Chapter Text
Obi-Wan Kenobi’s life had not turned out the way that he'd expected. Not at all. He reflected upon this, as he sat alone in the Supreme Chancellor’s office, leaning back in the absurdly throne-like chair, his feet on the desk.
As a youngling, his ambition was simply to be a great Jedi Knight. He loved the Code, loved the Order, loved the Force. He was a bit emotional and foolish, but a normal Jedi youngling. Far down on the list of those who would become… something else.
When did it begin? When was he changed?
Was it perhaps on Naboo, when Master Qui-Gon was cut down, and gave his final order? When his instinct to defy the Council came for the first time, in order to train Anakin? When the Council acknowledged the return of the Sith but did nothing to confront the threat, until that threat swallowed them whole? Was that when his faith was broken?
Questions like these were ultimately pointless—Obi-Wan already knew the real answer to when everything had changed.
He had been sixteen, when he had first dreamed of Anakin.
It had been a well known fact around the Temple that Obi-Wan was unusually strong with the unifying Force. He had been identified by Master Yoda as a sensitive youngling after experiencing a number of visions of the near future in his dreams. He sometimes knew things he could not know, and had seen things he could not have seen—not yet.
The prophetic dreams always showed the future from his own perspective, as if he was a spectator of his future experience, watching as he lived events that would take place days or weeks, sometimes even months, in the future. It was occasionally difficult for him to focus on anything else when awake, trying always to match where he was to what he’d seen in visions, never fully present in the moment.
By age thirteen, it was clear that Obi-Wan needed to be better anchored in the living Force, so Yoda engineered a partnership with Master Qui-Gon Jinn, who was an expert on such things, in the hopes that it would be mutually beneficial. It both was and was not helpful.
Obi-Wan did learn a great deal about the living Force. He learned to be connected to all life, how to tie himself to a particular moment of mutual existence. This centering and grounding was useful, as it was a skill that opposed his natural inclination to be drawn within the unifying Force, stolen from the moment, and woven into the entirety of the fabric of space-time.
In dreams his consciousness still seemed able to slide along his own timeline, visiting itself in future states.
This was the power that he desperately needed to learn to understand and control, and this was where the partnership with Master Qui-Gon failed. Qui-Gon’s disinterest in and disinclination to teach Obi-Wan about the unifying Force left Obi-Wan adrift. He had to research for himself, without supervision. He had to determine which of his dreams were prophetic or not, without supervision.
Obi-Wan would have appreciated supervision. He craved structure, feedback, improvement. He wanted clear expectations for success and he wanted to meet them. He liked rules, and when people followed them. He was profoundly uncomfortable in front of the Council, trying to reconcile Master Qui-Gon’s irreconcilable behavior over and over. Obi-Wan just wanted to be a good Jedi.
He was sixteen when the dreams began. There had been nothing special about the day before, just an ordinary day at the Temple. He was recently back from a year running from bounty hunters with the Duchess, and was settling back into Temple routine. It’d been an easy day of coursework and sparring. No indications of anything amiss.
He had three vivid dreams in one night. It was extremely unusual for him to remember more than one dream in the morning, if any.
He would never forget these three.
His dreams that night were not visions of tomorrow, or next week, or next month. For some inexplicable reason, overnight he seemed to have become exponentially more powerful in the Force. It made no sense. He seemed to be looking many, many years in the future—if they were indeed prophetic dreams at all. They had felt as vivid and real as the other prophetic dreams, but they simply couldn’t be accurate visions of his future.
They must have just been nightmares.
He was a Jedi, he didn’t…
He’s using the willing body beneath him for his own pleasure, fucking deliberately and roughly, the slap of skin on skin, smiling at a whining moan of submission. His cock is pounding in, so hot, tight, slick, his hands are gripping hips, fingers aching with the pressure as he squeezes bruises into the smooth golden skin. He slides one hand down the long, muscled back swayed in front of him, tracing the curved ridge of the spine down to the neck, tangling a hand in the curly golden mess and grabbing tight, pressing down, shoving the unseen face into the mattress as he continued to slam his cock into their perfect ass, murmuring in a low voice, take it, yes, good, you take my cock so well, Padawan.
They had to be nightmares. He wouldn’t…
He’s laughing at the sound of gagging as he fucks into a gaping mouth, pulling roughly on golden curls as he drags an unseen face down his cock, drool dripping from the swollen red lips stretched around him, fucking in again, deeper, pushing in, feeling the moment when they finally relax and just take it, let him use their throat, own their body, however he wants. He slides out and hears frantic gasps, sucking in precious air before asking for it again, saying please, please, Master, please, ever so desperately, opening their wet mouth and looking up, begging him for his cock. He slams himself back in, watching eyes roll back and flutter shut in pleasure at being so good, so useful, he says, very good, yes, darling, sweetheart, Padawan, take it.
