A note from the authors: With this final epilogue chapter, the journey of Star Wars Episode II: The Shadow Within has reached its end. Following this, the Skywalker Legend series will be on hiatus until early next year.

As we prepare to write the third and final chapter of this trilogy, we want to make sure we leave ourselves ample time to plan, outline, and prepare the story. We rushed into writing this episode, and we do not want to make that same mistake again with Episode III. Though we originally promised short stories set between each episode (first seen in The Skywalker Legend: Fragments, Part One), we now realize that writing those left us with insufficient time to focus on the main narrative. In light of this, there will be no The Skywalker Legend: Fragments, Part Two.

Thank you so much for joining us on this adventure! It's been a fun ride so far, and we look forward to bringing the trilogy to a close when Star Wars Episode III: The Risen Sith premieres in early 2020.

Epilogue: Separate Ways - Part Two

As he stood alone in the turbolift, watching the Coruscant skyline shoot past him, Obi-Wan shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot, trying to make the civilian clothes he wore feel as though they fit better against his skin. With the exception of a few incognito missions here and there, in the last several years he'd worn only two sets of clothing: his uniform, and his Jedi robes. These new trappings felt as though he'd stepped into someone else's skin, one that chafed against his in strange places.

For now, the civilian ensemble was mostly unnecessary—at the moment he was bunking at the Temple, which meant his robes would serve him just fine in most company. But a visit to his friends necessitated something a little more . . . well, normal. So he'd stopped by the nearest shop he'd been able to find and purchased the first thing that looked suitable.

That was another thing he'd have to get used to—managing money. He'd not had much occasion to spend his own credits in the last phase of his life—when the Order wasn't covering expenses, the Defense Force was. That meant that the entirety of his general's paycheck had gone into a bank account he had never had occasion to touch. The Jedi, of course, would provide for him full time now, but if he ever needed it . . . he had the funds to do other things.

Like buying some clothes. Picking up a bottle of wine for dinner with old friends, he thought, rolling said bottle around in his hands.

The turbolift ticked calmly upward—it was nearly at the two-hundredth floor, where Anakin had told him the apartment was. Obi-Wan felt no small degree of shame when he realized that part of him was hoping the numbers would just keep shooting upward, carrying him onward and upward past his destination.

It will never be the same anymore, he said to the Force, as though it were a person that could hear, and I don't know what to do with that.

If the Force had an answer, it kept it to itself.

He hadn't seen either Anakin or Padmé since Serenno—it had been a couple of weeks before he'd even heard from either of them. Anakin had shot him the invitation via a voice message, sounding choked with sheepishness as he read off his address. Obi-Wan had confirmed that he'd be there via a voice message as well—no direct contact.

What if this is just how it's going to be from now on? he asked as the numbers ticked by: 186 . . . 187 . . . 188 . . . You'll see them here and there, always smiling and fighting to get past the awkwardness, and then . . . well, it won't stop. It will just happen less and less, until eventually five years have passed and you're thinking about your old friends Anakin and Padmé, and how you don't exactly know where they are or how they're doing.

And that will be that.

With a courteous chime, the lift came to a gentle halt and opened to the hallway beyond. Blinking hard, Obi-Wan took one last look out the transparisteel chamber and into the lazy afternoon sky.

Well, it's certainly going to fall apart faster if you can't even summon the nerve to spend an evening with them, Kenobi. Just as the lift doors began to close, he stepped outward and started down the hall.

When he pushed the doorchime, it was only a fraction of a second before the door itself swept open. Padmé was standing there, hair newly cropped short. She looked good, but Obi-Wan didn't need the Force to see that she was tired as well; dark patches were visible beneath her eyes.

Anakin was nowhere in sight.

"Well hey there, stranger," Padmé said, bringing his attention back to the present. With a sardonic smirk, she punched at his shoulder. "Took you long enough, I was starting to get worried the prospect of us cooking was gonna scare you off."

