaughtered everyone in the Halls and every inch of the Temple is screaming with the echoes of murder, and who killed Bant, who—)

Master Drallig bows back with genuine respect for his little student. Obi-Wan bows back, and respectfully steps away so that others may continue the Tournament.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is a fortnight away from losing his future as a Jedi Knight, but he walks with an upright zeal and stops to follow a dancing tendril of the Force into a garden where a much smaller youngling is crying behind a bush because she has gotten separated from her group, and he coaxes her out with patience and respect and a hint of tired amusement (paternal, almost, nearly grandfatherly, as if he is simply too old to fully understand this small one but cherishes her for it) and when holds her hand all the way back to her Clan.

This Initiate is unusual. He feels strange in the Force but also simply shines. He behaves beyond his years but he is mischievous and sometimes overly sarcastic, almost rude.

Qui-Gon Jinn eyes him with concern and admiration and prejudice and simply…walks away.

Obi-Wan watches him go, and his eyes are unbearably sad but full of understanding, as keen as a razor and as broad as the sky, as if he knows, once again, far more than he ought to.

"Master," says Mace Windu quietly.

"Not yet," Yoda answers, his voice very low and very coarse. "If brought together, they are not, choose him then, you may."

"What, and swoop in on the day of his birthday?" Tahl Uvain demands.

Yoda merely shakes his head and hobbles away.

Obi-Wan ponders. He knew, he tells himself, he knew that Qui-Gon Jinn would not suddenly emerge from the shell of trauma and bitterness he had encased himself in just to take on Initiate Kenobi, no matter how unique or strange or empathetic he was.

He had known, but still, it aches.

Aches like the memory of the man twelve years from now (and thirty-two years ago) lying in his arms because he didn't have the strength to do otherwise, one strong hand trembling like a leaf in the wind as it rose to brush Obi-Wan's face and only just barely making it, and the blue eyes dulling to grey as he gasped out his last words—all of them about Anakin, for Anakin, the golden desert boy that both of them had wound up loving unexpectedly.

Why Anakin, he wonders not for the first time. Why him?

Why this scrappy, wide-eyed, open-hearted, fierce and angry boy with no training and much power, with deep attachments and burning resentments, with love and passion and ambition…

This is where he always stops asking the question, always.

It's so obvious, really, why anyone at all would look at Anakin Skywalker and instantly forget Obi-Wan Kenobi.

So he never finishes asking himself why, because he knows why, because even in his own mind and his own life (all one and a half of them) he sees Anakin and his destiny and his spirit and fire, and wants only ensure that he makes it safely from beginning to end.

He is sure, even now, that this is why he is here: part punishment for his mistakes, part necessity: someone must ensure that the Chosen One succeeds, and Obi-Wan, who surrendered his hard-won place in the Order and at Qui-Gon Jinn's side, who stepped up to be the boy's Master and stood up to the entire Order to do so, who filled a seat on the Council although he did not feel ready, who rose to High Jedi General of the Third Systems Army, who felt every single Jedi perish (almost 10,000 of them in a single standard day, and more over the following years) and persisted in existing despite his lack of ability or worthiness, who watched over a little boy whose guardians held him at bay for fear of his killing the boy, who kept going because the galaxy refused to simply let him die…

…this same man (boy?) steps forward in a body that is too small and softly framed for his sand-weathered soul and throws caution to the wind in order to arrange the galaxy so that Anakin Skywalker may cross it safely.

Obi-Wan is never chosen.

Not as a Padawan, not as a Knight, or a Master, or a Councilor, a General, the guardian of the (next? True?) Chosen One, not as anything at all.

He is simply the last one standing, the most convenient pick, and he is fine with that.

He can convince Qui-Gon Jinn again, he is sure, and so he does.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is not kicked out of the Order early for a temperamental fight with Bruck Chun in a hallway. He does not fight Bruck; he side-steps a sloppy punch and just says: "It's all right, Bruck. May the Force be with you."

And that brief speech is so startling that his bully of the past decade (a long time ago and right now) stumbles through the punch and trips into a wall, and then watches him aghast as the ginger-blonde boy strides up the hallway and requests a meeting with the Council.

They agree to meet with him after their current session, and the not-quite-teenager drops calmly onto a cushioned chair outside the chambers and slips into meditation, calming himself, drawing on the Force for strength, and it caresses him gently—almost, he fancies for an instant, fondly, like a hand ruffling his hair. And then the feeling is gone, but at least—

–he's on track, this time, he thinks.

When he is called in, he steps to the exact center of the cool marble floor and works very hard not to look too often at the chair that had once been (would be, would never again be) his. He drinks in the suffused calm of the room and almost chokes.

It's cloying, like perfume, almost dizzyingly peaceful in this room—it doesn't feel balanced—it feels almost suffocating—what in the hels? Was it always like this Before—

But he pushes the heaviness in the Force away and addresses the serene Masters. (He wonders what it is like to be a High Councilor in peacetime.)

"Masters," he says, and his voice sounds irritatingly childish in his ears, "I have an unusual request."

They wait in silence.

"I would ask that you send me to Bandomeer on the Monument in two days' time."

A stir in the Force. He has shocked them, although they hardly show it.

Master Yoda's ears raise up in some surprise, and he leans forward on his gimer stick to peer at Obi-Wan with soft green eyes. "Wish you not to be a Jedi, young Kenobi? Leave us, before the age limit you reach?"

Obi-Wan studies Yoda for a moment, and comes to a decision to be blunt. "Master, I did not ask to be sent to the AgriCorps. I merely wish to be sent aboard the Monument."

And now he truly has their whole attention; they exchange startled glances and both Windu and Yoda lean further towards him in their seats.

Windu speaks first. "Are you chasing a particular Master, Initiate?" His voice is always stern, as is his expression, but his eyes are gentle.

He thinks I am desperate, Obi-Wan realizes with no surprise, he believes that Qui-Gon's rejection of me has made me overly determined to change his mind. In another life, this guess would not have been wrong. In this one, it has less to do with Obi-Wan wanting Qui-Gon Jinn in particular as his Master (although he does—badly, so badly that he keeps it locked tightly down inside his mind) and much more to do with ensuring that it is they two who discover Anakin Skywalker someday.

This is what must be.

