Pairing: Obi-Wan Kenobi x fem!Jedi!Reader
Word Count: 1.8k
Genre: angst and nothing else. angst o’clock my lads.
Summary: After the fall of the Empire, you return to the little house on the hill for the first time in six years. It’s long empty.
Warnings/Tags: detailed/intense depictions of grief, following major character death (y’all know who it is lmfao)
A/N: This is less of a chapter and more of a prologue, I suppose, as Obi-Wan doesn’t make a real appearance here. It’s some heavy stuff but things will get happier as the story progresses :’) Also, a HUGE thank you to @filthybookworm for beta reading! (seriously. everyone go follow her. stop reading this fic and go follow her) - aubrey 💕
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We the Indelible: concept // i // ii
You hadn’t missed the scent of dust. The color, the texture. The way it gets in your mouth and sticks in your teeth, the way it clings to your cuticles and your hair and your scalp. The way it coats every surface no matter how often you dust, and grinds underfoot no matter how often you sweep.
When it wasn’t too hot, you’d open the windows. Either the dust blew in with the breeze or all was still. Still, desolate, paralyzed—nothing but rock and dunes of blistering sand. They’d lain there a thousand years and would for a thousand more, and they glared at you through the window into your little house on the hill.
No, you’d missed the scent of home. Fragrant tea like a dream of pressed flowers, spiced chai for nightly tete-a-tetes, the rare and cherished cup of caf. Savory stew on the stove and coarse bread in the oven. Nothing special. But it was hot and filling and a blissful distraction from the smell of your own sweat, of lingering bantha hair.
It was the scent of home that had sustained you. The scent of him, of the little family and the little life you’d made for yourselves. But he’s been gone for years and the home empty. And now only a house—frozen in time—and the scent of dust remain.
There’s a mug on the dining table, little more than a nightstand. Hardly enough for one person, let alone two and then three. But you made it work, pulling in your elbows and knees, pressed up against each other. With the heat radiating off your limbs and the steam off your womp rat stew, and the hot air blowing through the windows on the most sweltering of nights, it could be downright infernal.
But then, in your mind’s eye: old Ben Kenobi drinking his tea and alone at the table, with plenty of room to spread his legs. Just a few degrees cooler.
Nausea sweeps over you like a tsunami of cold oceans past. Your head swims; your knees quake; your eyes are watery and desperate for sleep. But you can’t—not yet, not at the table. So you sink onto the stool, gripping the mug with shaking hands. At its bottom long-dried tea leaves peek through the layers of dirt. They’ve lost their scent, of course; they’ve sat here for years. This was a newer habit of his... Always so neat, so orderly. Yet he’d leave out his empty cups for hours after...
“There’s still a bit left,” he’d swear. “If they can dry out a little.”
“It’s just a few drops. Why not just make a new cup?”
“No sense in wasting the last of a good thing.”
He’d shrug and you’d shrug back. It was his tea, after all. As long as he cleaned up eventually (and he would), you couldn’t really argue.
But now you circle the lip with your thumb and you think... Maybe you should have argued more.
“Mum! Mum, I found Kida!”
The mug almost slips from your chill, numb fingers. Ana peaks her head out from the annex and leans against the wall, wringing her hands, watching you.
“Mum?”
“Where was she?”
She joins you at the little table and holds out the doll. A little Mirialan girl with a feed sack for robes and black beads for tattoos, now white with dust. A low bun of black yarn, and a long, narrow braid below the ear. Dark eyes. Open eyes.
“Right on my pillow, funnily enough. And here I thought... I’d just lost her.”
She laughs a little, a hollow laugh. You try to match it but you can’t, because you know, you remember, she had lost her. You’d looked under beds, under laundry piles and the grass-strewn floors of the barn... you and Obi-Wan both. Ana had cried, and you’d cried with her. Had... Had he searched again, in your absence? Or had he found her on a whim in some strange, sunless corner and placed her right where his daughter should be?
Another scene in your mind’s eye. Stomach-churning.
But before the edges sharpen, Ana’s warm hand finds yours and squeezes. Hard. She still stares at the doll, her eyes wet. Blue eyes of the same shape. You catch her tears on your fingertips and pull her to your chest. She’s nineteen and as tall as you, but now she shrinks, shrinks back to the night she first heard the krayt dragon with the spoils of his hunt.
“Baby girl,” you whisper into the crown of her head while her tears wet your shirt. She’s shaking, not with sobs, but the simple trembling of a lonely soul in agony. You stand there until she stills, until your knees ache, and your wrists from gently stroking her hair.
“I think...” Her voice is muffled in the fabric of your robes. “I think I’ll go to the Skivrens. Check on... Check on the herd.”
You smile, letting your own tears roll into your mouth, welcoming the taste of salt. “They’ll love that.”
“Do—do you want to come?”
You pull away just enough to glance around the room, and to wipe your eyes. “I think I’ll stay a few more hours. Clean up a little... Clearly he never found the dust rag.”
