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Satine is in mourning when she shares with him the origins of her name.
Not mourning for her father exactly, or for herself either, but mourning how close to defeat they stand at this moment: the two of them, hunted and alone.
How near her people are to losing their last fading chance at peace.
It is oddly fitting that it is her Death Watch seeks to find and destroy as they tear apart the system. She is – quite literally – her people’s chance for rebirth out of all this strife.
Apparently, ‘Satine’ is her name only as rendered by translation into Basic. She is stubborn enough to embrace it as the cost of alliance and progress, but Obi-wan privately prefers the version in Mando’a: Cetin.
Cetin.
It’s beautiful.
It lays closer to the original meaning that way, too. From the concept ‘cin vhetin’, apparently. White fields, new beginnings. Obi-wan can think of no more fitting name for this girl, this living icon of renewal and rebirth for Mandalore.
Even if she has let some things go in her haste for translation.
“What does your name mean?”
It startles him out of his perhaps too-admiring musings.
“…Obi-wan Kenobi?” He checks.
She raises an eyebrow. “Do you have another name?”
He is not, actually, as thick as she seems to find him. He is only reluctant to share this part of himself.
He will share it though, because this is Satine, who he finds himself wanting to listen to and talk to and confide in at almost all times of the day, even when they should be trying to sleep, even when he should be focusing on the terrain or the fire-beetles or the firefights they are almost constantly engaged in.
“It’s Stewjoni,” he begins. “Kenobi, my family name, means…. ‘born of strength’, more or less.”
“And Obi-wan?”
“Well, you can tell they both have -obi in them… that part’s quite common,” he hedges, then sighs. “Obi-wan means… ‘born of suffering’. Or ‘born to suffer’? It’s a bit ambiguous, I’m afraid.”
Satine inhales quietly at his unhappy little false laugh that does not quite succeed at making light of the matter.
(Anakin does not laugh either when he asks, years later, what are you meant for, and Obi-wan answers with the truth, with infinite sadness, and that time Obi-wan does not laugh either, but he still smiles and keeps smiling and keeps smiling.)
“Together, what my mother named me, amounts to ‘son of my suffering, son of my strength’.” Obi-wan pauses. “Of course, she gave me away only weeks after I was born, so I never got the chance to ask what exactly that meant to her. But her early and anonymous repudiation of me rather fills in the blanks well enough.”
She murmurs something under her breath that sounds like ret gar cuyir bentar. He’s not fluent yet.
“Sorry?”
“Perhaps you are both.” She repeats. Then tilts her head. “No. You are in spite of. Like me. In spite of war. In spite of everything, we face. You have remained with me. You always endure.”
She touches his cheek and names him anew.
“Ben.”
He takes it as his name as they cross the continent under hoods and in shadows, holding hands as they search for some small chance, some piece of hope for Mandalore.
They find it eventually, and she rises and he stays as he is, and she remains and he must go, and he leaves her but he takes this with him.
Ben.
He will learn, years later, the word she said was ban, molded into a gentler shape by her Kalevalan accent.
This is ban, the root of banar, ‘to happen’. Of bantov, ‘nevertheless’. Of bal’ban, ‘irrefutable, certain, beyond any doubt’.
The meaning is something like, ‘it will be’. Unstoppable. Unfaltering. Resilient.
Yes, resilience.
That is the word I have been missing, he realizes when he meditates on his new form, Soresu, for the first time after losing his Master and abandoning his Master’s preferred form. He takes up Soresu, the resilience form, and does not look back because this is what he was meant to be. Adaptable, enduring.
What else could be the sum of such suffering and strength?
It feels as fated as Anakin’s destiny, that Qui-gon proclaimed for him. Obi-wan was christened as much for this agony as his padawan was for greatness.
He clings to this when he finds himself alone in the endless desert.
He remembers this when he stands as the last of the Jedi Order -- the rest dead, dying, scattered and hiding amongst the stars, Yoda in his seclusion on Dagobah in mourning-- and Obi-wan Kenobi, who still calls himself Jedi in his mind, takes on this one last mission.
