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[onlyhope]

@ ben

THIS USER IS UNAVAILABLE. LEAVE A MESSAGE AFTER THE TONE.

✉️ ☎️ 📷

Comments

[unrepentant]

We've been at war for 2 years stop making it sound like this is suddenly high stakes

[onlyhope]

Yes, but this is not our war.

We were brought here somehow, and I cannot imagine it was just to have us all catch a plague and die.

[unrepentant]

And I agree. So can you stop talking as if you're just accepting that you'll die of this stupid plague?

[onlyhope]

I am hardly about to roll over and accept it, Anakin, but I must count it as a potential possibility.

[unrepentant]

No you mustn't because how much can a potential possibility mean on a train that's already defied everything we know to be possible?

[onlyhope]

So I should dismiss all previous evidence? That would be very reckless.

[unrepentant]

[where are you obi-wan he's gonna force choke u himself]

Then maybe you shouldn't have made promises you aren't willing to keep

[onlyhope]

What on earth are you talking about?

[unrepentant]

You told me you would protect her
But you're already planning not to walk away from this!

I knew I shouldn't have listened

[onlyhope]

[ He- what? Is he talking about Padmé? In his mind it makes no sense. Obi-Wan assumes they will each be thrown back into their own timelines, the Obi-Wan he had been referencing was this other counterpart. But perhaps that isn't entirely what Anakin means at all. Obi-Wan would have to look after Padmé in his own timeline, too, and if he died here and did not make it back, that too would be breaking his promise. ]

And I meant it!

It is not as though I am planning my own death, Anakin. I am being realistic! That does not mean I do not have every intention of making it out of this alive.

[unrepentant]

[Anakin seethes, magma churning through rock and eating up every inch- forcing its way through gaps and crevices until it leaks out and begins to burn everything around him. It isn't rage, it's anger. Fear. Betrayal]

No you're just rolling over for it

If you meant it you'd fight you wouldn't just make these excuses

[onlyhope]

I am not making

[ he huffs, frustrated, feeling the thick swell of hot magma burning against him. some part of him wants to throw up a solid guard against it, but the rest of him so wants to understand what it is he is missing. ]

Where is this coming from? You and I have always understood this to be a possibility in the war. Why are you speaking as if I have betrayed you?

[unrepentant]

You're asking me to trust you!

But there's always a double standard!

[onlyhope]

What double standard?

[unrepentant]

How am I supposed to rely on you, or any of the other Jedi to save her when you're willing to settle like that?!

She might die
You might die
And I'm supposed to just let you?!

[onlyhope]

[ normally he would tell Anakin to be mindful of where his thoughts are headed, but the problem is he already knows. here it is, like a neon sign in front of him. Obi-Wan takes a breath and makes a point of peeling back his guard, an offering of vulnerability, knowing well Anakin could scorch him from the inside out. ]

How long have you felt this way?

[unrepentant]

[He feels something yield, but Anakin knows the world only in extremes- in absence or abundance, in deafening volume. Obi-Wan's question is foreign, so far removed from the boiling of his blood that it might as well be a different language.]

What?

[onlyhope]

Anakin, I have raised you since you were a small boy. I can sense your distress, just as I can sense that these feelings are not new.

How long have you been struggling with this alone?

[unrepentant]

What're you trying to ask Obi-Wan

You want me to not care? Is that it?
Like I should have when Ahsoka left?

[onlyhope]

[ their night on Utapau flashes back to him, and safe behind the device it's enough to make Obi-Wan wince in real time ]

No! I would never ask that of you.

[unrepentant]

[Isn't that what you're asking right now Obi-Wan? Isn't that what everyone's asked of him? Anakin has seen it looking back at him in every face on the Council- every time he was too emotional, too volatile, cared too much.]

Then what?

[onlyhope]

[ In Anakin's nonanswer, he finds his response. He cannot see Obi-Wan's realistic point of view in this moment; he can only see with his heart. Evidently there is much of Anakin he had not known existed — but what he does know is the heart of the Padawan that would sleep in his bedroom on the floor instead of his own room. The one that wanted to save every single person, regardless of the cost or threat to his own life.

It shocks him that the war has blinded him so completely that he missed all of the signs. ]

Anakin, I will not abandon you. Not as long as you or I live and breathe.

[unrepentant]

[Anakin's entire body goes still. As empty as a planet without atmo, a cruiser without fuel. The words cut through him, cleanly, precisely. They land like a mortal blow without the pain because... it's what he wants to hear- maybe the thing he's always wanted to hear.

But-

Fear remains in his gut, tells him to hesitate. Tells him to keep holding on, to dig in even harder if he must, to choke it if he has to- as long as he holds on the worst won't happen-

He is so afraid to trust it.]

But

You just said

[onlyhope]

What I said does not change that fact. Search your feelings, you know it to be true. I have always been right behind you.

[ though it is the first time they have spoken on it aloud. perhaps Obi-Wan assumed that his former Padawan had just known, and didn't need him to say it. but the fact remains Obi-Wan had been willing not once, but twice, to walk away from the Order to be where Anakin was. ]

[unrepentant]

No

[Even as he says it, there are two voices in reply- Anakin's, and another's. No, Obi-Wan Kenobi hasn't always been behind him. He doesn't understand, he doesn't trust him, because Obi-Wan is a good Jedi. And Anakin is-]

You want me to say that it'll be alright if you die, because that's what everyone else will say

[Because that's what I'm supposed to say]