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Dark Magic Witch Curses Hero With No Fear!
Is this the end?
“Alright, objectively, I think we can all agree this is not ideal,” Obi-Wan clears his throat and rubs a hand over his beard as he studies the Holonet article that Mace is displaying in front of them.
The picture accompanying the piece is a little blurry and not very good quality at all, but one must admit it helps sell the angle the article’s going for. In it, Obi-Wan is clutching a collapsed Anakin to his chest and glaring at an unknown assailant just out of the frame.
But it doesn’t mean anything. Just that Obi-Wan was the closest to catch his former padawan when he fell. And he wasn’t nearly as angry as the article makes him out to be; that’s not his angry glare, that’s his I’m listening intently expression.
Because the witch who’d attacked them had been spouting, as Anakin would say, some absolute bantha shit in response to Obi-Wan’s perfectly reasonable question, “What did you just do to him?”
Kit slides his finger through the air and a new headline takes the first’s place.
Aggressive Negotiations
She told him EVERYTHING!
This is, of course, paired with a picture that looks objectively like a very furious Obi-Wan storming into Coruscant’s police station where the witch was being held.
He hadn’t even noticed the camera.
“Alright,” he starts to say, but Plo switches articles before he can.
This time, it’s the picture that captures Obi-Wan’s attention before the words do. It’s old by a few months, taken at one of Senator Amidala’s parties. Obi-Wan isn’t there, but Anakin is, with his head tilted back in a loud laugh as everyone around him looks at him with adoration.
TRUE LOVE’S KISS? are the words.
Sources say our beloved Hero With No Fear will SLEEP until his LOVE AWAKENS HIM.
Follow for updates.
Obi-Wan clears his throat again. “Technically, the witch told me dearest love, not truest."
“We’re really splitting hairs about this?” Mace asks, looking as if he has the worst headache in the entire galaxy.
“It’s important,” Obi-Wan insists, leaning forward and placing his elbows on his knees. “When looking for the cure. It’s Force-willed magic. Master Che has tried everything else to wake him up, but it’s…” he swallows. He doesn’t like thinking about the way Anakin looks in his bed in the Halls of Healing. “It’s as if he’s slipped into a coma. Only what the spell-caster says will work.”
“And she says dearest love?” Depa checks. Obi-Wan nods.
“Anakin tried to...help her out of her speeder. She took offense, as she thought he was suggesting something more untoward and she had understood his Force signature of being that of...something akin to a married man. When I...questioned her later, she explained that the curse tied into his strongest, most secret emotions. His dearest love can break the enchantment. She didn’t seem to believe me when I told her that Jedi do not have dearest loves.”
In fact, laughing in his face had been the last thing she’d said to him at all.
“What I don’t understand is why you have not already broken the curse,” Mace says, finally giving in the urge to rub at his forehead.
Obi-Wan blinks at him.
“We’re at war, Obi-Wan,” the Jedi master continued. “I’d rather have the Hero With No Fear But One Inappropriate Attachment than have no Hero With No Fear at all.”
While Obi-Wan tries to parse this through and figure out its implications, the rest of the Council dismisses itself, several holos turning off while other Jedi exit the room. Plo stops by his seat and pats him on the shoulder. “Go get him, Kenobi,” the master chuckles.
Obi-Wan stares up at him, confused. Him?
No, if Obi-Wan is going to go get anyone to wake his former padawan with an illicit kiss, it’ll be a her.
----
“I think there’s been a...misunderstanding here,” Padmé Amidala says after she finishes her cup of tea and Obi-Wan finishes his story.
Obi-Wan frowns. He thinks he’s been very clear on both the events that have unfolded and the expectations he has for the next several minutes of events. “Oh?” he asks.
Senator Amidala looks at him with something akin to sympathy in her eyes. “Master Kenobi, Anakin and I...are not together.”
Obi-Wan stares at her. “But...after Geonosis….”
The senator blushes and looks away for a second. “Alright, yes, we did...try. But once it became clear that he had no intention of leaving...the Jedi Order and I had no intention of having a secret lover, we decided we were better off as friends.”
He takes a few seconds to fit this information into his worldview, before he rallies himself. “That doesn’t mean you can’t be his dearest love, Senator. You know him, you know he doesn’t need a defined relationship to feel things deeply. He’s been in love with you since he was eleven at least. I’ve read his diary.”
“You’ve read his diary?” Padmé asks, sounding aghast.
Obi-Wan raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “When your padawan can kill people using his brain, Senator, you read his diary.”