He was positively sure they could not be visions of his own future. He couldn’t…
He’s using the Force, holding someone still, binding their hands together, bent over the back of what looks like a curved, metal desk in a large red room, and he’s roughly shoving himself inside, not quite enough preparation, he’s hurting them, and they’re asking for more, more, please, Force, more, so he fucks them, and they say thank you, Master, thank you, please can you, will you, so he does, using even more of the Force to gently begin to cut off the air, choking them as he fucks them, letting them gasp and struggle, before they come, unable to make a sound but their body trembling and tensing around him, so he comes too, looking over at an ornate mirror, at his much older, bearded face with a faint hint of amusement showing in his golden eyes.
Obi-Wan had awoken to messy sheets, and had stared vacantly at the wall.
What.
None of it had made sense to him. He had thought about sex, certainly. He was a young, healthy human male with instincts. Not sex like that, though. Never sex like that. Nothing violent, nothing aggressive. He would never, could never, imagine himself having sex with his own Padawan, if he ever had one. He could never imagine laughing as he hurt them, used them.
If asked the day before the dream, he wouldn’t have even been able to fathom the idea of conjuring up such things. He hadn’t known that people could or would do such things. And yet he had dreamt it. It was just a nightmare, something imagined, not the future, so that meant those desires had already existed inside him, right? How else could he dream of such things?
How could he even have golden eyes? That simply must mean it was symbolic.
When asked, Master Qui-Gon’s face had gone still, his tone grave as he acknowledged what happened to those who fell to the dark. Golden eyes. He then swiftly transitioned to a more comfortable topic—discussing thousand-year-old references to golden eyes from various texts he had discovered in the archives. He loved old stories, and so knew a surprising amount of relevant information about the ancient Sith, to Obi-Wan’s horror and despair.
Sith.
Surely that meant that they definitely couldn’t be prophetic dreams, because the Sith had been vanquished a thousand years in the past. Sith had become the stuff of legend, one step past history, figures bigger than life, becoming a perfect villain for the Jedi’s story of themselves. The story they told the younglings about who they were, why their Code was correct. Mere crèche stories. Sith were just the Jedi’s nemesis, their foil. A narrative device, a concept.
Sith.
Not possible.
Obi-Wan thus unhappily dismissed the dreams as nightmares indicative of worrying problems with his mental health—his anxiety was out of control. Master Qui-Gon agreed (in abstract, without details that Obi-Wan adamantly declined to share) that dreams pass in time and that Obi-Wan should focus on the here and now. So he did.
He decided that his problem had been that somehow he became fixated on being the best Jedi possible, a perfect Jedi, which meant that the fear of being a bad Jedi lived inside him. What was the worst Jedi? A Sith. So, his fears had synthesized those dreams, shown him nightmares about being the worst possible Jedi. They were a symptom of a disease that he could cure.
They were not prophetic.
All Obi-Wan had to do was be even a moderately good Jedi, and stick by the Code, and those things would never happen. Since they would never happen, that meant those dreams were not visions of his future. His partner was just an amalgamation of things he apparently and worryingly desired, not a real person, not someone he would ever really meet. They were nightmares he wouldn’t have again. He nodded to himself. Sighed in relief. Went to sleep.
Sucking dark purple bruises down a long neck and across golden collarbones, laughing at whimpering and pleading, knocking flimsy off the desk, pushing down roughly, kicking legs apart, fingers causing moans stretching and preparing, slicking himself quickly with bacta, then teasing with just the tip, waiting for begging, pleading, before slamming the entire length of his cock in with one rough thrust, murmuring, very good, take it, darling, dearest one, Padawan, take it, fucking hard and fast, no more time to adjust, no more time to waste, they’re almost caught, he has to take what what his…
He opened his eyes. He stared at the ceiling. He closed them again, in defeat.
There is no emotion, there is peace.
This would become something of a waking-up ritual, in the following years. Not every morning, but enough mornings.
The dreams weren’t always of sex. Sometimes he was fighting unseen enemies, his Padawan at his back. Sometimes the enemies shot blasters, sometimes the enemies had red lightsabers. Several times, the enemies had blue and green lightsabers. No matter the color of the blade, the mood of these dreams was visceral joy, savage pleasure. One time he had been laughing as his apprentice decapitated an enemy, the sound of the body hitting the floor making his heart race with satisfaction and pride.
It did not sound like a laugh that would come out of his mouth. It did not sound like him. Definitely not. His subconscious was just processing anxiety.
