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Part 1 of Mustafar Canon Divergent AU
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2025-03-24
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3,689
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1/1
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The Man Who Sold the World

Summary:

Obi-Wan keeps rambling about how “good it’ll be” about how they’ll finally be free from this war to live a peaceful life like they always said they would when reality became too tough to face in the midst of so much death and destruction. It sounds like gibberish to Anakin’s ears. At some point, he can’t hold it in anymore, so he blurts, “What do you mean, Obi-Wan?”

Obi-Wan halts mid-sentence, staring. There’s a hollow but grim determination there. Anakin has never seen such a look on his Master’s face.

“What,” he whispers, “did you do?”

Notes:

I'm feral about the concept of Obi-Wan killing Palps when he comes for Anakin in Mustafar so this is a manifestation of my insanity. And it can't be said that Sith Obi-Wan isn't always a treat, especially when he falls for Anakin (get the joke do you get the joke)

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

When Vader awakes, it’s to a searing, throbbing pain, behind his eyes, in his skull, spreading in hot pulses of agony down his body. He makes to suck in a harsh breath, startled by the rush of pain; it catches in his throat and makes his chest jerk and heave. Why can’t he breathe? His throat isn’t clogged, he should be able to, but he can’t, he can’t, he forgot how to—

 

“Anakin.”

 

A familiar soft, accented voice.

 

Three syllables that increase the ache in his head by tenfold, blood rushing up to his head and flooding his vision with angry black spots.

 

“ Nnnnoo ,” Vader wheezes with what little breath he can muster. Abdominal muscles clench to sit up, but he immediately abandons the effort with a horrible shriek that sounds… so foreign from his own voice. It hurts. It hurts so bad. He can’t see anything but white light as the spots fade, swarming from his eyeballs like bugs from a rotting animal at the stomp of a boot. He can’t feel his arms, his legs, only heat and agony and helplessness.

 

Fear, Anakin’s voice whispers in the back of his skull.

 

Weak, Vader hisses back. Shoving Anakin’s presence out of the way feels like a physical effort.

 

A physical effort that doubles when his silhouette comes into view, blocking the light from Vader’s eyes and bringing a sweet—and unwelcome—relief to his head.

 

“Hush.” Obi-Wan’s voice filters through the space between them as if from a dream. It makes Vader’s teeth clench and grind. You did that yourself.

 

Hands cup his head to stop his half-coherent thrashing. If Vader didn’t know better, he’d think the faint tremble of those fingers against his temple was a sign of grief. Regret.

 

Then you are lost.

 

But he knew better than Anakin ever had.

 

“Hush, now, Anakin,” Obi-Wan repeats, fingers pressing into the soft— bare— sides of his head, a gentle pressure. “It’s alright. Calm down, stop struggling, that’s right. You can breathe. Deep breath, now.”

 

Vader could almost suffocate himself out of spite.

 

A wisp in the Force urges him to inhale, coaxing and cajoling his diaphragm into a spasm like Obi-Wan has physically reached inside of him, massaging at and rearranging his insides for his own peace of mind. It forces a gust of air into Vader’s lungs. His eyes widen and flicker against his will.

 

Obi-Wan hasn’t ever used the Force to control him in this way. Not even—

 

You were my brother, Anakin.

 

I loved you.

 

— even on Mustafar when it could have saved them both.

 

“I know,” that voice soothes, and now there are hands on his chest, riding the rise and fall of each breath, a taunt, a condescension—

 

(relief, reverence, promise)

 

Stop.

 

A reminder that he’s been beaten by his Master. That he will never best him.

 

(Never be his true equal, his partner in all things.)

 

Vader can still see the flames licking his body. Broken, useless, disgusting body.

 

The flash of a blue lightsaber blurs in his mind. He wants to scream. Snarl. Bite, tear, consume. Instead, the sound that comes out is a pitiful imitation of a growl, animalistic and utterly pathetic.

 

“What—“ A ragged inhale. The sound seems so loud to his ears, and there, Obi-Wan adjusts a mask clamped over his mouth and nose to align more closely with his gaping mouth. Oxygen. Kriff, he can’t even breathe on his own anymore, he was right, he forgot how, he can’t. “What did you— do ?”