In the end, Yoda grants his request, and they all watch him leave, and the air of the Force is less weighty than it was when he entered. As the doors close behind him, although he should not have been able to, Obi-Wan hears Yarael Poof murmur, "There is something strange about that child…I cannot tell what the Force means with him."

And Ki-Adi Mundi's reply: "There is something strange about him, indeed. He has plans, that one, and the Force neither agrees nor disagrees with him when he speaks."

That is an interesting perspective.

Two Jedi board the Monument at the end of the week. Qui-Gon Jinn is completely unaware of Obi-Wan Kenobi's presence aboard the ship for several hours.

Obi-Wan is cautious and reckless at the same time.

Where once he had accidentally crossed a Hutt and nearly gotten himself killed for the trouble, today he waits until Jinn is safely in his rooms before he approaches Clat'Ha himself and charms and negotiates his way into the middle of the mess that is about to erupt.

He warns her well in advance of the Hutt's plan to steal the dactyl, and while she runs off to find Qui-Gon and prevent the theft, Obi-Wan walks into the cockpit and warns them of an impending pirate attack. The three co-pilots stare at him as if he's crazy, but the boy only stares back blankly and says, "I'm going to go hold them off. They'll be here soon, so I suggest you prepare who and what you can. When I signal you, pull the ship away. There will be exterior damage, but I'll keep it minimal if I can."

He's on his own when the side of the ship is impacted, alone when the pirates burst in to the area he has so diligently evacuated, and he raises his lightsaber (his original lightsaber, and how strange it felt in these soft and small hands of his) alone.

One twelve-year-old human against over a dozen pirates.

In three minutes, he has half of them unconscious, two of them dead, and he's fairly sure several of his ribs are fractured. His head is painfully hot—and he knows from experience that that means he's been badly bruised somewhere and in danger of concussion—and his left ankle is twisted weirdly—kriff these small and untrained limbs of his—and he eyes a vent in the ceiling.

Qui-Gon is coming. He can sense it. Even without their little healing session after an interaction with the Hutts, they have a natural bond, and Obi-Wan suspects it is stronger for having been folded backwards in time on one end.

Ah, well.

The young Jedi uses the distraction of Qui-Gon's entrance to propel himself in a single leap into the open vent. It's a tight fit, but he makes it, thumbing off his saber as he does.

Qui-Gon is a match for most of the pirates, especially without screaming civilians nearby. He may take a beating—again—but Obi-Wan has no choice. He crawls through the vents and drops off into a nearby compartment that, with a bit of shoddy Force manipulation (he didn't intend to tear the wall open quite so wide) allows him to fling himself dangerously through an instant of cold, bottomless space before he lands clumsily on the panel that has connected the Monument to the pirate ship.

Before he leaves, he reaches back out with the Force and disengages the boardwalk from the transport ship. Now the panel he just used shifts violently; either ship can pull away easily without further damage.

Obi-Wan races through it, blasting the handful of opponents he encounters into walls and tables, and enters the cockpit.

There's a pilot, with a blaster, and Obi-Wan is twelve and very tired (and fifty-eight, and somewhat cranky.)

Their fight is confined to the tiny room; it's brutal, fast, and leaves the pilot unconscious and Obi-Wan with a broken right hand. That's all right. He remembers how to fight with his left, even if his muscles do not. Regardless, he presses forward and fiddles with the comm unit, broadcasting into both ships.

"Attention," he says briskly, his high little voice both channeling and undermining his General's commanding tone, "we are now disengaging from the Monument. I suggest anyone who wants to be aboard run here, unless you'd prefer to be left behind. Or sucked into the vacuum of space. Monument—pull away on my command. Three, two, one!"

Two small hands yank the wheel of the pirate's craft hard.

Simultaneously, the Monument banks in the other direction.

And Obi-Wan Kenobi is now piloting—for who knows how long—a pirate ship full of angry pirates, while Qui-Gon Jinn, Clat'Ha, and some very angry Hutts fly away with several dozen shaken civilians. He can feel, across the heretofore tightly suppressed bond between himself and the (other) Jedi Master, a distant bolt of alarm and frustration, and then it is gone again, and he's alone.

"Well," Obi-Wan sighs. "Chssk."

It is two days before he reunites with the others.

His escape from the pirates was risky and very narrow, but fortunate all the same. He managed to fend off several of them and deploy himself in an escape pod before blacking out from Force exhaustion.

Banking on the hope that his plan to prevent Jemba the Hutt from stealing the dactyl has succeeded, Obi-Wan sets the navcom for Bandomeer, and lands roughly on the poor agricultural planet. He disembarks and looks around.

"Ah," says Obi-Wan. "Well, since I'm here." It is true, of course, that he is technically here on behalf of the Jedi Order. No mission was issued, especially since he's merely an unclaimed Initiate, but the Council sanctioned his departure and allowed him to take his lightsaber, and they all know he's here for Qui-Gon. So while Jinn runs around trying to figure out what is going on here and dodging his dodgy former apprentice, Obi-Wan will proceed to wreck Xanatos' plans behind his back.

Obi-Wan places ionite around the central bomb and dismantles it within seconds. Really, he thinks, we ought to be training Initiates and Padawans in this. It's going to be necessary, and so many of them got blown up along the way because we didn't have time to prepare for war before war was upon us. That will be his next project. He's got so many running at the same time now that it's a marvel he can keep track of it all. Perks of having been a High Jedi General and a Councilor, he supposes.

After he dismantles the main one, he treks back to the headquarters of the AgriCorps and runs directly into Clat'Ha, who stares at him in utter astonishment.

"Ma'am," he says cheerfully.

She sweeps him up into a crushing hug and then shakes him. "What in the stars, Kenobi—how did you get here?! Where have you been? Are you all right? Are the pirates here? What happened?" She sounds impressed and suspicious and relieved all at once. It's rather like listening to Anakin greeting Ahsoka after separate missions.

"No pirates, I damaged their navcom and ejected myself in an escape pod. I'm perfectly fine, and I'm here to help. I don't suppose you know who's been planting bombs all over Bandomeer, do you, because I've dismantled them. They need to be safely removed."

Her eyes widen and she drops down to her knees to look him in the eyes. "Kenobi, say that again. What are you talking about?"

"Bombs," he repeats. "They're all over the planet. The main one would have triggered all the others. I found it underground, in the mines. I used ionite to shut it down, and then I took it apart. Clat'Ha, where is Master Jinn?"