With a smile he hoped didn't look as strained as it felt, Obi-Wan pulled her into a short embrace. "Well," he said as they broke apart, "if it turns out badly I've brought something to dull the pain." He waggled the hand that held the wine bottle. "It'll need to chill first—"

"Oh, trust me," she cut him off with a dismissive wave, "we have plenty of booze to drink while we wait." In a gesture that came off as strangely artificial, she jerked her head toward the interior of the apartment and rolled her eyes. "Speaking of cooking, Anakin is trying to slice up vegetables, we'd better go make sure he hasn't injured his good hand yet." Stepping backward, she threw out her arm toward her home. "After you?"

He hesitated for the barest instant on the threshold, then nodded and stepped inside. The apartment seemed to open up before him—a panoramic window cradled a sunken sitting area. Beyond the window he could just make out a balcony—and a sizeable one at that, home to multiple pieces of patio furniture.

Opposite the sitting area, an impressively modern kitchen was framed by a sweeping countertop and a set of barstools. Anakin stood at the cooktop, his back to the front door, slicing through a cluster of vegetables with a chef's knife.

Obi-Wan fought the urge to prod at his former student through the Force. He knew what he would find—or, more precisely, what he wouldn't find—if he did. Yes, Anakin still radiated an air of life, as any living being would. But now there was an emptiness, too—as if he were a hollowed out statue. Obi-Wan had felt it once, back on Serenno. He didn't need to feel it again.

"So," he said, whispering out of one corner of his mouth, "how's he doing?"

Padmé looked up at him with pain in her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she had the chance a call rang out from across the room.

"There he is!"

Obi-Wan looked back in the direction of the kitchen—Anakin had turned around, his arms now spread wide as he started to stride forward. "Long time no see, huh?" he said in a tone of voice that sounded remarkably jovial considering the message he'd left. Before Obi-Wan could reply, his apprentice had pulled him into an embrace.

It felt good, seeing him again. But something was off, now that Obi-Wan could no longer feel the Force bond he'd shared with the man who was hugging him. It was almost like being embraced by a droid, or a mannequin.

As the two pulled apart, the Jedi opened his mouth to say something, but Anakin swiftly turned back to the kitchen, talking all the while. "Anyway, if the cooking kills you, it's Padmé's fault—this is her family's recipe, and we've never tried it before, so . . ."

The jabber faded into muted white noise as Obi-Wan threw another look at Padmé. She blew out a long, slow breath and then snatched the bottle of wine from him, on her way to the cooling unit.

He'd expected Anakin to be withdrawn, unsure, still coping with . . . well, all of it. Serenno, leaving the military, leaving the Jedi. He hadn't wanted that for his friend, but he'd been prepared to deal with it. What he hadn't been prepared for was Anakin being cheery.

It would be ridiculous for him to be affronted by this, of course. If anything it was a good thing that the young man had been able to bounce back from all that he'd been hit with in the last few weeks. So why did Obi-Wan feel as though his former apprentice had slapped him in the face?

As the couple's droid companion shuffled away from the dinner table, Obi-Wan could just make out her grumbling—something about being "demoted to a damn housekeeping unit." The plate Liz had set before him was certainly more high-class than the basic metal place settings used in the mess hall at the Jedi Temple. The silverware, too, seemed almost excessively fancy, laced with a glimmering golden trim. Obi-Wan picked up a fork, cradling it gingerly between thumb and forefinger, uncertain if something like this was even meant to be placed in one's mouth.

Padmé, it seemed, held no such hesitations. "So, Kenobi," she said, stabbing a slice of vegetable with her fork. "How's retirement treating you?" As she spoke she gestured with the fork before shoving its contents into her mouth.

"Oh, I wouldn't exactly call myself retired," he began, returning the fork to the table and instead reaching for the glass of water in front of him. He took a hefty gulp of the drink, hoping it would soothe his strangely dry throat. "The Order keeps me plenty busy. You know," he paused, glancing at Anakin with a knowing grin, "Jedi business."

