Part IV
It shouldn’t have surprised just how easily Luke adapted to being a refugee. He was his father’s son and craved adventure just as much as Anakin had. Luke had grown up on tales of the boy who wanted to visit all of the stars and managed to see quite a few. Luke loved the stories even though he didn’t yet know that they were about his father. Obi-Wan had given up trying to convince Luke that he wasn’t his father some time ago. He was still too young to fully understand what was going on. At that very moment, Luke was playing with a young T’wilek girl that he had befriended the day before.
It was three days since they’d left Roon and Obi-Wan had not yet set a final destination for them. He thought it was best as they would be harder to track that way. Sticking to Outer Rim planets, he and Luke would simply venture from spaceport to spaceport until he no longer felt as though Sidious was closing a fist about his throat.
There was a slight tug on his arm and Obi-Wan gazed down into Luke’s smiling face. “Daddy, tell me an’ Talia ‘bout the man an’ the stars.”
“I think you know that story well enough to tell her all by yourself,” Obi-Wan chuckled, ruffling Luke’s hair.
The little boy arched out of his grasp, shaking his head with a huge grin on his face. “Nu uh. You tell.”
“Please!” the young T’wilek chimed in, her small violet hands clasped and shaking towards him.
“Please!” Luke echoed, copying her pose, but adding a slight bounce. Luke was never good at remaining still. “Please, Daddy! Please!”
As had always been the case with Anakin, Obi-Wan could not ignore those pleading eyes or the lower lip stuck out in a pout. There had always been very little that he could deny Anakin and it was now the same with Luke. So it was not a surprise to him that he soon found himself with Luke perched on his lap and an audience of younglings crowded around him. After a time even a few nearby adults had given up the pretence of conversation so that they could hear his tales of the boy journeying through the stars. On the surface it was a far more hopeful tale than any of the refugees currently enjoyed. None of them knew, however, the fate of that little boy. Obi-Wan doubted that they would enjoy the story so much if they knew that the boy became the monstrous Darth Vader.
By the end of the story all of the younger children had fallen asleep. He was quite certain that there was even a small puddle of drool where Luke’s head rested against his chest. Comfortable where he was, Obi-Wan merely leaned back against the wall behind him and allowed Luke to continue sleeping.
Obi-Wan was determined to do whatever he could to ensure that Luke maintained his innocence and was allowed to remain a child. He was powerful, yes, but that power should not keep Luke from enjoying his childhood. Perhaps that was what had gone wrong with Anakin. Slavery and his training as a Jedi had aged Anakin far beyond his years and had given him no chance at peace. It had, in fact, destroyed what little he had managed to find in his and had turned it to darkness. With Padmé Anakin might not have fallen. The Council was full of blind fools, himself included, and Anakin’s peace had been stolen from him. Along with his children.
Futile as he knew it was, Obi-Wan had to hope that one day Luke would resurrect Anakin from the shell of Darth Vader. Everything that Anakin had done had been to save his family. So long as a part of that family survived, Obi-Wan had to hope that a part of Anakin survived as well. Even after nearly three years, Obi-Wan wasn’t ready to say goodbye to his best friend. Not when there was a chance that some part of him remained. For a brief moment at the very end Obi-Wan had sensed it. Right before the flames had consumed him.
“That’s quite a story you told,” one of the mothers said as she bent to pick up her son. “It’s very romantic. Where did you learn it from?”
“A very dear friend of mine used to tell it,” Obi-Wan murmured, adjusting his hold on Luke so that the boy could rest more comfortably. “He wanted to see all of the stars just like the boy in the story.”
“And did your friend get to see all the stars?”
Sadly, Obi-Wan shook his head. “He tried, but in the end life caught up with him.”
“That’s always the case with dreamers,” she whispered, meeting Obi-Wan’s gaze for a brief moment before turning away.
There was a truth to her statement that Obi-Wan didn’t want to acknowledge.
“There is no sign of Kenobi on Roon,” a small holoimage of one of the clone troopers informed the Emperor. “There was a Ben Kenobi, but he was too young to be the Jedi and has a child. He’s a mechanic.”
