Work Text:
The mission on Naboo was a success by any measure, except all the ones involving Qui-Gon Jinn. Obi-Wan, left quite alone to deal with the entirety of the consequences, found this to be objectionable. But, nonetheless, time wore on. Obi-Wan was knighted and Anakin, the young boy they’d found, was put into the creche to live out what few years they could give him of an initiation before he was given to a Master to train. Everyone seemed to think that that Master would be Obi-Wan, except for the man himself, who quite adamantly disliked the idea of being given a child to raise. He, frankly, wasn’t fit to keep most of Qui-Gon’s old plants alive, let alone an entire person.
So life went on. Slowly. A lot slower than it had any right to be, as one month turned into two and two into six and those months became a year and then three–
And suddenly time had gone too quick because Anakin had now been in the Temple for three years, unclaimed, freshly twelve years old by their count since nobody knew the birthday of any one slave child from Hutt Space, where they used a different calendar to boot.
And in spite of the assumptions, or perhaps because of them, Obi-Wan found himself drifting further away from Anakin with every passing month, taken by missions, mostly, or those days where he didn’t have the will to do anything but stare dolefully at the blank wall of his chambers from his only half-decent chair, tea in hand. There were other days, good days, or at least better ones, where he went to the Archives to study some half-forgotten interest or watched a holovision program or two. Sometimes he spoke to his crechemates on the comm. He drank less tea those days.
When Obi-Wan was twenty-eight, about three months before Anakin’s thirteenth birthday, he ran into his crechemate, Bant, in the halls leading to the training salles. She asked him if he’d met Maul’s new Padawan yet. He hadn’t, in fact, he hadn’t spoken to the ornery Zabrak in longer than he hadn’t spoken to Anakin, which was some months at this point. It turned out that those two issues were related. Anakin had accepted Maul as his teacher.
And as Bant continued on without him, Obi-Wan felt a little like the floor would open up to swallow him.
The days where Obi-Wan drank a lot of tea began to change after that, because now he was adding a little whiskey to his tea. It was really only a little. But he drank a lot of tea, because tea and a little whiskey helped him sleep when all he could see was Qui-Gon’s empty eyes after the mercenary had shot him dead on the steps of Theed Palace.
There were still good days, though, and he mildly resented the fact that so many people seemed to think otherwise. He wasn’t having any issues on his own, thank you very much. He was a Jedi Knight now, even though he privately felt like an unkempt Padawan on the tea-drinking days. He finally had his chance, his opportunity to live the life he’d wanted to live since he was small. His adventures took him all across the galaxy, fighting pirates, freeing slaves, rescuing noble monarchs and defeating dastardly villains, and while the work was being done, negotiating, defending, wielding his lightsaber and still-sharp wit in equal measure, why, he may have been the man most full with feelings in the whole galaxy. And then he went home, drank his tea, and went to bed.
Anakin had beskar’gam , now. It muffled his absurdly bright Force-presence; what had once been akin to looking into the sun now felt like looking at a campfire. Strong and bright, still above average for a Jedi’s signature, but bearable. And his abilities were still up to snuff even through the plating. It was almost unfair, really, and it hurt to look at because it dredged up memories of something and someone he thought he’d left behind.
But really, it was nothing to Obi-Wan but proof that he wasn’t ready to teach a student, especially one with such specific and complex needs as Anakin Skywalker. He certainly never would have thought of such a novel solution. Though he did wonder, sometimes, if the meaning of the colors made sense to anyone but him and the armor’s wearer. Black and maroon was a bold statement, especially for a Jedi Padawan, but it wasn’t really Obi-Wan’s place to judge, now, was it?
Obi-Wan had lots of days, these days. Tea-days, where the percentage of tea gradually dropped and the percentage of whiskey gradually grew, and a few Archive days. Missions, ideally that took longer periods of time. He contemplated taking a Watch position, just to get out for a while, and couldn’t really find it within himself to apply. Anakin had made some friends of Obi-Wan and Maul’s former crechemates’ Padawans, and he, Aayla Secura, and Barriss Offee became known as the Disaster Trio for all their hijinks. Sometimes they’d sprint through the halls, followed by one or more of their respective Masters, drenched in hot pink paint and/or glitter.
The ‘clank-clank’ of Anakin’s beskar’gam , accompanied by the rapid footsteps and whooping of three teenage delinquents echoing through the halls became a common sound in the residential wing that Obi-Wan’s rooms were in; it was shared by all three of those Master-Padawan pairs. Obi-Wan was silently grateful for that fact. It made the tea-days a little easier.
People asked him why he didn’t take a Padawan almost as much as they asked him why he shut himself in his room so much. He didn’t want to explain just how inextricable those two questions were, so he usually just replied that he didn’t feel like it. A valid answer, to be sure, but one that came with curious stares, since his crechemates all either had an apprentice, were seeking an apprentice, or were Watchers who therefore could not take an apprentice. He snapped at Bruck for the first time since they were children and went home. He didn’t bother with the tea, that time.
One day, spontaneously, Obi-Wan decided to go on an aimless excursion through the undercity. There was no logical reason for it, except that he felt like going away from his home in the Temple for that day, and the lower levels were full of avenues for misadventure. He found himself climbing down buildings, trusting the Force to catch him each level he descended and, before he knew it, he’d landed in the bazaar on level 301. He’d been here before, but that had been before Qui-Gon died, so… Someone asked him what he thought of spices and he agreed, remembering his time on Mandalore, that spice was nice on the tongue.
He woke up several hours later in his rooms with no recollection of how he’d gotten there, his pockets noticeably lighter except the baggie of orange crystals that were undoubtedly glitterstim that had definitely not been there before.
There was something alluring about spice, Obi-Wan thought. He’d never really understood how people became addicted before. He’d seen spice, smelt it, even touched it once, but felt nothing but a distant, dull aversion every time. Holding the bag in his hands and seriously considering putting some in his tea in lieu of whiskey was a different sensation entirely. However, he could not deny that the empty hours between arriving at the bazaar and arriving at home had been the deepest sleep of his life. Obi-Wan had a mission coming up, a minor dispute on Ithor, where he would become a Jedi again. But now, he would allow himself the comfort of oblivion instead of staring, hollow, at the wall.
Bruck left to Watch over the Meerian Sector. Reeft came back from the Tython system. Anakin passed his late verd’goten , and Maul glowed with pride. Bant took a Padawan, a little Nautolan named Fole, and spoke of him often. Quinlan took Aayla on her first Shadow mission and the two had to be rescued by Luminara and Barriss. Garen taught all the Padawans to fly, but got upstaged by Anakin on their first outing. Obi-Wan drank a lot of tea with glitterstim sprinkled liberally across the steaming surface. Speeders passed, the world turned, people across the galaxy called the Jedi for help.
Life just…went on.
