keep time with the melody (we learn to play in minor key)

by grumpyhedgehogs

Summary:

Barriss Offee loses her first master in the Second Battle of Geonosis. She is unsure of her new master, but Obi-Wan has practice in proving his worth.

Notes:

Literally no one asked for this but me and I'm okay with that.

Chapter 1

“Master Unduli, are you sure I shouldn’t go with Padawan Tano?”

 

Barriss’s master lays a hand on her shoulder, a soft smile on her lips. “Peace, my padawan. Stay with Skywalker; he’ll keep you safe while you deal with the frontal attack. I will be back before you know it.”

 

These are the last words Master Unduli ever speaks to her padawan.

 

---

 

The morgue in the Jedi Temple is cold and clean in a clinical way that makes Barriss’s hackles rise on instinct. Her robes stick to sweat-slick skin, but the coolness of the room (of her master’s hand in her own two palms, so still, so icy, so lifeless) makes Barriss shiver. There are too many bodies in here. Too many Jedi wait for their ritual pyre. Too many Jedi sit with their dead in the last moments before they are released into the Force. The morgue used to be a story the younglings told each other in the creche. Barriss remembers nights with her own clan, shivering as she does even now, eyes wide, looking for dangers in the dark and finding none as her friends whispered words designed to scare but never harm.

 

Those days are long past. 

 

Barriss makes sure to fold Master Unduli’s hands gently over her sternum, lacing her fingers together. They are boney hands, elegant, long-fingered, with tempered tips and filed nails. They clasp around Unduli’s lightsaber naturally. It will burn with her. These hands will never hold Barriss’s ever again.     

 

The scrape of a footstep behind her makes Barriss turn, half rising from her seat. Master Kenobi moves to her side with all the fluid grace she’s ever hoped to possess. When she hurries to offer her chair, he lays a hand on her shoulder, just where Master Unduli did. 

 

“Master--”

 

“None of that, please.” Kenobi’s face is drawn, paler than Barriss thinks Stewjoni usually are. But there is a softness there; she’d take it for the familiar pity she’s seen in her friends’ faces ever since the Second Battle of Geonosis if there weren’t so much understanding behind his eyes. Barriss remembers rather abruptly the story of Kenobi’s own knighting. They called him the Sith Slayer. He lost his master in the crossfire. “Just rest now, Padawan Offee. You’ll need your strength for the future.”

 

Barriss folds back to sitting without complaint. “May I ask why…?”

 

His lips twitch, the ghost of a genial smile passing over his grave expression. “May not an old man come to pay his respects to a very good friend?”

 

That’s right: Master Unduli is--was--from the same clan as Master Kenobi. Barriss had forgotten that until now. 

 

His fingers are light where they brush across her master’s brow. He lets his fingertips fall away after a long pause. There are other whispers from other mourners, words of wisdom and grief, but none break the air between them. Barriss is too tired, too wrung out to feel awkward. Her heart has turned to ice, numbing her from the inside out. Maybe this emptiness makes her next words easier to voice.

 

“I can’t believe she’s gone. Every time I look away from her, it’s like it never happened. I keep thinking of things to tell her, jokes or plans or suggestions; and then I look up and remember she’s dead all over again. It hurts so much, Master Kenobi.”

 

Kenobi tilts his head, nodding slowly. “Would you like me to be comforting, or to be truthful with you, Padawan Offee?”

 

No one has asked her that yet. For the second time the light in his eyes, the knowing glint, makes Barriss relax. “The truth, please. I can’t stand any more sympathy.”

 

“It won’t get any easier,” Kenobi says, honest as a punch to the solar plexus. “People will tell you it will, but they aren’t ever the people who actually know what it is to lose someone like this, to lose a master or a padawan or a family. You will be in pain constantly, for a while; remembering the loss, as you said, will be the worst of it. And then, slowly, so slowly you won’t even sense it happening, you’ll grow used to her death. You’ll think of something other than the end when you first think of Luminara; you’ll listen to the music she liked and think about the good times you had listening to it with her, or eat her favorite food and remember when she made it for you, before you think about her, dead and in the Force. The pain will come back after that. And then it will only come every other time you think of her, and then every third, and so on. It might come upon you all at once sometimes, even after you’ve released your grief into the Force for days or weeks or years. And it will be debilitating--but only for a moment. Only for a time. You will learn to release the grief into the Force over and over again. But until then, Padawan, I’m afraid you have a long, hard road ahead.” 

 

Somehow, even as her throat tightens, Barriss feels a band she hadn’t known had closed around her chest slip loose. She breathes through the tightness. “I will have to walk it alone.”

