EAST OF EDEN ( anakin s. ) ✔️

034 | The Dream You Don't Remember..

━━━━━━ ༻ 🌅 ༺ ━━━━━━
" the dream you don't remember "
...
━━━ ༻ CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR ༺ ━━━

          FEAR THE DREAMS YOU DON'T remember, for as long as you can ignore that fear is the death of light, the creator of monsters into shadows, the sealer of fates in crimson and wrath. Fear the dreams you don't remember as you might be tempted to, but ponder in your hour of need on why your instinct is correct; how does the instinct always know?

Obi-Wan Kenobi was choked up in fear.

Erso's voice was at war with Ahsoka's on the fields of his mind where though the bounty hunter's words resonated to a part of himself that had been taught patience and hope by his own Master, they still belonged to a vile man without virtue, someone who could not ever stand above an apprentice he watched grow, no matter how stained in fright her words were, how dark their edges or how horrific their allusions. Obi-Wan was forced to watch this battle unfold even as his breath knotted in his throat, widening his eyes to a clear display of his constant trepidation.

Pointedly, he had no knowledge of how exactly he reached the hangar bay or how many people he had frightened with his disheveled aspect before arriving in the landing area and freezing at a sight he was told to expect, but naturally, was still shocked to behold. There he was.

"Anakin," the name rolled off his tongue softly; breathlessly as his voice was bound to be, it could not speak the name as anything less than a plea of peace, an ovation to a love of family that oftentimes Obi-Wan had found inevitable to seek and discover in the Jedi Order's very foundation. It was for that second it took him to speak his name so quietly that the single twitch of his lips could be easily ruled off as a gasp for air, that Obi-Wan forgot what had upset him in the first place. Preying on just how badly he wished it had all been but a bad dream, he fooled himself for a cruel moment that the man he was seeing was not in any way related to the man Ahsoka described... that she was just wrong, and that the Anakin who threatened her in regards to the truth was some pretender, not their brother, not Kenobi's young padawan.

But reality came crashing down back on him almost twice as hard sooner rather than later: he had gotten a good look at Anakin and his false reality crumbled on the pile of ash that his hope had been reduced into. He looked at his Jedi robes, at his tired eyes, at his slightly damp hair still mostly slicked back, and finally, all the way down to the bag he was holding in his right hand, hanging by his side heavily. Something about the roundness of the object the bag concealed in its bellows stilled Obi-Wan's heart and sent across his skin a command for cold goosebumps.

"Master," Anakin beamed at the sight of Obi-Wan, hurrying his last steps and wrapping his left arm around his former Master to sweep him in a side hug that coerced him to follow along a certain degree of hurry back inside the Jedi Temple. He was almost completely disillusioned by the reunion towards remembering Eden's vision and the warning it carried against his Master. Even the hesitance with which Obi-Wan halted his step and hitched his breath when inevitably, he reached forward for the side hug and a pat on the back, had to ultimately be ignored. It was much easier to blame it on the shock of seeing each other again that Obi-Wan hadn't yet regained a grip of himself sufficient to show that he had missed Anakin, rather than immediately admitting to something that had already grown within Anakin's soul a void that kept on staring back at him with a growl of doubt, one that promised to endure in spite of his best intentions, of his better hopes and even stronger convictions that the only way forward had to be path of complete trust into the Force.

Obi-Wan's stiffness showed no signs of decreasing and though he was pulled to walk beside Anakin, to his left, his right ear was burning to turn away from facing that hanging bag his past apprentice was swinging. However, complete silence was an unfavorable way to go, especially when there was so much to discuss in order to probe whether or not things have indeed spiraled out of control and an intervention had to be made. Until he saw it for himself in Anakin, present and lurking, Obi-Wan wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. "Back from Felucia so soon?"