The already distorted features of Sidious twisted some more. “I have it on good authority that Master Kenobi was never very proficient with the mechanical arts. All the same, I want him brought to Coruscant.”
“My lord, we are no longer on the Roon system,” the clone protested. “We left it three standard days ago.”
“Then return to it and snatch this man,” Sidious ground out. “The child too. It might be of some use to us if the father proves difficult.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The transmission ended there, but Vader kept the security footage playing a while longer. He needed to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything because Sidious would not fill him in. Not when his master was the one keeping him in the dark about his search for Obi-Wan.
Once he was certain that there was nothing else of interest that had been recorded, Vader rerouted the security link back along its original path so that no one would notice that it had been tampered with. And Vader knew enough so that not even the maintenance droids would realize that the circuits had been tampered with. It was an advantage of having worked so long with electronics and mechanics. Vader had even been able to rewire the tracking device that he wasn’t supposed to know was hidden in his suit. The protocol droid T-6C1 was the lucky recipient of his tracking signal whenever Vader needed to do something without Sidious’ knowledge. Something which occurred a lot recently.
As he made his way back towards his quarters, Vader pressed the button he’d rewired that turned off his ventilation system. He’d made a recording of the suck/hiss that was his breathing that played over the sound of his own weak attempts to draw breath. It annoyed him that he hadn’t thought to wean himself off the thing sooner. Waiting had only made his lungs weaker which meant it would take longer to correct the damage so that he could breathe on his own indefinitely.
Vader refused to be the Emperor’s faithful pet any longer.
Unfortunately, desire alone wouldn’t free him from Sidious. At least not yet. His body had become weak after Mustafar and all of his anger made it difficult to focus. Try as he might, though, Vader couldn’t seem to release his anger. It consumed him. Anger at the Jedi for denying him Padmé. Anger at Padmé for dying. Anger at Sidious for making him dependent…. And anger at Obi-Wan for abandoning him.
Yet the part of him that was still Anakin knew that it couldn’t have been any other way. For all that Obi-Wan loved him, he would never betray the Jedi. It was all that Obi-Wan had ever been. Obi-Wan had no memories of a family beyond what the Jedi had become to him. Anakin, though, was the only one he had ever truly thought of as his brother.
“It’s as close as I can come to explaining it. The Jedi are my family, yes, but you, Anakin, are my brother. You are closer to me than anyone else. Even Qui Gon.”
As Anakin he had written off the words as the medication Obi-Wan had been on at the time speaking. Obi-Wan had been newly released from a bacta tank after receiving a near-fatal wound during a pitched battle on some system Vader couldn’t remember the name of. The older man hadn’t been the least bit coherent so he’d excused the words as being confused ramblings. Obi-Wan had never mentioned it again and until that moment both Anakin and Vader had forgotten about it.
Except Vader was no longer quite so certain. Finally able to garner some control over his anger, Vader found himself questioning things that he never had in the past. Such as the way their battle on Mustafar had gone. During the actual fight itself, Obi-Wan had spent most of his time on the defensive. In his arrogance, Vader had simply thought himself to be the better fighter. And while he was more ruthless without Anakin’s conscience, Obi-wan had been proved the victor in both skills and strategy. In the end he was the one who had walked away with all of his limbs intact. He had also taken Anakin’s lightsaber.
For a long time that had confused Vader. Obi-Wan was not one to take mementoes from battles. In truth, Vader only knew of a handful of possessions that Obi-Wan had ever kept. A river stone from Endor’s watery moon, the crystal from his lightsaber that had been destroyed on Naboo, Qui Gon’s lightsaber and the small box with both his and Anakin’s padawan braids inside. Everything else in his apartment at the Jedi Temple had all been standard issue. Even the civilian clothes he kept for undercover missions were wholly unremarkable. Those five things were all that proved that Obi-Wan had ever existed.