Her face hardened. "Dealing with Offworld. They're the mining corp. that's been taking advantage of us—I knew something wasn't right. Hels, bombs? I'm going to go down there with a crew. If I give you directions, can you find Master Jinn and settle this?"

He nods.

"You're a good kid, Kenobi. Crazy, but good." She gives him a crooked smile and then she's off running, and Obi-Wan walks in the opposite direction in search of Qui-Gon Jinn and Xanatos DuCrion.

He finds them in the midst of a cold, stilted discussion in a conference room, the elder standing with his arms folded, the other lounging in a chair with a trace of a smirk on his lips. They both turn to look at him, and Qui-Gon's eyes brighten inexplicably at the sight.

Obi-Wan bows shallowly in his direction. "Master Jinn. Sorry, I was a little delayed." Ocean-green eyes turn to the other in the room, and Obi-Wan does not bow. "Good afternoon, Xanatos DuCrion. I hear you're the owner of Offworld; how intriguing. Did you spend a lot on the bombs? Because I'm afraid they're gone."

Xanatos sits bolt upright, sneering; Jinn stiffens and glances back and forth between them.

"Bombs?" Xanatos drawls after a moment. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Well, they had your symbol all over them. Funny coincidence. Another funny turn of chance—slavery happens to be illegal in the Republic, which means we're going to be dismantling your deep-sea mines as well. Terribly sorry."

Xanatos is on the verge of an epic meltdown, but Qui-Gon just looks at the youngest in the room with serious eyes and says, "Obi-Wan—" (and it hurts, to hear him say the name) "—do you have proof of all this?"

Obi-Wan nods. "Clat'Ha and the others are seeing to it as we speak. If you can get to the systems before he does, I'm sure you'll find other evidence as well."

Xanatos springs at him; Obi-Wan politely steps out of the way and lets Qui-Gon handle this. He has barely begun to move when the painfully familiar green. The former Master and Padawan duel, and the unwanted Initiate quietly departs in search of local authorities to get the ball rolling on the deep-sea mines.

He wants to see Bandomeer cleaned up and made right now, but it has to wait. It will come, with time. It's part of the many plans he has in mind.

This is going to be tiring, he thinks. And I'm not looking forward to puberty again, I really am not.

Fortunately, however, Qui-Gon Jinn is there, and Xanatos DuCrion is imprisoned on Coruscant for criminal acts against two Republic planets, and though both of them are strange and strangers, Jinn kneels down and asks Obi-Wan quite humbly to forgive him for his quick judgement and asks him to be his Padawan.

Yes.

Time after that seemed to go quickly.

Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are a team again, unstoppable, in some ways opposites and in some ways just the same. Qui-Gon is bewildered by Obi-Wan's strange knowledge, but then, so is everyone. Sometimes the Padawan thinks Yoda may have some idea of the bizarre truth, but he never says anything about it, just watches and chuckles and whacks him with his gimer stick, and the familiarity in that is comforting.

Obi-Wan's life isn't all that familiar.

Qui-Gon is aloof and distrustful again, but for different reasons. Obi-Wan is vibrant but perfectly shielded. He's inordinately talented and poised.

And he's an activist for all sorts of things that drive everyone else insane.

He pushes for the age cap to be moved up, or better yet, removed altogether. He researches endlessly for five solid years, presenting essay after report after dossier after presentation after compilation to the Council on their waning numbers, on the wasted talent, on the cruelty of adopting children six and under and training them to be Jedi and then allowing them to slip through their fingers because of something as simple as age, he argues that the Jedi Order could be so much larger and stronger if they treated all the Corps as equal career paths instead of Jedi-or-not-Jedi, he points out patterns over the last few centuries that prove the Senate has slowly been encroaching on the rights of the Jedi over their own members.

When Obi-Wan is eighteen, the Council collects all the data, compiles it, reorganizes it, and drafts the Youngling-Trainee Proposal, a document that cites evidence centuries in the making and proposes that the Jedi Order be permitted to take and train any willing participant under the age of majority, and that the Jedi branch Corps may send participants back to the Temple as well. It follows the letter of the law to the last detail. It does not drain on taxpayer funding. It protects the Order from further encroachment, and it puts the Corps directly under the control of the Jedi Order instead of the Senate.

The motion is shot down.

The Jedi Order moves to be independent from the Senate, citing that their status as a religious order is threatened by the government's ability to control their incoming and outgoing members and its ability to militarize and demilitarize the Order at will.

The motion cycles through the Senate for years, but when Obi-Wan is twenty, it passes.

The Jedi Order stands apart. Servants of the galaxy, now independent from government control or direction.

In the meantime the boy is not idle.

At age fifteen, he asks Yoda and Mace Windu to accompany him into the depths of the Archives. They agree on the basis of Obi-Wan's keen instinct and the lingering, carefully concealed fondness for the youth that many of the Masters share.

The three of them return the following morning, pale and shaken and sickened.

Mace is clutching a sealed box that he refuses to let anyone touch; Yoda looks like he's just gone five rounds against a Sarlacc, and Obi-Wan has such a severe case of Force exhaustion that he drops to the floor in the hallway—directly into a coma.

Qui-Gon Jinn comes sprinting, without being summoned, into the Halls of Healing within minutes, white as a sheet.

First he had felt cloying Darkness across their bond—for an instant he had thought his Padawan was Falling, but then he felt Obi-Wan resisting, pressing back, determined but afraid, and thought that a Darksider had somehow attacked his Padawan who was supposedly safe somewhere in the Archives with two of the most powerful Masters the Jedi Order had ever seen—and then everything went quiet, so quiet that Jinn had been terrified that Obi-Wan was dead.

He is not, of course, dead.

But he is in a coma for two solid weeks, and when he wakes up he receives a stern lecture, a firm shake of the shoulders, and then a fierce embrace. Obi-Wan melts into it like he has been waiting for it for decades (he has.) Qui-Gon may not understand this version of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but he may love him more fiercely.

What they found was this: the Jedi of a millennium ago had built their Temple on top of a sealed Sith Temple. And down in the shadows, the Darkness has been growing. Not lingering, not waiting, but actively growing, fed by the holocrons and bleeding kyber that now reside in a box under Mace's careful eye and by any and all negative emotion filtered down through the Temple.