He would try to give the dreams to the Force. He would pretend that he had successfully given the dreams to the Force. He would pretend that he was at peace. He would recite the Code several times. Then, he would get out of bed.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
During the day, Obi-Wan was a good Jedi. A bit too serious, a bit too focused on the rules, to Master Qui-Gon’s endless despair, but as long as he had conscious control of himself and his faculties, he was an exceptionally good Jedi. Obi-Wan knew, though, that he was something else, in dreams. Something feral. Something wrong. He had decided to accept this as just the way it was. The dreams were part of his path to walk as a Jedi, part of his struggle—something to overcome.
They were just dreams.
Nine years after the dreams began, Obi-Wan Kenobi met a boy and heard the Force whisper, “Padawan.”
Nine years after the dreams began, Obi-Wan Kenobi met and killed a Sith.
If the Sith were real…
Kriff.
Alone in his office, seated on his de facto throne, Obi-Wan knew. The dreams had been where it all began.
22 BBY
“Anakin!” Obi-Wan shouted down the collapsed tunnel. “Anakin! Where are you?” The dust was beginning to settle, and the obstruction was clearly visible. “Anakin!” The shaft had collapsed completely. Obi-Wan took a deep breath through the cloth of his sleeve and was about to shout again when—
“I’m here, Master!” Anakin’s voice was muffled behind the wall of rubble. “I’m fine.”
Obi-Wan checked his comlink—no reception. “This is not fine, Padawan!” His voice was loud, and a little more shaky than he liked.
“Well, obviously, this is bad, Master, but I am fine. There were three miners caught, did you feel them die? I did.” Anakin’s voice came from inside his head, now, a rapid burst of verbalized thoughts. “I sense there are about ten feet of rock between us, what do you feel?”
“Fifteen!” Obi-Wan shouted and then coughed. Blasted dust. He could never let his shields down far enough to openly share his thoughts—he could never, ever, allow Anakin to enter his mind—and he didn’t have the concentration to push a thought at him intentionally. Hence, yelling: “Can you shift them?” He considered, coughed, and added, “I can’t do it alone!”
“Probably, Master, but I worry about making it weaker elsewhere right now, it seems settled like this. I can’t bring down the mine with people still inside.” Anakin’s tone was apologetic. “I’m going to do a sweep, I can feel life forms below us.”
“We do not have time! This is all about to collapse!” Obi-Wan yelled, frustrated. “Do not leave!”
“Master, I know you don’t want to let people be crushed to death if we can prevent it.” Anakin’s voice was almost chiding.
“I’m sorry, Padawan, but we DO NOT have time!” Obi-Wan’s sense of danger was spiking. “Can’t you feel it?!” He began to hold the tunnel open around him, just in case. “Anakin!”
“Sorry, Master.” Anakin said, and his Force signature began moving away, and down. “I won’t let slaves die like this.”
“I know,” Obi-Wan said, furious, resigned. “I know you won’t.” Anakin was beyond hearing range from him anyway. Obi-Wan’s head was ringing slightly, the blast had caught both of them off-guard, which was very rare. Obi-Wan’s sense of ‘I-have-a-bad-feeling-about-this’ had been absent, and Anakin hadn’t felt uneasy. The Force was quiet. Until… explosion.
“I’ve found twelve slaves, Master. Four chained to the wall.” Anakin’s thoughts were a sticky ooze of anger. “Two more dead, still in chains. Days old.”
Obi-Wan focused as hard as he could and sent one word: “Hurry.” He held the structural integrity of the mineshaft together as best he could, keeping the upper parts of the mine above the collapse as stable as possible. He couldn’t reach below, and he could feel it giving way. “Hurry, Anakin!”
“Stop fussing, Master.” Anakin sounded both resentful and gratified. He always seemed to like it when Obi-Wan communicated through the bond, but he usually didn’t like what Obi-Wan had to say. That was normal. “We are on our way up. One couldn’t walk, we had a delay.”
Obi-Wan couldn’t spare the focus to comment. He held his hands in front of him, sinking in the Force, feeling the shape of the stone and the weight of the earth, pressing his will up against gravity’s pull, giving all of his available resources to the Force, feeding his energy into keeping everything stable and still.
It was exhausting.
He wished to the Force that he could be powerful enough to hold up a mountain by himself, but he knew that despite his own relatively considerable power in the Force, he could not do this. Not without Anakin. He was beginning to feel dizzy with the effort.
“I’m here.” Anakin finally projected. “I’m here!” He shouted, immediately after, letting Obi-Wan hear his position.
Obi-Wan couldn’t yell, he couldn’t lose focus, so he used what sliver of attention he had left over and sent out a weak, undirected “Help me, now!” into the Force at large. Immediately he felt a bit of relief, Anakin’s ocean of power sweeping through and reinforcing all the places that Obi-Wan’s hold was fraying. Obi-Wan relaxed marginally.
Anakin began shifting the stones to clear a path when the shafts cut directly beneath them suddenly began to cave in, turning their tunnel’s floor into a fracturing mess.