All at once, Anakin's expression narrowed. His lip curled downward into a slight frown. All the jovial energy he'd been projecting mere moments ago evaporated.

"Right," he muttered, his tone bordering on biting.

That's what he's been feeling this whole time, Obi-Wan realized. All I've done is break the front.

"And where are you living?" Padmé quickly interjected—judging by her panicked expression, she was as eager as Obi-Wan to move things along.

"Oh, at the Temple," he replied, finally plucking the ornate fork off the table and poking it into a wedge of roasted potato. "The Jedi take care of their own. I'm housed and fed, so long as I put in my share of the work. There's plenty of it to be done."

"Have you taken another student?"

He froze, barely managing to swallow his food. Padmé Amidala was not the first person to ask him that question over the course of the past few weeks—though she was the first non-Jedi. He'd been urged by several of his fellow Masters to resume a teaching role, taking on another fledgling Jedi and guiding them in the ways of the Force. At every opportunity he'd turned it down. Despite part of him knowing that it wasn't, it would have felt like nothing more than replacing Anakin—and he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Silently he glanced at the table, wagging his head in the slightest of shakes. "Not yet, anyway," he added after a lengthy silence. "I've been offered the opportunity, but I turned it down. I just don't think I'm ready." Gently setting his fork down, he brought the glass of water back to his lips.

"You should do it."

As the words left Anakin's mouth, Obi-Wan nearly choked on his drink. His first instinct was not to look at his former student, but at Padmé—they exchanged a pained glance. Before Serenno, there was no Anakin without Obi-Wan. That had ended only a matter of weeks ago. But it sounds like he's over it nonetheless, the Jedi Master thought to himself, even if you're not.

The young man must have seen Obi-Wan's expression—he quickly added, "you're a good teacher, that's all."

"Well, thank you," Obi-Wan said with a nod, finally summoning the courage to lock eyes with his former pupil. "Maybe I will. Someday."

The look in Anakin's eyes wasn't one Obi-Wan could decipher—certainly not without the aid of the Force. His former student looked tired, that much was clear—but then again, they all were. When he could bear to look at Anakin no longer, his gaze wandered past him and to the apartment's panoramic window—and the skyline beyond.

"Quite the view," he muttered as he took another bite of food. "You must have found excellent work." Though he spoke to Anakin, he did not look back at him, instead gesturing with his fork at the man as he continued to stare out the window.

"It's not the pay so much as the significant housing stipend," Anakin replied—from the direction of his voice, Obi-Wan could tell he was trying to avoid eye contact too. "I have to live somewhere close to the Senate District."

Indeed, the dome of the Republic's capitol complex was visible through the living room window. "You both work at the Capitol?" Obi-Wan turned to look at Padmé. "That must be nice, working so closely after all these years of being apart."

She merely shrugged.

"I, uh . . . " Anakin began, trailing off into a momentary silence. As he paused, Obi-Wan returned his gaze to Anakin's side of the table. "I work for the Chancellor."

Obi-Wan felt his throat grow dry as his heart rate spiked. Please don't let that mean what I think it means. "A staff position in the Executive Offices," he said, voice shaky. "Quite the honor."

"Ah, no, it's . . . a bit more than that," Anakin replied. His eyes darted briefly downward; when he'd stared at his plate for longer than anyone at the table was comfortable with, he raised his head and locked eyes with Obi-Wan. "I work directly for the Chancellor."

Oh.

"'Executive Aide' is my official title," Anakin said, launching into an explanation Obi-Wan hadn't asked for. "I really just do whatever Chancellor Palpatine needs me to do. Attending meetings, running errands, the occasional trip into a dangerous sector to hand deliver messages to important personnel. It's like an official version of what you used to do for Bail, I guess." He paused, putting on a cheap imitation of his signature Skywalker grin. "Though I have yet to start any wars."