 

“No. No Jedi is ever truly alone.”

 

“But I am. I have no master. I won’t even be able to stay in the Temple if I’m not apprenticed to another Jedi; I’ll have to go to the corps.”

 

Master Kenobi hums, thoughtful, before smoothing his fingers once more over Master Unduli’s fine, calm brow and turning to Barriss. Instead of the placations she expects, his face opens even further. It looks almost like hope. “I may,” Master Kenobi says, very softly, “be able to help you with that.”

 

He holds out a hand. Barriss’s mind goes strangely blank, like a fog rolling in. She looks up at him. He looks down at her. Around them, the Force sings a soft, nearly discordant melody; Barriss does not know what this means. 

 

“If you’d like,” he offers.

 

She takes his hand.

 

---

 

“Are you sure about this?” Master Skywalker’s voice floods Barriss with doubt; her stomach cramps with it. She has a hard time keeping her eyes closed as the words crash into her. “I mean, it’s a noble thing to do, taking your friend’s padawan on after she--but are you sure , Obi-Wan?”

 

Under Barriss’s temple, Master Obi-Wan’s shoulder shifts in an approximation of a shrug. He keeps his voice low, as if not to wake her where she’s fallen asleep against his side. “Afraid she’ll show you up as my apprentice, Anakin?”

 

(The past few weeks have been--trying. It isn’t proper for her to sleep in the hangar as they wait for their transport to the front, but she’s so tired . Master Kenobi has been of great help with the panic attacks in the middle of the night, but it's slow going, this process of healing.) 

 

Barriss can practically feel Skywalker bristling. “It’s a lot of responsibility and you’ve got enough on your plate already.”

 

He isn’t wrong. Her heart shakes her ribs apart. 

 

A warm palm curls securely around her shoulder. Obi-Wan murmurs, as much to her as to his former padawan, “That is true. But I am willing to take on any responsibility if it helps one of my own.”

 

“You already dedicate yourself to the Order, even without a padawan. What’s the real reason?”

 

Master Obi-Wan sighs, a gust of air past her ear that almost tickles Barriss into revealing her wakefulness. “Barriss needs a guide who understands her--not just the code that she vowed to follow but the obstacles she will face because of her loss, too. I can help her; why would I turn her away instead?”

 

Decorum be damned; Barriss resolves to curl up with her (new, strange, still too unknown) Master until they arrive at the battlefield.

 

---

 

It’s after their first battle as partners that Barriss makes another vow, as serious as the one she made in the name of the Jedi. She’s surrounded by death, dust floating in the aftermath of violence and the screams of the injured vibrating against her eardrums long after they’ve trailed off. The explosion from one of the battle droids rattles Barriss’s teeth in her head and sends her spiraling into memories. This is what Master Unduli heard before she died, this is what she felt, this is what she saw--

 

The Force shrieks through her, high jangling notes scratching at her shields. It makes her clutch at her head, her shields slamming shut on reflex, trying to push every external stimulus out. Barriss nearly doubles over--and then she sees him.

 

Obi-Wan steps out of the dust ahead of her, cresting a hill. He is covered in muck and blood. He holds his clone commander, injured and bleeding, over his shoulder. His lightsaber glows in the late evening sunlight. There are scorch marks on his robes, but Master Kenobi is alive and strong and standing on his own two feet.

 

He has not seen Barriss yet. “Padawan!” She sees Master Kenobi’s head turn to and fro, quicker (more frantic?) by the second. “Padawan Offee?”

 

Her shields--she’s shut him out along with the rest of the Force. Before she can think better of it, Barriss pulls her shielding down just a fraction and lets him back in; his presence in the Force is growing more familiar. The once discordant song their partnership made in the Force is smoothing out. Obi-Wan’s face relaxes when she runs to him through the debris and Barriss realizes once again, more fully now, that he is alone just as she is. Obi-Wan’s Force Signature wraps around hers, and holds her, like a father would a child.

 

They have each other now. Barriss is going to make sure it stays that way. 

 

---

 

The first time Barriss sustains an injury in the field, Master Obi-Wan is by her side before she even really knows she is hit. 

 

Her blood cascades down her side, hotter than flame, hotter than the suns of the planet they are on. Around them war rages, animal and dirty and wrong. It roars in her ears as her wound sears into her flesh, ripping into her body and leaving her open and vulnerable. Barriss doesn’t know if she screams or if her Force Signature projects her pain loudly enough to draw her master to her side. But here he is anyway.