He remains.
He is mid-conversation with Mace, when he finds himself defending Anakin from a remark of Mace’s that was only offhand -- and admittedly true -- but still rung a bit too harsh to him. The boy had scarcely begun to adjust to the Jedi Order. A little leeway was warranted.
“He is trying,” Obi-wan cuts in, over his friend, sounding perhaps a bit too defensive. “He works hard. He just needs a chance to adjust to having such freedoms and responsibility, rather than restraints and mistrust.”
“I swear to the force, Kenobi,” Mace sighs. Obi-wan winces. “I’m not out to get the boy. He simply needs to respect our ways, as we respect his origins and needs. He doesn’t have to become a mendicant monk of the Outer Rim and renounce all spoken word, he just needs to stop stealing swoop bikes for illicit lower-level racing circuits.”
“…I’ll talk to him.”
A sharp spike of pain echoes through his head, then fades in moments: not real but remembered. Or perhaps … anticipated.
Another ‘bad feeling’, then. Just what he needed.
When his vision clears, Mace still stands before there, a steadying hand on his shoulder and squinting at his pained grimace in concern. He feels very young under such scrutiny; the Master of the Order has, after all, known him since he was a youngling himself.
“Anything to worry about there?” He raises a stately eyebrow.
Obi-wan shakes his head. “No, nothing serious.”
The other Jedi nods and lets it go.
Anakin is awaiting him in their quarters. Obi-wan hopes the imminent talk he will be having with his padawan will go well, but that is looking less and less likely, if the Force has anything to say on the matter.
He rubs at his temples tiredly.
Every Jedi experienced the force differently, but anyone who knew Obi-wan Kenobi had, at one time or another, heard the famous warning, the infamous knell of coming chaos:
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
A staple stock phrase- consistent and reassuring in its regularity. In truth, the feelings themselves are not so courteous as to be so uniform or coherent.
There is a whole array of them and sometimes he feels as though he has spent his whole life in the work of characterizing them as each comes to actual fruition. Then they become not portents but reminders.
There is the weight that crushes in on his chest from all sides (the undersea pressure of Bandomeer, choking, constricting); a deafening pop in his ears and a juddering vibration like the massive concussive wave that preceded (the BOOM of bursting shells on Melida-Daan, it tears him apart); a sharp pain in his gut, twisted (Qui-Gon). And the last, perhaps the worst: a scorching sensation of heat that seared like poisoned tears and betrayal and failure.
Sometimes, he can feel a new one start to pull at him: a tumbling spinning feeling like he is in freefall, the shriek of a terrified creature echoing in his ears and the sensation of plummeting into a lonely void, untethered and lost.
He doesn’t know what it means. Yet.
Mace is looking at him like he can see the fracture lines – Obi-wan wonders how many are running through him right now.
He squares his shoulders and smiles faintly to deflect the attention from them.
One of Mace’s hands, large, warm, and calloused, takes the empty cup of tea from his shaking hand.
“Obi-wan.” He says. “I sense … in the coming years… things coming to a breaking point.” He sighs, looking as tired as Obi-wan feels. “I don’t want to see you break with them.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me, Mace. I will endure.”
Inwardly, he laughs to himself at the little joke.
Perhaps Mace can sense his misplaced humor because he squints at him once again then turns away muttering imprecations about this karking lineage and their doubful sanity.
Obi-wan’s smile widens, for real.
Obi-wan has good feelings, too, though he doesn’t announce them every time they arrive.
There’s no need to warn people of good fortune, after all. He keeps these for himself.
A glee his cheeks – like young predator-sharp teeth grinning in cheeky mischief.
The comforting, warm weight of a large hand on his shoulder.
The hopeful glint of blonde hair under double suns.
That one most of all.