Yoda had destroyed Sith projections. Windu had captured and contained Sith artifacts. And fifteen-year-old Obi-Wan had sunk into battle meditation and fought the Darkness itself, grappling with it mind and soul and body.

Obi-Wan Kenobi had stared into the Dark, and the Dark had stared back, and they had clashed like mighty foes from ancient tales straight out of the time of the Sith Empire and beyond in ages untold. It was bewildering, stunning, overwhelming, and Mace Windu no longer believes that Padawan Kenobi is quite…human.

What he suspects, however, he does not say (not yet.)

(When he finally whispers the words 'Chosen One?', his dark eyes are on a copper-haired boy, not on the desert child.)

Either way, the Temple is in uproar as the Jedi come to terms with the fact that not one of them in 1000 years had ever remembered or noticed the Dark powers emanating from beneath their feet and preying on their fears and angers, and then Yoda points out what everyone is missing—the Sith holocrons are alive. They pulse and flow and ebb in the Force.

They call out.

To the Sith.

Somewhere out there, the Sith live on.

Obi-Wan does not allow his Master to contemplate the upended universe; instead he grabs his Master's arm and says fiercely, "We have somewhere we need to be. Now. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't know I would be out for so long—"

And Qui-Gon, sleeping in chairs and pacing across floors next to his deeply unconscious child for ten and a half days and pouring healing energies into his body and sending queries and comforts down their alarmingly deadened bond, has not been having visions of Tahl Uvain dying in his arms. He has no idea she is in peril.

But she is, and somehow Obi-Wan knows it, and knows exactly where to find her.

She's sick. She's sick and weak and injured but she lives, and Obi-Wan smiles as if he's watching the sun rise after a long and terrible night, and he ducks out of the room so that the two Masters can hold hands and whisper promises that dance right across the edge of heresy.

When Obi-Wan is sixteen he takes an internship in the Senate. He's charming, clever, handsome, witty, knowledgeable, intelligent, humble, amiable, and a good judge of character. Half the Senate views him fondly and with trust. A quarter of the Senate draws him in to their inner circles, their inner workings, and over polished tables and glasses of wine and parcels of papers Obi-Wan integrates himself into the personal and professional lives of figures including Bail Antilles, Mon Mothma, Nee Alavar, Bana Breemu, and Onaconda Farr. He listens and persuades in equal measures.

And when Obi-Wan is eighteen, the Senate moves for a massive action against the slave trade in the Outer Rim, arguing that the Rim has been and continues to prey on Republic citizenry. Thousands if not millions of our people have been unwillingly enslaved, argues one Senator. And those citizens have had children of their own, tripling those numbers or more. Another says, They have suffered enough. We have allowed them to. We can take action. Once this Republic stood against the Sith themselves, now we cower in fear of slavers?

The movement flourishes.

Far away on Mandalore, a bitter and disillusioned Jango Fett, the absent Mand'alor, listens and watches and looks at the clones of himself he has allowed the Kaminoans to make and thinks—the Republic and the Jedi are going to free slaves where I have helped create them?

When Obi-Wan is nineteen, he visits Tatooine, alone, under the guise of staking out information for the coming Freedom Movement. He has been laying whispers amongst the slaves for years, now, and the slaves are ready. They are more than prisoners, they are people, and they are patient. They listen to the wandering Jedi and they trust him because he has made himself trustworthy. For them.

And when he leaves Tatooine with twenty-four-year-old Shmi and three-year-old Anakin Skywalker, they allow him to do so.

He'll be back to help them. For now, he will help these two.

Anakin Skywalker spends one year with his mother in their Coruscant apartment, and then she gives him over to Obi-Wan—I give my son to you, she says, to you. I know he is not old enough yet, but I am giving him to you—and Obi-Wan shudders like a tree in a storm and wraps his arms around the squirming child, securing him against his side.

And he nods.

And bows deeply to Shmi Skywalker, who steps forward and kisses his cheek in thanks.

Anakin grows up in the Temple. He learns to release his emotions—and despite Temple training, they are still many and vibrant.

The Freedom Trail blazes to life. First it is a covert operation run by the slaves themselves and the friendly planets. Then the Senate takes a role and—

—and everything begins to fall apart.

The movement is crushed in the Senate. The tide has turned against them.

Republic worlds vote to close out slave refugees to avoid conflict with the Hutts, to avoid pirate attacks, to avoid having to rearrange their social and economic structures to absorb thousands of new citizens.

Several planets fight it furiously, but there's no changing the overwhelming, Sith-poisoned majority.

Naboo, Alderaan, Rodia, Dantooine, Glee Anselm, and twenty other systems secede from the Republic and form the Alliance of Independent Systems.

It's the war, it's the war but backwards, but there's no fighting—not yet—the Clones aren't ready, after all, and so Obi-Wan, all of twenty, holds firm.

The Jedi disintegrate.

They fall to bickering over what to do, who to side with. There are many who insist that their allegiance is to the Republic—Anakin, in a voice tightened with growing pain and disbelief, my allegiance is to the Republic, to democracy!—others say their allegiance has always been to the entire galaxy and that now is their chance to break away from all governments—still others say that their loyalty is owed only to the Force and that they should retreat from the turmoil of the galaxy—and still others protest that they should be joining forces with the new Alliance.

Obi-Wan is not a Councilor. He's not even a Knight, much less a Master. His voice is abruptly silenced in the roar of the entire galaxy in conflict.

Only Yoda, Windu, Jinn, Jocasta Nu, and Shaak-Ti still bother to listen to the young man who knows too much. (He knew too little in his last life, and now he knows too much. He will never be trustworthy in the eyes of the people he loves most.)

There are many that blame him for the chaos. His self-righteous pushing landed them here.

Obi-Wan prepares the Jedi, as best he can, for war. But he's no longer certain who is in charge—is Palpatine the Sith Master, now, or is his Master still alive? If not, is there a new Apprentice?—and he begins to worry that the war will begin sooner rather than later.

It does.

He feels it when the Order reaches Kamino.

Not Order 66. It's too soon. The best batches are only just now being produced.

It's a different Order, a kill switch for someone else. The Kaminoans destroy all the Clones, accept payment, and recede into the shadows once again.

Jango Fett is there. Obi-Wan knows that, even before he and Masters Windu and Jinn arrive there in a storm of alarm. Fett is howling his rage, slaughtering any Kaminoan he can get his hands on, and there's already so much death in the air.

