The twin suns of Tatooine began their slow, lazy descent, painting the Jundland Wastes in shades of orange, purple, and blood-red. It was a beautiful, melancholic sight, one Obi-Wan Kenobi had witnessed thousands of times. Usually, it was a signal. The end of another day of meaningless labor, of watching the Lars homestead from a distance, of playing the part of a ghost.
Today, he had done none of that. He hadn't gone to his odd job at the butcher farm. He hadn't trekked to the ridge that offered a clear view of the homestead, to catch a glimpse of the boy playing with his friends.
Obi-Wan sat cross-legged on the smoothest patch of rock inside his cave, hands resting on his knees, eyes closed.
He had been sitting like this since dawn, waiting for the Force to answer him. It hadn't. It rarely did anymore.
He had just sat. And thought.
A lot had happened today, yet in the grand, miserable scheme of the galaxy, nothing had happened at all. It all began and ended with a boy. A child who couldn't be more than ten or eleven, who had walked up to him in a dusty stable and spoken a name that had been buried under a decade of sand and regret.
General Kenobi.
The title was a key turning a lock he'd long since forgotten how to pick. Ten years of effort, of meticulously crafting the persona of "Ben," the hermit, had been nearly undone in a single sentence. All because a boy said the Force had guided him here.
The Force.
It had never left him. The Force doesn't work that way. It was an ocean, and he had simply walled himself off from it, building a dam of grief and guilt in his own mind. He told himself it was necessary. He was protecting the last, best hope for the galaxy. Luke. As long as he was hidden, as long as his connection to the Cosmic Force was a mere trickle, he was untraceable.
But sitting here, watching the sky bleed, he was forced to admit it was an excuse. A good one, one he'd repeated to himself so often it had become truth. But it was still an excuse. He wasn't just hiding from the Empire. He was hiding from the galaxy.
Hiding from the fact that he, Obi-Wan Kenobi, the High Jedi General, the Negotiator, had survived when so many others had perished. He was hiding from his own failure.
He let out a slow breath. "Anakin Skywalker," he said aloud, testing the name as if it might fade into the heat haze like a mirage. It didn't.
Anakin....is alive.
The thought refused to stay buried. He had tried. Maker, he had tried. To not think of him. He'd buried the name in sand, silence, exile, a dozen empty years. But now it was clawing its way back up, gasping for air.
He had felt Anakin die. Or atleast he had deluded himself into it. He had seen him broken and burning on Mustafar, felt the Force rip through him like tearing cloth. That kind of agony didn't leave room for doubt.
So if the boy spoke truth—and Obi-Wan felt, in the quiet center of himself, that he did—then everything he'd built his exile on was a lie. He had not killed a monster to save the galaxy. He had left a friend to suffer.
He rubbed a hand across his beard, the gesture more to anchor himself than anything else. "You always were impossible to be rid of, Anakin," he murmured. "Even now."
For a while he just sat there, letting the desert light creep further into the cave, turning the air gold and the sand to glass.
More machine than man now.
Darth Vader...
He had failed. He hadn't just failed to save his friend from the dark side; he hadn't even managed to finish the job. He had left Anakin to be pieced back together by the Emperor, to be turned into an instrument of terror, a mockery of the hero he once was.
His thoughts drifted back to the boy. Ezra. Who was he? He claimed the Force guided him, that it showed him things. Visions. The Jedi Council had always been wary of such abilities. They were a path to the dark side, a glimpse of a future that was always in motion.
He remembered his own master, Qui-Gon, speaking of a Jedi seer who had foreseen the coming of the Clone Wars.
And Anakin... Anakin's visions of his mother's death. He had dismissed them as nightmares, as a boy's grief manifesting as bad dreams. He had told him to let go of his attachments. If he had listened, if he had helped him, would things have been different? Another failure in a long, long list.
But this boy... his knowledge wasn't just of the future. He knew of the Clone Wars, of Order 66, of things that had happened before he was even born. He knew about Luke. That was the part that truly shattered Obi-Wan's carefully constructed reality. How could a child from the Outer Rim know the secret he had guarded with his life? It wasn't just information; it was proof. The boy's claims, as outlandish as they were, had the weight of terrifying truth behind them.
He had let the boy go back to Mos Eisley. A part of him screamed that it was a mistake. The town was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, no place for a child alone. But what could he say? The boy had come across stars, crossed half this wretched planet on his own. People twice his age would fear doing half of that.
He couldn't turn him away. The boy's threat was not an idle one. He would start asking for "Ben Kenobi" in every cantina. He would draw attention, and that attention would eventually lead to the Lars homestead. He couldn't risk Luke. His relationship with Owen was already strained to breaking point, a brittle thing built on a foundation of shared loss and mutual blame. If he asked them to move, they would laugh in his face. He was trapped. By a ten-year-old.