 

“Ma--Master,” she hitches out. Obi-Wan lowers her steadily to the ground. His shoulders are broad and protective; they block out the battle around her. His hands are solid as rock where they staunch her blood. Barriss really does scream then. “Master!”

 

“It’s alright, Padawan. It’s alright. Keep breathing; I need to keep pressure on the wound.”

 

Her vision grows dark at the same time as Barriss tastes copper on her tongue. “Master Kenobi…”

 

“Barriss.” Obi-Wan calls urgently. Barriss opens her eyes, not having realized they were closed. The light is different. Has time passed? She’s not sure. “Barriss, can you hear me?”

 

“Obi-Wan,” she grits out with great difficulty. The words stick like mud in her mouth, gross and cloying. “I--I am afraid.”

 

“You are hurt.” Kenobi tells her, truthful to the end. “But you are not going to die. Do you hear me, Barriss? You are not going to die.”

 

“I’m glad--you are here.” Death seems to loosen her tongue. Barriss makes a hazy mental note to remember that the next time she’s shot. “I--don’t--want--to be--alone…”

 

“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, my dear one. You are not alone.”

 

Her master’s eyes are wide and blue and afraid, but Barriss can’t hold his gaze for much longer. As her eyes slip shut, she remembers the promise she’d made herself after Obi-Wan took her as his padawan: that she would not leave him to be all alone in the world either.

 

She keeps her promise; he keeps his. Barriss wakes up in the Negotiator’s medical bay days later, Master Kenobi’s hand wrapped firmly around hers. Something settles in the Force; their melody plays sweetly in her ears. 

 

---

 

Master Obi-Wan’s lightsaber burns a reassuring blue as it dips towards Barriss. He lets the blade rest in the air above her shoulder, a mere hair’s width away from singeing the flesh from her cheek. Then Obi-Wan lifts his saber and, just as precise, just as careful, dips it to her other side, a perfect mirror. 

 

Barriss tips her head forward, eyes on her master’s boots on the Temple’s polished floors. Her padawan braid hangs loose from her clothes. Gentle as she has come to expect from him, Obi-Wan gathers the braid and swiftly severs it.

 

In one deft move, Barriss Offee is knighted before the Jedi Council.

 

Barriss catches her braid when Obi-Wan hands it to her, a word of thanks falling from numb lips. Behind her, her friends cheer and rush forward. Ahsoka meets Barriss first, lifting the Mirialan right off of her feet with her enthusiasm. Someone yells in triumph, in congratulations. Barriss’s cheeks hurt with the weight of her smile. The Force scatters their Signatures around her, like refracting light. 

 

For but a moment Barriss swears she feels the small, light hands of Master Unduli resting on her shoulders.

 

It is a long party. The Council shuffles off after the formalities, Master Yoda with a knowing wink and Master Koon with advice to take it easy on the sabacc. Master Kenobi drops a kiss onto the top of her head before he leaves, a move that surprises her into a smile, and promises that he won’t throw her things out of his quarters until she’s been a Jedi Knight for at least a day.

 

Anakin, awkward and stilted around Barriss as he always is, takes a moment to drop a hand onto her elbow. His face is uncharacteristically open when she meets his gaze. “Congratulations, Knight Offee,” he tells her, genuine and earnest. Then he breaks into a wide grin. “Now that you’re not Obi-Wan’s padawan anymore, you can stop with the perfect Jedi routine.”

 

“Oh, Force forbid I actually like following the Code, Knight Skywalker.”

 

“Come on, now we can see what real mischief we can get up to!”

 

“Get away from me right now.”

 

He leaves laughing. 

 

Barriss begs off of the party after hours of festivities, letting her friends boo and hiss at her as she leaves early. Obi-Wan looks just as surprised to see her when he looks up at his door opening. The surprise melts into a smile though, and he rises to meet her. “I’d have thought you would celebrate all night, my dear one.” 

 

“I did.” Barriss shakes her head. “I mean, I got what I wanted, and I had fun, but I--”

 

“Yes?” He prompts after her silence stretches. Barriss shakes herself. 

 

“I wanted to give you this.”

 

Her braid is sleek and smooth as she presses it back into his hands. “You should have it. I want you to have it,” Barriss tells her master. The Force chimes in agreement, swirling in her mind. “You got me here when no one else would--when no one else could. You’re the reason I am a Jedi today.” 

 

“Oh, Barriss.” Obi-Wan replies quietly. That is all it takes for Barriss’s resolve to break; she throws her arms around his middle, hugging him like she hasn’t in months, maybe even a year. His palm is heavy and warm against the back of her head. “How proud I am of you, my padawan.”