“Anakin!” Obi-Wan shouted, voice flush with panic, “Now! We have to go NOW!” He pushed his last bit of effort into the Force, holding the floor up.
“Let it drop!” Anakin’s thoughts came fast, frantic. “No, Master, Obi-Wan, let it drop, I can hold the ceiling up.” Obi-Wan didn’t understand. Anakin’s voice came even faster, “Let the floor fall under the blockage! Let it drop! It’s the only way!” With a sense of resignation, Obi-Wan refocused his powers on holding his side of the tunnel and only his side alone open. It was all he had left in him to do. “Thank you, Master, yes, that is perfect, Master, thank you!”
Anakin’s low, grateful murmur in his head made Obi-Wan’s stomach turn over, hands trembling slightly. He had heard those words before. Many, many times over the past twenty years. He swallowed and forcefully refocused, having almost lost his grasp.
Anakin let the floor drop and controlled the fall, filling in the hole with the rubble from above, creating and holding a tunnel open for the surviving miners to hustle through, Anakin following up the last. The miners were all pale, starved, filthy, and terrified, streaming around him. Obi-Wan’s nostrils flared in frustration as he began to lose his grip. “Anakin!” His voice was strangled. The miners weren’t clear. They weren’t clear. They were all about to die if—
Anakin was there, Anakin was grabbing him, Anakin was pulling him along, Anakin was keeping him running. Obi-Wan had exhausted himself totally into the Force and had almost nothing left. The tunnel was collapsing behind them, on their heels. They shot out of the door into the refinery with only moments to spare, the crash behind them was tremendous, the dust cloud billowing out with them. Obi-Wan tripped over his feet, Anakin’s grip on his arm turned Anakin sharply back towards him, and then Anakin tripped over backwards over his heels, and they both went down hard, Obi-Wan landing on Anakin’s stomach.
For a long moment, they both just lay there, while the collapsing mountain settled and the reverberating cracks stopped shaking the ground. Anakin was still gripping his arm tightly, holding him close—Obi-Wan was boneless, exhausted, lying stretched on top of Anakin’s body, cradled on his chest. They were both gasping for air. Obi-Wan’s face was pressed near the junction of Anakin’s neck and shoulder, and before Obi-Wan regained his sense of balance and understanding of where his body was and what it was doing, he breathed in one long breath with his nose, taking in the scent of Anakin—
He felt a lightning strike of arousal, and jerked back so that he rolled off and lay next to Anakin instead, pulling his arm sharply out of Anakin’s grip. He was furious with himself. The dreams didn’t have scent. He didn’t need to add scent.
These occasional spikes of arousal had only become a problem after Anakin had gone through his final growth spurt, becoming taller than Obi-Wan, gaining broader shoulders than Obi-Wan. Ever since his voice had deepened from his high childish tones to the hauntingly familiar low, melodic, masculine ones. His cock should not get hard whenever his Padawan merely called him Master in a deeply grateful tone, and yet it did. He gave those feelings to the Force, over and over.
Anakin had become—almost overnight, it seemed—almost identical to the man Obi-Wan had been dreaming about for as long as he could really remember. All that was missing were curls that he would presumably grow as a Knight, a metal hand, which was concerning, and a scar over an eyebrow. The otherwise familiar form and presence of Anakin’s adult body—the strength of his chest, the length of his arms, the softness of his skin—was known somewhere deep in Obi-Wan’s consciousness, and his subconscious recognized him in a way that Obi-Wan found completely unacceptable. His reactions began to be wrong. Anakin was still a Padawan.
His Padawan.
Obi-Wan pursed his lips and breathed his calming breath. “You disobeyed a direct order, Anakin.” Anakin scoffed lightly back at him. He didn’t even bother to defend himself, or to acknowledge Obi-Wan’s point at all. He just scoffed. “Excuse me?” Obi-Wan asked, voice sharp.
Anakin rolled his head to the side to look at him. “It was a bad order, Master.” Obi-Wan looked sharply over, making furious eye contact. “You knew I wasn’t going to follow it.”
“What did you just say?” Obi-Wan was livid. He could still smell Anakin’s sweat. He suddenly had enough energy to get up, so he did. “We need to leave. I cannot speak with you about this right now. Believe me when I say we are going to talk about this later.”
Anakin rolled his eyes and got up too. “You can skip the lecture, Master, I’ve heard it before.”
Obi-Wan stopped, turned, and took a step forward at Anakin. He wanted to wring his neck. “That is enough, Anakin!” He took another involuntary step closer. “You will learn your place, young one.” His voice had become deceptively mild. “If you cannot follow simple orders, I can not and will not take you with me on missions.” Anakin looked flushed. “I cannot wonder if you will follow directions, Anakin. That is not how this works. That is not acceptable. That is not sufficient.” He prevented himself with difficulty from moving any further forward, from coming within arm’s reach. “I am supposed to be your Master. You are allegedly my Padawan.” Anakin’s blush was deep red, now. “I need to know you will listen to me!”