JEDI OF A NEW AGE: OBI-WAN KENOBI
In years past, the members of the Jedi Order were renowned as peacekeepers and religious scholars of innumerable sciences and cultures. Practitioners of their own faith centered on the “Force” of the universe, their lives centered on cultivating harmony and contemplation. Now, like the rest of the galaxy, the days of such complacency and comfort lie behind the Jedi. Their new role as generals and commanders in the GAR is one that some have adapted to better than others. Amongst the most well-known Jedi of the war effort is the famous ‘Negotiator’. In addition to his charming and photogenic media persona, this diplomat, general, swordsman, and young councilor is near unrivalled in every aspect of his mastery. The paragon of a new kind of militant Jedi seems incapable of stumbling no matter the challenges thrown his way…
In the Room of a Thousand Fountains, aged 23, Obi-wan Kenobi trips over his feet again.
He stares at them balefully, until he is distracted by the arrival of a friend ducking under green fronds to join him in the clearing.
“Obi?” Luminara calls.
“Luminara.” He sighs, pardoning his clumsy feet—this time – and turning to greet her, flipping sweaty hair from his forehead with a wan smile.
“You asked me to meet you here…”
“Yes.” He straightens up, neatening his demeanor before her. “I was hoping you would grant me the privilege of your wisdom.”
She smiles fondly at his use of the phrase one offered a master whose teachings were sought.
“Very well, my student. My wisdom is yours.”
The core tenets of Soresu encourage duelists to place themselves "within the eye of the storm": to maintain a calm center, undistracted and undisturbed by the conflict around them. In keeping with this idea, Soresu incorporates powerful defensive techniques that are flexible enough to adapt to almost any circumstance, at the cost of never reaching past the figurative "eye of the storm."
She has him running through the motions of all that he knows of this form. Soresu has fourteen sets, but none of them seem to ring quite in the Force as he steps through them.
It takes little time for her to see the difficulty. He needs to retain his calm.
“- yes, my temper,” he agrees, when she says so. “Emotions,” he laughs once, bleakly. “Always getting the better of me.”
Luminara is a storm in a bottle, not given to effusive displays. She only rests a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Let me show you the first kata.”
“The first? Nara, we learned that when we were younglings.”
He closes his mouth at the arch of her brow, and settles into deeper silence, as he watches her sink into the fluid steps of the form and begin the practice of Soresu, truly.
He lets it wash over him: awed by the flow of her, her dark robes not an encumbrance but an inseparable part of her. The twining lines of her tattoos as intricate as her neat steps and flourishes. She steps with precision. A crisp careful neatness that is very Luminara.
He joins her in the third, and begins to runs through the sets alongside her, heart rate settling into slowness even as the effort increases. His breathing evens out, his brow smooths.
They practice – spars annd offering tips, set after set. He dances for her, and she observes the rhythm of his movements – his pale stoic face lit by the blue light of his crystal.
He has undergone another undefinable tectonic shift, she thinks – one she had seen him undergo the likes of before. The cause is always the same. Grief. She has not seen him so upset since Tahl’s death.
In the arcs of his blazing turns, the influence of his Ataru is still presence, but something else, something new is emerging.
His darting twists are sharper than the smooth arcs she favors, the set to his jaw more intractable than her curated serenity. She had crafted herself like blown glass. He had been fiery and eager, but hammered and beaten down again and again, like a pre-industrial world’s old bladed weapons: tempered.
He is not finished but he is ready to begin.
She will train him many afternoons more. And he will re-forge his skills under her careful eyes.
“This is Obi-Wan Kenobi:
A phenomenal pilot who doesn’t like to fly. A devastating warrior who’d rather not fight. A negotiator without peer who frankly prefers to sit alone in a quiet cave and meditate.”
One of the instructors approaches him as he gulps down water and ignores the impressed whispers around the salle that have seemed to follow him ever since he began attending Open Spar sessions to work on his new form.
“That was one of the most skillful duels I’ve ever seen from such a young knight.” He says bluntly, startling Obi-wan with the praise. “I see you have a gift for Soresu.”
Dear Force, what is there to say to that? He smiles to hide the edge of nerves. “You’re too kind. You see only the product of a great deal practice--- and skillful tutelage, for which I am very grateful.”
