Obi-Wan palms the door and enters his quarters with a frown. He looks tired when he comes home. Far too tired to have gotten that way sitting in Council meetings all day long. He's distracted. As if he's searching for something.

No. Make that someone. He doesn't see Anakin. With that realization comes another one. He lets his guard down, and now I can see how deeply exhaustion has seeped into his body. He reaches for a ceramic cup to make tea, but his grip is shaky. The cup falls to the floor with a loud noise, and Obi-Wan's shoulders jerk, betraying the state of his nerves.

Obi-Wan abandons the thought of eating or drinking. I can tell that his appetite is suffering. He was always slender, but now there is a fragility that belies the hardness of the battle-honed muscle beneath.

My eyes follow him into the fresher where he undresses. I have seen him naked before. Many times. But I have never allowed myself to watch with such unseemly avidity. I am confronted by his beauty yet again, but I fear there is something dangerously wrong with me. For I miss his Padawan braid with a hunger that I cannot quite control.

He groans loudly when the spray of the water hits his face. He shuts his eyes, and I know he cannot see me, so I move closer. Close enough to touch. He strokes himself, caresses his chest, then the eager flesh that jumps to attention below. I wish that I could feel the silken hardness that throbs between his legs. But I am confounded by my own desire to see him happy.

For it is not my name that he whispers as he comes. "Anakin…"

Obi-Wan wasn't happy. I don't know why that seemed like such a revelation, but it was. Time, a great deal of time, had passed since I died and went into the Force. More than ten years, if my calculations were accurate. All that time, and I never tried to visit him, peer into his life, not because I didn't want to, but because I did want to. Too much.

I had difficulty separating from my former life and my former Padawan. I never confessed my true feelings to him, something I deeply regretted, but I sometimes wondered if things might have been harder on him if he had known. As it was, his grief over my death remained unresolved. I couldn't have guessed how much he truly loved me, and I was glad of that. If we had become lovers, how much greater would the pain have been? Would we in fact have been able to part at all? Or would the ruinous wake of my murder have dragged him into the Force with me?

Obi-Wan deserved to live the life the Force had meant for him. He was destined to be a great Jedi Knight. I wouldn't have wanted to stand in the way of that fate. Because he would have chosen me. As I had chosen him.

And now that I could see what the years had done to him, I was sad.

Obi-Wan wasn't happy. He never really let me go because he had not told me what was in his heart, and I never really let him go because I had not allowed him to do this.

I lamented the fact that Obi-Wan seemed ordained to be alone, never loving or letting himself be loved, because of the poor example his Master showed him. I was too concerned with upholding a code that was inflexible, something that perplexed me since I had always found my own way before. Yes, there was an inherent inequality in the relationship between Master and Padawan. Yes, abuse was possible and did occur despite the moral standards we fought to maintain throughout the galaxy. But Obi-Wan's training had been virtually completed, he had stood on the brink of knighthood, and he had been a man fully capable of making his own decisions about whom he wished to love and share the rest of his life with.

And I had robbed him of that.

It was my fault that Obi-Wan was not happy. It was my fault that my Apprentice could not voice what he felt for Anakin.

He believed it was wrong.

He believed that Jedi should not, could not love.

But he was wrong.

Because I did, and I still do.

I could not bear to see my beloved Obi-Wan this way. I loved him too much not to seek his happiness before my own. If I could not be with him, and I could not wish for his death, so that we might be together, then I would do the only other thing possible.

Obi-Wan stirred as he slept, dreaming perhaps of someone who could love him.

As I should have.

As I could not.

"You deserve to be happy, my love," I murmured, brushing the gentlest of kisses against his temple. No true kiss this, a tiny disturbance in the Force ruffled his hair. How ironic to know now what I could have had…

If only…

End