She stares at him for a second before a shrewd look crosses her face. “Have you read it recently, Master Jedi?”
“He’s not my padawan anymore,” Obi-Wan says stiffly. Anakin also doesn’t keep one anymore, but he’d hate to incriminate himself even more to Anakin’s dearest love.
The senator opens her mouth to say something else, but Obi-Wan cuts her off. “I tried everything I can think of,” he murmurs, staring down into his own mug, “before calling upon you. I had not wanted to expose either of you to the scrutiny of the Jedi ways, not when I believe he’s become a happier, better man since you re-entered his life.”
This next admission, it’s the hardest yet. Obi-Wan doesn’t want to think about why. “But the Council has granted Anakin permission to have this attachment to his dearest love. To you, Senator. If all that stood in your way before was the need for secrecy, I cannot promise that you may love him without discretion, but the Jedi know what they stand to lose should Anakin never wake up.”
Padmé purses her lips and taps her fingers against the tabletop. “You tried everything?” She asks, brow furrowing for a second. “I could have sworn that...never mind. I truly do not know much of the inner workings of the Jedi, nor the norms of their bonds with each other. Maybe…”
Obi-Wan clears his throat because he can’t really understand what she’s saying and there are more important things she should be doing. Even if the successful accomplishment of her task means he loses Anakin forever. He’d rather have his padawan awake and openly in love than forever asleep.
Even though he’s sort of enjoyed the peace and quiet of the past few days.
“He’s in his room,” Obi-Wan stands, gesturing for her to follow him. “I had him moved here a few hours ago. So that this won’t have to happen in front of a handful of nosy Jedi and healers.”
Anakin is lying on his back on the bed, on top of the sheets. His hands, one over the other, sit on his stomach, and his face is tilted upward, the perfect curve of his lips exposed to the room.
If Anakin were asleep by natural causes, he would be snoring, on his side, with a pillow clutched to his chest. Obi-Wan hates looking at this still picture instead.
“Just on the lips,” he instructs as the senator moves closer to his padawan.
Padmé throws a look at him over her shoulder. “I know how to kiss Anakin, Master Jedi.”
He flushes and casts his gaze away, crossing his arms when she leans forward, over the bed. He can just see her hand coming up to Anakin’s cheek, which Obi-Wan thinks is quite unnecessary, actually. Save the touching for when he can touch back.
Bile rises surprisingly quickly in his throat at the idea of Anakin touching someone, anyone, back.
But it’ll be worth it. It will.
He turns his back so as to give them privacy. After all, it’s not often a pair of star-crossed lovers are shown the unarguable proof of the strength of their love.
A few seconds pass in silence.
And then, “Um, Obi-Wan, Master Kenobi--it’s--it didn’t work.”
Obi-Wan has never turned around so fast in his life. “What?” he asks incredulously.The senator gestures to Anakin, who hasn’t moved.
“You’re sure--” he starts to say but stops at her raised eyebrow.
“Would you like to watch, Master Jedi?” she asks, hands on her hips.
He blushes, but something of what he’s feeling must show on his face because Padmé turns sympathetic. “I’m sorry, Master Kenobi,” she murmurs, crossing the distance between them and putting her hand on his arm. “It seems Anakin has a dearest love we don’t know about.”
-----
“Oh good, “ Mace says when he finds him in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, where Obi-Wan is trying and failing to meditate. “I’m glad I’ve caught you. The Council wants you and Skywalker to take your troops to Umba--”
It’s unforgivably rude, but Obi-Wan has to interrupt him. He can’t listen to Mace talking as if Anakin has woken up and is fine and Obi-Wan hasn’t failed him. “It didn’t work.”
Mace looks as if Obi-Wan has told him he’s handing in his saber and leaving the Order in favor of working at the Coruscanti police station. “It what?”
“Anakin didn’t wake up, Mace,” Obi-Wan says, rubbing a hand down his face and staring off into the middle ground. “I thought...I was so sure. But perhaps I don’t know him at all.”
He startles when the Jedi master reaches out and grips his shoulder. Mace’s expression is one of confused compassion, but Obi-Wan latches onto the support he’s being offered.
“Anakin has a dearest love and I don’t know who that is,” he confesses. “I don’t even know where to start. I thought I knew. I thought we were--” close enough that Anakin wouldn’t be able to hide something like that from him.
The words won’t come. They reek of attachment. And while the Council has decided unofficially to let the Hero With No Fear have one attachment, no one’s said anything about the Negotiator.