“Or the broom, either.” Ana laughs with a nod to the sandbank by the doorframe. And you laugh, too, biting back the silence.
“You have your comlink?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll com if you need anything?”
“Course, Mum. I’ll be back in a few.”
She kisses you on the cheek, wipes her eyes, and slips out the door to your borrowed transport. You just glimpse her tuck Kida into her pocket.
You’d stitched Kida yourself, back when you first were learning to sew. You’d trained a Padawan; you’d led armies; you could move things with your mind, by the Maker. But sewing that doll... Was it worth it, when you’d stitched and restitched her for the fourth and fifth time, and your fingers were swollen from the pricks of your dull needle?
Kida’s safe and sound again, and reunited with her friend. That’s worth it all, the lopsided hair and the ghosts in her eyes.
Your daughter’s footfalls fade to nothingness. She heads east, and so fades the melody of her presence humming through the Force. Only silence remains: silence, stillness, nonentity. Surrounding you, filling you as you study the empty mug, an emptiness that curls its hand over your heart and chokes you until you’re well and truly dizzy. You fix your hands around the body and squeeze. And squeeze and squeeze until your fingers shake with the force of it. But it’s not enough.
You wind back your arm and smash it on the ground.
The shatter serrates its way through the quiet while dozens of shards scrape across the floor. Your breaths come heavier, faster, like the crash lit a trail of gasoline from the soles of your feet. The flames shoot up through your heart and engulf you. But it’s not enough. The vase on the windowsill with the corpse of a funnel flower, the old water pitcher and Obi-Wan’s red-painted box of tea leaves. All of it against the ground, against the wall above the alcove, like little ceramic fireworks that splinter and wash the floor and bed sheets scarlet.
The bed sheets.
The first sheets you’d ever bought. The last. Coarse but hardy, over two decades old; the same color as the dunes beyond your window. You’d meant to replace them, someday, when things were better. Safer. Brighter. Looks like Obi-Wan hadn’t gotten around to it, either. The mattress is still dented on his side, the one closest to the door, while yours looks the same as the day you left. If you lie down—just for a moment—would it feel like having him beside you again?
No, no, no. You can’t make two out of one.
But why hadn’t he just replaced them? Replaced the whole mattress? He didn’t want you here. He’d sent you away. New sheets. New mattress. New home for all you cared. A new family. A new life.
But in the Maker’s blessed name, don’t keep that dent there.
You run your hands along the hollow, catching on the sharp little slivers and the holes that had never been mended. They’re calderas and grains of sand beneath your palms as you bunch the blanket in your fist. You pull it up to your nose, breathing deep. It smells like dust. You yank it away.
But that’s not good enough.
You rip it off the bed. The duvet, the pillows, the sheets... You pull so hard the mattress jolts up with them and sends another shower of splintered clay. You could listen to that sound forever, you think, the rustling fabric and chinking, broken pottery. Your hair sticks to your forehead and in your mouth; your eyes sting with sweat. So what? You’re almost done. Just another layer of cloth. Just another sliver in your palm.
But when again you dig your hands into the bed and pull, nothing gives. The bedding lies scattered all around and behind you, pooling at your ankles. Some of the shards have caught in your robes and hang like cave crystals and stardust. You have nothing left to wreck and ruin.
And how do you feel now? Triumphant? Vindicated? Soothed? Assuaged? Master of the fire within, victor against the grave?
You feel cold, and cold alone.
You dig your fingers into the wall above the alcove so hard your nails threaten to split, and stare at the bed. It almost stares back, stripped down to the flat hard mattress. But the dent’s still there.
You could have stayed, if you’d insisted. He’d have agreed. If you’d indulged in your selfishness, he’d have indulged in his. He wanted you here. Ana, here. Things could have been different. Had you argued. Had you asked.
Somewhere through the open window you hear a dreadful wail. It’s the anooba, you think distantly, woozy and lightheaded. They’ve brought down an eopie. Separated it from its herd. Waiting for it to die.
You hear it again, but the vibrations are there: right in your chest. It’s you. And the wails never cease.
So you sink to your knees against the bed frame, atop your cairn of blankets and clay. You shake and you shake and you shake until you’re fisting the duvet, your palms finally screaming with the shards embedded beneath the skin. Be still. Be still. Be still. Just an illusion. Just for a moment.
But what can a duvet do? A cut of coarse cloth you should’ve scrapped a decade ago? And what will your crying do? No one can hear you. Not as you sit alone in the old, abandoned house on the hill.
No. All you can do is wait it out. Cry it out. Go to sleep. Forget the heat, and the cold, and the silence, and the sand.
And maybe you could. But there are no sheets on the bed.
Ngl I’ve been between two inches from a panic attack at all hours for I can’t remember how long because lately I can’t distinguish between what happened yesterday vs what happened last week. It’s been a long time though.
Your blog never fails to make me laugh, and neither do you! You seem like a witty, fun person! (Also, broccoli discourse is actually pretty relatable!) 🖤