The Clones are dead. They're all dead. There were 4,000 already tottering about and another 2,000 in tubes. Imperfect Clones, many of them, the early batches that never would have seen the Wars anyway—but—now none of them will—all of them are dead—

Obi-Wan takes up his lightsaber and levels it at the Prime Minister's wide, gleaming eyes and fights back the seething, writhing temptation to plunge the blade inside, to fry this self-serving creature's brain, to kill him.

Inside—

"General, your orders?"

"I don't wanna be a wall decoration."

"Aw, hels. Kix, stop fussing!"

"General Kenobi—"

"Yes Cody? Cody? Cody!"

"Shrapnel. Blood loss. He'll make it, the di'kut, but—"

"Cody, next time you're injured, you tell me—"

"Only if you do the same."

"Shaak-Ti."

"Obi-Wan. It's good to see you."

"And you. How are the little ones?"

"They're treasures, as always…I…I find it—hard. Sometimes. To train children who grow too quickly and send them off to—hm."

"I…understand."

"Weird Jedi voodoo." "I heard that." "Sorry, General."

"Do you have to flirt with the enemy?"

"I like to call it charming."

"It gives the men heart attacks. What if some Sith runs you through while you're mouthing off?"

"I'm offended you think I'd stay still long enough for that to happen. Cheer up, Captain, we're joining up with the 501st today."

"Ah, joy. Now I gotta keep an eye on you and Skywalker."

"Don't forget Ahsoka."

"Nuhur."

"General Kenobi, there's…there was a situation on the other end of Umbara. General Skywalker, Yoda, and I are convening there as we speak."

"Mace? A situation—what kind of situation?"

"Obi-Wan, they're not sure what happened yet—"

"Waxer's division was over there—tell me now."

"…It appears that General Krell may have Fallen. Fallen before this battle took place. We won, yes, but the tactics he used—"

"What happened to my troops?"

"Wrecker, I have a present for you."

"I get to blow it up? The whole thing?!"

"I think you'll be needing this, sir."

"Thank you, Cody."

Obi-Wan backs down by sheer force of will.

For himself, it matters. He held on, dammit. He's held on through a lot of things.

For the Minister it matters not at all. Jango Fett is screaming about his clones, his ade, his people that he allowed to be born and bred in slavery and he decapitates the Kaminoan without hesitation. Qui-Gon attempts to detain the bounty hunter, but Jango will not be stopped.

It is Obi-Wan, his heart trampled into a thousand bleeding edges, who gets in his way. "Fett," he says. "Listen to me. Mand'alor, you must listen."

"Nu draar, Jetti!"

"Vod! Stop. Stop—your people still need you, they need you now more than ever—you can't save these ade but there are a million more back home who need you. Adonai Kryze cannot hold it together forever."

"I—"

"Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum. Jango…stop."

He stops.

The bloodbath ends. The Mand'alor returns home to crack hell down on his people and put them in line, and Obi-Wan breathes in the taste of despair and death and oncoming war on the air, turns on his heel, and departs, two Jedi Masters trailing in his wake.

There are no Clones. No droids.

The Alliance and the Republic go to war with regular, sentient citizens and there is so much death.

The Jedi Order falls apart.

Some pack up and leave for places and planets unknown.

Master Piell joins the Alliance along with a large faction of the Order. Master Yoda refuses to leave the Republic. He and Windu and Shaak-Ti and Qui-Gon and Tahl and Bant and a few thousand others stay with him in a Temple that is suddenly far too empty and large. There are no new initiates.

Obi-Wan leaves.

He severs his braid, places it in Qui-Gon's room, and vanishes before morning. He locks down the bond tightly, so tightly. The way he had clamped down on a hundred others when the bondmate was dead or dying or a machinated Sith Lord.

Through the durasteel walls in his mind, he does not have to hear or feel Qui-Gon Jinn's explosion of fear and confusion, betrayal and concern, affection and terror. (He knows it happens though. Which is almost as bad, imagining it. All the shields do is stop him from knowing precisely when. Sometimes he can feel—with what must be massive effort—Jinn pounding and pulling on the other end of the walls, trying to break through, but Kenobi does not yield.)

Obi-Wan is insanely busy. There is no rest, no peace. Not for him, not ever.

He visits Mandalore. He goes to Naboo, Alderaan, Serenno, Dantooine, Tatooine, Coruscant. He avoids the Jedi—except Mace. Windu was hard, stern, sometimes unforgiving. But he was compassionate, and he understood many of the same things as Obi-Wan, if not in the same manner. He saw the death spiral as surely as Obi-Wan did.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is twenty-nine, and the war is still raging. Anakin Skywalker is fourteen and he meets Padmé Amidala for the first time on a rare diplomatic meeting between members of the Alliance, the Republic, and the now-shattered Jedi.

She is twenty and hardly notices him, but Anakin falls for her as surely as he did before.

Obi-Wan is thirty-four.

The Alliance is crushed to bloody dust beneath the heel of the newly reorganized Empire, lorded over by Emperor Damask—no, he's murdered in his bed, now it's Emperor Palpatine—no, Dooku and his acolytes Ventress and a Fallen Quinlan Vos slay him, two of them dying in the process—Amidala, Organa, and Skywalker perish in a public execution before the Sith are dethroned. It is too late for them, though the dark-eyed woman and the blue-eyed man lean close enough to kiss before the shots are fired.

Even on the screen, it's impossible to tell if their lips touch before they die.

The galaxy falls to pieces.

Obi-Wan feels it when the Jedi Temple is attacked. He feels it because he hears Bant screaming, he feels Mace roaring in rage, he feels it when behind the wall the other end of his once-vibrant bond with Qui-Gon Jinn once again snaps violently. And this time, he isn't there to cradle him in his arms and whisper a promise.

He's on Mandalore, standing side by side with Jango Fett, Satine Kryze, Bo-Katan, and Jaster, and they're fighting desperately just to keep their main city intact.

They fail.

Satine takes three blasts to the chest and back. She's gone before she hits the ground, smacking into Obi-Wan's knees and toppling him over, his grimy hands getting tangled in her clean blonde locks as he tries to stand up again, tears in his eyes. Bo-Katan loses her head to a flying vibroblade. Jaster and Jango go down at the same time, and Obi-Wan can't tell what killed them because his vision is darkening as a Darksider crushes his larynx with the Force.