 

---

 

“Is everything alright, Knight Barriss?”

 

Obi-Wan’s voice knocks Barriss off kilter, thoughts of Letta Turmond clearing from the forefront of her mind. Like a breath of fresh air amid the Coruscant smog, the Force trickles in, the light wood chime notes and cool calmness that always precedes Master Kenobi’s Force Signature filtering into her.

 

“Oh--yes, Master Obi-Wan. I apologize, I seem to have drifted off…”

 

Obi-Wan hums, busying himself by pouring her another cup of tea. His quarters are just as they were when she’d moved in. A bookcase full of scientific volumes and journals, a plush but lived-in couch and armchair, a coffee table with only a ceremonial Stewjoni tea set and a smooth stone that hums in the Force as decorations. The familiarity soothes something wild and raging in her chest. The tea warms her palms where she grips it like a lifeline. 

 

“Credit for your thoughts?” Obi-Wan’s smile is kind but searching. He’s worried; he always gets that tick in his temple when he thinks she might be in trouble. Barriss’s spine softens. “Maybe I’ll be able to help with whatever’s clouding them.”

 

“I just--”

 

He is part of the Council, a seething, squirming little thing in Barriss reminds her. How could he know how you feel? How could the great Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Sith Slayer, the Negotiator, expect to understand your disgust at this war?

 

“You found the clones.” Barriss blurts without quite knowing what she’s about to say. Obi-Wan nods. “How did--why--what was it like? When you found out what they were for?”

 

“Terrifying.” Obi-Wan answers simply. Barriss’s breath catches in her throat, but she’s always liked it when her Master was brutally honest rather than placid and placating. Obi-Wan knows it too. He shrugs, settling back in his seat. His eyes are far away. “When the scientists told me that a marching force willing to wage a war was waiting for a command, I felt as if the world had changed irreversibly. This was, of course, before the war had even begun, before the First Battle of Geonosis. You remember. And then they told me that the clones were waiting for Jedi command, and it was as if I had suddenly lost all idea of who I was, of what the Order was. What self-respecting Jedi would look to be put in charge of a war, after all?”

 

Something shifts inside Barriss’s heart. The room seems lighter than before. Obi-Wan takes a long moment to collect his thoughts. She waits him out.

 

“I gained control of myself, obviously. The rest of my time on Kamino--and even Geonosis, beyond--was spent trying desperately to solve the puzzle of a coming war that I only had pieces of. I couldn’t see the bigger picture until it was too late. One thing led to another, and well, here we are.”

 

“You--” she coughs. Brows raised, Obi-Wan nudges the teapot closer and waits for her to refill her cup. Clumsily, Barriss nearly sloshes half of it down her front before thunking the teapot back down. The porcelain cup creaks in her grip. “You didn’t want to go to battle, then.”

 

Obi-Wan jerks back as if shocked. “Of course not!”

 

“Right. Right, of course not…”

 

“I sense a question in your mind, padawan mine.”

 

“But...did anyone else want to go to war?” Did the Council? Did the Order? Have the Jedi all been corrupted right under my nose, and I was just too much of a fool to see it?

 

“Oh, no.” Obi-Wan rubs his beard, a troubled tilt to his eyes. “Of course there were Jedi--grey, we should have called them, or maybe even dark--who were much too open to the idea when the Council caught wind of the news that we were to be assigned to the clones. Pong Krell, for one. But, oh, Barriss, you really should have seen the Council chambers when the Senate sent word that they decreed the Jedi as generals for the GAR. You’d never believe what holy hell we raised; I thought there was a good chance Master Windu would spontaneously combust that day--or perhaps resort to political assassination. Not that it did us any bit of good. We were bound to the Senate’s wishes, as always.”

 

“The--the Senate did this?” The Senate did this to us? Barriss knows Jedi have to respond to the Republic’s needs, but the way Turmond spoke--the way she made Jedi out to be warmongers...Barriss had almost forgotten the Senate’s role in this. But how could the Senate be made to answer for the Order’s sins? “We couldn’t just say no?”

 

“Old legislation, I’m afraid. We don’t have any legal room to maneuver out of becoming the Republic’s watchdogs.”

 

His flippancy rankles. “But we haven’t even really tried-- ”

 

Master Kenobi shakes his head. Barriss stares and sets her jaw stubbornly when he meets her gaze. For a long moment neither move; until he drops his elbow on his knees and rubs his forehead. Obi-Wan looks more tired than she’s ever seen him. For a second, Barriss barely recognizes her master. It is as if he has dropped some wall from between them. He is greying around the edges, worn and tattered like a much abused fabric, spread thin enough to see the light through. “Master Kenobi?”

