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  Qui-Gon found him at practice, working through cadences and filling a cave with blue light and sound.

  Obi-Wan realised that he still thought of that finding as a physical thing, rather than Qui-Gon choosing to appear before him. It was surely the latter and not the former; in death his old Master was unbounded by physical space. He frowned at the limits of his thinking, limits he should already be moving beyond. That would have meant a chiding from Yoda, were they still able to speak. Too much concentration on the crude matter, disregarding the luminous…

  I feared you were disregarding the here and now, Qui-Gon said.

  Obi-Wan paused, finally registering the heat which his movements had generated. “I supposed I ought to start preparing myself,” he said. “My departure might be in two decades’ time, or it might be sooner. The Empire has taken much of the Outer Rim. It doesn’t have to be here for its threat to reach this world.”

  Wise policy. No hint of reproach in Qui-Gon’s voice, though there was a certain wryness in the words that followed. Yet I sense that this is more… symptomatic. You’re making other preparations.

  Obi-Wan nodded. He extinguished the saber and sat. There was no evidence of eyes watching him, but he trusted that the gesture would be seen and understood. “I have to consider… what I will say to Luke. What I will tell him about his father, and his enemy.”

  For the truth is dangerous.

  Obi-Wan hated the thought of that. He remembered where lying had led before. He remembered a young voice, demanding How many lies have I been told? Those had been necessary deceits, he’d thought. They had, after all, been decided on by Jedi Masters in a time of war. Yet when the falsehoods were laid bare, he’d felt hollowed by guilt. Later he had wondered if that had been one of the first points where it all began to go wrong, and ever since that first moment of questioning, it had been a gnawing ache of regret in his heart. To do that again, to lie to another Skywalker, was a thought which did much more than gnaw. Its teeth sank deep.

  Still, Qui-Gon’s assertion was quite correct. There was so much threat in the simple truth of who Luke’s father was. That was the case for both Skywalker children, but Obi-Wan feared it was especially so for Luke. If Vader could be brought down was another matter, but for now… for now, the truth was dangerous. It threatened to undermine everything they were working towards.

  “There’s danger in trickery too.”

  I do recall you tricking me, Qui-Gon murmured. That went less disastrously than it might have done, even turned out quite well.

  “It might have been a fluke.”

  Or just the first time.

  “I don’t like it being just the first time.”

  It wouldn’t be the first time Luke has been told a mistruth about his father. Have you spoken with Owen? There was the sense that Qui-Gon’s spirit was directing a pointed look his way. He'll have spun up his own version of events for the boy already, him and Beru. A cautioning note entered the voice of Obi-Wan’s old Master. Luke won't have been taught that his father was a Jedi, Obi-Wan.

  “I doubt Anakin will have even been a soldier or fighter pilot, in Owen’s telling,” Obi-Wan said. “I'll have to dispute that, tactfully.”

  But I don't think you can expose everything he tells Luke as a falsehood. We know what resentment can do.

  “I know. It's just not a fun conversation to anticipate, even besides the usual factors.” He sighed. “Hello Owen, I appreciate that you don't want me intruding, but I thought we ought to compare notes on our carefully crafted deceptions…” The silence stretched out, and he sighed again. He should take this seriously. He ought to sketch out the likely version of events. “Owen will have placed Anakin firmly on Tatooine, and kept him there for as long as he could. Very much Owen’s brother, who might’ve got out into space sometimes but wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the Galaxy’s bright centre. The boy who won the podrace will be a namesake, and if anyone remembers the war hero, the same thing will apply.”

  Well, at least Luke will jump at being told his father was actually a hero. It’s everything a boy could imagine, if he’s grown up being bored to distraction.

  “That’s hazardous in itself. Remember what Yoda always told us about excitement?” But for the most part, Obi-Wan was worried by the little thrill which rose up in him at the thought of being able to relive the good times. He could – and probably should, for Luke’s sake – present Anakin as the shining hero, the Jedi Obi-Wan had always known he could be. “But it will be tempered with sadness, of course. Because Anakin Skywalker is long dead.”

  Qui-Gon didn’t miss a beat. How?

  Obi-Wan took a moment. “A warrior named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil…” he hesitated again, suddenly finding a precipice before him. Then, gathering himself, he took the step: “...betrayed and murdered Luke’s father.”

  It was true, after a fashion. Anakin had been betrayed by his worst impulses, and by a monster preying on those as well as his virtues. The boy he had trained was gone, as Yoda had said.

  Qui-Gon, however, didn’t seem to see things in such a clean-cut way, not that he often had in life. The boy's curious, Obi-Wan. You see it as clearly as I – and even if you'd never met him, you knew his parents, and that would tell you enough. Both of them have passed that curiosity on, doubtless to both their children.

  Obi-Wan nodded wearily. “So I'll need details.”

  You know you will. Copious details. Luke is trusting, even naive, but he'll still take some effort to deceive. It was like being a Padawan again, his Master receiving an answer to some testing question and now expecting an explanation too. So, when and where did Luke's father fall at the hands of Vader?

  But that was a sterner tone than a Master would use in merely testing an apprentice. Again, Obi-Wan felt that his old Master was goading him, prodding to see just how far Obi-Wan was willing to go in the service of a kindly lie. He felt a twinge, but hardened his resolve and pressed on. It was only fitting. Obi-Wan was no callow student, and his judgement was being tested in the weightiest of matters.