 

A face, strangely damp, pushes into the tender skin on his head, and Vader hisses at the foreign feeling of skin-on-skin contact in this particular area. He should get used to it. Everything is gone. Not just his hair, only stiff, blackened strands remaining in scarce patches, but his arms, his legs. He’s sure if he had the strength to look he would find his genitals completely mangled. 

 

There is nothing.

 

Soft, ginger hair, hair Anakin (he) used to stare at when it caught the sunlight a certain way, or fell in his Master’s face, brushes against his forehead. He can feel something wet smearing against the reddened, sensitive flesh.

 

“I’m sorry, Anakin.” Now there’s something soft on his skin; lips, he realizes belatedly, something buried deep inside of him preening at the bare minimum affection after getting utterly mutilated by this man. This is why Anakin was weak, Vader thinks desperately. This is why he has to get rid of him. Because anything his Master could do to him, any wound he could inflict, would not deter him from following at his side with his tongue lolling out like a loyal dog waiting for a treat. A pat on the head. So much as a glance.

 

Those lips trail over the center of the top of his skull, the newly revealed flesh there, and up to his forehead. They halt there. Hands slide down to cup his face and tilt his head back to see his face.

 

An—Vader freezes, keeping his eyes trained on the ceiling. He could look at Obi-Wan. Make him face the pain he’s caused, the pain he’s caused Anakin for all these years. Let him see what he’s done and watch him suffer a fraction of the pain he’s suffered.

 

But he can’t.

 

He can’t.

 

But he can feel Obi-Wan’s eyes on his own.

 

Obi-Wan gasps in a wet breath, thumb ghosting over the corner of Anakin’s eye. “ Anakin . My Padawan. My sweet, broken boy, I’m so sorry. I failed you. I have failed you from the start.”

 

Vader would’ve spit on his perfect face. Told him he figured it out too late. Anakin is gone. You can’t save him.

 

But Anakin instead whispers from Vader’s mouth, “You left me.”

 

Mixed with Vader’s anger, the words simmer like hot coals in his mouth, burning his tongue to ash like the rest of his body. His lip curls back from his teeth, and he echoes, forceful and infuriated, “You left me!”

 

“I didn’t.” Obi-Wan presses his forehead against his, upside down. His voice is starting to break. Good. “I didn’t, Anakin. I pulled you out. I tried to walk away. I should have, maybe. Better yet I should have extended you the mercy of a quick death. You deserved that much. You deserved that kind of love from me.” A damp, devastated bark of a laugh, breathed against Vader’s brow line. “It is what the Council… what remains of it… asked of me.”

 

Anakin has Vader’s tongue, and he can’t choke him down, can’t lock him away along with every hope for a life without grief and death and war. He has him, and he will not let go any more than he will let Obi-Wan go. “Should’ve let me burn,” he chokes, that flash of aggrieved heat pressing down on him once more. “It’s what you’ve always done.”

 

That harsh one-off laugh from Obi-Wan’s lips crescendos to a hard string of them. He rips himself from Vader’s head, making Vader’s torso jolt, surprised, as Obi-Wan stalks down the short length of his supine form. Vader makes a low, almost scandalized sound when Obi-Wan crawls onto the foot of the infirmary bed Vader lies on; the infirmary of Padme’s ship, he recognizes distantly. Unable to pull himself away (perhaps unwilling to even if he could, because Anakin has waited so long for any grand gesture from his Master) Vader only watches, shocked, as Obi-Wan moves closer until he’s hovering over him, hands pressed flat to the stiff bed on either side of Vader’s neck. Look away. He can’t bear the intensity he feels on him. Look away. Do not look. Do as he has done to Anakin.

 

“I’ve let you burn?” Obi-Wan murmurs, dangerously low. “For all this time, Anakin? ” Vader winces, a physical thing. Anakin’s presence wails. “Yes, Anakin, that’s who you are. Yes, you’ve burned. And I’m sorry. ”

 

Obi-Wan’s breath shudders, ghosting against Vader’s cheek and over his breathing mask, fogging the outside of it, and he can’t suppress the shiver that it forces from him. “But so have I. And it is my fault. I should have loved you like you deserved. Not as I was supposed to.” 