He’s supposed to be above the urge to cling to Anakin and demand to know everything about his life. He’s not supposed to be feeling so lost when faced with the proof that sometime in the last decade, Anakin has grown into his own person, one Obi-Wan does not know everything about.
“I’m sorry, Obi-Wan,” Mace murmurs sincerely, gripping his shoulder tightly once before letting go completely. “But we will find your padawan’s dearest love.”
For the first time since Padme left the Temple, Obi-Wan manages a smile. There’s a flicker of hope inside his chest, just at the knowledge that he will not have to do this alone.
-----
“Dearest love,” Plo taps his chin on the holo projection. “Perhaps it does not have to mean romantic love at all.”
“A kiss on the lips is inherently non-platonic,” Shaak Ti shakes her head.
“Then why wouldn’t Knight Skywalker wake up for--” Plo argues, but Mace cuts him off.
“Are you suggesting his padawan?”
Obi-Wan sits up in his seat. “Ahsoka!”
Ahsoka could be Anakin’s dearest love. As her master, he cares for her and protects her and teaches her. It makes sense.
After all, given enough drinks to lower his inhibitions, Obi-Wan would freely admit that his dearest love is Anakin.
It’s a master-padawan thing.
----
“You want me to kiss Skyguy?” Ahsoka checks, looking extremely uncomfortable.
Obi-Wan lets his hand rest on her shoulder. “I understand how you must feel, but--”
“No offense, Master,” she interrupts him with a look of disbelief. “But I don’t think you think the idea of kissing my master is as disgusting as I think it is.”
Obi-Wan, embarrassingly, has to fight the urge to check to see if Anakin has magically woken up in time to hear that. “Ahsoka,” he hisses. “It’s a platonic kiss.”
She holds up her hands, but the look of disbelief doesn’t fade. “For me, yeah. For you? Eh.”
Obi-Wan rubs a hand down his face and gestures for her to enter the room where her sleeping master is. “Just kiss him.”
A few seconds later, she emerges, with no Anakin behind her. “That was disgusting, Master, and you owe me,” she calls back to him as she leaves.
Alone in his apartment save for a sleeping Anakin, Obi-Wan groans and tips his head back.
This would be much easier if Anakin still kept a blasted diary.
----
The problem is, Anakin is the sort of man to fall deeply in love with someone after only a few minutes in their presence. Padmé Amidala, for example. Obi-Wan, who loves in a completely different way, couldn’t say if Anakin’s love is based more on his own ideas of the person or genuine feelings.
But the point is, it probably wouldn’t take very long for Anakin to start nursing a crush on someone. With enough exposure, Anakin could be deeply, hopelessly in love by suppertime.
To make matters even worse, Obi-Wan knows from a diary entry from when Anakin was thirteen that he finds every gender and multiple humanoid species attractive.
The first time Obi-Wan walks through the Temple and he thinks, “It could be any of you,” he has to admit to himself he has a bit of a problem on his hands.
The first time he checks in with Ahsoka and the 501st and sees Rex standing next to Anakin’s padawan, he realizes his problem has just become exponentially bigger.
Because Anakin is a general, and he has taken that responsibility incredibly seriously in the past few years they’ve been at war. His dearest love could be his men, any of his men. Maybe even some of Obi-Wan’s too.
----
“Sir,” Cody says, sounding extremely pained.
Obi-Wan crosses his arms. “It’s just a kiss.”
“Sir.”
“Cody. Please. A few seconds, that’s all.”
“And you have to be seated there, sir?”
Obi-Wan has taken up a chair next to Anakin’s bedside. “Cody.”
His commander sighs. “There’s no grounds for this, I need you to know that.”
“Who knows how Anakin feels about anyone?” Obi-Wan mutters, a touch bitterly, as Cody leans down and presses his lips against Anakin’s still ones for no longer than two seconds.
He doesn’t know who sighs with more relief when Anakin fails to wake up, him or Cody.
“Never again, sir,” his commander says as he turns to leave the room.
Obi-Wan leans over Anakin and wipes his lips gently with a disinfecting cloth. He takes a second just to look at the face of his padawan. He’s certainly very beautiful. Anyone would be lucky to have his love, and Obi-Wan is going to find that person.
He is.
“Next!” he calls out the open door and into the living room. There’s a few voices, and then footsteps before Waxer appears, helmet tucked under his arm.
-----
Obi-Wan holds his breath when Rex kisses Anakin, but there’s no change then either.
“I think it’s touching that you thought any of us could be his dearest love,” the clone captain tells him upon leaving. “Doesn’t he love being a Jedi though, too? Same principle applies, doesn’t it?”