“Grateful enough to return the favor? There are some knights that would benefit from your skill in Soresu— part of a weekly class. You would be a fine instructor for it, I think. We start in an hour, in fact. Would you be willing to stay?”
Obi-wan glances at the clock. He has considerable plans for the Archives today, in truth. A lengthy mission report to complete and research for his next mission to begin.
But the Jedi are a community and this duty is no less than the other.
“It would be my honor,” he says instead.
Soresu is characterized by tight motions, the lightsaber moving every second in an attempt to achieve near-total protection, and expend as little energy in the process as possible. Form Three stresses quick reflexes and fast positional transition, in order to overcome the rapidity with which a blaster could be fired.
War is an exercise is adaptability, Obi-wan thinks.
Particularly now, for them – as war has been sprung upon them like a surprise summer storm and they, an organization of peacekeepers, utterly unequipped.
If only the war could pass as swiftly as such a squall.
But Obi-wan has ever been quick to adjust. He is promoted to High Council and given command of roughly 300,000 souls, and within a week he is at the center of battle, forging ahead with soldiers instead of a padawan at his side, lightsaber in hand and quip on the tongue.
Being more optimized for lengthy battles, a Soresu user must hone the ability to gain control of a combat situation, creating multiple options for the Jedi employing the form. A Form Three user can choose between killing, disarming, or even reasoning with their opponent.
His deflections become legendary – both his diversion of blaster bolts and his witty asides to his soldiers, his enemies, and the press alike.
His smooth impenetrable façade becomes another shield.
Neatly trimmed beard, pressed robes – as well as can be maintained in war, anyway.
Grievous, Ventress, and Count Dooku all waste precious minutes arguing with him, seeking him out personally on the field of battle to engage in battles of sabers or words with him. These minutes add up. Time is worth lives in wartime, so Obi-wan delights in every eye roll he elicits from Ventress, every ineffectual tantrum he provokes from Grievous, every irritated rejoinder Dooku cannot restrain himself from injecting.
His life has probably been saved by such ridiculous distraction more times than by his skill with a saber.
He also relishes the secret pleased knowledge of how it never fails to make Cody’s eyebrows rise high underneath his bucket - - which Obi-wan can sense is happening even when he cannot quite see it. He can read it in the tilt of the man’s head, the exasperated slump of the shoulders.
“Come now, Cody. Don’t look so stressed.” He claps the man on the shoulder, grinning and flushed with recent victory.
“General, with all due respect and as someone who counts themselves your friend… one of these days, if the droids don’t end up shooting you for these stunts, I just might do it myself.”
Obi-wans makes a note to get his longsuffering commander some shore time planet-side to relieve some of that stress. Such tension cannot be good for him.
Making clever remarks is a considerably less enjoyable pastime under torture, admittedly, but so is anything, Obi-wan muses.
Ventress is eyeing him eagerly to see what reaction her latest torment might provoke.
So he simply tosses the blood-soaked hair on his brow off to the side, and offers roguishly as he can, “You’ll have to do better than that…. my darling,” and grins.
Fives raises his tankard with clumsy drunken good spirits. “To the 501st and 212th!” he roars. “The karking best men in the GAR!”
Shouts of oya answer the toast.
“Vode an!” one man calls out, and a host of voices rises up to join him.
Obi-wan is sitting with Anakin, Cody, Rex and some of the other commanders. They have drinks as well, though Obi-wan and Cody are more preoccupied with the soon-to-be-due requisition forms than with their drinks, whereas Anakin and Rex’s focus lies with the latter.
Even filling out paperwork as they are, the high spirits are universal.
Rex’s drink clangs against the table as he sets it down heavily with a look of great thoughtfulness. “Do the Jedi have a battle cry? Sir.”
Appo snorts. “Yeah. You haven’t heard it? They shout one every time they sit down to meditate with the Force.”