“You wanted me to let those people die!” Anakin’s voice was loud and defensive. “Why would you ask me to do that?”
“Because I wanted you to live!” Obi-Wan snapped back at him. This was not the time or place for this argument, but Obi-Wan couldn’t stop. “Because I wanted you not to die!” Anakin swallowed and looked hard at the floor. “You are my responsibility, Anakin!” Obi-Wan tried to push his frustration into the Force, and felt slightly dizzy. “Sometimes as Jedi we have to make hard choices, but it’s not a hard choice if the choice is to live or to die with them! We can’t save every person every time, and it’s hubris to try, Anakin. It’s up to the will of the Force, sometimes.” Obi-Wan ran his eyes over Anakin’s tense posture and clenched jaw. For some reason it made his frustration flare back up. “I was unable to get you out without your help, and you just left to go running off into more danger because you just felt like you could handle it!”
“I could handle it!” Anakin’s head had snapped back up, he looked indignant. “I did handle it.” His jaw clenched again and he took a deep breath. “You never acknowledge what I can do, what I have done. You don’t want me to use my powers, you don’t seem to think I have them, but I do. Why can’t I use them if I know I can?”
“You didn’t know, Padawan. You guessed. You could easily have guessed wrong.” Anakin was glaring at him, defiant. Obi-Wan wanted to shake him. “When a mineshaft is collapsing on top of you is hardly the correct time to indulge your ego, Anakin.” Obi-Wan forcefully turned and began to walk measuredly towards the door. “We need to leave.” After three fast paces away, he heard Anakin follow, dragging his feet.
As Obi-Wan strode back to their speeder, he couldn’t stop thinking, it’s getting worse.
Back when Anakin was a young boy, the discrepancy between Obi-Wan’s dreams and reality made it very easy to keep them separate. Obi-Wan was sure that he could handle it, when he undertook Qui-Gon’s dying request. The Force pushed him hard, telling him it was important that he do so, besides, the future was always in motion, according to Master Yoda. Obi-Wan had free will, and he was going to choose to be a Jedi, every time.
The child he took as his Padawan only held the Padawan that he knew in his dreams as a lurking potential, a distant shadow, a hypothetical problem. Everything was fine for years, Obi-Wan had everything under control. The occasional dreams inspired him and motivated him as a teacher—it was essential that Anakin be the best Jedi it was possible for him to be.
That would just be another way to disprove the nightmares. They showed just one of many possible futures, and it would not be theirs.
Obi-Wan diligently taught Anakin the Code, and he taught him everything he knew about the Jedi arts. He dedicated himself to setting the best possible example of Jedi behavior. He maintained a respectful and professional distance between them, and did not encourage affection or indulge in attachment. He was a mentor, not anything else. For many years, until Anakin was in his mid-teens, everything had worked relatively well between them. Then, suddenly, it had cracked apart.
All the other Jedi seemed to agree that Obi-Wan was just doing his best, which was admirable, and that it was Anakin who was the problem in the relationship. Obi-Wan knew, however, that was not the case. He was the one failing Anakin, failing to guide and protect him. He was the one who was distracted, who was struggling with his emotions. Anakin was the apprentice, it was up to the Master to lead the way, and Obi-Wan knew he was not leading. Not anymore.
As a child, Anakin would accept Obi-Wan’s discipline without too much backchat. Anakin was and had always been willful, argumentative, emotional, and a million other things that Jedi were not, but he used to have a modicum of respect. Now, because of Anakin’s recent attitude, Obi-Wan was losing the ability to confront Anakin without his own emotions breaking through his façade, without losing his cool. Obi-Wan did not lose his cool. That was not a thing that Obi-Wan did.
Anakin’s changed appearance only made things worse. Obi-Wan’s failure to control his attraction was not Anakin’s fault.
Obi-Wan let Anakin drive the speeder, rather than argue about that, too.
“You did do good work today, Padawan.” Obi-Wan said, at length. “It’s not that I don’t see that. It was unequivocally good that those miners’ lives were saved.” Obi-Wan looked over at Anakin, who was staring straight ahead with a fixed expression. Obi-Wan looked back out the window. He pinched his nose, warding off a headache. “It’s about trust.”
Anakin huffed out a disbelieving breath. “You don’t trust me when I say I can do something, Master.”
“I know you are capable of many things, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said in a pressed tone, “But you must trust my more experienced understanding of risk. You must trust me when I say you shouldn’t do it. We’re not necessarily talking about can or can’t, Padawan.” Obi-Wan was trying to not let his emotions enter the argument. This was merely a high-level conversation about their last conversation. A meta-conversation. No need to become emotional.
