Chapter Text
It had been a long, long time since Obi-Wan’s last prophetic vision.
He still experienced the occasional premonition–more presentiment, really, but that wasn’t unique to him. It wasn’t even unique to the Jedi. The force spoke to every sentient willing to listen. Even the clone troopers, supposedly force-null as they were, had a remarkable sense of intuition. But the force visions of Obi-Wan’s youth were a thing of the past.
Or at least, they had been until this morning.
He wished the blasted vision had lingered long enough for him to pin down the details in his mind before rushing out into battle. And he wished that isolated images from it didn’t keep blocking out his vision now. He was in a firefight. He needed to be able to see where he was, not wherever the vision had taken him last night.
Case in point.
“General, look out!”
An armored body struck Obi-Wan from the side, knocking him bodily behind a cargo box. Something exploded where he’d been standing, and Obi-Wan covered his head, throwing up a hand to redirect the worst of the blast, curving it away from the clone trooper who’d knocked him aside.
Cody. Of course it had been Cody.
“You alright, sir?”
Obi-Wan shook his head–not refusal, just trying to clear it.
“Yes, I’m–I’m fine, Cody. Thank you.”
He wasn’t, though. He wasn’t injured, but he clearly wasn’t fit for battle today. He resisted the urge to thunk his head back against the cargo box in frustration, and instead let Cody help him to his feet.
Why had his bloody visions chosen now, of all the blasted times, to come back in full force? Why this morning?
“You sure, sir?” Cody was still looking him over critically, obviously unconvinced, and Obi-Wan indulged himself in a surge of overwhelming fondness for the man.
“I’m fine.” He said, and this time it came out as less of an automatic response. He owed Cody that at least, the man had just saved his life. Again. “I’m not at my best today, but I’m not hurt, thanks to you. Let’s just make it through this battle. There will be plenty of time to explain back on the ship.”
After a weighted moment, Cody nodded, but he gave Obi-Wan’s shoulder a brief squeeze before heading back out into the firefight. Obi-Wan steeled himself, took a breath, and followed, saber up and already in motion as he stepped out from behind the crate.
He knew better than to dismiss the dream he’d had last night as only a dream, even if it did go against his training with Qui-Gon to acknowledge that fact.
Dreams pass, in time. He could practically still hear Qui-Gon’s gentle voice, could practically taste the panic of waking up from a force vision when he’d been in his teens. Master yourself, my young padowan. To lose oneself to possibility is to lose oneself entirely. We can exist only in the present moment, only where we currently are.
Yes, master. Obi-Wan had agreed readily more out of habit than anything else. He’d been sweaty, and panicked, and nauseated by what he’d seen in his vision, but he’d swallowed it all down and continued talking. I’m…not sure I understand, though. If these things are happening–or will happen–and the force is allowing me to see it, surely we should take action–
Breathe, Obi-Wan. Qui-Gon had taken a deep breath as though to demonstrate, and Obi-Wan had followed suit, only shuddering through it a little. The living force is all around us. You are young, and by your very nature you are sensitive to the pain of others. This is no bad thing. Your compassion does you credit. But in the same way that lightning is drawn to a rod, your compassion for the needs of others makes you a point in the force that visions of pain will seek out, like water flowing downhill. It is our duty as jedi knights to alleviate pain where we find it, when we can. But the universe is full of darkness just as it is light. One man cannot alleviate it all, and attempting to do so will destroy you. It would destroy any of us. You must remain mindful of the present, always. Do not follow these visions of darkness and allow them to consume you. They will bring you to despair, and your ability to bring your light to the present, and to bring change wherever you go, will be snuffed out in darkness. He’d placed a kind hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder. Do not dwell on the fates of those you cannot save. He’d said. Focus instead on the ones you can.
Obi-Wan had tried to follow his master’s teachings throughout his apprenticeship, but he hadn’t found himself able to on this topic. Every cry in the darkness that found him felt too strongly like a call to action, a cry for help. He knew he couldn’t answer them all, but how could he not? He followed his visions against his master’s advice, over and over. It was only when Qui-Gon followed distress through their training bond and found Obi-Wan weeping over a dead child in an alleyway a few miles from the jedi temple that his master had changed tactics entirely and simply trained Obi-Wan’s mental shields until they rivaled Master Yoda’s own. The visions had stopped, and part of Obi-Wan mourned for them, mourned for the good he could be doing if he could see more, anticipate more, see beyond where he was–but part of him knew that his master had been right. Despair was not a tool, it was a trap, and Obi-Wan could not afford to allow himself to fall into it. To do more, he had to limit himself. To make a difference, he could not be everywhere. It was maddening, but the pragmatist in him had found it to be an inescapable truth, as well.
