A/N: Something similar to With Questions Like These, but more humourous at times. In response to a prompt on Tumblr.

A Fool's Game

Eirian Erisdar

Anakin wakes to the spine-chilling groan of tortured metal, and the rancid, metallic aftertaste of blood in the back of his throat.

Whatever light there is here is so dim that he can barely make out anything at all; there are ill-defined shapes in this compressed world of sound - or possibly nothing at all except his imagination, painting images where his eyes cannot perceive them.

He becomes aware of fingers around his left wrist, clamped tightly around his pulse-point. A protective, almost desperate kind of hold, thrumming across the muddled waters of the Force like a parent's unworded wish.

And with this realisation comes the pain.

He gasps despite himself as a hundred hurts make themselves known from his forehead to his toes - which are surprisingly cold.

"-kin!"

"Whuh?" Anakin mumbles. The hand around his left wrist has tightened further.

"Stay awake and stop moving before you puncture a lung." Obi-Wan's voice hold that same note of severe command it does when Anakin does, or is about to do, something stupid - but there is a strained edge to it here that belies something else.

Anakin waits until his head has stopped spinning enough that he can pinpoint Obi-Wan's voice - somewhere slightly above and to the left of him - before speaking. "You injured?" he ventures.

A pause.

The kind of pause that usually suggests Obi-Wan is calculating how much to hide.

"Somewhat, yes," Obi-Wan replies, with that same odd note to his voice.

"Could you-" Anakin closes his eyes as a fresh wave of agony rises behind his sternum. "-could you quantify that. Please."

There. He said please. It is one of those words Obi-Wan kept drilling into his head, all those years ago when he was a junior padawan.

"Um," Obi-Wan says, and is that a hiss of pain because if it is Anakin is so going to punch the living daylights out of him when they're out of whatever this is - "I may have a few broken ribs. A peripheral fracture here and there. My kidneys may be a bit...roughed up?"

Anakin really wishes he could see Obi-Wan's face right now, because then he could return Obi-Wan's expression with one of pure disbelief. He vaguely remembers how they got here, now - flashes of turbulent air and wailing alarms, the support strap around his wrist snapping in twain as the LAAT/i ploughed into rock-

"-akin."

"Whuzzat?"

A hiss, as something shifts to his left. "Stay. Awake. I'm sure Cody and Rex will find us, soon," Obi-Wan says, the words drifting away towards the end of his sentence.

"Sure," Anakin replies, blinking rapidly to clear his mind, despite the darkness in his vision. "Let's play a game."

"Anakin." Exasperation, now, trembling through lungs that aren't quite getting enough air.

"Why not? We've got to keep each other awake until help comes, like you said," Anakin steamrolls on, rambling now - "And I've got a good one. The dumbest things we've ever done."

Obi-Wan doesn't reply.

"Obi-Wan?" Anakin shifts his left wrist, finds that the grip around it has loosened. "Obi-Wan!" He shifts his hand despite the screaming of his elbow, clamps his own fingers around Obi-Wan's, and squeezes.

A hitched breath above and to the left of him, and the blood-slicked fingers move in his.

"The dumbest thing you've ever done," Anakin says, rambling a bit in his lightheadeness, now. "Go on, Obi-Wan."

"The stu- the stupidest thing I've ever done," Obi-Wan murmurs, slowly, "was...was eating that raw Bothan pepper because I saw that Qui-Gon could."

"You what?" A wheezing laugh leaves Anakin's lungs, draws fire across them. Ow. Bad idea.

"Your turn, Anakin," Obi-Wan's voice says, and the fact that there is absolutely no teasing lilt to the words at all should probably be very frightening, but Anakin cannot handle thinking of two things at once and so focuses on the game instead.

"Remember that time earlier in the war?" he says. "When we were stuck in a cave or something. And I was hungry."

A groan from Obi-Wan, from agony or memory, Anakin doesn't know - and the older man chuckles, painfully. "You found food, as I recall. Of...your own definition."

"Yeah. The dumbest thing I ever did was eat live bugs."

"That was very stupid," Obi-Wan says, contemplatively, fingers trembling.

"Yeah. I know," Anakin replies, tightening his grip when Obi-Wan cannot. "Your turn."

Obi-Wan takes a breath properly, a horrible, rattling thing, and continues.

And so does Anakin.

After an indeterminate period of time, Anakin hears Obi-Wan shift again. The silences between their turns have grown steadily longer, as each of them fight off the lethargy clinging to their limbs. Anakin is sure Obi-Wan has closed his eyes, as he himself has. The only thing grounding them to reality at all is their clasped hands, now itchy with dried blood.