 

The bed squeaks as Obi-Wan lifts a hand from the sterile sheets beside Vader’s head and brushes his knuckles over his forehead, his eyelid, his cheek. The mask.

 

It stops there.

 

“And I should have never left you alone, not for a minute.” The grip on the mask tightens, visible in the way the blood flees from Obi-Wan’s knuckles. 

 

It occurs to Vader for the first time that Obi-Wan sounds angry. Not just irritated like he got with some blunder Anakin had made. No, this was different.

 

He was truly, genuinely angry.

 

Vader chances a look at his eyes, and Anakin gasps, “Obi-Wan?”

 

Golden eyes stare back at him, furious. Heartbroken.

 

“I left you and you ran off and got married.” Obi-Wan leans in closer so that Anakin can see every tiny, minuscule freckle of blue left in his eyes. “You recklessly impregnated your non Force sensitive wife with Force sensitive babies. You have children now, Anakin.” Anakin’s stomach flips, queasy with the memory of his parting from Padme, his harrowing visions that led him to seek out the Chancellor in the first place. As his eyes drift, the hand on his mask tightens and none too gently tugs his face back to look Obi-Wan in the eyes.

 

“And no,” Obi-Wan grits out, “I didn’t forget about that. I knew I shouldn’t have left you to your own devices. The look in your eyes when I was telling you goodbye—“ The harsh shade of Obi-Wan’s eyes softens with remorse. “I shouldn’t have ever left you with him. He twisted your mind. Made you into something you’re not.”

 

The sickness in Anakin’s stomach recedes just a touch when Obi-Wan kisses the space between his eyes, something he hasn’t done since Anakin was very young. He can’t move. He doesn’t remember how.

 

Another tear falls right on Anakin’s nose. “But he can’t hurt you anymore. We’ll be okay. I’ll—fix this. Fix you. ”

 

Vader and Anakin fight for control of his voice, but it is Anakin who continues to win, irrepressible in Obi-Wan’s presence. “What?” he croaks weakly, struggling to focus with the battle raging in his head, two warring tones in his ears. 

 

He can’t hurt you anymore.

 

Vader does not sense his new Master’s presence in the Force.

 

Obi-Wan pulls back to look down at him, eyes shining with unshed tears. “I said I’ll fix you. I’ll get you two new mechno arms, and mechno legs. I’ll shave this dead hair off of your head. You’ll soak in the bacta tank every day. We can do some reconstructive work on the parts of you that are too damaged to heal.” Anakin’s face heats at the mention–not as if his skin will even show a flush anymore, dead and greyed as it is.

 

Obi-Wan keeps rambling about how “good it’ll be” about how they’ll finally be free from this war to live a peaceful life like they always said they would when reality became too tough to face in the midst of so much death and destruction. It sounds like gibberish to Anakin’s ears. At some point, he can’t hold it in anymore, so he blurts, “What do you mean, Obi-Wan?” 

 

Obi-Wan halts mid-sentence, staring. There’s a hollow but grim determination there. Anakin has never seen such a look on his Master’s face.

 

“What,” he whispers, “did you do? ”

 

He hates that his voice wobbles—not with fear, no, he’s never been afraid of his Master, not even on Mustafar when he should have been. It doesn’t even waver with the anger, the pain and resentment that Anakin has been projecting this whole conversation. He should swear to strike Obi-Wan down for whatever he’s done to the Chancellor—the Emperor.

 

Instead, his vocal cords flutter with excitement and disbelief along with his stomach. The shock of laying eyes upon Obi-Wan’s now golden eyes, jarring compared to their gentle greenish-blue shade prior, begins to morph into something he can only identify as delight. It erodes at Vader’s influence. It is entirely Anakin’s own.

 

Their eyes match again.

 

They can still—

 

Don’t you even think it. Foolish. Idiotic. Weak! You never learn! He let you burn and then he didn't even have the decency to end your life by his blade!

 

…they can be equals in all things.

 

It’s after this long, tense pause, fraught with speculation and silent of even their breathing, that Obi-Wan finally utters the words and confirms Anakin’s hopes and Vader’s fears. 

 

“I did what I had to do.”

 

Anakin lets his eyes slip shut.