The last sliver of the second sun disappeared below the horizon, and the desert was plunged into a deep, cold twilight. The boy would be back tomorrow. And the day after that. He was like sand, he'd said. Annoying, and gets everywhere.
Obi-Wan let out a long, slow breath, the air turning to mist in the cold. For ten years, his purpose had been simple: endure. Wait. Protect the boy. Now, that purpose had been complicated. The Force, in its infinite, cruel wisdom, had sent him a student.
A boy chosen of Force itself and a head full of secrets that could unravel the galaxy.
Obi-Wan watched the suns sink beneath the dunes until only the moons remained. The desert fell silent, the kind of silence that pressed against the chest.
He stayed there, unmoving. Fear had never left him, only changed shape. It wasn't sharp anymore, not the kind that came with battle. It was quieter now. Heavy. The kind that stayed even when everything else was gone.
He thought of the boy. Ezra. Too young, too bold, and too familiar. Beneath that bravado was something he knew too well—desperation. The same kind that had once burned behind Anakin's eyes.
The thought made his stomach turn.
He couldn't do it again. Couldn't take another student and watch him fall. Couldn't see another life twisted by good intentions. He'd told himself he was done teaching, done shaping anyone's future but his own.
And yet, the Force had brought the boy here.
He almost spoke aloud, as he used to. Master, what would you have me do? But no voice came. No shimmer of blue light. Just the sigh of wind through stone.
He'd waited years for Qui-Gon's voice. Nothing. Only silence. Perhaps that was the lesson.
He rubbed the sand from his hands and stared at them. Hands that had once built a lightsaber, trained the Chosen One, held a dying friend. Now they trembled.
He laughed quietly. "Some teacher I'd make."
He tried to convince himself the boy would be fine without him. That the Force would guide him elsewhere.
Afterall he had failed once, and the galaxy still bore the scar of it. To take another student felt like tempting fate.
Yet a part of him argued, if he was so afraid of failure, what would happen when Luke's time finally came? Did he believe age would make him wiser, or only slower to act? If he could not trust himself now, there was little reason to trust himself later.
He exhaled. If I am meant to teach again someday, why not now? If there is still hope in me for Luke, is that same hope not owed to Ezra?
The thought unsettled him—and freed him, all at once. Yes, there was hope in that.
And leaving the boy aside, the words he had said earlier kept echoing in his mind.
'How long can we just wait? While Luke grows up, how many more fathers will be taken? How many more families will be broken?'
As much as he tries to ignore it, it held truth. Every year the Empire grew stronger, the darkness thicker. Waiting had begun to sound less like patience and more like fear.
He had wanted to silence the boy then—to tell him he didn't understand. But he did, perhaps more than this hermit who could find only cowardice to hide.
Every day of stillness on Tatooine was another day the Empire tightened its grip. Every step he didn't take was another life ground under the heel of what Anakin had become.
Now that did made him see the boy from another angle, there was discipline there, the kind Anakin had never found. An understanding born of loss. He was defiant yes, but it felt different. It was as if he knew the reasons for his actions instead of being defiant for the sake of being so.
The difference was small, but it was everything.
Anakin had never learned control. He mistook compassion for possession, strength for anger.
Ezra could be different.
Not every pupil was destined to fall after all.
Obi-Wan almost smiled at the thought, though it faded quickly. Why was he finding reasons to teach again? He had sworn off it. Sworn that the next time he would not interfere. But the truth pressed harder than the vow.
Still, the cowardice remained. The thought of facing Anakin again—Vader—froze him in place. He was afraid of what he would see in those eyes, afraid that beneath the armor, he would still recognize the man he had once called brother.
Maybe that was why he hesitated—because teaching Ezra would mean accepting that he still had something left to give, that atonement was possible.
Or maybe… he was already trying to atone.
He rose, joints stiff, and looked toward the desert where the moons silvered the dunes. The fear was still there, but beneath it, something steadier. Not peace. Not yet. Just the faint sense of movement, of purpose returning after too long stillness.
He exhaled, the words barely louder than the wind.
"Then maybe I will try again."
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A/N: Apologies for the late update, this chapter was a tad hard to write. Obi Wan is a complex character, full of contrasting emotions and motivations. Combined with the depressive state he was at the start of Obi Wan series (The series was horrible btw, I will rectify that), it makes it quite an challenge to make him willing to teach Ezra.
I could have done it in a more simpler way, but curse this brain of mine that gives this itch to do it right.
Hope that the current chapter made sense. I will try to update another chapter soon which starts with the Training Montage Mini-Arc.
Also dont forget to vote! We had gone to #19 past days, and that made me quite proud of you guys.
And a sincere request, when so ever story starts feeling slow, please let me know. One shortcoming of mine is pacing. I struggle a lot in them to be honest.
Rereading the Preparations Arc, I did realize that it could have been done in fewer words. So in future, if it ever feels like that, lmk!
Adios