On the outside, Obi-Wan forced himself to smile. Inside, the comment felt like Anakin was twisting a vibroblade. They'd joked a number of times about how responsible Obi-Wan was for the galaxy's current situation. But back then it was different. Back then they worked together.

Now he worked for Palpatine.

"Did either of you see the news today?" Obi-Wan asked, his tone suggesting he was throwing himself at the topic like a drowning man onto a liferaft. "Apparently that Peacekeeping Corps is officially expanding. They'll be deployed here on the capital next."

"Great," said Padmé through a mouthful of food. "Ran into those guys on Naboo, they seemed like an absolute pillar of responsible policing."

"You didn't mention that," Anakin cut in, his brow furrowing. A forkful of his own dinner was clenched unwavering in his mechanical hand.

Oh DAMN it. There she'd gone again, straying too close to the meat of what had actually happened to her during her time there.

Keeping secrets from Anakin wasn't something she did. Before the war, they simply hadn't had the room in their lives for that to be feasible—occupying the same bunk in the same starship made privacy infeasible. And afterward, well . . . why would she have wanted to?

If it had been any other man she'd gone to Theed to gather evidence against, she would have told Anakin everything. They'd have shared laughs at her close brushes with danger, she'd have embellished some details, it would have gone into regular rotation as one of their campfire stories. But she couldn't let him know, and not just because he liked Palpatine.

The man she'd tried to incriminate, whose things she'd broken into, was her husband's boss now. And even though she had insisted to herself over and over since he'd let her know about his new job that nothing would change, that they would go on the way they always had, something irreplaceable had broken.

Anakin was, for lack of a better phrase, working for the enemy.

"Padmé?"

Startling, she realized she'd let several seconds pass without saying anything. "Sorry, geez. My mind must've wandered. It was no big deal," she said with a forced shrug, gathering as big a bite as she could manage and shoving it into her mouth. "Jusht shaw 'em patrolling the shtreets, being a nuishance." Swallowing, she almost coughed but managed not to. "They frisked Ellis for no reason, it was annoying."

As Obi-Wan expressed his sympathies, Padmé studied her husband's face, trying to figure out if he'd bought it. At least he can't sense when I'm lying anymore, she thought, and immediately despised herself for it.

"Yes, I'm less than pleased with it myself," sighed Obi-Wan; she forced herself to focus on his end of the conversation. "Not least because it'll probably mean extra precautions to keep the Temple hidden from anyone poking around." He gave a weak smile and looked at Anakin. "Perhaps you can speak to your boss about it when you next see him."

Anakin responded with the most strained simulacrum of his grin that Padmé had ever seen. "Well, he and I don't really talk politics. I leave that end of things to him." As he looked down at the scraps on his plate, he said, "And honestly, I'm not convinced they're that bad a thing. If the Confederacy ever were to make it here, it's good to know there'd be someone here to fight them in the streets."

"Assuming that's all they do, sure," Padmé broke in, her voice rising from the subdued tone it had taken for the last several minutes. "But when I was on Naboo it seemed like they were doing a lot less fighting Separatists and a lot more hassling people just minding their own business."

Flushing, Anakin again averted his eyes from hers. "If an inconvenience is what it takes to keep people safe, I'll live with it."

Poor Obi-Wan looked absolutely miserable at where his small talk had taken them, his expression sliding into faint relief as a sapphire-eyed Liz ambled over to clear plates. "Thank you so much, Liz," he said to the droid.

"My pleasure, Mister Obi-Wan," she said. A moment later, scarlet crept in. "Clearing away organics' table leavings is my absolute favorite thing to do."

With a valiant effort, the Jedi tried again. "This really is a lovely place you both have here."

Almost too lovely, Padmé had thought when they first took up residence here. She found herself standing near walls and furniture as often as possible, as though standing in the plentiful open space for too long would send her floating through some void. "I liked the staff apartment Bail gave me, but it wasn't big enough for two of us full time, so."