Obi-Wan pauses from where he’s wiping at Anakin’s lips and looks up at Rex.
The same principle does apply.
Blast.
He almost forgets to call out for the next person, but thankfully Jesse walks through the door with no prompting from him.
-----
“His dearest love could be more metaphorical,” Obi-Wan broaches this subject at the next Council meeting. “A love for the Jedi Order itself, made physical through its most exemplary Jedi.”
Mace stares at him for a very long moment. “Obi-Wan, you cannot be suggesting what I think you are suggesting.”
Holding eye contact is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, but for Anakin he’ll goddamn do it. He’ll goddamn get every single Jedi on the Council to kiss his padawan.
-----
Aayla Secura isn’t called on, but she flounces into his quarters early one morning. “I was Anakin’s first kiss,” she tells Obi-Wan as he follows her to Anakin’s room. “It is worth a shot, no?”
It doesn’t work.
Obi-Wan has mostly stopped suspecting it will at this point.
-----
“Alright,” he says next Council meeting. “I have a few new ideas.”
“I am still trying to give the memory of your last idea to the Force,” Master Mundi mutters mutinously.
It’s been weeks since Anakin was cursed. Obi-Wan knows that everyone is reaching the end of their patience, but he can’t pretend this isn’t the most pressing issue at the moment, war or not. This is Anakin. This is about returning Anakin to his side. He lowers his shields just enough that some of his desperation leaks out into the Force.
Mace sighs and rubs at his temples. “What are your new ideas, Obi-Wan?”
“He had friends on Tatooine,” he starts energetically. “We can find them and bring them here. Maybe he’s been holding onto their memory for years now, and that has turned itself into his dearest love.”
“And the other idea?” Depa asks.
Obi-Wan purses his lips and shakes his head. “It’s a stretch,” he admits.
“Master Kenobi, I have kissed your padawan. I think we can all say at this point we’re very used to hearing stretches from you,” Shaak Ti says.
Obi-Wan clears his throat. “Well, he was...infatuated with the Queen of Naboo for several years when he was a child. Perhaps he saw one of her almost identical handmaidens and fell in love with her later.”
Perhaps Anakin’s type was pretty brunette women from Naboo. For some reason, the thought makes his chest feel very tight.
The Council chambers are completely silent. Finally, Kit speaks up, making intense eye contact with Obi-Wan. “Before we try either of those...solutions, are we quite sure everyone kissed him correctly?”
Obi-Wan looks around. “Yes,” he answers with surety, realizing he’s the expert on this subject. “I was present for every kiss but the one from...the senator.”
He trails off. Maybe Padmé had done it wrong. He can’t say how that’s even possible, but it would make sense in that Obi-Wan can see Anakin being in love with her much more than he can see him being in love with, say, Cody.
“I think what Master Fisto means,” Mace says delicately. “Is are you sure that you kissed him correctly, Obi-Wan?”
Obi-Wan blinks at him.
“I didn’t kiss him at all,” he says blankly.
The room’s temperature seems to drop by several degrees as shock reverberates around it, followed swiftly by the strange sensation of ten Jedi Masters clumsily giving their emotions to the Force.
“You didn’t kiss him.” Mace states in an unreadable tone.
“I...I ruled myself out in the beginning,” Obi-Wan says, shifting in his seat, unused to so much animosity being directed at him from his fellow council members.
“You ruled yourself out in the beginning.”
“I would know if Anakin considered me his dearest love!” Obi-Wan protests. “I...alright, look, we still share a Force bond. I would have been able to feel it.”
“And you didn’t think that maybe the person he shares an illicit Force bond with could be the person he held closest to his heart?” Master Mundi asks, rubbing at his temples.
Mace shakes his head. “Obi-Wan, I mean this sincerely. If I could strip a rank from someone based on sheer stupidity, I think I would demand a vote right now. Does anyone have a count of how many people have kissed Anakin Skywalker in the past three weeks?”
“Two hundred and forty-nine,” Depa reports, looking down at her datapad.
“Two hundred and forty-nine and you never once thought that perhaps you should try?” Mace looks like he wants to get out of his seat and throttle Obi-Wan.
Actually, most everyone on the Council looks like they’re imagining how that it would feel to wrap their fingers around his neck.
“I…” Obi-Wan trails off. “No one said anything.”
“Everyone thought you’d already tried!” Shaak Ti cries. “Why do you think we’ve been so understanding and nice about this?”
“We thought you’d tried and it didn’t work and you were heartbroken that Anakin didn’t feel the same way you felt about him,” Plo elaborates.
