Around ten in the morning, Nami signals that they’re approaching an island. At noon, the Thousand Sunny docks in a bay full of white sand and sunflowers with rusty yellow petals. At one, it’s safe to say all the Strawhats have scattered around the island on various errands or explorations. By two in the afternoon, everything changes. "Luffy?" He speaks without speaking. "Sanji?" Luffy answers without answering. "What the fuck—", Zoro curses without cursing, and suddenly all three of them—all /one/ of them—is knocked flat on their ass on the ground.

He’d known how some of the men are with younglings—known from Waxer and Boil how sharply those attachments can form with little ones. Hell, the men were raised to be protective, so much so that Obi-Wan has often wondered if their protective drive was not written into their very atoms, some intrinsic part of their DNA. It wasn’t something Obi-Wan had ever questioned. He’d thought he had understood the scope of it. In reality, he hadn’t understood a thing. Not until Kamino. Or: Not all that dive from cliffs make a running head start. Sometimes, the Fall is only a natural progression.

It all comes down to this: the babies in his arms are just so little. “You should sit down, Sir. Let Waxer and I take the tubies for a minute,” Cody gentles. Despite the even, easy tone, despite knowing that it’s Cody and that, as the last twenty-four hours have successfully proved beyond a doubt, Cody would rather die than see any harm come to him, Obi-Wan can’t suppress his immediate reaction to the thought of putting the twins— his twins, his now, and he’ll die before he lets anything touch them—down. “Full disclosure, I don’t believe I am capable of letting go of them, at the moment.” He thinks for a beat and then adds, “Possibly ever.”

"I fear that, when you reached into the Force to ease this man's pain, you reached too far. And without proper shielding… it’s easy to see how a rudimentary connection might have been established," the force-ghost of his former master says contemplatively, as if he is not casually ruining Luke's entire life. Luke buries his face in his hands. “You’re saying I gave too much.” “In a sense, yes," Ben replies. “I’m a force-whore,” Luke moans. “Oh, kark. Leia is going to kill me.”