Anakin frowned. “If I can, I should, Master.”
“That is overly simplistic, Anakin.” Obi-Wan sighed. “You must realize that.”
“Why is a simple rule not a good rule?” Anakin sounded honestly frustrated. “Why shouldn’t I help, if I can help? That makes no sense at all, Master.”
“As you never trust my judgement, I’m not sure why you bother to call me ‘Master.’” Obi-Wan mused, suddenly very tired. Anakin looked over at him sharply. “Nevertheless,“ he pressed on, “you are my Padawan, and that means that ensuring your safety is going to be a factor in my calculations. It does not appear to be one in your own.” Anakin looked back at the road. “Forgive me if that does not inspire me with confidence in your decision making abilities.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” Anakin said, grumpy. “If I can help, I should help. Why is that wrong?”
Obi-Wan kept his breathing as steady as possible. “Why are you resistant to the nuance that a situation with an exceptionally high risk of death is an exception to your tidy little rule?”
“But they would have died!”
“So would you, if you had misjudged any one of a million single decisions you made over the course of five fraught minutes.”
“See! You still don’t believe I can do it, even after I did do it!”
“Blast it, Anakin. What if we escaped, exactly as we had, but the bomber had been waiting for us at the door? I couldn’t have fought them off. I probably still couldn’t. We’re extraordinarily lucky it was on a timer.” Obi-Wan slumped back in his seat, resigned. “I’m exhausted. I nearly depleted myself holding things together until you got back. If we had left when I wanted to, I wouldn’t have had to risk being this exposed.”
There was a long, quiet moment.
“I’m sorry, Master.” Anakin sounded much sorrier that he had put Obi-Wan’s life at risk than his own. “Master, I didn’t think about that. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t think Anakin. You just act.” Obi-Wan could see Anakin’s shoulders dropping all the way, now. Obi-Wan continued, still a little more waspish than usual. “You do what seems right in the moment, but never consider more than two steps ahead. I do, and that’s why you should trust my judgement. At least until you figure out how to do it yourself.”
“Yes, Master.” Anakin swallowed, loudly. “Sorry, Master.” Obi-Wan’s stomach flipped over, again. He looked out the window. Pushed the memory of a dream into the Force, and then pressed his hands hard against his temples against the spiking migraine that followed. He felt Anakin’s attention snap back to him, again. “What was that, Master? Are you alright?”
Obi-Wan sighed. “Yes, Anakin. I am fine. I am tired. I am depleted. I tried to use the Force beyond when I should have.”
“To do what? You’re just sitting there.” Anakin looked confused.
Obi-Wan didn’t want to talk about it. “Focus on driving, Padawan. I was just meditating.”
“Uh huh.” Anakin sounded dubious. Obi-Wan did not appreciate that. “If you say so, Master, I suppose I’ll just have to trust you.” He said the last words with a hint of a smile. Obi-Wan’s mouth quirked up too, for a moment, before it dropped.
He needed rest.
Being nearly blown up and crushed was the least of the problems with their mission, Anakin thought sullenly as he sat beside Obi-Wan in the Parliament chamber, two days later. He shifted in his padded chair, stretching his legs out long before him, and sighing loudly, which made Obi-Wan glare at him briefly. After he looked away, Anakin grimaced.
The reality of being a Jedi was nothing like he had expected when he was a boy on Tatooine, dreaming of traveling the galaxy and helping people—freeing slaves. It had felt like his destiny, his obligation. He would become a Jedi, and come back to Tatooine, destroy the Hutts, and make the people free.
He was forbidden to do this by the Council, of course. Anakin despised the Council, sometimes. They had forbidden Obi-Wan to help his mother, too, he knew that for a fact. He had heard Obi-Wan arguing about it once. He sometimes overheard Obi-Wan defending him, or advocating for him.
If only Obi-Wan would be like that when Anakin was around… Whenever Anakin was in the same room, Obi-Wan’s spine seemed to turn into a metal rod, his face lost all humor, his presence in the Force disappeared almost entirely.
Anakin hated that.
Obi-Wan did a lot of inexplicable things that Anakin hated. It didn’t mean that he hated Obi-Wan, though. Far from it.
He watched as Obi-Wan tried to negotiate to improve conditions for the local population, watched with a secret well of pride as his Master passionately and earnestly attempted to right the injustice that was being done to them—to prevent the loss of their sacred land to extractive mining, to prevent their enslavement, and to prevent them being forced to dig up the mountain they held as divine.