They all laugh --Anakin nearly falls off the bench at that one— until Rex amends his question, looking embarrassed. “Not, not like oya. I mean a saying. Thing. Like vode an. Something with meaning, I mean--”
Anakin rolls his eyes, cutting off Rex’s ramble. “May the Force be with you,” he offers, his curved smile faintly mocking the saying. In truth, it has become almost trite. It’s been said so much throughout this war, Rex cannot possibly have missed it.
Rex leans forward, though, looking confused. “Isn’t that more of a pleasantry than a – an, uh, invocation? The Force doesn’t – can’t actually leave you, can it?”
He looks so genuinely alarmed at the thought that some of the men chuckle. The other men become distracted from the discussion immediately – laughing and teasing Rex. Hopefully the Force will stay with Skywalker next time he tosses you off a wall, eh?
But when Obi-wan looks around the table he finds Cody is watching him, as though still waiting for Obi-wan to give his answer to the original question. He finds he actually does want to answer.
“There is one saying I have always favored,” he confesses to his commander. Cody waits patiently. It is little more than an adage, in truth; Obi-wan does not know why telling him feels so much like baring his soul. “…We are not saints but seekers.”
He falters under Cody’s steady eyes. Obi-wan looks down at his own hands: pale and graceful, calloused and scarred.
“We say it to remind ourselves, of our purpose and our resilience, both. However flawed and faltering. No matter how we may stumble, we still walk the path.”
There is a moment, where they simply sit -- the two of them, alone together -- even amidst the surrounding cushion of light and sound that is their men celebrating. It is quietly loud, until Cody speaks.
“I like that, sir. I think it suits you”
Cody’s eyes are a warm gold in the firelight, and Obi-wan finds himself thinking that suits Cody, as the commander of the 212th even though, of course, his eyes are the same shade as a few million other men. But are they truly the same? Technically, yes, and yet…
And yet.
Scars often dulled sensation where they lingered – but Obi-wan finds himself wondering what Cody might feel if a hand were to lightly trace the jagged one that marked his steady brow. It reminds Obi-wan of bold shriek-hawk eyes, of valor. Kote, indeed.
The man holds his gaze for a long moment, turning away only to settle a dispute as several of the men grew over-boisterous, Anakin’s involvement being more akin to the high-Rhydonium flame-accelerant he so gleefully favors than anything resembling a corrective influence. Obi-wan is content to watch. Cody has it in hand. He is always – steady. Yes, that was Cody.
If Obi-Wan is an adroit and accomplished tactician, as the media would have one believe, then it is only because Cody is a masterful facilitator: making any stratagem, any inventive scheme that Obi-wan devised, into an achievable act. There is no-one the men trust more, and perhaps no-one Obi-wan trusts more.
Cody is more than mere facilitator, though.
He is a leader in his own right. He is his own man – always ready with a raised brow of critique, or a bolstering nod of approval. He never follows orders blindly but is always ready to adapt and never finds less than maximum efficiency. Commander Cody never misses a shot.
“Good man, that Cody,” he says to himself, in the dark, and swallows the rest of his drink.
Dueling with Anakin these days feels more like spats than spars. They cannot seem to escape an encounter these days without some form of sniping arising, from one side or the other. In the end, Obi-wan is always the one to relent.
How funny that lifelong training as a diplomat cannot manage to equip a man well enough to nurture a little peace between himself and his closest brother. His almost-son.
“In every exchange, Obi-Wan gave ground. It was his way.”
“Master Kenobi!”
They are calling him over for a demonstration. Young knights are ever attempting to recreate one move or another that he has managed on the battlefield-- at times under the keen lens of a recording camera, much to his chagrin. They watch the tapes like action flicks and the little ones mime the heroics in play battle.
His reputation has long since outstripped the reality, he muses ruefully when he finds his name noted in the Archive’s texts for learning Soresu.
…his blast-deflection technique advanced to the point where Kenobi could walk "unscathed through hornet-swarms” of blaster-fire.
Sometimes it seems the only time he truly leaves it all behind is in the heat of a fight, submerged equally under the flow of the Force and the fluid impulses of instinctual blocks. Battle meditation has become an unfortunately regular staple of his life.