I failed, I failed, I failed failed failed failed—

He wakes up in his bed.

He's safe and warm and surrounded by Jedi.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is eighty years old. In mind and soul.

In his body, he is twelve for the third time, and he sobs into his pillow because he hasn't slept in days and even death has not eased his terrible exhaustion.

Again, again, he's back here again.

He didn't keep close enough to Anakin. That's the answer. The Chosen One got lost in the shuffle of warfare. Obi-Wan is meant to guard and guide him and he failed because he was too wrapped up in the larger picture.

Qui-Gon was always disappointed in Obi-Wan's fixation on the bigger picture. The first Anakin had hated it too. The second one never got the chance but he'd died for it anyway.

Disappointment is the theme song of his life, the terrible underline that has forced him back to the beginning twice over now.

Initiate Kenobi drags himself out of bed.

He must find a Master and become a Jedi.

He must be here to raise Anakin.

All else is detail.

He's apprenticed by Qui-Gon Jinn again. And then Jinn throws him away, again, for being too strange, too rebellious, too secretive. The maverick takes the first chance he gets and severs their bond and repudiates him before the Council, and Obi-Wan cannot blame the man at all.

He had been Force-blessed to get Qui-Gon in his life once, much less twice. Three times is too much to ask for.

Obi-Wan is transferred to Plo Koon, and the elder (younger, actually) Jedi is calm and kind and affectionate, and he seems to see that there is much more to this copper-haired child than meets the eye. Obi-Wan has all seven lightsaber forms mastered by the time he is twenty. He is a favorite of Madame Nu and Master Piell and a bitter rival of Pong Krell. He negotiates without hesitation; he strides forward without fear.

Some say he leans Dark.

His mastery of Vaapad, second only to Master Windu and that by a disturbingly narrow margin, does nothing to discount the rumor.

Padawan Kenobi trains as a Searcher.

When he is sixteen, he and Plo return from a mission to the Outer Rim with a one year old human male named Anakin Skywalker.

Shmi Skywalker is dead. Master Koon reports to the Council that a slaver had killed her in a fight at a marketplace, and that Obi-Wan had forced the killer to pay Gardulla the Hutt for both mother and child.

The Council is displeased with Kenobi's methods, but the Padawan does not yield.

Yoda senses attachment and tells Obi-Wan so.

Obi-Wan shifts in what may be a minute shrug, shifting the swaddled child in his arms, and replies, "So are the trees attached to the soil, the vine to the tree, hand to the arm, and all things to the Force. Some things must hold together, Master Yoda."

The room falls silent—a breathless, shocked silence.

Kenobi bows and leaves.

Obi-Wan and Anakin are meant to be a pair. Even the sternest, most disapproving Masters can see it in the Force.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is surrounded by that strange pulse in the Force, the way it both caresses him and won't quite touch him; Anakin Skywalker is a nexus unto himself. They are feared, they are loved, they are power.

A sun, a moon.

A tree, the soil.

Obi-Wan nurtures compassion in the boy. Patience is harder. Trust is easy. They are inseparable.

Kenobi is twenty-two and Knighted early. Knighted early because he petitioned the Council for permission to take six-year-old Anakin with him on a routine trip to Naboo and encountered a Sith—a Sith—

—two Sith. A Master and an Apprentice.

Obi-Wan slays the Apprentice and severs an arm from the Master and flees with the child back to the safety of the Temple, bearing the news. He allows his mind to be searched for the Truth but refuses to open parts of his mind to them.

He is keeping secrets.

They lock him away until he agrees to talk.

He does not talk. He does, however, rail at them when they allow Qui-Gon Jinn to take Anakin as his Padawan.

Anakin does not want Jinn. He wants Obi-Wan. The twelve-year old howls and digs in his heels and demands for the millionth time that they release his real Master, that they listen to him.

He may be a Sith, they say, or Fallen. No.

Kenobi and Skywalker form a bond anyways. Without contacting one another, without seeing one another in person for more than two years, they form a training bond so strong that they can share feelings and words from systems away.

After that they don't really have a choice.

Or so they say, when they forcibly shatter Obi-Wan Kenobi's shields to discover the impossible, incomprehensible truths hidden there. Three different timelines, different lives, this strange little shadow-Jedi somehow important enough to send back in time itself? Unheard of. False. Insanity? Pretense?

Anakin Skywalker bursts into the room, and there is no question about this one's sanity. He has forsaken it for murderous rage, and he sets upon the entire Council to rescue the screaming man in the center of the room, his back arching from the pain of having his mind broken into.

Four Councilors are killed by a thirteen-year-old boy before anyone can stop him.

Master Gallia runs the boy through with a wince of grief and guilt.

And Kenobi shrieks. The pain is leaving him but his blue-green eyes track the child's body as he falls. The boy is a murderer, an anomaly in the Force, but the broken (former?) Jedi howls as he watches Anakin die.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is given Force-suppressants. He is tied to a medical bed and left there to be monitored and treated until they can extract real answers from him.

All they get, when this Obi-Wan Kenobi is twenty-nine, is a tearful glare and the words: "You—you sit in your ivory tower—you don't study the Force, you study yourselves—why? Why? Now I have to start again—Anakin…"

He flatlines.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is twelve-almost-thirteen again.

He's also ninety-six. He can feel it under his skin. His body yearns to bow and break and wrinkle and fold in age, it wants to mirror his soul.

But it can't.

So Obi-Wan Kenobi marches through the Temple and strides directly to Master Yoda's quarters.

The diminutive Master responds curiously to this pre-dawn incursion, and the ginger-blonde boy with the ocean-deep eyes bows stiffly. "Yoda," he says, "I am too old to wait around for people to listen to me persuade them gently. I need to tell you everything, now."

And he does.

Yoda believes him.

He has no choice. Obi-Wan talks for six hours. Yoda pardons him from all missed classes and listens solemnly as this angel-faced child outlines with the sharp critical analysis of a seasoned solider three different lifetimes, three devastating failures. He tells the Grand Master everything. Except the names of the Chosen One, his wife, and the true names of the Sith Lords.

"You will face them in fear," Kenobi explains. "You always have. This time I am handing you knowledge. My body is too young and my position too low for me to handle these things alone. I need the power of the Order behind and ahead of me, and you are the one to talk to about these things."

