The boy cried. But she didn't.
Padmé Amidala was already halfway gone—her voice little more than a breath caught between the living and the dead. Her face was pale, speckled with sweat and silence. The painkillers barely held her together.
> "There's still good in him..." she whispered, her voice catching like a dying spark.
Obi-Wan sat beside her. Still. Silent. He didn't offer comfort. What words could he possibly give?
He'd watched her husband burn alive.
He'd watched a brother become a beast.
Now he watched her—the last light of the Republic—fade like a dying sun.
And next to her the med droid buzzed softly. Then louder. A sharp whine of alerts and failing vitals.
Padmé's eyes locked onto Obi-Wan for one final second. Wide. Unblinking. Glassy with sorrow—and something deeper.
Forgiveness.
And then… nothing.
Her hand fell limp against the cot, sliding toward the floor.
She died staring upward. No screams. No struggle.
Just a whisper of love and guilt, swallowed by the sterile air.
Then came the sound, sharp, wet and piercing, a newborns cry.
There was just one, a single child, a small, reddish baby boy. Screaming with lungs too new to understand silence. The med droid raised him gently in its arms, as if unsure what to do with something so... alive.
Obi-Wan didn't move.
He stared at the infant—at the raw, red skin and flailing limbs and the face that was, impossibly, his father's and his mother's at once.
He wanted to feel joy. Relief.
He felt nothing.
Just a cold, nauseating weight settling in the pit of his stomach.
> Luke.
He said the name aloud.
It didn't sound like a name. It sounded like a sentence, and soon the realisation hit him. There was no hope or balance anymore. Now there was just this one boy, born in the ashes of betrayal, screaming into a galaxy that no longer had any use for heroes.
> Now there was only this one child, no mother, no father, no sister's, and no future, just dust.
And with that thought the light above them flickered. A power surge. The atmosphere seemed to press in closer, as if even the station could feel the shift.
A child was born.
A woman died.
And Obi-Wan Kenobi broke a little further.
After that he brought the baby to Owen Lars under a burning sky—a sky so white with heat it looked bleached by death.
The suns blazed overhead, but Obi-Wan felt cold.
He stood there, holding the child like it was someone else's sin.
Owen stepped out of the adobe dome, wiping grease from his hands. His face was sun-worn, jaw tight. He didn't speak. He didn't move.
Obi-Wan said only one thing.
> "He's hers."
And with that said, he simply extended the child to him that was only wrapped in a faded medical cloak, still smelling faintly of sterilized birth and blood.
Owen didn't reach out.
He just stared at it, like the child was a bomb that might detonate at any second.
Only when Beru emerged did someone move. Her hands shook. Her lips parted in a gasp. She didn't ask. She just took him.
Held him. Pressed him to her chest. Whispered his name without knowing how she knew it.
> "Luke."
Soon after, Owen turned away and they didn't speak until sunset.
Obi-Wan stayed outside, seated on a broken droid chassis, watching the wind paint swirls in the dust.
When Owen finally opened the door, his voice was like a cut.
> "We can't feed three mouths, we can hardly feed ourselves you know."
And for a moment there was silence, until he continued.
> "If you want to keep him alive, you better help us do it."
There was no fury, no pleading in Owen's voice, just facts.
And Obi-Wan nodded. Because what else was there to say?
Two weeks later, he walked into Mos Eisley in a dead man's cloak.
It wasn't his. He'd taken it off a slaver who died coughing on his own blood.
He pawned what was left of his Jedi belt for credits—refused to sell the saber, but refused to use it either. It sat at the bottom of a bag like a relic no longer his.
His first job came fast: 500 credits to clear out slavers harassing the eastern trade routes.
He said yes. No questions.
He shot two in the back, strangled the third with a fiberwire, and left the fourth alive—long enough.
When a Hutt posted a bounty for a deserter hiding in the canyons, Obi-Wan found him in two days.
> "Bring him in alive," they said.
He did.
But he didn't bring him in unbroken.
And soon he stopped telling people his name.
He gave whatever alias came to mind: Ben, Jorad, Kenth. No one cared.
When a Rodian bartender once asked, "What did you do before blasters?"
Obi-Wan sipped his drink and answered:
> "Faith."
So the Kill Count kept Growing. Sure he never planned to keep going and he didn't want to, but the credits kept Luke alive.
So he kept at it, kept doing the only thing he felt that he really anymore knew how to do, the only thing he was truly ever good at, killing and death.
He sniped spice dealers from canyon ridges while they were mid-piss. Cracked skulls in underground pit fights where no one asked about the scars across his ribs. Tracked down debt runners, slave smugglers, gang deserters—and every time he pulled the trigger, it got easier.
He started drinking before jobs instead of after.
Stopped flinching at screams.
Stopped burying bodies.
> "You've still got the look," one merc said. "Not the Jedi look. The killer look."
He didn't argue.
Every kill paid a little.
Every kill fed Luke.
And every kill hollowed Obi-Wan just a little more.
He never went back to the homestead.
Instead, he left credits wrapped in oilcloth, buried beneath vaporators, or tucked in canisters beneath rocks. Always at night. Always unseen.
Beru probably guessed. Owen probably didn't care.
He watched from the hills as Owen hauled parts in 50°C heat, as Beru hung wet cloth out to dry in wind that turned everything to sandpaper.
He watched Luke crawl, laugh, reach for the sky.
But he never went near him.
He whispered in the dunes:
> "I'm not worth knowing. I'm not worth trusting. I protect them best by staying far away."
And he faded into legend. A ghost with a blaster.
At night's he dreamed of Mustafar.
Of fire.
Of screams.
Of Anakin, burning and howling his name.
Of Padmé gasping for breath while her heart broke.
Of Yoda's voice, soft and final:
> "Failed, I have."
He'd jolt awake in sweat, the thin mattress soaked, his hand around the grip of a blaster—not a lightsaber.
> Never again the saber.
He couldn't lift it. He wasn't a Jedi anymore.
By the time Luke turned one, Obi-Wan had finally accepted what he was.
Not a peacekeeper.
Not a sage.
Not a hero.
A man who knew how to kill.
> "They trained me to defend peace.
But all I ever did was lead men to their deaths.
All I ever did was take lives in the name of justice.
And now? I do it for food.
For credits.
Because a boy I made an orphan needs to eat.
And because no one else will bleed to keep him warm."