The whole of it — all these years of war — sometimes feels like one long bout of battle meditation. No chance to look over one’s shoulder, no time to wonder why, no rest, no reprieve. Nothing but this moment, then the next.
The Soldier’s Minute, Cody calls it.
Blindness, Obi-wan mourns it as, later on. But what else could they have done?
“Master Kenobi! What have you to say about your most recent triumph?”
250 men had died in the battle, but the press has been hailing it an unmitigated success. He forces down his exhaustion under an easy smile as the reporters accost him on the street.
He deflects like the master of Soresu he is.
“Triumph? Well, it’s only a haircut, but I’m pleased to hear you like it so well—"
“No, general, your victory on Bakura—’
Masters have to maintain an incredibly strong focus on the center of the combat circle, since the defensive tactics of the form included guards and parries that engaged very close to the body. Jedi with small lapses in their otherwise strong defense left little room to avoid injury. As a result of this defensive mindset, Soresu practitioners often had great difficulty seizing the offensive initiative in combat. Overall, the whole point of Soresu is to deflect blaster fire out of harm's way and safely prolong a lightsaber fight in hopes of wearing an opponent down.
He spends years waiting for Anakin to tell him, to come to him and share this important part of his life with him. He thinks it important to let Anakin come to the decision on his own.
As time passes, he wonders if he is perhaps not so much patient as paralyzed. Playing it too close to the chest, too cautious of being hurt. Too afraid that perhaps it is not Anakin’s regard for the Code or his love for Obi-wan that keeps him silent on the matter… but instead a lack of either.
He waits years, believing his patience to be an expression of love.
He realizes on Mustafar -- when Anakin is shocked and infuriated by how well Obi-wan can match him strike for strike, and stand against the flood of his fury -- that Anakin never understood either: how he once held himself back or why.
He stays quiet.
Even as the unforgettable sight of broken Jedi younglings sears itself into his closed eye, he stays quiet.
The whole temple is a tomb now. It demands a respect he tries to summon and tries to cling to even he chokes upon a drowning grief.
He covers his mouth, and his skull aches with silent screams.
Not even the younglings.
In the salles, a class of initiates sits at the feet of a master. Faces upturned, eyes shining. Today, they learn a new form by which to wield their sabers. And new philosophy to be nurtured between Jedi, crystal, and Force.
Battlemaster Cin Drallig’s voice is gravelly and even, as patiently measured as the form in question:
“Truly focused masters of Soresu are extremely formidable due to their strong defensive technique, as well as the well-rounded nature of the form itself, effective against both blasters and lightsabers. However, Form Three facilitates survival rather than victory as Soresu possesses no dedicated offensive sequences of its own.”
Young Obi-wan glances up to find Drallig looking at him. They both look away without knowing the meaning of the jolt at those words.
Obi-wan will delay many more years before ever seeking to master Soresu in earnest. He does not like the feel of that jolt. He does not much like the sound of that:
Survival rather than victory. Survival rather than victory. Survival rather than victory.
Survival rather than victory.
Out on a sand dune, seated cross legged under the burning suns of Tatooine, Obi-wan lets out a wild hysterical laugh.
The forest does not survive the fire unscathed.
The canyons are changed by the floods.
The mountain is shaved and shaped by the ice and the winds.
They are forever changed.
Against multiple blaster-wielding attackers, a certain technique is advised. This technique allows a Soresu practitioner to hold off as many as twenty shooters by dropping into a moving meditation, relying on the Force to perceive the various positions of the attackers and the necessary movements to evade or deflect their shots. This maneuver is executed while in a meditative state, the Force-adept's mind open to the Force, is known as the "circle of shelter”.
Beru squints out the window into the bright afternoon suns-light. He is at it again: the Jedi off-worlder in his same old odd patterns. He wanders in those steady peregrinations, circling their farm like a winged bird in that great swooping cloak.
She does not feel hunted by it though—these circles.
She feels only safe.
Nightfall is the hardest time of day for Ben, for all that most people on Tatooine rejoice at it.
