Second chance

What was Obi-Wan thinking on the flight to Alderaan? One-shot, ANH.

~:~:~

It's been a long time...

But here we are again.

Luke Skywalker, with two droids and an appeal for help from Leia Organa. There are no coincidences in the Force. No random chance that Anakin Skywalker's daughter has sent her message – commanding, requesting, plaintively appealing by turn as it is, while remaining too brave or proud or stubborn to explain exactly what trouble has detained her from coming in person – by the twin brother she does not know of.

He does not know either. Force help me! How can I tell them?

I have told Luke Darth Vader killed his father. From a certain point of view, that is true. What I will say to his sister, I do not know. There is no hint of guidance in the Force. But I do not need to know that yet. For the moment – and that is where we are meant to live, after all – there is just myself and Luke.

Kenobi and Skywalker.

It's not a second run, not quite. These are dark days. This is certainly no royal space yacht. And the young Skywalker before me, clutching his father's lightsaber, is not Anakin. Not in the least. He looks like him, in a way, I grant you. But the person who looks out from under that sandy thatch, through those blue eyes … if he is like anyone, it is his mother. The Force from him is care and love and compassion, ideals laced with youthful confidence and naivety, not arrogance.

If you want arrogance in here, it's lounging in the engineer's seat opposite me, holding forth on 'Luck' and the merits of blasters.

Now and then he casts a glance at me. The old man, old fool, probably, in his eyes. Looking to see what I think of him. He's thinking I find him tiresome, cock-sure, loud-mouthed.

Oh, he's all of those. But if you let go, if you shut out your surface impressions and reach out with the Force instead, he's not those shallow, surface things.

He's a second chance, too.

Someone older (a little). Wiser (in some things). Steadier (pardon my arrogance!).

Someone whom random chance (as those who do not believe in the Force would call it) has flung into the paths of the Skywalkers, as they make their bright and brilliant and burning way across the galaxy. To walk those paths beside them; to have his fate bound up with them; to watch their backs and guard their steps and now and them remind them that they need to live, not just crusade, and not get too cocky, either.

Of course, to have your life saved and your view changed and your patience taxed and your heart broken, all a million times, is part and parcel for it too. And to learn and love and come to see the world a different way, as well.

I know. It is the role I used to have. But … this is no second run. Not mine, at any rate. I know. Some whisper in the Force tells me that I still have a part in all of this, but it is my last. The last ride of Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi.

It is for others to go on now. For someone else to walk beside these new Skywalkers.

Who? This I worried even as I sought Luke's company for this trip. My lot was one Skywalker, and even then, I lost him. Who could be the anchor for two of them?

Now I know.

If Luke is Padme in Anakin and Leia is Anakin in Padme, then Han Solo can only be myself.

Force keep him so!

And maybe, just maybe, he will manage to say "I love you" just a little sooner.

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