Apparently Obi-Wan had a history with Offworld Mining Corporation. He seemed much more angry than usual, beneath his very effective façade. Anakin was very familiar with the cracks in that façade, and how to see through them. He knew Obi-Wan was furious, but everyone other than Anakin would read him Obi-Wan as entirely calm.
Anakin smirked. His chair creaked as he leaned back to watch the show, arms crossed. It might as well have been a show. He knew in advance that all of Obi-Wan’s pointed eloquence was probably just wasted breath. Obi-Wan doubtless knew it to—he shot Anakin another dirty look before returning focus to the negotiation. Anakin sighed, quieter this time.
The fact that Obi-Wan knew it was pointless but was still trying anyway made Anakin’s chest ache a little bit.
He was slightly surprised Obi-Wan was even allowed to be advocating on the side of the vulnerable population. Anakin had been going on missions with Obi-Wan for years, so he knew that the crimes against the indigenous people were probably not the reason Jedi had really been dispatched to the planet.
He knew well enough by now that the real reason was that the planet’s Senator probably just didn’t like the terms that Offworld had offered, wanted more money, and was connected enough to get a motion through the courts. He had seen it a million times, the Senate was so corrupt. At least the current Supreme Chancellor was a wise, good man, or else the situation would be intolerable.
Anakin hated politics. He thought that economics was boring. He had zero interest in sitting around listening to people talk. He would much rather be fixing something, fighting something, doing pretty much anything else.
The only time Anakin was interested in history class was when they covered the Jedi before the Ruusan Reformation, back before the Jedi Order only enforced the laws, back when the Jedi did what they thought was right. There were Jedi who defended worlds, and even regions of space, from Sith, pirates, slavers and warlords.
Anakin wanted nothing more in life than to defend regions of space from Sith, pirates, slavers and warlords.
Just because of stupid war, a thousand years ago, Anakin had been hounded all his life by a stupid Code, criticized all the time for just being a person, and was currently stuck in this stuffy Parliament chamber on this neglected Mid-Rim planet, listening to Obi-Wan pour his heart out in a pointless effort to use words to fight money—instead of just going and freeing the slaves he knew for a fact were in more mines not twenty miles away.
He was beyond frustrated at everything that put him in that room. The Senate and the Council. They were the ones who were always stopping Anakin from being useful. At least Obi-Wan seemed to agree with him about the Senate, but Obi-Wan practically loved the Council. He always agreed with the Council.
“Let’s go, Anakin.” Obi-Wan was suddenly talking to him, the room was suddenly full of the sound of chairs scraping, rustling of expensive clothes, and low murmuring. “It’s lunch break.”
Anakin stood up gratefully. “Alright, Master.” He trotted after Obi-Wan, who was already striding out with his angriest walk. It was Anakin’s favorite walk. It made Obi-Wan swagger. “What’s wrong?”
“Not now, Padawan.” Obi-Wan snapped over his shoulder. “We obviously cannot speak now.”
Anakin looked around at the Parliament building, at the people milling about. He projected in the Force: “Of course, I’m sorry, Master.”
“Thank you, Anakin.” Came floating back through the bond, to Anakin’s surprise. A faint smile appeared on Anakin’s face as they left the building. The feeling of Obi-Wan’s mind brushing his always made Anakin feel slightly warm and dizzy. He loved the feeling of his Master’s mind. He wanted to feel it all the time. The feeling retreated, almost immediately. Anakin sighed.
“Where are we going to eat, Master?” Anakin asked a more publicly acceptable question. “Do we have a meeting scheduled?”
Obi-Wan huffed a false laugh. “Thankfully not.” He led them back out to their speeder, leaving the pilot’s seat open. Anakin smiled widely as Obi-Wan continued, “We can return to our hotel and have a quiet minute.” He deliberately pushed his shoulders down and took a deep breath before he said, “I am going to contact the Council and then meditate.”
Anakin frowned as he drove away quickly, swerving around a slow transport. “What does the Council want now?”
“It’s me who wants to talk to them, not the other way around.” Obi-Wan’s voice was bleak. “This mission is a failure. We need to leave.”
“What?” Anakin turned his head sharply, and studied the mask of Obi-Wan’s face, trying to get a better read. “We’re in the middle of negotiations, I thought?” He quickly veered back into their own lane. Obi-Wan hadn’t reacted to his reckless driving, which was a very bad sign about his state of mind. He asked the question anyway: “What about the people? They’ll be slaves and die if we go.”
“You know as well as I do that’s not why we’re really here, Anakin, and I wish you would, for once, not attempt to rub salt in wounds that I cannot heal.” Obi-Wan snapped. Anakin’s heart raced at Obi-Wan’s tone, and he swallowed. There was something about the fervent iciness that made him oddly feel warm and special. He shouldn’t like being chastised this much. Obi-Wan continued in the same tone of voice: “It became clear to me today during negotiations that the deal has already been finished in a backroom meeting last night. Today was just performative.” The last word was barbed.