It is partly because that is when the stars come out, shining down beautifully and incessantly, and remind him of the wider galaxy, whereas daytime here-- so insistently heated – is better able to bind him exclusively to the uncomfortable present.
And secondly, because in the weeks since it all happened, he has learned by way of a bored newscaster the name of the whole evil operation.
Knightfall.
He has seen far too many of those.
Quinlan Falling, fractured into pieces, less than whole,
Luminara’s falling tears, face collapsing, shattered by Barriss’ betrayal
Anakin waking from his nightmares, eyes wild
Qui-gon’s hollow bitter voice after Tahl, barely restrained from outright loathing
When did he stop being enough?
He is not so egotistical to think himself the center of the galaxy or to think himself powerful enough to save everyone.
But would it have been too much to save someone?
He can still see the light leaving Cerasi, Siri, Qui-Gon, and Satine - all of them dying in his hollowed arms.
Xanatos laughing at his terror as the cuffs clicked onto his wrists. Nield screaming blame and Cerasi silent- absent- gone. Qui-Gon turning away with a hand on a different boy’s shoulder.
Anakin sneering, Cody shooting him down, Padme lying to his face, the Republic cheering as the Empire rose in the burning wreckage of their genocide, announcing with pride the extinction of the Jedi, every single one--
Obi-wan bows his head.
Satine had asked him once (only once because every other time she had gone straight to berating him), why do you fight? Why must you fight? How can you when you see where it leads, how it always ends?
(Here is what he thinks now, head bowed, the younglings and Satine’s own broken form dancing in his head: because even those who do not live by the sword can die by it.)
Obi-wan of sixteen was less broken though, back then. Obi-wan with his padawan braid tied tight and the light of a hundred thousand Jedi flickering in the distant night sky of his mind had fire in him, still.
Here is what he said to her then:
The Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and it’s…. as misleading as slogans always are. The Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace. We fight for justice because justice is the bedrock of it: an unjust civilization is built upon sand. It does not long survive a storm. We fight because without justice, there can be no peace.
They had believed it, they had not lived it. They had lost their way and they had become lost to themselves. Lost to the storm, as the saying went on Tatooine
He is seated now amidst the shifting sands, meditating on it, on all of it.
He holds on even when the sand and the wind and the sun do their best at erasing everything: his footprints, his path, they go about wearing away at his very self. It beats down on him asking who he is. Who he thinks he is, such pretense. There is heat and there is water and there are beings that live between the two on Tatooine. What room is there for anything else? To survive, you must leave your baggage behind. One cannot make the trek so burdened.
But Obi-wan has always been stubborn. He has, also, always been foolish.
He keeps both sabers. He keeps his name, too. Kenobi. He thinks he will have some need of strength in the days ahead.
He trades Obi-wan for Ben, though.
The Jedi Order’s suffering is over, is it not? So Obi-wan is gone, but something remains. What remains is Ben. His people are gone but here he is, nonetheless.
Let go, Qui-Gon said, says. Let go of your pain and your griefs.
I don’t think I can.
You can, my padawan. It will not be easy, but you can let it go.
I don’t think I will. I don’t think I want to.
He summons them all up around him, as the suns set. His beloved ghosts, the one he suffered for….
There is Satine’s sharp words –
Lumi’s exasperated expression –
Quinlan’s damned crooked smirk--
Bail’s gentle laugh, the one he shared only with his friends--
Cody’s raised eyebrow, his secret hidden humor--
the soft quiet looks between Qui-Gon and Tahl
Padme’s steely grace, Ahsoka’s bounding leaps.
Anakin’s …. Anakin.
And Leia.
And Luke.
“It is alright,” he says to no one. “Because I have learned…”
Maybe Qui-gon is here, listening. Maybe he isn’t.
Obi-wan speaks to wide open empty sky, because perhaps it is curious.
“Do you know where infinite sadness comes from?”
The last part is whispered...
“Infinite love.”
Obi-wan repairs his generator, wipes the sweat off his brow, and sets off into the burning glare of Tatooine.
To catch a glimpse of blonde hair under double suns.