  “Where Anakin died for me, Qui-Gon. In the Knightfall.”

  A pause, befitting the gravity of that notion. You'll have heard the stories of escapes from the sack of the Temple. You wouldn't-

  “No. Anakin, our Anakin, would have stood and fought to the very end. I have heard stories, after all, in which he was the last to fall. The last Jedi, even.”

  Obi-Wan bowed his head, even as he wondered who the final defender had really been. That would be a noble end. He remembered a quote like it from his history lessons - Lord Hoth during the New Sith Wars if he recalled correctly. We will make a stand worthy of the sagas, even if there is no one left to tell it. Yes. That was the spirit of a true Jedi.

  It was a death which Obi-Wan, in the depths of sleepless nights when he was new to Tatooine and exile, had wished for himself. Indeed, he felt a new kind of spiking guilt, stealing the accolade from the unknown fallen warrior who had held out to the very end and bestowing it upon the very man who had led Operation Knightfall, and quite likely killed the final defender.

  I wonder about that, you know. Just how many do the last Jedi number?

  Obi-Wan had the impression of being looked at sidelong. Qui-Gon did like to muddy a perfectly clear narrative sometimes. He'd enjoyed messiness – still enjoyed it, it seemed. The Living Force was a current which twisted and flowed with a will. If you kept your mind on the serene Cosmic Force and the pristine future, Qui-Gon said, you'd be tripped up by the untidy present.

  Obi-Wan had always struggled with that, even before his life became defined by the way events tripped him and sent him stumbling.

  He shrugged and said, “I'd rather not risk raising false hopes for Luke. There might still be Jedi out there, but the Sith have had two decades to hunt for them. And for the survivors, that's two decades of getting older and wearier, and finding other concerns. War might bring a Jedi or two out of hiding, or it might not. It's… simpler, if Yoda and I are the last two remaining. As for how the two of us survived, we were far away, caught up in the fighting. We returned far too late.” That much was perfectly true.

  He found himself lingering over his own words. How would it feel for a Jedi to just… let go, after all this? It was probably for the best, he knew, if they could do it and remain hidden, but was there a price to ceasing to hear the Force and turn away from the Galaxy? To meekly turn away when a file of Clone Troopers, or the new Stormtroopers, marched down a street?

  Obi-Wan had had to do similarly himself not long ago – not for Imperial troops, but another breed of vicious brute. The Knights of Ren had come to Tatooine, evidently to do business with the mighty Jabba. Once, they’d have been furtive even here, wary of detection by the Jedi, but when Obi-Wan had rounded the corner, he’d found them swaggering brazenly along.

  The Dark Side had fumed off them, its concentration almost enough to mask the fact that they were all quite weak. Obi-Wan had nearly recoiled for it, and had wanted to go for his lightsaber and confront them. As a younger man, as a Jedi able to walk tall and carry the authority of the Order with him, he would have challenged the vagabonds without hesitation, and he would probably have prevailed alone without trouble.

  With Anakin, he would have had them in irons or in pieces in less than a minute.

  In the changed Galaxy, however, the same Jedi who had confronted Sith Lords and General Grievous had to pull away, lowering his head and making himself appear small. He had done as anyone else who wasn’t an Imperial, or one of the Hutts’ horde of jockeying mercenaries, would have done.

  It won’t last for them, for what it’s worth. Qui-Gon’s voice carried a certain grim satisfaction. The Sith are jealous of their power. I can feel Sidious’ malice sweeping across the Galaxy as his gaze alights on one sect after another. Light or Dark, he’ll have supremacy over them all or eradicate them. The Knights of Ren just don’t understand they’re on his list yet.

  And there again was the maddening sense of torpor, for Obi-Wan.

  That was probably the reason why those other exiles could let go - or rather, why they could take hold of something else, however much smaller than the Order, the Galaxy and their service. That had almost been Obi-Wan’s path, whose echo still stalked him, when he was weary enough that the winding tunnels became the corridors of the Sundari Palace, and he could imagine Satine just around the corner.

  The melancholy curdled even as he thought of it. Thwarted futures and unrealised stories hemmed him in, left such a narrow path for the remaining Jedi to navigate. Just how precariously slender was the way forward? How easily could it be blocked?

  “I find myself fretting that the Force will play some trick on us, that Luke will have a gift which undoes all of my plans. Psychometry, perhaps – imagine if he touches that saber, the first time, and he sees the things that were done with it. What if his first experience of the Force is horror?”

  He could hear Qui-Gon’s reproachful frown in his voice, though a smile lightened it just a little. Have a little faith, Obi-Wan. If nothing else, Anakin never had the gift.

  “To think that’s where we’ve ended up. Reassuring ourselves about things the Chosen One couldn’t do, even as we make up stories about him.”

  Perhaps it’s a step in the right direction.

  “How so?”

  We might’ve trusted too much in the prophecies to simply carry us. Perhaps we have to write a saga ourselves, to see the ending the Galaxy needs.

  “I suppose so,” Obi-Wan said, stroking his beard. Then he shifted, and stood. “I’ll sleep on it tonight, though. A story like this… needs some polish.”