Anakin swallowed again and tried to calm down, shaking his head slightly and refocusing on the road. Ever since he was about fifteen, Obi-Wan’s angry voice always made him feel unacceptable things. Extremely unacceptable things, that he hid as best he could. “I’m sorry, Master,” Anakin said, finally getting to a place where his voice would be steady. “I didn’t know that for sure. How can you tell?”
“I could feel it in the Force as they were speaking.” Obi-Wan’s tone was still glacial. Anakin tightened his grip on the steering controls. “Their minds were saturated with self-congratulations and smugness at me and my responsibility as a Jedi, as if I was a dancing Kowakian monkey-lizard.” Anakin almost shivered at the suppressed emotion in the last phrase. He knew that Obi-Wan’s skill with mind tricks far surpassed his own, and so probably could have felt the mood of the room viscerally if he’d tried. How he had kept his cool in such a scenario was beyond Anakin’s comprehension.
It seemed that Obi-Wan had almost complete control over his own mind and over his public persona. Anakin had spent a decade looking for cracks, and had appreciated every hairline fracture he could find. He had an instinct for how to press on those weakened areas, and an addiction for doing it, despite the consequences—or because of the consequences, he could never be entirely sure about that. He also knew when it was actually a bad idea to press.
“What’s next, Master? What do we do?” Anakin asked, attempting to act the part of dutiful Padawan to appease Obi-Wan’s coiling frustration. “How can I help, Master?”
Obi-Wan looked at him for a moment, and then relaxed minutely. “I’m not sure, Anakin.” He smiled faintly, eyes crinkling a hint. “Thank you for asking.” Anakin wanted to grin back, but tried to maintain a calm face. Obi-Wan pulled out his data pad and rubbed a sleeve on the display, clearing it of dust and fingerprints. “I’ll figure it out after we talk to the Council.” The smile was gone. “They doubtless have opinions about what our next move should be.”
“Yes, they probably do.” Anakin agreed, as neutrally as he was able to. Obi-Wan shot him a look that almost looked fond. Anakin felt a glow of pleasure, at having been useful in calming Obi-Wan down. He wanted very badly to say, I can be a good Padawan too, see? I can be useful.
Obi-Wan looked up again sharply. “You’re projecting, Anakin.” He looked vaguely ill, for some reason.
Anakin winced. “Sorry, Master.” He quieted his thoughts and slowed down the speeder, stopped swerving quite so much. “Should we look into who attacked us before we leave? It was strange that we both didn’t feel any warning in the Force.”
“It was strange, but not unprecedented.” Obi-Wan agreed, still looking unsettled. “We’re not omniscient, unfortunately.” He typed rapidly on his data pad before saying in a reluctant undertone, “Offworld really is the most likely culprit. They don’t exactly have a history of being troubled by killing Jedi, Anakin.” His tone was final, as if he would not be continuing on that topic. Anakin had a vague sense of why asking the question right then was not wise but—
“What happened?” It slipped out of his mouth before he could stop it. As Obi-Wan’s face went still and he sighed deeply, Anakin immediately said, “Never mind, sorry, Master.”
“It’s a story for another time, Padawan.” Obi-Wan just sounded tired, now.
“Yes, I know.” He said. He sent across the bond. “I’m really sorry, Master. I didn’t mean to pry right now.”
Obi-Wan sighed and looked at him. “I know, Anakin.” Anakin met his unreadable gaze for a long moment before he turned his eyes back to the road. Obi-Wan said, “Your braid is coming undone. You need to take better care of it, it’s supposed to symbolize—”
“—my dedication to and accomplishment in the Jedi arts. I know, Master.” He winced. “It just slipped my mind this morning, I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright, Padawan.” They had arrived at the hotel, and Anakin parked in a very narrow space. Obi-Wan watched warily, his own shoulder-length copper hair blowing gently in the breeze, which distracted Anakin minutely. No real damage to the speeder, just a bump and a sharp “Anakin!” and they were parked.
“I’ll bet you five credits the Council will make us stay for the duration of the assignment, no matter how pointless it is.” Anakin said as they walked inside.
“I refuse to take the bet,” Obi-Wan replied, resigned.
Anakin was right—Council insisted they stay for the remaining two weeks. Obi-Wan had agreed, immediately and politely.
Anakin wanted to punch a wall.
Just another normal day as a Jedi, Anakin thought as he flopped dramatically back on one of the beds. He looked over at Obi-Wan who had ended the com with the Council and was looking at him blankly. Anakin stretched and whined, “I want to leave.” Obi-Wan just looked at him for another moment before shaking his head and swiftly leaving the room. Anakin slumped back and frowned at the ceiling.
Just another normal day.
Kriff.