 

“Barriss, if we could have disentangled ourselves from this business, the Jedi would have done it in a heartbeat,” Obi-Wan says, a little muffled as he does not raise his head to speak to her. Again, her heart shudders. “I do not know what has brought these doubts on, dear, but know this: you are not the only Jedi who questions our presence on the battlefront. You are not even in the minority.”

 

The abrupt change of her master’s tone brings her up short; Barriss’s heart beats loudly in her ears, but the Force curls around her, light and clear for the first time in days. Even so, she says, a little petulantly perhaps, “My brother padawan seems quite adept at war.”

 

“Anakin Skywalker is an adrenaline junkie with an attitude problem.” Obi-Wan states plainly, and Barriss can do nothing but laugh. Obi-Wan does not hesitate to join her.

 

“Come now, are you feeling any better?” He asks after they have both quieted. Biting her lip, Barriss takes her time answering, assessing her mind in the Force, her roiling emotions. Before, Turmond could have threatened the Order and Barriss would have been on the verge of letting it slip by--now...What does she feel now?

 

“I feel better,” Barriss starts slowly, pushing passed the sinking feeling in her gut. “But there’s something I need to tell you. It’s about a woman I met, and what she had to say about the Order. It made me think such terrible things, and if you hadn’t helped me I don’t know where I’d be right now.”

 

“Well then,” Obi-Wan nods. He picks up the teapot, and, on his way back to the kitchen, rests a reassuring hand on her shoulder. On her opposite shoulder, a phantom hand, light and slender, rests in a perfect mirror. “I’ll make us another pot of tea and you can tell me all about it. I’m sure between the two of us there’s no problem we can’t solve.”

 

Wrapped in the Force Signatures of both her masters, Barriss can do nothing but agree. 

 

Chapter 2

Summary:

Barriss experiences meditation and lessons and growth; not particularly in that order.

Meditation with Master Kenobi is not what Barriss expects it to be. She’d thought that it would be like what she has-- had with Master Unduli; a guiding light, a point in the distance that she has to strive for, working tirelessly towards that beautiful horizon. That light would wrap around her as she sank deeper into the meditation, fill her up and shine right through her. It was a labor of love, her meditation with Master Unduli, and Barriss never regretted it. But Master Obi-Wan--he is different.

 

“Do you like meditating with him?” One of her fellow Padawans asks once, after they all have gotten up the nerve to speak to her again after such devastating loss. She nearly snaps at him when he asks. “Is it--it’s just that I’ve heard it can be painful, creating a new bond after you’ve--after the first one is gone.”

 

They haven’t formed a bond yet. Barriss can feel it at the edges of their union in the Force during meditation sometimes, can hear the discordant notes begin to strum in tune if she concentrates. Master Unduli’s bond with her was a bright light, a blooming, blossoming thing that filled her and lit up her eyes. 

 

“It’s fine,” Barriss tells him. She leaves it at that.

 

~

 

“You’ve got to be bored with all that,” Anakin tries when Barriss tells him she has to meditate with Master Kenobi tonight. She appreciates the effort when he asks her to spar, she truly does--but it is late, and Barriss is tired. She is so often tired these days. “I know how often Obi-Wan makes his apprentices meditate; aren’t you tired of it? Don’t you want to get out of there for a little while?”

 

Barriss feels her brow wrinkle of its own accord and is too far gone to smooth it back out again. “Whatever do you mean? Master Kenobi is only looking out for me, and he never pushes when I can’t manage a deeper meditation.” There have been stories before of Masters who won’t settle for less than a perfect trance before, but those are simply horror stories to scare the smaller Initiates. 

 

The entire Order, from the haughtiest Council member to the lowest Padawan could tell you the truth: that Masters are responsible for any and all care of their Padawans, and it is a grievous offense to betray that responsibility. Padawans are a gift from the Force itself--they’re a chance to see a life grow and to shape its place in the galaxy. They are the chance to pass on one's own wisdom and live on in their memories long after one has passed on into the Force. Master Unduli taught her that, and Master Kenobi upholds those ideals, and someday--perhaps--Barriss would very much like to continue the tradition.

 

But Skywalker rolls his eyes. “Well, no, but he doesn’t have to push to let you know he’s disappointed , right? He gets that pinched look on his face and then you have to spend a week feeling bad about it until you meditate with him again.”

 

Biting her lip, Barriss shakes her head; she recognizes the expression Skywalker describes, but… “Knight Skywalker, I…” 

 

He nods for her to continue when she trails off. Barriss gathers her wits. “I’ve seen that expression on Master Obi-Wan’s face before but--”

 

“Ah-ha! I knew it wasn’t just me!”

