It had been three years since the fall of the Republic.

Obi-Wan Kenobi would not have known that. Sure, he checked the chrono often enough to know that time was passing - days, weeks, months. But he rarely paid attention to the year. On this desert planet, there were no natural seasons to give him external clues, and he had no desire to keep a personal log to track the years. He was one of the very last Jedi in existence – hell, he might even be the very last by now, he had no way of knowing. If any others had survived, they were lying low in some godforsaken world beyond the Empire's gaze.

Obi-Wan knew if he had any sense he'd do the same for the rest of his foreseeable future. For a time, he did. He delivered the boy, now called Luke, to Tatooine, and stayed close by for months after. But the isolation had been torment. Every moment spent alone with his demons and Anakin's lingering ghost, neither dead nor alive, drove Obi-Wan one step closer to giving in. Worlds were falling around him, the Empire's shadow grew every day, and Obi-Wan was completely helpless to stop it. The Force itself seemed to shrink away from him. Whispers replaced it, coming to him in the lucid nightmares before sleep. The Dark Side had overtaken the remnants of the once-great world he knew, they reminded him. What, really, would be different if he gave in to its power instead of tormenting himself?

And yet, in the midst of despair, the Force caught up to him and fanned the dying fire in his heart. He was of its last precious children, and it called him to act.

Despite the hopelessness that had taken hold of his heart so firmly in Anakin's wake, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi came back to himself. The confident, surefire Jedi Master of yesteryear had died, but before he did he'd sent a firm and resolute kick to the backside of his successor. Get off your sorry aging ass, Obi-Wan, it rebuked him in a calm, belligerent tone that Qui-Gon had taught him, If you keep moping like that you'll get stuck that way.

Put in your place by yourself. This had to be a new all-time-low for his mental stability. Obi-Wan laughed dryly at the thought. The Mind Healers at Coruscant would've had a field day to diagnose him – he could all but feel the weight of the inches-thick folder cataloguing his mental ills. But the mind healers were no more. Coruscant was a world of soot. He had no one to remind him that he was going crazy, no one to coach his crackling psyche, no one to sit him on a couch and ask him if he really was, deep down, alright. So in the silence of a troubled man trying very hard to be sane, Obi-Wan locked up his meager home and set up force shields to protect it. He bid a silent goodbye to the Skywalker farm on the horizon, took a borrowed speeder to Mos Eisley and used what little funds he had to buy the smallest, most rickety starship they had.

He left. He did not know where he would go, where the Force would guide him. But he knew that he had to do more than mope in the desert. He was a Jedi. Perhaps the very last. The future needed him, but so did the present. The past had had Master Obi-Wan Kenobi to clutch its pieces together even as it fell apart. Now, in the midst of darkness, it would have Ben, the tired old man who had a lightsaber on his belt and a determination in his heart that even he didn't understand. He sighed into the star-lit windshield and closed his eyes, calling upon the Force to guide his path.

He was so alone. He was so tired. He was so heavy with grief and guilt.

But he had work to do.

His fingers glid over the controls without his knowing exactly what they were doing. The computer plotted a course for a planet that he had never heard of, and Ben streaked into hyperspace, leaving Obi-Wan Kenobi behind.