And they should have been destroyed when the Jedi Temple became an inferno. Vader had still be recovering from Mustafar when the Temple had been burnt, but those few things Obi-Wan kept secreted away remained safe. After his initial assault on the Temple, before he had gone to Padmé, Vader had gone to his former apartments and taken them. Even now Vader didn’t quite know why he had done that since he hadn’t taken away any of his own belongings from that same apartment. The few keepsakes Padmé had given him, a lock of his mother’s hair and trinkets he’d collected in various systems he’d visited were all gone. While their loss pained him at the time, it was a loss that had since faded.
Vader was brought up short, his breathing suddenly becoming difficult. He refused to turn the ventilator back on, though. Instead he forced his limbs to obey and continued on towards his quarters. He had to become stronger if he was ever going to free himself from his leash. With Sidious seeming to be narrowing on Obi-Wan’s location, Vader knew that he didn’t have much time if he was going to be the one to kill his former Master.
Obi-Wan would see what he had done to him.
It was chance that brought Luke and him to the watery moon of Endor. At the last spaceport Endor had been the only Outer Rim stop available so that was the ship they had boarded. There had been on need for tickets, just a few whispered words to the attendant at the gate and they were passengers without anyone being the wiser; the gate attendant included.
Obi-Wan had always had fond memories of that particular moon and was happy to take Luke there. It had been more than a decade since Obi-Wan himself had last been there. Around the time of Anakin’s thirteenth birthday he had managed to get them a few week’s leave and had taken his little desert rat to a moon riddled with lakes, rivers and waterfalls.
Growing up on Roon with its extensive oceans, Luke had been able to swim before he could walk. Luke was completely at home in the water, a confidence that Anakin had never shared. Even though Anakin had learned to swim not long after he’d come to the Temple, Obi-Wan had always sensed a hesitance in him whenever they were near large bodies of water. Anakin regarded water with a sense of awe as it had been a precious commodity on Tatooine. It had taken a full month to convince the nine year old Anakin that he would take showers that lasted longer than a minute. By the time he was a knight it wasn’t unusual for him to spend a full hour in the ‘fresher just enjoying the feel of water beating against his skin. Or at least that was what Obi-Wan had always told himself. He’d rather not think of what Anakin had really been up to.
Within a week of arriving on Endor’s watery moon, Obi-Wan had set up a new life for him and Luke. One that was relatively the same as their one on Roon. Obi-Wan’s skills as a mechanic got him work in a village a few hours from the nearest spaceport and Luke was accepted readily by the other younglings his age. Their place in the village was made easier when Obi-Wan hinted that they had lost their home to the still expanding Empire. There was no shortage of people unhappy with the Empire on Endor; others who had lost their homes.
Obi-Wan settled himself and Luke into a routine as quick as possible because he wanted to keep things as consistent as possible for Luke. Even so, the fact that Luke was so adaptable made things infinitely easier for him. Luke barely even seemed to register any difference between their life on Roon and their new one. After the first week he had stopped asking for Tion and Zander and for Meryssa after the second. By then there were enough new people in Luke’s life to keep him thoroughly distracted.
In less than a month it would be Luke’s third birthday. Obi-Wan had set up a calendar next to Luke’s bed and each night before he went to sleep the little boy would cross off that date. It was a simple task, but one that Luke seemed to enjoy immensely. Each night Luke would be bouncing on his bed, waiting as patiently as he was able for Obi-Wan to come so that he could mark off the date. Obi-Wan couldn’t help but notice that as energetic as Luke was, he was also very disciplined, knowing that he wasn’t allowed to mark off the box until Obi-Wan was there.
“T’morrow, Daddy!” Luke announced as he drew a rather lop-sided “X” through that day’s box. “T’morrow I’s three.”
“That’s right. You turn three tomorrow,” Obi-Wan murmured as Luke crawled into his arms. “You’ll be all grown up.”
“Big boy!”