 

“But it’s usually there when he’s just worried about me.”

 

His triumphant Force Signature dims. “Oh, come on…” 

 

“Yes, it’s when he thinks--well, knows --that I’m, you know, I’m processing something on my own and he wants to help but I won’t let him.” The expression had been present on Obi-Wan’s face often in the first weeks of their partnership; every time Barriss woke from a nightmare, or whimpered in her sleep, or, most often, when she turned down meditation for fear of dealing with the frayed, sore tatters of her bond with Master Unduli. 

 

They’ve gotten closer in the last few months, especially with their first and second deployments to the front lines under their belts, but they have a long way to go. Her bond with Master Kenobi is picking up, notes less discordant than before, but still not quite in tune; her Force Signature is a second off from Obi-Wan’s, like the faint reverberation of a string long after it is plucked. 

 

“Obi-Wan doesn’t show when he’s worried, everyone knows that,” Anakin asserts, but he doesn’t seem to have his heart in it. “Sith hells, I wasn’t sure he even got worried for the longest time!”

 

It really doesn’t make any sense. Barriss knows Obi-Wan tries to hide it from her, but he’s very worried very often. She can always find him in his office aboard The Negotiator, pouring over battle plans, or in the Temple’s archives, consulting maps and histories of different planets. She’s woken in the middle of the night to the light in their shared living space on, and when she’d peeked in, he’d been sitting, head in his hands, in the middle of a minefield of datapads filled with orders from the Senate or proposals for the Clones Rights Bill or communications from his fellow Council members. He’s so very vulnerable in those moments that if she hadn’t seen them Barriss would understand why Skywalker believes his former Master to be an emotionless husk. Obi-Wan is nothing but calm and collected in the outside world, and he tries so hard to set a good example for her--but seeing him process his emotions before releasing them into the Force has helped her too. 

 

“Who told you that about Master Kenobi? Who said he doesn't ever feel badly?” 

 

Skywalker’s eyes dart to the window they stand beside for a split second, and when Barriss turns her head, her gaze catches on the Senate building in the distance. Interesting. “No one.” Skywalker tries to cover, somewhat lamely. Barriss resists the urge to snort at him as it would be very un-Jedi of her. 

 

“If you think Master Obi-Wan too shallow for feelings of anxiousness or trepidation, you really should dwell on why you believe such tripe, Knight Skywalker.” Barriss advises. Master Kenobi would call her tone arch, but she is tired and very late for her appointment with her new Master. Perhaps today is the day their song will fall into tune. “May I suggest meditating on the subject?”

 

She sweeps away and does not stay to see if Skywalker bristles or not.

 

~

 

“Kenobi’s curious new plaything,” Maul calls her when they first clash on the battlefield. “Tell me, do you think he has a favorite between you and Skywalker? Do you think he compares you and finds one of you wanting? ”

 

For the first time in all her years of battle and training, Barriss snarls and strikes out with no finesse, aiming only to make Maul feel the consequences of her rage. How dare he? How dare he suggest that she and Skywalker are little more than toys for Master Kenobi to play with? How dare he wreck their mission and put Master Obi-Wan on the ground and draw her Master’s blood and keep their clones from helping them with a blaze of fire at their backs? How dare he make Commander Cody’s voice just barely quiver as he commed Knight Skywalker for help before their transport blew to pieces? How dare he corner her all alone and make her feel so scared?

 

Maul bypasses her wild swing with ease, laughing in her face. It rasps in his throat like gargling sandpaper and Barriss’s eardrums ache with the noise. There are blaster shots from somewhere beyond the wreckage of their transport, where Commander Cody is no doubt trying to lay down suppressing fire to give her an opening for escape. But Obi-Wan slumps against the ground behind her and she is the only thing standing between him and Maul. Barriss is not going anywhere.

 

Except that she has to, because Maul presses in closer, going for the opening she’d left for him to exploit. Soresu is not advantageous to an aggressive approach. Barriss has miscalculated. Her anger peters out as a wave of cold fear rushes in like the changing of the tides. More blaster fire rains down at Maul’s back, but the fire catches most of it, and Maul twists deftly, pushing her further back to avoid the strokes of his ‘saber. The heels of her boots slide one, two, three feet back, gravel spewing in her wake. 

 

Maul is three feet closer to Obi-Wan.