 

If Obi-Wan died, he would feel it. Their bond has been forged too deeply and for too long to let it be any other way. Whether from feet away or from galaxies away, Anakin knows that he would feel the severing of their bond, the way he didn’t feel it when Obi-Wan was presumed dead along with a group of Padawans when he was in his teens, when Obi-Wan posed as Rako Hardeen for the Council and faked his own death behind Anakin’s back. Both times, he felt something distinctly off about the supposed deaths, because he would feel it.

 

And yes, maybe it’s the fact that he was out and on the verge of death when his new, now dead Master was apparently slain. But he didn’t feel anything at all.

 

And in the Force, their fragile, newborn bond is gone without a trace, wiped clean by the hand of the man who raised him, trained him, protected him, fought by his side through war and peace, broke his heart into a million pieces with his refusal to join Anakin and butchered him with one smooth swing of his lightsaber.

 

The man who couldn’t kill him and couldn’t watch him burn, who betrayed Anakin and then rescued him from the wreckage.

 

Of all these messy thoughts and emotions, all he can manage to vocalize is a blank, “How?”

 

Obi-Wan understands what Anakin means without needing to ask.

 

“He came for you in Mustafar.” Obi-Wan touches the edge of Anakin’s severed arm, heavily bandaged with the same mechanical socket at the end as Anakin had been equipped with back when Count Dooku severed his arm on Geonosis. His new mechno arm—if Obi-Wan is being truthful—would be inserted there.

 

If.

 

A calloused thumb brushes the durasteel edge of the socket. Anakin feels flayed open. “He had his ship ready for you,” Obi-Wan continues, voice strangely detached. “Ready to transport you where you belong. ” A bitter huff. “No, Anakin. You’re right where you belong. And I ensured you would be.”

 

Hands frame his face and gently, too gently, lift his head to face Obi-Wan. “I didn’t want this,” he says flatly. Anakin feels a faint tremor build in the base of his spine. “I wanted us to be together at the end of this war, but not like this. Never like this. But you wouldn’t listen to me. Always, Anakin, your fatal flaw has been your inability to listen to me. ”

 

Suddenly their faces are a mere breath apart, the slits of Obi-Wan’s pupils fluctuating frantically in the amber preserves of his crazed eyes. They look so foreign. So alien. But Anakin’s must look foreign then, too, because he’s not supposed to be Anakin.

 

“But you will now, won’t you?” Hot breath hits his breathing mask, forming little clouds of condensation over the plastoid. Graying bristles of Obi-Wan’s beard ghost over his cheek. His breath hitches all too loudly, and he knows Obi-Wan hears it by the way his expression shifts to something desperate, almost pleading.

 

“You’ll listen to me.” Obi-Wan’s fingers tremble where they touch his grotesque face. “You’ll listen to your Master. Your real Master. I’m your Master, Anakin, your friend. Don’t you see?”

 

Anakin tries to speak, but his mouth only flutters into vague, empty shapes of syllables, some airy sound wheezing from his throat and reverberating through the breathing tube. Obi-Wan presses his lips together, studying him. Anakin has often felt like he’s under a microscope when Obi-Wan looks at him, like he’s trying to unlock some secret not yet revealed to him, buried somewhere deep within Anakin in a place Obi-Wan has not touched and cannot figure out how to. He’s never felt this strange, pleasant yet unpleasant sensation so acutely as he does now, lying on a hard infirmary bed, body boiled down to his last layer of skin, no limbs and no breath of his own to keep himself afloat. It’s only Obi-Wan. Since Qui-Gon’s death and Obi-Wan’s subsequent inheritance of Anakin’s training, it’s only been Obi-Wan.

 

And Obi-Wan had fallen.

 

For him.

 

For Anakin.

 

So it’s him who tries to shove their mouths together, his entire core tensing as he lifts his neck, but there’s the mask between them, and he hurts too bad, everything hurts. He groans brokenly and slumps back as tears of frustration spring to his eyes, panting, and Vader screams in his head, chanting how Obi-Wan did this to him, withheld every real show of raw love that Anakin offered him, and now that he finally indicates a willingness to reciprocate, Anakin is stopped from bridging that final gap by the pain Obi-Wan inflicted upon him.

 

His upper lip twists in a snarl. He wants to bite. He wants to be bitten. He hates Obi-Wan. He loves Obi-Wan.

