I once wrote Obi-Wan having a genetic joint/connective tissue disorder to support a plot point (in Anakin’s DNA Wish), but now I think I’m just. Stuck with it as a basic headcanon for him? And it’s going to come up regularly in any fic that involves his genetic code.
The fictional joint connective tissue disorder is managed; he needed more intense treatment ages 6-15, but during the Prequels, it’s just a checkup every few months and a daily dose of medication.
He’s generally fine during the prequels, and not in any significant chronic pain from it due to the childhood treatments; there’s some pain with regularity, but that’s due to him still having hypermobility and very literally overextending himself in a way that hurts for a few days after.
It was mild in the first place and the gffa had the medical tech to mitigate most of it long-term, but… still a thing in his life.
It was Not Great after his time in Ventress’s care, though he didn’t notice due to the many, many other pains.
It was a much bigger problem on Tatooine, where his specific medication was difficult to come by, and often too expensive for him to afford.
(Snippet from fic below the cut if you want to see some technobabble and a name for the thing)
“We could say sibling,” Bant offers. “I know you’re not old enough to be his father, though that is what a fifty percent precise match usually indicates; human siblings usually share something like forty to sixty percent of their genome, though, so technically this falls into that range. But, um… yes, since Obi-Wan’s blood type is O-positive with a both a negative and a positive Rh antigen gene, it appears that the O replaced the previously-sourceless A gene, and Obi-Wan’s Rh-negative indicator replaced the previously sourceless Rh-positive gene, resulting in Anakin’s blood type shifting from AB-positive to B-negative.”
She shuffles a few papers and starts explaining in a nervous ramble, “I noticed that there was a red-hair genotype in the new data that hadn’t been there before, one that we rarely see outside of a handful of planets, and even there it’s only usually about ten percent of the population actually displaying the phenotype at all. I only noted it for a second, but then I came across a positive indicator for what is currently referred to as the Stewjoni-Gatalentan arthrostrucural mutation, which only shows up in those two populations, excluding diasporas. It’s present at a rate approaching thirty-seven percent on Gatalenta and sixty-eight percent on Stewjon. I already knew Obi-Wan had it, because he’d demonstrated the specific mutation when we were padawans by bending his fingers back and letting me feel out how the cartilage functioned differently from human standard, and that joint mutation is now present in Anakin’s new genome sequence, which it really shouldn’t be and definitely wasn’t before. Between the red-hair gene and the S-G AM gene, I thought it was… very strange, and did a paternity test. It came out positive. So…”
“Ben,” Luke says, grabbing at his face with… well, with one hand, but he moves like he expected both, and forgot the other wouldn’t land without a prosthesis. “Ben, I’m six again. Or seven or five or something. The point is, I’m small and I have one hand and you’re alive. I have no idea what planet we’re on, but the Force is being weird everywhere.”
Is it?
It is.
Obi-Wan had thought it was mostly because he wasn’t dead anymore.
Why isn’t he dead anymore?
—————–
“Ben.”
Hm. No.
“Ben, wake up.”
The famed—and infamous—negotiator turns over and tries to bury his face in his pillow.
His pillow is dirt.
Unfortunate.
“Ben, I’m going to kick you.”
That’s nice. Obi-Wan’s dead, though, so it’s not like kicking is going to—
A tiny foot collides with his hip.
Ah.
Obi-Wan rolls onto his back, blinks open his eyes, and considers the situation.
A too-young face glares down at him, framed against a backdrop of unfamiliar, mostly-green trees and a pale blue sky.
“Luke?” he asks.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” the boy scoffs. “Literally.”
Well, then.
A bit rude, that, but Obi-Wan supposes he can allow for such. The situation does appear to be a strange one. He moves to sit up, and Luke scoots away and to the side, still standing.
The boy is very small. Very young. Too young to be missing a hand the way he is; he didn’t lose that until adulthood.
He’s also very naked.
Obi-Wan looks down at himself. He, thankfully, is not naked. A glance around shows a small pile of what might have been Luke’s clothes. He wonders…
“I kept tripping on them,” Luke explains before the question can be asked. “And I can’t tie them up with one hand, and the Force is being… weird.”
Obi-Wan stares at him, because this is the Luke he knows, with all the memories that entails, and that’s…
He stares down at his hands, calloused but not wrinkled, scarred but not stained. There are no liver spots.
“Your hair’s reddish,” Luke tells him. “Or dark blonde. I don’t know, the color’s weird.”
“It’s not weird,” Obi-Wan protests, before he can really stop himself. He reaches up and brushes a little just low enough to see it, except it’s back to the length he had at the start of the clone wars, and hangs over his eyes. It’s the right color, too.
“It’s weird,” Luke asserts. “Ben, what the kriff is going on?”
“Language,” Obi-Wan corrects absentmindedly. He thinks he sounds a little faint. It’s probably normal, for this situation. Nothing about this situation is normal, of course, but that’s his life.
His death, too.
Somehow.