 

Barriss can feel her Master gathering himself at the other end of their bond. She hopes the blow he took to the shoulder when their transport crashed didn’t sever any of his tendons, but it’s a lost cause; she’d caught a glimpse of white bone beneath all the red and her stomach rolling had not been a result of the crash. Obi-Wan’s Force Signature flickers in the back of her mind, but her nerves drown out anything he sends to her end of the bond, the Force jangling in her mind like a windchime right beside her ear. 

 

“You think your anger can ever hope to match my power?” Maul sneers at her and neatly sweeps her legs right out from beneath her. Barriss collapses to the ground. Somewhere far off, her clones are shouting; Commander Cody’s voice rises above the rest, hoarse and worried, telling her to “ move, Commander!”  

 

The blade hangs over her head, red as her Master’s blood which still slicks the palms of her hands. Her saber rolled away when she landed, she cannot block Maul’s next strike. The Force grows cold and still--

 

Barriss!

 

Master Obi-Wan’s voice in her head shocks Barriss from her paralysis just as Maul goes for the downstroke. Roll to your right!

 

Her robes nearly pin her down, too tangled around her legs, but Barriss does as her Master bids her and the lightsaber cuts through the air where she had been moments before, sizzling. As Barriss stands the Force moves with her; the cold that has seeped into the edges of her mind pulls away and the warmth of Obi-Wan’s Force Signature wraps around her, holding her. Barriss breathes and reaches out blindly, their bond humming in harmony between them. She can just catch Obi-Wan stumbling to his feet from the corner of her eye and knows he draws strength from their music in the Force just as Barriss does. Her saber flies back to her, the smack of it fitting into her palm a satisfying contrast to the song playing in her mind. A twin to the sound of her weapon returning to her echoes from across their makeshift battlefield, and a twin of her own blue blade springs into being.

 

Maul snarls. As always, his attention shifts to her Master. “Do you think yourself capable of keeping the whelp safe, Kenobi?” He hisses. Obi-Wan’s side of the bond brightens as he reaches for her, and Barriss shores up his shielding without prompting. Obi-Wan steadies on his feet. “You can do nothing to save her from the Dark--you can save no one . Just like you could not save your precious Master from me!”

 

Maul is going to kill her Master; the temporary calm Barriss found in the Force threatens to desert her but then Obi-Wan speaks across their bond again. Moving meditation, Padawan, he sends. We’ve practiced this.

 

Yes, Master. Moving meditation at the Temple is a little different than in the middle of a fight, she thinks, but does not send to her Master. Already her feet fall into the familiar patterns, circling around Maul’s back while he’s distracted. The Force flows through her, bolstering their bond which hums in her mind. Her shields strengthen, the cracks her fear and anger created smoothing out. With Obi-Wan’s Signature melding with hers she can feel his mind brushing against her shields, just as hers does to his. He’s inside her mind, his music mingling with hers and flooding out all her doubts. She hopes she does the same for him.

 

Maul flies towards her Master and they clash but Barriss is at his throat a second later. Maul breaks off, forced backward at the dual assault. His Signature burns in the Force.

 

The familiar sounds of The Resolute’s engines hitting nearby airspace thrum around them. Barriss breathes in, breathes out, places herself shoulder to shoulder with Master Obi-Wan, and sinks into their meditation with a quirk of her lips that sends Maul into a rage. 

 

~

 

“How is your apprenticeship coming along, Padawan Offee?” The mind healer asks as if she is not sitting beside her Master’s sickbed, holding the unconscious man’s hand tightly between her own. He is warm where Master Unduli was cold, his skin rough where hers was soft, his blood hot where hers ran cold before Barriss could offer her aid. Barriss knows the mind healer has to ask, has to assess her baseline stability--but for a moment she considers screaming in her face, shrieking and spitting like a wild animal. Obi-Wan will wake, he will . But Barriss is alone in the meantime, as she has not been alone since the last time Master Unduli brushed their Force Signatures together. 

 

“Fine.” Barriss snaps out waspishly. She doesn’t flinch at the mind healer’s narrow look, but it’s a near thing. Obi-Wan wouldn't like her speaking to her elders in such a way. She breathes in, breathes out. She tries again, softer this time. Obi-Wan’s fingertips are calloused and scrape against hers as she holds them. “It’s fine. Master Kenobi told me this morning that I--I’m coming along well.”

 

The twi'lek sighs, scrawling some note onto the datapad she holds in front of her. “Seeing one’s Master harmed is not an easy thing, Padawan Offee. It happens too often in war that our younglings see things we wish they did not.”

 

“I’m alright. I’ve been on the front lines for nearly the entire wartime, now. I know how to handle the emotions it brings up.”