So why were the visions back now?
Obi-Wan knew a force vision when he saw one–even if he hadn’t had one since he was fifteen. He knew how necessary meditation was upon waking. But unfortunately, the separatists hadn’t consulted with Obi-Wan’s schedule before attacking the trade convoy’s base. Forget meditation, there hadn’t even been time for caf this morning. There’d barely been time to lace up his boots.
Ahsoka and Anakin were here, too, somewhere –if Anakin actually woke up– Obi-Wan thought drily. His former padowan had… mostly grown out of it, but in his teens he’d been every inch the sullen teenager in the mornings, and it had sometimes taken as many as five attempts to get him awake enough for ‘getting up’ to actually stick. Anakin would never ignore a call to defend the trade convoy. But there was a slightly discomforting nonzero chance that he hadn’t fully woken up, and was still in bed, drooling on his pillow. Luckily, that was more Ahsoka and Rex’s problem than Obi-Wan’s these days, and frankly they were far better at managing Anakin than Obi-Wan had ever been. Anakin really did quite well with responsibility for others, and in turn, those he was responsible for did well looking after him. It seemed to be a natural, intrinsic trait of Anakin’s, because force knew he certainly hadn’t learned those mentorship skills from Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan had long been a passable older brother to Anakin, but he knew perfectly well that he hadn’t been the wise jedi master Anakin thought he’d be getting when he’d left Tatooine. They sniped at each other like brothers, Anakin ignored him like he would a brother, and, frankly, Anakin had seen Obi-Wan struggle his way through mentorship far too much for there to be any pretense between them. That had brought them closer, once, but Obi-Wan couldn’t help but feel that Anakin somewhat resented him for it now.
Anakin would have been a difficult boy to raise even if he weren’t the chosen one. Even if he hadn’t been so old when he began his training and Obi-Wan hadn’t been so young when he’d taken him on. Anakin was stubborn, headstrong, and arrogant, sure, but it was his naivete, his lingering pain, and the deep and lasting trauma of his early life that made things difficult. Anakin was so much more than anyone thought, and the balance between friendship and mentorship, between teaching and holding him back, gave Obi-Wan headaches. He’d learned early on that there was no use in counting on Anakin to learn from his own mistakes when testing his own limits; the boy was strong enough with the force that his limits outstripped Obi-Wan’s own by a significant margin even at the beginning, and his power only grew with time. Giving Anakin free rein was more likely to teach him recklessness than it was to teach him restraint, because even as a child, Anakin could accomplish wildly unlikely things successfully nearly every time. But he was also intensely sensitive to feeling held back. If Obi-Wan let him run wild, he fueled Anakin’s overconfidence, and that in turn got Anakin hurt–charging at Count Dooku on Geonosis was the most obvious example, and that had nearly gotten both of them killed, and had cost Anakin his arm-there were plenty of other examples. But if Obi-Wan tried to rein him in, Anakin grew furious at the condescension, certain that his powers were strong enough to manage whatever Obi-Wan was trying to keep him from. Obi-Wan's only real hope of providing useful training was to emphasize the vital importance of precision, nuance, and restraint. Anakin had him easily beat in terms of raw power, so Obi-Wan had little to teach him there, and spent most of his training efforts working to make sure Anakin knew power was not the only tool in a jedi's arsenal, and was not even necessarily the most important one. Anakin might never come across someone with more sheer power than himself, but that didn't mean that he couldn't be bested or outmaneuvered, and Obi-Wan did his best to prepare him for that.
