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Obi-Wan really hadn't thought the worst day of his life could possibly get worse.
His body screamed with untended aches and pains, his tunic still singed from Mustafar and before that, from Utapau. Soot smudged his cheeks, his eyes were bloodshot from smoke and unshed tears, and all he really wanted to do was crawl into his bed at the Temple and stay there until he woke up from whatever twisted nightmare this had to be.
But here he was – flying off to a Force-forsaken desert wasteland, with a screaming infant in his lap.
Emphasis on the screaming part.
"Shh, shh," Obi-Wan murmured, pulling his eyes away from the ship controls to gaze down at the baby. "It's alright, Luke. Everything's alright."
He almost laughed as the words came out of his mouth – alright? Things were anything but alright.
Luke seemed to think so, too, because he cried even louder.
And blast, it was so loud. Coupled with the voice that kept screaming in his ears, "I HATE YOU," over and over and over, and the screams of agony as fire consumed his body and burnt his flesh away, burnt away the boy that Obi-Wan had raised and known and loved -
Stop, stop, he told himself. There is no emotion. There is peace. Come back to the present. Come back...
Only problem was, the present rather sucked.
Obi-Wan sighed, clueless. Was the baby hungry? Tired? Uncomfortable? He couldn't exactly do anything regardless. This ship wasn't built for comfort, much less infants – the cockpit was barely large enough for Obi-Wan himself, and it was chilly in spite of the ship’s heaters. There was nothing he could offer Luke, especially not what he really needed – his parents.
Or at the very least, somebody who knew how to care for a baby. Like Yoda – Yoda had always been good with the little ones. Privately, Obi-Wan always suspected it was because they were nearly the same height, but there was something else, too. A gentleness he reserved for the younglings, a lightness of spirit others rarely saw.
He wished Yoda were here now. But he supposed he could try to channel his gentleness.
He put the ship on autopilot and lifted Luke's tiny form into his arms.
"Hello there, little one," Obi-Wan whispered, peering into the child's watery eyes. He was wrapped in a swaddling cloth, his tiny head poking out the top to reveal a thin fuzz of hair. "Hush. I've got you. I've got you."
With the hand that wasn't supporting Luke, Obi-Wan loosened the cloth around the child's body to find his tiny hands. He took one into his own, the softness of the skin making him exhale. And as he did so, Luke shuddered.
The crying stopped.
Obi-Wan sighed in relief. He'd done it! That wasn't so hard after all. All it took was a little patience, and...
Luke started screaming again.
And Obi-Wan almost did, too. Screw patience to the sticking place.
"I don't...I don't really know how to help you," he stammered. He ran his thumb through Luke's hair, his palm cupping the infant's cheek. "But then, I suppose I should've expected that. I never could help your father, either."
Anakin's face came back to his memory – not the face of Vader, burning away to ash. The face of his best friend. Anakin biting back tears as Ashoka left the Jedi Temple, his eyes flaming when Obi-Wan had tried to apologize. Anakin yelling out in the night when visions of his mother wouldn't leave him alone. Anakin on Naboo just before Qui-Gon's funeral, staring at Obi-Wan in silence but his feelings betraying him all the same: "I wish it had been you, instead."
He hadn't known how to help him then. And now the whole galaxy was paying the price.
But perhaps he had helped Anakin. Not in the ways he'd truly needed – clearly, as recent events had shown. But in little ways. Little ways like...well, he didn’t really want to relive them. Not now. It hurt too much.
But then he was back there anyway, staring into the eyes of 11-year-old Anakin in the darkness of his bedroom.
“Master?” Anakin’s voice was so timid he hardly heard it. “Are you...are you awake?”
He was. In the first few years of Anakin’s apprenticeship, Obi-Wan’s sleep schedule was something of an atrocity – on the rare nights he wasn’t tossing and turning with anxiety, nightmares of red lightsabers and Zabrak horns kept him awake. That particular evening, it had been the former.
“What’s wrong?” Obi-Wan said, sitting up in bed.
And then suddenly Anakin was crawling onto the mattress, his face collapsing into a sob.
“There was a...a shadow...and he had yellow eyes, and lightening for hands, and...”
Ah, yes. Obi-Wan wasn’t the only one who suffered from nightmares.
But as Anakin sniffled beside him, he didn’t know what to do. Not at first. After all, he couldn’t even deal with his own bad dreams, much less somebody else’s.
Yet the Force must’ve given him a little nudge in the right direction, because suddenly he was folding Anakin into his arms, whispering hush, hush. Anakin’s tears seeped through his nightshirt, both of their bodies shuddering slightly with the boy’s sobs.
And before he could think better over it, the lullaby was slipping from Obi-Wan’s lips:
“You will lose your baby teeth.
At times you’ll lose your faith in me.
You will lose a lot of things,
But you cannot lose my love.”
And then Obi-Wan was back in the cockpit, staring down at a crying Luke and trying not to cry himself, willing his voice not to tremble as the song poured out. He hadn’t sung in a long time, and the sound felt odd in his throat. But it filled the cockpit, warming the space in a way that the heater couldn’t.
And as Obi-Wan rocked Luke, he imagined the song spilling out into the blackness of space, across star systems and nebulas and a galaxy now lost to darkness. And he imagined it, somehow, finding Anakin, too.
“You will lose your confidence.
In times of trial, your common sense.
You may lose your innocence,
But you cannot lose my love.”
Luke’s tiny hand snaked free from the swaddling cloth. He reached upward, his watery eyes shining, and tangled his fingers in Obi-Wan’s beard. And in spite of everything, Obi-Wan was smiling, feeling the warmth of little fingers on his face. Anakin’s son’s little fingers.
So much had been lost. He’d lost friends, comrades, a galaxy of democracy. He’d lost freedom, lost hope. Lost his way.
But maybe, he thought as he ran his fingers down the side of Luke’s face, maybe not everything is lost.
Maybe some things can’t be.
“You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you.”
Obi-Wan swallowed hard and tried not to let the thought come to his mind, but it did anyway:
I still do.
Luke was still gazing up at him, all anguish gone. Obi-Wan stared back into his watery eyes – deep blue, like Anakin’s had been – and lost himself there. Imagining what might have been and what should have been and what wasn’t.
He wiped the ghosts of tears from Luke’s cheeks just as his own tears made him blind.