Yoda folds his ears. "Trust me, you do not? A power play, this is?"

The old-young-man-child smiles softly. "It is what it is."

Yoda persuades the Council. With his words, with time and effort, with selected memories from Obi-Wan's mind, given freely, not taken.

Some believe he is insane. That both of them are insane.

Some believe that Kenobi was granted a terrible vision—to be taken into account but not wholly trusted.

A few believe fully.

It's enough. They remove the age cap on initiates. They encourage more Knights and Masters to take Padawans. They train their students to fend off massive blaster-fire and opponents with Force abilities and lightsabers.

Dooku takes Obi-Wan as his Padawan. It's rather nice, being back in this Lineage. Dooku is of the opinion that Obi-Wan had a massive vision, but he does not begrudge Obi-Wan a small, smug smile when Qui-Gon Jinn raises a disapproving eyebrow at the pair.

Yan Dooku teaches Obi-Wan precision. He teaches him a little cruelty, but Obi-Wan repeatedly sheds those lessons like a reptile shedding its skin, so he gives up on that. He trains him in Makashi, only to find that Obi-Wan is a Master duelist, only hindered by limbs that are too small and gangly.

So they escalate.

Their duels are wild, fantastical. He drops his Padawan into war zones and jungles and oceans and underground tunnels and they fight constantly. They bicker privately and present an unyielding unified front in public.

Gold saber and blue saber dance side by side.

Obi-Wan waits until the opportune moment, and then presents evidence—from the present timeline and from his memories—that indicate that Sheev Palpatine and Hego Damask are the Sith Lords on the rise.

The Council watches them like hawks. They sense nothing, but Obi-Wan insists.

Dooku goes undercover to prod the beast.

He comes back convinced.

When Obi-Wan is twenty-one Jedi attack the Sith and kill them both. They set out across the galaxy to root out any Sith supporters, any Dark acolytes. They arrest Xanatos DuCrion and six others.

They escape and wreak havoc on the whole Temple. One, a female by the looks of it, pauses to crush a youngling's neck underneath her boot. Just for fun. For the sound it makes.

Obi-Wan challenges her, wins.

He does not kill her.

Not until Xanatos creeps up behind him and tries to stab him through the spine—a slow and painful death—and then Obi-Wan kills both of them in a single fluid strike.

And then he cries.

Obi-Wan and Yoda find the Skywalkers and bring them to the Temple. Shmi stays to work and heal; Anakin is deposited in the crèche.

Dooku sees his midichlorian count and a gleam enters his dark eyes. Obi-Wan holds his Master at arm's length ever after, and when he is Knighted there is a chill in the air between the two.

The galaxy is outraged.

The Jedi acted too quickly, for once in their long miserable existence. The people won't hear the evidence, they won't listen to reason, they cannot stand the band of murdering Force-wielders suddenly on the loose.

The Sith are dead, or nearly so.

It is the rest of the galaxy that begins hunting Jedi down wherever they are.

They flee Coruscant.

Then they flee Dantooine.

Then Hoth, then Jedha, then Illum.

They all die.

Every last one.

Obi-Wan is not the last, but he's close. He can sense a handful of others still alive as he places himself in front of his child, his Anakin, and prepares to go down fighting.

The blaster bolt hits him directly in the face, scorching through his flesh and frying his brain.

Even as his heart stops he hears Anakin, all of eleven, give a heart-wrenching sob.

Obi-Wan Kenobi wakes up again.

He tells the truth again right away, and this time spills less truth at a time. He's cautious and caustic and very very charming and the Council despises and frets over him at the same time.

Yoda takes him as his Padawan.

Many call him indulgent, some add the word fool. It doesn't matter.

Obi-Wan is here to guide them to safe harbor.

It cannot be too late to save the Order, to save Anakin, the Chosen One, now more of a son in his eyes than a brother. (The brother is dead. The brother died in the first life when his knees bowed before Sidious, and this is a bitter truth that Kenobi lives with every day of his miserable, extended, circular life.)

It cannot be too late.

He is always reverted to just weeks before thirteen.

There must be a reason.

(It can't just be punishment.)

(Can it?)

Obi-Wan is more wise and temperate in this timeline, more like his first and second self. He tries to remember how old he is.

Physically, today, he is fifteen. So that must mean he is…one hundred nine? One hundred ten? He decides to call it one hundred nine.

He works his way through lightsaber training more slowly this time. He does not push his limbs to obey what his mind remembers.

He does, however, insist the Jedi train harder to fight to survive. "I don't wish for war," he says, when asked, "but in four tries I have been unable to help you avoid it. This fifth seems unlikely."

It wasn't.

Palpatine became Senator, then Chancellor. Padmé Amidala conveniently vanished when they gently encouraged her to help them look into Sheev Palpatine's history.

Married or not married, sixteen-year-old Anakin feels her die and cries into his Master's shoulder.

And that Master is not Obi-Wan.

He never was a good enough Master to Anakin. Never. He chooses to surrender the reins to someone else—in the Lineage, so they can still be brothers. Qui-Gon Jinn takes Anakin Skywalker as his Padawan just as he always wished. He fuels Anakin's arrogance—and why, when he was so good at crushing Obi-Wan's without even intending to? But Obi-Wan refuses to listen to such self-indulgent nonsense, even from inside his own head (heart)—but soothes his angers and fears. He never allows him a friendship with Palpatine in the first place, and he does not need the Council to help him reach that decision.

Skywalker takes an interest in the crèche. He plays with children and learns to love them and let them go, and he's kinder and wiser for it. His laughs light up the whole Temple. Younglings flock to him; his peers befriend him; his superiors keep a benevolent, watchful eye. He is fire and soul and sweetness, he is a dear, dear friend.

He is everything he could have been the first time around, or even the second and the third, if only Obi-Wan had realized sooner that the problem was having him as a Master.

They're talking in a corridor one day, ages thirty-nine and twenty-four respectively, and Anakin has a small Pantoran girl on his hip, her blue fingers playing with his long wavy hair and her tiny rosebud lips open in a continuous giggle.

There is no war, Palpatine is not grooming Skywalker, the Clones were never commissioned, and the Jedi are slowly peeling away from Senate control, ever so slowly and gradually, always waiting for convenient opportunities to make their moves.