"It sure is a lot roomier than the last place we shared together," Anakin said, sounding genuinely pleased. "And the smell too—even once we got the Dancer fixed, it still had that musty smell to it, especially in the bunks."

Padmé knew he wasn't wrong—and she'd complained about that smell as much as he had when they were living out of the ship—but as the two men chuckled at the crack her mind flashed back to when she and Anakin had dumped the Dancer in a nearby garage a couple of weeks ago.

"Yeah, between you using Bail's ship and me sticking close to the Chancellor, I don't know how much more we'll be using this thing," he'd said to her in a tone of forced bravado. "Good riddance, huh?"

She'd just looked back at the ship as the two of them walked away, and said nothing.

"It didn't smell that bad," she snapped aloud, "you got used to it. And we sunk a lot of work into fixing her up, that should count for something. She's not just some piece of trash to ditch as soon as you can stop it from sticking to your shoe."

Anakin's eyes widened in shock, and even Liz, eyes still glowing red, turned to stare at her. Padmé felt herself growing red, and looked away from the others quickly. "I—sorry."

"Hey, I still love her," Anakin said from across the table. "I just—some distance is nice, you know?"

Sighing, she looked back up at him and shook her head. "You're right. I'm just—I'm being an asshole. Sorry, everyone."

Obi-Wan hastily shook his head. "Not at all. We're all . . . tired, lately."

Padmé didn't have the Force, but she could see in his eyes that he knew it was more than that. She wondered how much better than her he saw it.

Without thinking, her hand reached up and started to rub at the snippet of wood that hung from her neck. Ever since Anakin had cut himself off from the Force, the little piece of the Temple tree had stopped responding to his presence; when they kissed, or embraced, Padmé no longer felt the tiny flicker of warmth that had arisen within it whenever his aura had touched it.

Wonder if I'll ever feel that again.

With an abrupt exhalation, she jerked her hand away from the necklace and pushed her chair out from the table. "I don't know about you two, but I need a gods-damned drink."

The evening breeze wisped across the balcony of Anakin and Padmé's apartment. There was a chill in the air, but Padmé only felt warmth—the warmth of a slight buzz, owing to the multiple drinks of whiskey she'd enjoyed since they'd moved outside.

The trio sat around a central firepit in even intervals—as the artificial flames sputtered upward and radiated heat outward, she couldn't help but think back to the caves of Had Abbadon. They'd been in much the same situation then—circled around a fire, passing a bottle of liquor back and forth, regaling each other with stories of past adventures. The atmosphere this time was different—almost giddy, as though they needed to keep the momentum of the alcohol's buzz going or risk falling back into the strained half-arguments that had made up the first half of the evening. But hey, it's something.

Dismissively, Padmé waved a hand. The particular story Obi-Wan was in the middle of—one about Anakin losing an embarrassingly large sum of the Defense Force's money in a sabacc game on some backwater space station—wasn't new to her.

"No, stop, I've heard this one," she said. Then, turning to glare at her husband, she continued, "Though when you first told it to me, it was only a couple hundred credits . . ."

"Moving on, then," Anakin hastily interrupted, plucking the whiskey bottle out of Padmé's hand—across the firepit, Obi-Wan snorted out a sharp laugh. "You want a story you haven't heard before? I think I've got one." Tilting the bottle sideways, he topped off his drink, then plunked the glass container down beside him with a dramatic flair.

"So, Obi-Wan and I had just gotten back to Coruscant after some"—pausing, he glanced at his former teacher with a twinkle in his eye—"Jedi business. Usually once we got home from a long trip we'd hit up this bar near the Jedi Temple, but on that particular night Obi-Wan wanted to go someplace much fancier. So we hopped the train to Monument Plaza."

