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1.
“What’s a nice kid like you doing in a place like this?”
Obi-Wan is flattered despite himself. Still, this is the most offensively unoriginal opener in the galaxy, and he feels obliged to answer it with an appropriately scathing glare, sharpened further by eyeliner.
Slightly uneven eyeliner. He is suddenly more conscious of the imbalance than ever.
With his silent retort delivered, Obi-Wan turns away from the interloper and raises his cup to his lips. Holding the stem delicately between two fingers, he takes a slow, luxurious sip, pretending for a moment that it isn’t just blumfruit juice in an inordinately pretty glass, and resumes scanning the tavern for suspects.
“What’d I do?” splutters the Master of Forgettable Seduction Attempts. Far from obeying his dismissal, he has sat down on the next barstool over. Remarkably, he has the audacity to look put out.
(Obi-Wan allows himself a proper look in return. Besides the juvenile sputtering, the man’s not unattractive: a twenty-something human with a lithe frame, his insouciant smile at odds with his surprisingly intense stare. His auburn curls have a careless windswept quality that Obi-Wan interprets as a sign of considerable care, seeing how there’s barely a breeze on Theron in the summer.)
Obi-Wan huffs, turns back around, and sets his glass deliberately down on the counter, savoring the brief, silvery clink.
“Should I know you?” he asks.
The man’s smile falters. “No. No, you wouldn’t.”
That ought to be the end of it.
“So what,” the man says, leaning in conspiratorially like they’re “in it together” though Obi-Wan can’t imagine what it would even be, “brings the Jedi to Theron?”
Obi-Wan freezes. It’s dangerous to get caught out as an undercover Jedi, and he wishes, for one fleeting moment, that he was at Qui-Gon’s side tonight. But a Dagoyan scholar just published a new theory on the Chosen One last week, claiming that their arrival might be expected in this very century, and Qui-Gon has since spent every spare moment bent over his comm, conversing fervently with other scholars. Obi-Wan had hardly been invited to join; it wasn’t a subject he would know anything about.
Mid-panic, Obi-Wan opens his mouth to shape some desperate retort (“Is that what you’d like, then, being tied up by a Jedi-”), yet the man’s expression softens first.
“I’m guessing that’s a saber.” He nods towards Obi-Wan’s hip, where his brief flirtation with clothes that aren’t baggy to the point of shapelessness has come back to bite him. “And then there’s your braid.”
Obi-Wan’s reflexes are Jedi-quick. Yet the stranger’s hand brushes his face before he knows it, strangely tender as he reaches towards his braid. Obi-Wan flushes hot as the stranger takes the wayward strand between his fingers and tucks it back into his hood. It is a gentle motion. Oddly intimate, as if this man might understand the significance of that braid to a young Jedi.
Or, Obi-Wan supposes, he might understand something else by the motion entirely.
Obi-Wan’s heart speeds, tripping over itself in elation, yet the man draws back as if nothing had happened at all. Instead, he squints at his menu and then waves down the bartender. “Nectarwine.”
“The bottle’s on the house.”
“Just a glass,” he corrects, as if it’s ordinary to be offered free liquor, so ordinary he can turn it down without thinking. He turns back to Obi-Wan. “So are you here for the coaxium?”
Obi-Wan freezes again because, yes, he and Qui-Gon are here to investigate reports of smuggled, half-refined coaxium, the fuel for lightspeed jumps. It’s rumored to be a tiny amount: practically untrackable until it explodes and brings a building down with it.
“I smelled some down at the track,” the man says.
Obi-Wan stares at him blankly.
“The racetrack?” the man prompts, equally perplexed that Obi-Wan doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “For the Spiral? Biggest prize in the Mid Rim?”
Obi-Wan says nothing.
“... It’s a Podrace.”
“Oh.” Obi-Wan wrinkles his nose. No wonder he’s never heard of it.
“You really haven’t heard about the Spiral Classic?” He’s put out again, on the verge of a pout.
“I wouldn’t know anything about Podracing,” Obi-Wan snaps in self-defense. “I hate flying.”
Ill mood abandoned, the man bursts out laughing like Obi-Wan’s told some marvelous joke. It’s strange behavior, though he hasn’t even tasted his nectarwine yet.
“Right, well,” he says, still shaking his head. “Tomorrow’s explosions might be louder than usual, if you don’t get going.”
“I’m sorry, but are you suggesting someone smuggled in half-refined coaxium in order to put it in a landspeeder?” Obi-Wan exclaims in disbelief. “That’s illegal-”
“It’s Podracing, nothing’s illegal.”
“- not to mention an incurably stupid idea.”
“Hey,” he says, as if personally offended. “I could make it work. Just inject a drop into the fuel line before a straight shot-”
“A word of advice: don’t plan your crimes with a Jedi.”
