Fanfics from Ao3 - Private

the sound of your voice (helps me find peace) - izazov - Chapter Four

Obi-Wan managed to make a single step inside his quarters before tripping over something that most definitely did not belong on the floor of his living room.

He muttered a low curse, then flicked his wrist, turning on the lights. As the light spilled across the room, erasing the shadows, Obi-Wan crouched to pick up the offending object.

"Your situational awareness is abysmal," a voice said, mimicking - badly, in Obi-Wan's opinion - Obi-Wan's accent. Then, after a moment of silence and stripped of the fake accent, it added, "I could have killed you five times by now. Maybe even six."

Something warm and bright sparked in Obi-Wan's chest upon hearing that familiar voice in person, and not distorted by static over countless miles of space between them.

Still in a crouch, with his head bowed, Obi-Wan allowed his eyes to flutter closed as a wave of pure, unadulterated relief swept over his senses after four long and exhausting months spent out in the field, fighting.

You are here. You are safe. I missed you.

Obi-Wan felt those words echo deep inside himself, as well as a warm, bright light pouring across the bond that tied him to Anakin.

Obi-Wan reached out, tentatively brushing against Anakin's mind, only to be enveloped in the blazing fire that was Anakin's force presence; protective, possessive, unyielding.

After four months with no contact outside a few holocalls... it was almost too much. But it also felt like coming home. More so than the actual arrival at the Temple had been.

Obi-Wan took a deep breath, then gently withdrew his presence from Anakin's mind. He felt Anakin's reluctance to let him go, an almost physical sensation of fingers wrapping tight around flesh, but it was gone in the next moment, leaving only an impression of deep and profound longing.

"Well, I suppose I am fortunate you mean not to kill me then," Obi-Wan said, straightening. He glanced down at the object in his hand, then at Anakin who was sitting on the ground, with his back resting against the sofa, and a half assembled cleaning droid next to him. "Although, your inherent lack of tidiness is a danger unto itself."

On his way to the kitchenette, Obi-Wan threw what he suspected was the part of the cleaning droid's chassis at Anakin. Anakin caught it out of the air, easily, grinning unrepentantly.

"You're a Jedi Master, Obi-Wan," Anakin said. "You really shouldn't be intimidated by a stray piece of metal."

"We have been fighting a war for over a year now," Obi-Wan remarked drily, opening a cupboard and pulling out the tea kettle that Anakin has been threatening to dispose of for years now "I am quite accustomed to being shot at by things consisting largely of metal."

Obi-Wan couldn't see Anakin but he could feel the shift in the Force a mere moment before their bond was flooded with frustration and helpless anger. Anakin reigned himself in quickly, but the echo of his feelings remained, a heavy weight Obi-Wan himself has been carrying since the beginning of the war.

Obi-Wan leaned forward, flattening his palms against the counter and swallowing thickly. For all his fierce, blazing light, Anakin has always had shadows lingering deep inside his very core. The war... it certainly didn't help in dispersing them. And Obi-Wan could do nothing to shield Anakin.

Anakin was good. In fact, he was among the best on the field despite his years and - or, perhaps, because of it - his unorthodox methods. But the war was starting to weigh heavily on him, on all of them, and Obi-Wan couldn't even glimpse a possible end to it.