Kit crosses his arms. “Half the Temple had bets about whether it was purely physical between you two or if you were in love as well.”
“But then you’ve seemed so sad these past few weeks no one had the heart to even collect their winnings,” Depa adds, sounding slightly accusing.
Obi-Wan splutters and stands. “I do not-- I am not--we are not participating in anything physical! We share a bond, not a bed! I am not in love with my padawan!”
Mace silences the noises of the Council with a wave of his hand. “Obi-Wan,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Get out. I don’t want to see you again until you’ve kissed your former padawan.”
Obi-Wan stares at him.
“We will sanction no more funds or trips to find Anakin Skywalker’s dearest love until after you have proven that he does not wake up when you kiss him.”
His mouth falls open in outrage. They can’t do that! “You can’t do that!” he cries. “This is Anakin’s life on the line--”
“And your heart,” Windu says, with a modicum of compassion. “I understand. But you cannot continue to deny something everyone else can already see. Go, Master Kenobi.”
Obi-Wan goes.
------
“It’s shameful and outrageous,” Obi-Wan rants as he paces the floor at the foot of Anakin’s bed. “I would not--you have never--I--”
His words tangle into themselves and bring Obi-Wan to a stand-still. He looks at his former padawan’s unmoving figure.
“I would know if you did,” he whispers, coming forward to sit on the edge of the bed. He reaches out and smoothes down Anakin’s hair. “I would not have been so blind as to miss it.”
Anakin says nothing.
He really has grown these past few years, Obi-Wan reflects. Grown into himself, into his deep voice, his sharp jawline, his soft lips. He’s both Obi-Wan’s padawan and not, something else that Obi-Wan has forbidden himself from looking at too closely.
But battlefields are made bearable by this man’s presence at his side, guarding his back. And these quarters are made home by the droid parts he still leaves scattered around. And there’s nothing Obi-Wan looks forward to more than the minutes he has Anakin’s attention on him, even if they’re not doing anything more productive than bickering the day away.
A few standard months ago, they’d gone down to the lower levels together in search of a special candy for Ahsoka’s birthday. And there had been a moment when crossing a crowded street, that Anakin had reached back and grabbed his hand so as not to get separated. It’s a memory Obi-Wan can still remember every detail of, for a reason he’s never examined.
But it’s because he’s in love with Anakin. It has to be.
That’s why it’s been so painful to watch a string of friends and colleagues and past lovers kiss him. Because he could never shake the dread that accompanied the hope that this one might be the one Anakin loves above all the rest.
Alright. So he’s in love with Anakin. The realization settles easily into his heart, as if it’s always been there. Maybe a version of it has.
Fine. But what if Anakin doesn’t feel the same way?
What if he’s admitted his feelings only to have to face the clear, visceral proof that he’s alone in them?
But he can’t not kiss him now. Master Windu has made it clear that he will not be allowing any more resources put towards this particular case until Obi-Wan has kissed Anakin in front of a witness. So it’s either now, alone, so no one can see his devastation at its failure, or later, with someone else present.
Because giving up is not an option. Obi-Wan has thrown himself in front of a blaster shot for his padawan. Surely a kiss is nothing.
One kiss.
Obi-Wan leans forward before he can think any longer.
His first thought is that Anakin’s lips are as soft as they’ve always looked.
He lets his eyes slip closed as he opens his side of the bond, purposefully sending all of his love and adoration down the link to his former padawan.
If he is going to kiss him, he’s going to try his damnedest to do it right.
It’s nothing more than a press of lips, and Obi-Wan has just convinced himself to pull back and go get drunk in the lower levels when there’s movement underneath him.
He shoots backwards and his eyes fly open in time to see Anakin’s own sky-blue eyes blink open for the first time in far too long. “Master?” Anakin mumbles, sounding very confused. He brings a shaky hand up to his lips, and Obi-Wan tracks the movement intently with his eyes. “Did you just kiss me when I was asleep?”
Not trusting his own voice, he nods, staring raptly down at every small detail of Anakin’s animated face. He’s awake. He’s awake.
Oh, the Jedi Council is going to kill Obi-Wan.
“Master?” Anakin asks in a very small voice.
He looks back at him attentively.
“Will you do it again?” his padawan asks shyly.
Obi-Wan smiles and closes the distance between them. He’ll explain everything later. For now, they have a bed and nowhere to be and a temple full of people who, apparently, already thought they were doing this. Might as well give them what they want, seeing as how it aligns so perfectly with what Obi-Wan wants.
And what, apparently, amazingly, mind-blowingly, Anakin wants as well.