There were certainly times when the mismatch in their powers felt ridiculous, but Obi-Wan was never tempted to delegate Anakin’s training to anyone else, because the council often lost sight of the hurt boy behind the supernova of Anakin’s powers. It was mostly the boy that needed training; the supernova would be there regardless. And Obi-Wan knew something about loss, and death, and grief, and trauma–more than most jedi of his generation, at least before the clone wars. And he knew that most of what Anakin needed was reassurance. Anakin craved approval, but what he truly needed was trust, and companionship, and someone to confide in. Obi-Wan knew better than to think he could be everything to Anakin. It was one of the reasons he turned a blind eye as Anakin built himself a family of his own. Anakin would tell Padme things he’d never say to his jedi master, and that, in Obi-Wan’s mind, was a good thing. Ahsoka too, was like the little sister Anakin had never had. He even did his best to ignore Anakin’s apparent growing reliance on his friendship with Chancellor Palpatine. Obi-Wan had never been able to be a father figure for Anakin. Not the way Anakin truly wanted. So he certainly wasn’t going to let his own discomfort with Anakin finding one on his own (jealousy was unbecoming of a jedi, and Anakin deserved better from him anyway) get in the way of something Anakin clearly felt he needed in his life–an area in which it was Obi-Wan’s faults that had left something lacking for him.
Regardless, none of it mattered right now. Obi-Wan was drifting again, getting lost in abstract contemplation rather than focusing on the firefight all around him. No use contemplating the intricacies of his own relationships and failings as a mentor when under heavy blasterfire. But the force vision had shaken Obi-Wan’s grip on the present, and it kept sliding through his grasp like sand. One moment he was standing in the thick of the battle, saber spinning easily to keep blasterfire away from the men behind him, and the next he was staring out at a sand-blasted landscape with binary suns, an alien grief–his own, and yet not his own–weighing his shoulders down like weights. A grief so bitter he could practically taste it.
“Obi-Wan! ”
I suppose Anakin is here, after all. Obi-Wan thought, then blinked, then came back to himself. There was a rather large laser cannon pointed directly at him, halfway to firing, and Anakin’s was not the only voice yelling at him to take cover.
Ah, he had time to think, and then someone was bowling him over, and for the second time in almost as many minutes, Obi-Wan was knocked bodily behind cover. Anakin shielded him with his body and with the force as the cannon fired, but the blast was so loud it set Obi-Wan’s ears to ringing, and it was only several seconds later that he realized Anakin was yelling at him, so angry that his voice was shaking.
Force, Obi-Wan needed to meditate so badly. He could remember something like this from his vision, but he wasn’t even sure what it had been. Meditating might help with that and it might not, but at least it would help him resettle himself in the present.
“--and now you’re not even listening to me!” Anakin looked like he was barely resisting the urge to take Obi-Wan by the shoulders and shake him. On consideration, Obi-Wan thought, that might actually help.
“Apologies, Anakin.” Obi-Wan sat up, wincing–he’d hit his head this time, lovely– “I’m–I’m afraid I’m not myself this morning.”
That seemed to stop Anakin’s anger in its tracks, at least for a moment, and his brow furrowed. “Are you alright? Are you hurt? I’ll get–”
“No, no. Nothing like that. I had a force vision early this morning, and I’m afraid it’s still rather taking its toll. A bit of temporal slipping. Nothing harmful, but–”
Anakin stared at him, goggle-eyed. “Temporal slipping? That’s not exactly minor, Obi-Wan, I didn’t even know you got that–”
“Well I don’t, normally.” Obi-Wan snapped. “Not for a long time. I’m afraid I was somewhat unprepared for the aftereffects. Frankly the stakes are somewhat lower if you lose track of time when you’re eleven.”
Anakin glanced up, and Obi-Wan followed his look.
“Cody.”
“Get Obi-Wan out of here, Commander.” Anakin’s voice was flat, and he turned back to Obi-Wan. “You and I are going to have a long conversation about temporal slipping later.” He was obviously still angry, but Obi-Wan felt his lips quirk up slightly.
“Alright, fine. I can tell when I’m not wanted.”
“Good. So scram!”
Shaking his head fondly, Obi-Wan let Cody help him up again and start to walk him away, waiting until Anakin was out of earshot to speak up.
“Honestly Cody, I’m quite alright. Not fit for battle, perhaps, but I think I can manage a tactical retreat on my own.”
“Not a chance, sir. I’m passing you off to the medics.”
“Oh well surely that’s not necessary–”
Cody ignored him. “Helix! Check the general for a head injury. And do not let him back into the battle, even if it all checks out.”
Obi-Wan rolled his eyes, even as he let Cody and Helix make him sit. “Betrayed by my own men.”
“For your own good, sir.” Cody told him. “Now stay put.” His voice brokered precisely no argument, and Obi-Wan sat back, finally resigning himself to their fussing.
“If I must.”