Padmé's gaze wandered over to the Jedi Master—though he'd previously been slouched in his chair, Obi-Wan shot up the moment Anakin mentioned such a specific location.

His eyes wide in apparent panic, he shook his head rapidly. "Anakin, no."

The younger man marched onward with his storytelling, completely ignoring Obi-Wan's urging. "So, we get inside this really nice cocktail bar, and Obi-Wan is just acting . . . different. Something's off. He's tugging at his sleeves, constantly glancing at all the entrances. I ask him what's got him so skittish. And he says . . ." Anakin trailed off, making a sweeping gesture at Obi-Wan.

With a longsuffering groan, Obi-Wan drained his glass and said, "I told him there was someone I wanted him to meet."

"His girlfriend," Anakin added, the grin on his face growing wider. "We were there to meet his girlfriend."

Padmé's mouth dropped open. "No."

"Oh, yes," Anakin said with a nod. "He's super nervous, so I offer to grab us a couple of drinks while we wait. I run off to the bar, pick him up a Hapes Cluster—"

"His favorite," Padmé interjected, fighting the urge to snicker. She glanced at Obi-Wan—his head was buried firmly in his hands.

"Of course," Anakin said. "So I turn around, drinks in hand, and who do I see him at the table with? None other than Officer Lia goddamn Reznik."

Padmé nearly dropped her drink. That was a name she hadn't heard in—gods, how long has it been? Lia Reznik was a Centrality Sector Patrol officer who had harassed her and Anakin for years—she'd come close to arresting Padmé, and had actually caught Anakin on more than one occasion.

"That's right, folks," Anakin said with a theatrical flourish of his hands. "Obi-Wan Kenobi was dating a cop."

"Ex-cop," the Jedi piped up, raising a finger in the air. "She never told me what she used to do for a living. All she said was she'd moved Coreward to be a security consultant."

"Did she recognize you?" Padmé asked, locking eyes with Anakin.

"You bet your ass she did. I played it cool, though." He shrugged. "Credit where it's due: so did she. Shook my hand and everything when I got back to the table. Acted like she'd never met me in her life. But I could see it in her eyes. She was just waiting for her chance to strike."

Padmé bit her lip and gave her head a gentle shake. Raising her glass to her lips, she stared at her husband as if to say "continue" before throwing back a swig of whiskey.

"So we're chatting, getting along just fine, when I see her reach for the bowl of nuts in the middle of the table with one hand. Her other hand dropped below the table, to her belt—"

"Going for her blaster," Padmé interrupted with a knowing nod.

A pointed mechanical digit jabbed in her direction. "Exactly. And just as she pulls the trigger, I snap on my lightsaber."

"You're kidding."

"Oh, how I wish he was," muttered Obi-Wan, palm still firmly planted against his forehead.

"What was I supposed to do, let her shoot me?" Anakin said with a roll of his eyes. "Anyway, the blaster bolt ends up planted in the wall behind the bar. Didn't hit anyone, but it probably broke about six hundred credits worth of liquor bottles. I grab Obi-Wan's arm and start dragging him toward the door, lightsaber still in hand because, believe it or not, she hasn't stopped shooting at me."

Reznik would fire a blaster in a bar full of people just to catch Anakin, Padmé thought—she couldn't keep a bemused smirk from forming on her face.

"And once we get outside, we need a ride out of there, right?" he continued. "So I hotwire the nearest speeder bike and—"

"Wait a minute," Padmé cut in, holding up a hand to silence her husband. "I think I saw this on the news. A speeder chase near Monument Plaza—caused a huge traffic pileup and everything. The Coruscant Guard eventually found a stolen bike dumped in an alley down in CoCo Town. That was you two?"

Anakin answered with a sheepish nod—Obi-Wan silently averted his gaze skyward.

She couldn't stop herself from breaking into laughter. "The misadventures of Anakin and Obi-Wan," she said with a snort. "Certainly a memorable way to break off a relationship, I'll give you that."