Obi-Wan chuckled at that. Luke was excited about turning three simply because of the fact that he would be three which was older than two. The only thing that Obi-Wan knew about his own third birthday was that he had started training as a Jedi soon afterwards. He had no actual memories of that time just as he was certain that Luke would not remember much of this time. At the moment, though, his third birthday was very important to Luke. To mark the occasion, Obi-Wan planned to take Luke to the same waterfalls and grotto he had taken Anakin to his for his thirteenth birthday. It was foolishly sentimental, but at the same time seemed quite fitting. It was as close as he could come to including Anakin in on his son’s birthday.
Luke remained nestled on Obi-Wan’s lap while the older man read him his bedtime story. It was one about a kidnapped princess, a space pirate, and a lost prince. Obi-Wan had read the story to the boy more times than he cared to count, but Luke always demanded it. Of all the other stories on that particular holobook it was the one that Luke wanted to hear the most. His favourite character was the space pirate who kept getting the prince out of trouble.
“Can I be a pirate when I’s big?” Luke asked around a yawn as Obi-Wan finished the story.
“You want to be a pirate?” Obi-Wan echoed, sounding dutifully impressed. “Do you know how to fly a star fighter yet?”
Luke’s features scrunched up as he tried to think of a way around this problem. Less than a minute later his face brightened, tiredness seemingly forgotten. “You teach me!”
“What if I don’t know how to fly a star fighter?”
Obi-Wan had to swallow a laugh as Luke rolled his eyes dramatically at his denial. Luke looked well and truly put out that Obi-Wan would try and deny knowing how to fly a space craft.
“Yer Red Leader,” Luke said as though it were the most obvious thing ever.
It took every ounce of will power for Obi-Wan to keep from reacting to Luke’s revelation. There was no way that Luke could have known about his call name from the end of the wars. It wasn’t something that he had spoken about in the last three years. Ben Kenobi wasn’t a general or even a fighter. He was a widower raising his young son and fixing machines to earn credits. Ben Kenobi certainly didn’t know how to fly.
“What’s a Red Leader?” Obi-Wan asked once he was sure he wouldn’t betray anything with his voice.
“You are,” Luke insisted. “You fly ships. You an’ someone else. I don’t know him.”
Obi-Wan managed to distract Luke then, turning the conversation back towards space pirates. Having met a few in his time, Obi-Wan told Luke some of the less risqué tales while he waited for the little boy to fall asleep.
That night, Obi-Wan lay in his bed for a long while, his mind playing over what Luke had said to him. It was impossible for Luke to have known his call name. It had never been mentioned. Obi-Wan had made sure to never even mention the fact that he’d flown a space fighter before because that wasn’t something Ben Kenobi would have done. The fact that he didn’t like flying was one of the few things that hadn’t been pure fabrication when he’d created a past for himself and Luke.
Yet somehow Luke had known.
The fact that Luke had known meant that he was far more powerful than Obi-Wan had originally thought. As a result, Obi-wan couldn’t help but wonder just what Luke’s midichlorian count was. Had things not gotten so far out of control, but Luke and Leia would have been tested upon birth to determine just how strong in the Force they were. The fact that Luke seemed to be accessing abilities without much effort hinted at him sharing Anakin’s strong abilities in the Force. If Obi-Wan began Luke’s training then, as it would have been during the time of the Republic, Luke would become just as powerful, if not moreso, than Anakin because he wouldn’t have two different lives he was torn between. The greatest downfall in Anakin’s training was that he had never been able to distance himself from the life he had lived on Tatooine. It was a part of who Anakin was. And while Obi-Wan had never wanted to change Anakin as a person, as a Jedi he was severely lacking.
However, the Jedi were no more and even when they had existed their methods were very outdated. Anakin was proof of that. So much would have been averted if Anakin and Padmé had been allowed their relationship. Obi-Wan had known that the Jedi Code was failing. It was far too outdated, but the Jedi themselves refused to see that. Even Master Yoda, who had always been so far-seeing, had been unable to see the flaws in the Code until it was too late. The Jedi had failed Anakin and in doing so they had failed the Republic.
Obi-Wan was determined not to fail Luke. The boy had already lost too much already even if he didn’t know it yet.