"The...stupid...stupidest thing," Obi-Wan murmurs, faintly.

"Yeah, master?" Anakin mumbles.

"The stupidest thing I ever did," Obi-Wan says, surprisingly clearly again, "was not proposing to the woman I loved. Your turn," he finishes, with a note of triumph.

Fair enough, Anakin muses, blearily. And this gives him an idea for his turn, anyway. "The stupidest thing I ever did was not tell you that I proposed to the woman I loved," he counters. Ha. Beat that.

And then, of course, his mind catches up to him. He opens his eyes and stares up and to his left, where, even though he cannot see it, he know Obi-Wan's gaze is staring right back at him.

"Hmm," Obi-Wan says, conversationally. "Why don't we just solve the problem, then? You tell me about proposing to Padmé."

Huh. Good idea. "And you propose to Satine after we get out of here," Anakin replies. Perfect. "And I- wait." His brain is clearing, now, as horror pushes in a fresh dose of adrenaline. "Who said anything about Padmé?" he gabbles. "I didn't say anything about Pad-"

Obi-Wan's hand twitches violently in his, and the Force explodes with panic. His voice, when it comes, is quietly frantic. "Satine? What's this about Satine? I never said anything about Sat-uhhhh..."

Silence. That was an impressive feat of stumbling over sentences, especially for Obi-Wan.

Well. Anakin never thought that bleeding out in LAAT/i wreck would be awkward.

"I didn't realise," Anakin mumbles inarticulately, after a moment. "I thought you were only ever her secret admirer, or something."

"I could say the same to you, Anakin," Obi-Wan says, severity leaking into his voice despite the weakness of it - and Anakin braces himself for the inevitable lecture that will follow.

It doesn't.

Obi-Wan's voice is growing steadily fainter. "Well," he murmurs. "Congratulations, Anakin. I do apologise for not getting you a present."

Anakin searches for the sarcasm in that sentence. Finds none.

"Thank you, master," he says.

Nothing.

"Master?"

"Obi-Wan!"

In his haste to rearrange their hands so he can feel for a pulse, Anakin feels Obi-Wan's fingers slip out of his, and no matter how he fumbles in the dark until his shoulder - dislocated, he understands now - aches, he cannot find Obi-Wan's hand again.

The Force is out of reach, too. He is panicking too much for it, and he feels like he did, two years before: on Tatooine, in a Tusken camp, and his mother-

He screams.

And then it is like the sky is ripped open, and light, so painfully bright it seems to lance into his eyes like solid needles-

Anakin comes to, and immediately rips out his IV line in an effort to reach for Obi-Wan's hand, which he knows is next to him and must be next to him because otherwise-

"Anakin."

Anakin stills. Looks to his right, where Obi-Wan Kenobi sits in a medbay bed just like Anakin's own, looking about half a shade less pale than death.

"I am glad you are awake, Anakin," Obi-Wan's voice is quiet. Exhausted. "How are you feeling?"

"I. Um." Anakin presses a hand to the place where his IV port left his skin, sheepishly. "I'm okay?"

"Good," Obi-Wan says, with a smile that is all gentleness and relief, above bandages that wrap all the way around his neck.

Anakin settles back into his pillows. Allows a med-droid to reinsert his IV. "Uh, Obi-Wan," he begins.

"Yes?"

"About what we were talking about before...?"

"When?"

"In the LAAT/i," Anakin says, blinking at Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan's brow furrows. "You mean before we crashed?"

"Uh, no," Anakin says, suppressing the urge to cringe.

"Ah. If we did hold any conversation, I'm afraid I must have been barely conscious," Obi-Wan says, regretfully. "The last thing I remember was the crash itself."

Anakin gapes. Searches the Force carefully for any hint of falsehood.

Obi-Wan's Force-signature is a placid as a lake.

"Oh," Anakin says. "Nevermind. It wasn't important." His hands unclench from his blankets.

"Lovely. I'll go back to sleep now, if you don't mind," Obi-Wan says, and the next moment his russet-gold hair is all Anakin can see, buried in white medbay sheets.

Anakin copies him, a while later.

When Anakin's Force-signature has smoothed out into the evenness of sleep, Obi-Wan Kenobi opens his eyes and deepens his breathing - hitching on a gasp as a headache starts up behind his eyes - and lowers his shields.

Oh, Anakin.

A/N: Um. I have exams next week. But couldn't help myself :) Thanks for reading!