“Ben,” Luke says, grabbing at his face with… well, with one hand, but he moves like he expected both, and forgot the other wouldn’t land without a prosthesis. “Ben, I’m six again. Or seven or five or something. The point is, I’m small and I have one hand and you’re alive. I have no idea what planet we’re on, but the Force is being weird everywhere.”
Is it?
It is.
Obi-Wan had thought it was mostly because he wasn’t dead anymore.
Why isn’t he dead anymore?
He can hear his heart beating. That’s disconcerting.
Luke tugs at his collar. “Ben, come on, focus.”
“Luke,” Obi-Wan says, and he can’t say more.
His head is in the clouds, and past them. His mind spins across star systems and feels… Light.
There’s dark, too, but less, and there is light. So many bright, shining, familiar motes among the hubbub of life.
“Oh,” he says, feeling far away and loose to the atoms. Luke puts a tiny hand to Obi-Wan’s face. It comes away wet. The child himself looks worried, but Obi-Wan can’t be bothered to notice. His family is back. “The Jedi are alive.”
–
When Obi-Wan comes back to himself, it’s because Luke is pulling his clothes over, and the noise is disruptive.
“Luke?”
“I couldn’t help you,” the child-who-is-not tells him. “So I decided to bring my things closer, since it’s all I cando.”
“Let me help,” Obi-Wan says, still a little far away and unable to claw his way back into his own self. He finds a tank top, nothing quite as nice a quality as a Jedi’s tunic, but small and form-fitting on an adult Luke. He motions the boy closer, and puts it on him, quickly twisting and tying and pinning it in place, until it looks… well, it doesn’t look fashionable, but it’ll do until they can get him something in the right size.
“I’m still mad at you,” Luke tells him, even as Obi-Wan does what he can to make the underthings function as pants. They’ll have to turn his jacket into a long overtunic if they want him to avoid more attention than necessary.
“Because I didn’t tell you about your father,” Obi-Wan sighs.
“Because you planned to have me fight him,” Luke says, and the strain is audible. “And you didn’t tell me who he was.”
Obi-Wan doesn’t want to talk about each and every reason he hates to think of Vader’s identity. “It would have made it more difficult.”
“I deserved to know, Ben.”
He did.
Obi-Wan finishes tying off what he can, and adds the jacket as an overlayer. It fits poorly, even repurposed, but it’ll do for now.
Luke turns around when he’s done, crossing his arms as well as he can.
“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan says, because there’s nothing else he can say. “I’m… perhaps if we’d had more time—”
“You don’t actually believe that.”
Obi-Wan looks away. “I don’t know. I can’t know. I like to think that I would have.”
But it hurts. Even all these years later, even after dying to his blade, it still hurts to think of that monster as Anakin.
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to stop being angry with you,” Luke says, blunt and frank and all such things.
There are plenty of things Obi-Wan could say to that, about how anger isn’t the Jedi way, about how it would have only hurt Luke to know his father’s identity, about how Anakin as good as died on the shores of Mustafar. He doesn’t say any of them.
He looks at Luke, and he wants to cry.
The peace of death, of being one with the force, it’s beyond him now. He’s back in a body, a real one, and it may not have all the aches and pains of the one he died with, but it has the chemicals and hormones that any human body comes with. He has to struggle to rein them in.
Luke huffs and turns in too-big socks, and plops himself right onto Obi-Wan’s crossed legs.
“Luke?”
“I’m cold,” he says, leaning back against the layers of Jedi muslin and linen. Obi-Wan’s breath catches, memories clashing as he remembers holding Luke, age three seconds, Anakin, age ten years, Ahsoka, age fourteen. Children in his care, and—and—
(The robes are in better shape than the ones Obi-Wan had worn for over twenty years.)
He never had a chance to hold Luke like this, after giving him to his aunt and uncle. Obi-Wan should have been there for the twins, more than he was. He should have been able to visit Anakin and Padmè in the senatorial apartments, to watch Luke and Leia grow up with each other and their parents, to be an uncle instead of just the strange, mad old man in the middle of the wastes. Obi-Wan has lost so much, so many times over, but in this moment he is only struck by how utterly he was robbed of his chance to enjoy the family he could have had. Anakin would have had to leave the Order, yes, but Obi-Wan would have visited at any chance to see his brother, to see his niece and nephew, his sister-in-law, his…
Obi-Wan has given up his chances at family, willingly and not, far too many times, he thinks. It’s enough to break a man. It’s probably broken him.
He’s wrapping his arms around Luke and pulling him close before he can stop himself, head falling to press against the soft, straw-blonde hair, and he trembles. He knows he’s crying, and he very well can’t stop himself. The world shines around him, dark but not hopeless, and all Obi-Wan can do is cry on the child in his arms.
It’s too much.
Luke doesn’t push him away, thank all the little gods, just turns a little and clings to the inner edge of his robes.
None of the lights are close enough to be familiar. He knows they are Jedi, but he cannot hazard a guess as to who. He has a vague sense that Yoda is alive, but that doesn’t narrow it down, really, not beyond ‘somewhere between the fall of the Order and nine hundred years ago.’
“Ben?” Luke prompts.
He can’t speak.
He can barely breathe.
His body is almost young again and he can’t do a damn thing and it’s too much.
