Rebel Pilot: A Star Wars Story

Chapter 10

"After Geonosis. Before the Clone Wars." Anakin scratched the back of his neck.

Obi-Wan stared, jaw slack, for a moment. "Well... I suppose some late congratulations are in order," he said slowly. "Did you seriously get married and not invite me to the wedding?!"

Older Obi-Wan cracked up.

Anakin sputtered. "I was flagrantly ignoring the Jedi Code! Like, entirely! I was getting married , and you were my master , Obi-Wan, I couldn't just tell you I-"

"Oh please Anakin, do you know how long I've been covering up your war crimes in our mission reports? Well, and occasionally mine. Upon actually looking at this war I must admit the Jedi have been committing far too many war crimes. But that aside. I really don't care if you break the Jedi code. Well, I do, but honestly at this point, since I myself struggle with attachments... my point is I should have been invited and I wasn't invited!"

"I... okay. I apologize for not inviting you to my secret wedding," Anakin said slowly.

"So..." Obi-Wan paused. "I just realized that your daughter mentioned Senator Amidala in the past tense...?"

Anakin sighed. "She apparently died giving birth to Luke and Leia." He was still numb about that, still in complete denial, still telling himself that this was a timeline that wouldn't have actually happened, no way.

"My apologies," Obi-Wan said quietly. "She was a very wonderful woman, and I know you loved her."

"I know you know I love her. I just told you we were married." Anakin didn't feel like having a heavy emotional conversation at the moment, especially since the next thing Obi-Wan was bound to ask was -

"So if that's the older version of me , where's the older version of you?"

Anakin grimaced. "So... here's the thing..."

"Anakin has also died in this future," older Obi-Wan finished.

"Hey, shut up Obi-Wan, that's not true!"

"I didn't say anything!" Obi-Wan sputtered.

"Not you, him ." Anakin pointed to older Obi-Wan. "We're not doing the 'from a certain point of view' thing. You are literally lying to yourself. I mean, you were already lying to yourself, but now your self is standing in front of you and you're still lying."

Older Obi-Wan sighed. "I would have really preferred for things to just settle down and become easy. But of course, where Skywalkers are involved, I never can escape, can I?"

"What happened?" Obi-Wan asked in a warning tone. "What are you guys hiding? What am I missing?"

Crickets.

No one really wanted to be the one to tell him.

"Hey, Obi-Wan, how about you tell him," Anakin suggested.

"I'm the one who needs to be told!" Obi-Wan exclaimed.

"Not you, him !" Anakin gestured at older Obi-Wan. "You do it. None of us want to."

"Oh, absolutely not Anakin Skywalker. I was going to do this the easy way. I was going to avoid this conversation. You, on the other hand, suddenly felt morally obligated to tell the full truth. Leave me out of this." Older Obi-Wan crossed his arms. "Also, to save us all the confusion, you can call me Ben."

"I will not be calling you Ben." Anakin turned back to Obi-Wan. Time to get this over with... "I'm a..." Anakin trailed off, mumbling.

"I didn't quite hear you?"

"Sthlrd," Anakin muttered.

"Still not quite sure what you -"

"Sith Lord! I'm a Sith Lord. I turned to the dark side for some reason that the older version of you doesn't know about and now I'm evil and I'm the evil Sith emperor's apprentice and my children were raised on opposite corners of the galaxy to hide them from me so I wouldn't discover them and corrupt them or something and now the galaxy is shrouded in darkness I killed all of the Jedi even the younglings and the remaining Jedi are hunted and Alderaan is gone and all kinds of other genocides and -"

"Deep breaths Anakin!" Obi-Wan exclaimed, taking Anakin's shoulders as he calmed down. "Deep breaths. Are you okay?"

"As okay as I can be knowing I'm a Sith Lord," Anakin muttered, sitting down. "And just when I thought I'd come to terms with it."

"There's no way," Obi-Wan said definitively. "It can't be. You wouldn't, ever. I don't believe it." He sounded as though he was mostly trying to convince himself.

"It's true," older Obi-Wan said sadly. "I faced him myself, back before he needed the suit to survive." Obi-Wan looked confused at this, but allowed his older self to continue. "It was definitely Anakin, as much as I didn't want to believe -"

"It was Anakin's evil twin," Obi-Wan decided.

"Obi-Wan, I don't have a twin. My mother only ever had one child. She wouldn't lie to me about that," Anakin told him.

"The Sith master must have cloned Anakin then, it's the only explanation."

"Anakin was gone when Darth Vader arose," older Obi-Wan said. "I didn't want to believe it either. But my apprentice was gone, and I had no choice but to face the fact that he was the one I had dueled, and he was the one in the suit."

"I've actually briefly conversed with Vader," Anakin said, smiling as he remembered how fun it had been to annoy himself. "He's very dramatic."

"So you've said," Leia said dryly.

"And also very easy to irritate. But he pretty much admitted that we were the same person, so the only way to point-of-view your way out of this is the way Obi-Wan - sorry, I mean older-Obi-Wan - did: saying that I'm dead and Vader killed me." Anakin shrugged and looked down, not fully capable of seeming nonchalant about this. "It's not true, though. It's me in that suit."

"I'm assuming you've all come to the same conclusion I have, then," Obi-Wan said.

"What's that conclusion?" Luke asked.

"Obviously we have to kill the emperor and convince this 'Vader' that he's acting stupid. Problem solved." Obi-Wan smiled.

The others blinked.