 

Anakin realizes, belatedly, how loudly he’s projecting into their bond, fractured but forcefully held open by those fingers that had prodded at his diaphragm to coax him to breathe. Held open, too, by Anakin’s inability to let the past go.

 

Obi-Wan stares at him, lips parting in a silent question. His hand shifts back down to the oxygen mask. This time, it’s not in anger, the resentment that grows to its breaking point between them like a blood blister. His fingers don’t clench. They settle. Tap softly with a single pinky finger against the edge of the plastoid.

 

Anakin gasps in a harsh, rattling breath, and with every ounce of adoration, disgust, anguish, exultation, love, hatred, love, love, love, love, lovelovelovelove in his aching body, he pleads, “ Master.”

 

The hand at his mask clenches and rips it off in one lightning-fast motion.

 

“I’m here,” Obi-Wan gasps, sounding more breathless than Anakin.

 

The mask drops beside Anakin’s head, and Obi-Wan surges down to crush their mouths together.

 

It’s a relief to feel the scrape of his beard against his mouth. It’s a relief to sink his teeth in and draw a dot of blood from Obi-Wan’s lower lip, and to be nipped in return, a fond reprimand. This is all he’s wanted since he was twelve.

 

This is everything. There is everything and all there will ever be.

 

The taste of iron stings on Anakin’s tongue. He tries to thrust it into Obi-Wan’s mouth, but Obi-Wan tightens his hold on Anakin’s jaw and holds him in place as he pulls back. Anakin’s torso tenses as a whine of protest slips past his teeth, but it’s quickly swallowed as Obi-Wan dives back in, gentler, but deeper too, pushing his tongue past Anakin’s parted lips and licking at the roof of his mouth, the backs of his teeth. All Anakin can do is sigh and grunt and cry, overwhelmed with emotion, as Obi-Wan touches the furthest corners of just about the only undamaged part of him he has left to offer. Maybe if Obi-Wan had kissed him before, it would soothe his Master to feel this familiar part of him. Instead, this is, as everything else is right now, uncharted territory.

 

A thumb hooks over the swell of Anakin’s lower lip and tugs it down with fingers clamped around his chin to speak into his open mouth. “I’ll be anything you need, Anakin. Anything. I promise.” Anakin starts to choke softly from the thick, salty lump in his throat and the—oh, yeah. The lack of oxygen. He makes an aborted noise in the back of his throat, chest spasming. Obi-Wan makes a gentle shushing noise and rests a hand on his chest. “Shh, shh. I’ve got you. That’s what I’m here for, remember?” He presses one last pillow-soft, open-mouthed kiss against Anakin’s gasping mouth, producing a loud, wet sound that rings loud and clear in the room, drowning out the sounds of Anakin’s pathetic attempts to inhale. 

 

It feels like he’s been struggling for air for hours, though it can’t have been much more than a full minute, when Obi-Wan settles the mask back over his mouth and nose and tightens the straps to cling there. Anakin gasps, his body arching off the mattress with the sheer relief of it, inadvertently pushing him up against Obi-Wan, trembling.

 

And Obi-Wan holds him steady, cradling him like he’s his Padawan again and nothing— nothing— has ever changed. Anakin shuts his eyes and tilts his head to bury his face into his chest, letting himself be rocked in place and cooed at.

 

“That’s right,” Obi-Wan whispers, cheek pressed against Anakin’s. “This is what you needed, isn’t it? This is all you needed. You just needed your Master.” Fingers tangle in Anakin’s blackened hair. He’s almost certain he hears the ends snap. He doesn’t care. “I’ve got you, darling. It’s okay now. Everything is going to be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”

 

Golden eyes gaze down at him tenderly, and golden eyes stare right back.

 

They’re together at the end of the world.

 

“Our future is ours alone now,” Obi-Wan says softly, “and you’ll never have to fight battles that aren’t your own.”

 

Obi-Wan said that he never wanted it to happen this way, but Anakin—

 

Anakin thinks this is exactly how it was meant to happen. A charred husk of himself in the wake of their battle, he’s certain it had to happen this way.

 

He can’t even bring himself to regret any of it.

 

They’re the same thing now.

 

Equal in all things.

Notes:

I finger-typed this entire thing on my phone in the car aren't you so proud of me

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