"'Memorable' is a good word for it, yes," Obi-Wan said, finally relaxing into a more comfortable-looking pose. He raised his own glass to his mouth and took a sip. "Doesn't crack my top five speeder chases, though."

"You've been in enough speeder chases to have a top five?" Padmé asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Padmé," Obi-Wan answered with a chuckle, "I spent nearly every day of my last two years with Anakin Skywalker at my side. If you're spending that much time with him and not getting into a speeder chase every few weeks, you're doing something wrong."

From his spot beside the fire, Anakin dipped his head and flourished his mechanical hand in a mock bow. With his other hand, he raised his glass in the air. "I'll drink to that."

And drink they did.

The last of the vanishing sun tinged the edge of Coruscant's horizon like a ribbon of flickering embers, an orange wisp retreating from encroaching black. No stars were visible in the sky above, but thousands of speeders and millions of windows gave off twinkling lights all their own. Anakin and Padmé's building was far from any traffic lanes, but it was still possible to make out the gentle thrum of repulsorlifts as distant strings of vehicles drifted toward their destinations.

Obi-Wan supposed that the similarities to Stratum Apolune should have disconcerted him, but he found the sensations strangely beautiful.

"We should do this again sometime," Padmé said in a sleepy voice, her head resting against Anakin's shoulder. "Now that the war isn't keeping me apart from you guys. It's . . . it's been nice."

But we won't, Obi-Wan thought. And she knows that.

He could have gone along with it. Agreed with her, offered tentative dates for another reunion, suggested taking them out to a favorite dinner spot. But they'd fought hard to arrive at this moment—to dispel the awkwardness for one quiet little piece of the evening. To lie for the sake of appearances wouldn't just spoil it in the moment, it would forever taint the last night they'd spent together.

Instead, he simply said, "Yes, it has been."

Gently, Anakin let the fingers of his flesh hand twine through Padmé's hair, his mechanical hand nursing an empty glass. "It's funny," he said, his words faintly softened by alcohol but his eyes clear as they looked out at the cityscape, "A few years ago I never could have pictured myself joining the Defense Force. Joining the Jedi. And now . . . now I can't picture whatever it is that's gonna come next."

"Well," said Padmé, reaching upward to search for her husband's hair, then giving up and letting her arm fall onto her lap, "we're all at our best when we're making it up as we go along. I'm sure . . ." She blinked and pulled her head back as it started to loll forward. "I'm sure it'll work out."

Watching her, Obi-Wan found himself struggling to suppress a sizable yawn. It wasn't even that late, he thought, but between the drinks and two years of war, he was feeling positively exhausted.

"You can stay the night if you want, you know," said Anakin, looking at Obi-Wan with sudden concern. "If you're too tired to get back to the Temple. We've got a guest bed, you could be the one to break it in."

Anakin spoke with the same lethargic tiredness that Obi-Wan and Padmé felt, but even through the wisps that drifted across his brain, the Jedi could see that his old friend was alert as he waited for an answer. He stared at Obi-Wan without blinking, leaning far forward enough that Padmé's head risked falling off his shoulder.

Even without a Force connection, Obi-Wan knew what he was thinking.

Please stay.

For a long time, Obi-Wan said nothing. He held Anakin's gaze, then looked down at Padmé, snoring softly now. Then, as a fresh gust of breeze whispered across his face, he turned to take in the last shred of setting sun before it dipped into nothingness.

Anakin, he knew, as the seconds of staring at the city stretched into minutes, was still waiting patiently.

Obi-Wan sighed, and closed his eyes. "I'll think about it."

Maybe he would, he thought to himself. Maybe he'd wake up in a strange bed, and sneak out of the apartment before the others could wake up. Or maybe he'd simply wait until they drifted off tonight, and then call a cab to take him home.

But for now, it was best to simply not decide.

And so, the three friends sat, motionless, and watched the planet moving through the night.