 

The healer’s eyes are clear and calculating, her mouth pressed into a thin line. At her scrutiny, Barriss feels her own Force Signature wilt, swishing back and forth between fear and despair like a pendulum. The older Jedi sighs through her nose and sets the datapad aside. Barriss turns her cheek as the woman leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Barriss knows she’s trying for a connection, trying to offer support, but-- “It is alright to feel lost and upset at this time, Padawan. It would be more alarming if you were not having trouble releasing your feelings into the Force.”

 

But Obi-Wan was the last one to look into her eyes so deeply. Obi-Wan looked at her and laughed when she beat him as sabacc for the first time, just this morning. Obi-Wan’s sparkling eyes lit with good humor as he sipped the congealed mess he pretended was the finest tea he ever had, simply because she made it for him and he wasn’t going to turn it away even though Barriss had been half asleep and knocked nearly the entire bowl of tea leaves into his mug. Obi-Wan’s eyes were clear and calm as he took her hands and guided her into meditation after she couldn’t sleep last night, the most intimate trust fall she’d ever been a part of. 

 

Obi-Wan’s eyes were hazy and his words disjointed as he slurred out reassurances while she pulled the shrapnel from his side with the Force. Obi-Wan’s eyes closed as Barriss screamed for him to wake up. 

 

“My Master has instructed me on ways to healthily deal with negative emotions,” Barriss says, stilted even to her own ears. “Even those which I cannot yet release into the Force. Guided meditation, moving meditation, and solitary meditation have all been cornerstones in my education with Master Kenobi.”

 

“No one is blaming you for what has happened to Obi-Wan.” The Master replies nonsensically. She cuts Barriss to the quick. 

 

No one but me, Barriss thinks, and relives the weight of Master Unduli’s hand falling away from her shoulder for the last time. 

 

“I know,” she answers instead. “It wasn’t my fault.”

 

That is what Obi-Wan had said right before he fell unconscious. His eyes bore into Barriss and, surer than anything, he’d told her, “This is not your fault.”

 

This is not your fault.

 

The mind healer sighs, nodding, and swiftly gets to her feet just as another stretcher enters the medical tent. Too many of the GAR are injured in the field outside. Just like her old Master and her new one, their soldiers fall to the violence surrounding them every day. 

 

This is not your fault.

 

Barriss breathes in, breathes out. She closes her eyes, her fingers laced gently through her Master's own. She tries again.

 

This is not your fault.

 

Meditation does not come as easily as it usually does, but it does come. Barriss breathes in, breathes out, and listens to the faint notes of her connection with Obi-Wan growing stronger, stronger, stronger. She breathes in, breathes out, and lets herself reach out in return when her Master’s music searches for hers. Her notes fall in line with his, wood chimes and key notes, soft and lilting and looping around each other in a dance Barriss is becoming more and more familiar with. When it crescendos, at last, she opens her eyes.

 

Obi-Wan looks up at her and smiles. 

 

~

 

“Are you ready, Padawan mine?” 

 

Cross-legged on a squashy cushion Barriss knows Obi-Wan keeps around only because it is her favorite shade of blue even though its edges are frayed and one corner has split, Barriss smiles. She lets her eyes drift open, the sunlight streaming through the windows of their shared quarters in the Jedi Temple making her eyelids and the skin across the bridge of her nose itch pleasantly. Obi-Wan’s hair shines like a halo of flame as he gazes at her expectantly. He’d broken down and accepted a thin, tan cushion from his Padawan when Barriss refused to stop badgering him about his knees. 

 

Their music follows Barriss everywhere now. It sings through her and through Obi-Wan too, no matter how far away they are from each other. She has seen many Force connections before: hers with Master Unduli, which was light shining from beneath their skin. Knight Skywalker and Padawan Tano’s, which smelled of smoke and spices and filtered through one’s senses like the scent of coming home. Master Yoda’s with each member of the Jedi, like a steadying hand on the back of one’s shoulder, the warmth of a blanket around one's limbs and the heat of a fireplace at one’s side. 

 

But nothing compares to her bond with her Master in moments like this. Even their meditation does not hold a candle to the moment before they both sink into the music of their connection in the Force; the moment when Barriss’s notes sing and strike and pierce the air between them and, different only for a moment, Obi-Wan’s notes reach back and fold hers into his own song, lifting and falling and providing her an unshakable counterpoint. 

 

Obi-Wan raises his hands, palms upturned. Barriss slides her palms over his, smiles, settles. They sing in the Force, one and whole. 

 

“I’m ready, my Master.”

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of Obi-Wan and His Kids