Obi-Wan, now forty-nine, meditates.

He comes up screaming.

The Temple is on fire around him, and this is not a vision. This is Sith Magick, this is Nightsister Magick. They are everywhere, cutting down Jedi—the Elders, the Councilors, the Masters, Knights, Padawans, Initiates, younglings, all of them—there are screams.

The Sith do not know about the Chosen One in this timeline.

But apparently Palpatine did not need one to decide that he alone of Bane's line was destined to conquer the universe.

He has allied himself with the Hutts, the Zyggerians, the Nightsisters.

He has unleashed hell on the happiest Jedi Order, the happiest Anakin Skywalker, that Obi-Wan has ever seen. Ever. In almost a century and a half of life.

Obi-Wan stands side by side with Anakin, sobbing out apologies that Anakin is shouting at him are unnecessary, as they fight to the death to allow a group of Healers and younglings to escape.

They go down fighting together, and Anakin—

Well, Anakin launches himself up in a fury. Using Dark methods that he either learned from someone less than trustworthy or more likely simply invented on the spot, Anakin Skywalker drew on the remaining energies in the bodies of all the dead in the entire Temple, channeled it into his own body, and used it to leap across the room with supernatural speed.

His Dark powers serve the Light.

He strikes the head from Sidious' body, and expunges out every iota of energy in both their bodies to wrench the Living Force out of every Darksider and Sith on the surface of Coruscant.

Obi-Wan is down with a saber burn across his chest and his arm lying several feet away, but he feels warm.

Secure.

Swept up in the warmth of the Force like a soft blanket.

This is it, he realizes. My job all along was to let Anakin Skywalker go. His job was to use both aspects of the Force to see the Jedi and the Sith end at the same time.

The Chosen One.

His own precious chosen one, too.

Obi-Wan Kenobi sighs, and lets the Force carry him gently away.

He wakes up.

Again.

He's thirteen.

The Force is punishing him.

Obi-Wan abandons the Jedi Order. He sets out as a vigilante with a stolen lightsaber and he frees Shmi Skywalker.

Then he frees all the slaves.

The Hutt Empire falls when he is nineteen.

He and the Skywalkers settle on Naboo.

When he is thirty-six, his twenty-year-old adoptive son Anakin meets and charms newly promoted Senator Padmé Amidala.

Things go well. There is no Jedi Order holding Anakin back. He lives a dangerous life, helping his 'father' roam the galaxy, taking down true evil where they find it, expunging Darkness from people and Sith temples alike. But there are no rules preventing him from falling in love, from marrying, from having children.

Padmé knows what he does with his life. This is the only thing about this romance that could ruin her career—but having a forbidden, famous, risk-taking Jedi General did not stop her the first time, and having a vigilante for a husband does not deter her this time around.

Obi-Wan and Shmi are often away, helping the last of the Freedom Trail work successfully.

One time, Obi-Wan leaves his blossoming family—his platonic, sweet-tempered wife; his passionate, adoring son; his headstrong, clever daughter-in-law and the twin heartbeats she carries with her now—and vanishes for a year and a half.

He does not mean to.

He would never (again) willingly choose to leave his family.

He's overwhelmed and captured by some of the only remaining slavers in the galaxy. The Zyggerians.

Obi-Wan takes them apart from the inside out. A year and a half is how long it takes him to raise a rebellion, execute a plan, and dismantle the entire Zyggerian society, killing some and banishing others, and crawl his way back home.

Anakin and Padmé sob into his arms as he holds them close and they hold him upright, and in the background Shmi smiles and weeps (only a little, because tears do not spring easily from the eyes of this wise desert-mother) and cradles Luke and Leia, who cry for him. They can sense him. They want him. Their patriarch.

The Skywalker family lives in peace.

Eventually Padmé retires from the corrupt Senate, especially after a careful warning from her father-in-law, blessed as he is with his strange perceptiveness and foresight.

They evade the Republic. They evade the Separatists, when they come.

Anakin is itching for a fight, but Force-sensitive children are disappearing, and he will not leave his family. He loves them too fiercely. Not even bloodlust, not even a hunger for galaxy-wide justice will see him parted from their side.

Obi-Wan does not know how old he is, anymore.

Sometimes he thinks he is lucky to remember his name.

But he is happy and his family—his family—is safe as they can be, and happy, and growing.

Regardless of his emotional-mental-spiritual age (which he feels weighing down inside him as if his skin is lined with stone) this Obi-Wan Skywalker lives to the ripe old age of ninety-two.

The Sith Empire marches on and on and on, and there is nobody strong enough to stand in its way. The yellow-eyed Pong Krell fashions a mask to hide his age and tries to pretend that he is not going to be thrown away like garbage as soon as his Master can find someone worthier to stand at his right hand.

He passes away with Anakin sitting by his side, grey and tired, and Padmé humming in a chair nearby with eyes that have never lost their intelligent gleam, and the twins and Ben, and their children Obi-Wan, Jaina, Jacen, Anakin, and Sabé, and Obi-Wan Skywalker smiles.

For some reason he is terrified to die.

He cannot remember why.

He remembers when he inhales, and air rushes into thirteen-year-old lungs.

Obi-Wan—he believes that is his name—or was that his great-grandson's name?—or was his name Ben?—no, that was the name of his grandson—no—

He sits down on a high ledge with his legs dangling over the black writhing pit of Coruscant night life and he tries to cry, but no tears come.

He is run as dry as the wastes of Tatooine, and he wonders at that comparison. It makes sense—he knows he has been there—hasn't he?

It was only for a little while though. Not even twenty years. And he is two centuries old.

No, thirteen years.

No, he's one hundred nine.

No—two hundred twenty-four.

No—

NO—

He, once Obi-Wan Skywalker, once Obi-Wan Kenobi, once Crazy Old Ben, once High Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi, once the unwanted child in the heart of the Jedi Temple, shivers on the edge.

There are no tears.

There is no hope.

Nevertheless, he picks himself up and tries again. Every breath aches. Every step feels impossible. Nobody will listen. He is too old and too young to change the galaxy enough.

This is not a chance to do better.

This is hell.

This is punishment for being born, for forcing his way into the Order, for faking his way past his first Trials, for betraying his Master, for failing Anakin Skywalker.

But he tries. Because he is here.

Again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again. And again…