“Whatever you say, Master,” he says in a sarcastic tone that no Padawan would ever use, not unless they wanted to miss dinner for a week.
With a farewell eyeroll, Obi-Wan puts down the credits for his drink and starts to exit the bar, because by some miracle he’s found a lead to investigate. There’ll be casualties if he fails at his duty, but for once, the thought barely weighs on him. He’s light-footed as he weaves towards the door, practically giddy that he might have just gotten something right for once.
A pink-haired girl grabs onto his arm with a breathless squeal: “Was that the Anakin Skywalker?”
Obi-Wan looks at her dryly. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
2.
When interpreting Qui-Gon’s directive to “go gain an appreciation of Alderaan’s culture,” Obi-Wan may have taken some creative license.
In fairness, the shelves at this Alderaanian winery could rival a museum for aesthetic pleasure. Vessels glitter in every shape and size, some thin and tapered, others voluptuously round. Backlit, the glass and the wines within throw sparks across the room, splashing the walls with color. The holos in the background murmur sedately about galactic politics, more elevated than the usual grav-ball and fathier races one sees in such establishments.
Obi-Wan gazes at the display, as he internally debates whether to play the Jedi card (“You don’t need to see my identification.”). It might be an unnecessary hassle, given the actual card tucked into his back pocket: printed on Level 1313 and tested on twenty levels above it. And should Alderaan’s verification systems prove more rigorous than Coruscant’s, Obi-Wan muses, he would be presented with an exquisite opportunity to learn the boundaries of diplomatic immunity.
“What are you smiling about?”
Obi-Wan recalls this the voice: warm and mischievous. Strangely knowing. He turns and confirms it’s the Podracer from a year back. The man hasn’t died yet, despite the multiple loose control cables in his brain, and his hair’s grown out to frame his face with flyaway curls. Long enough, Obi-Wan muses, that one could twine their fingers in it and claim two solid fistfuls.
Obi-Wan’s fingers twitch. “What’s a guy like you doing on a nice planet like this?”
Far from taking offense, he grins: a blast of sunshine. “I’m thinking of rebuilding my cockpit from Alderaanian synthstone. It’s a lot lighter than durasteel.”
“Wouldn’t that cause issues with the structural integrity?”
“Only in a crash, so no. Not for me.”
Obi-Wan would inquire as to whether he has a superiority complex or merely a death wish, but his Podracer distracts him by signaling towards the bartender, raising one black-gloved hand. A prosthetic, probably from one of those supposedly impossible crashes.
Mechanics may customize their prosthetics, the lecturer in his Healing class once instructed him, to unlock extra capabilities and regain a sense of control.
To make them vibrate, Quinlan had supplied with an impish smile.
Obi-Wan calculates for a moment before propping his elbow on the counter and leaning his head on his hand. “Buy me a drink?”
He used his most guileless voice, yet the man looks quizzically at him. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” Obi-Wan replies promptly.
He looks eighteen. And eighteen would be legal on Alderaan, there’s a sign saying as much on the wall behind him.
Yet the man’s expression gets even more pinched, like he’s thinking even harder about Obi-Wan than Councilmembers do and is about as impressed.
“What’ll you be having?” The bartender rolls over.
“One Rhuvian fizz,” the man answers, completing his deliberations. “And a blumfruit juice for- the gentleman.”
Obi-Wan narrows his eyes.
Before he can protest, the man turns back to him. “I guess we haven’t been properly introduced. My name’s Anakin Skywalker. Which … probably doesn’t mean anything to you.”
He has the audacity to sound peeved about this.
“I’m Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he politely returns.
“Yeah,” he says, like that’s a socially appropriate response. He takes his cocktail, purple bubbles sparkling and popping at the surface, as Obi-Wan receives a plain glass of off-color blue-gray juice.
“Thank you,” Obi-Wan offers, in his sweetest manner.
Anakin snorts, like he’s detected Obi-Wan’s sarcasm (a feat usually restricted to Qui-Gon) and he’s decided to be amused by it (which even Qui-Gon cannot manage). He toasts to Obi-Wan and drinks. Obi-Wan lifts his glass too before drinking his juice like a crecheling.
It tastes even grayer than it looks.
He suppresses his grimace, yet Anakin winces sympathetically anyhow.
“Hey.” He throws a glance backwards, making sure that the droid’s looking the other way, and then slides his own glass towards Obi-Wan.
Careful not to disturb the salt sparkling on the rest of the rim, Obi-Wan sneaks a taste, fitting his mouth just where Anakin’s was. The bubbles dance on his palette. Even when he passes the glass back, his lips keep tingling.
“I want to give you my number,” Anakin declares. His eyes are dark, and he’s still wearing a conspiratorial smile. “You should comm me if you ever need something.”
“Something?”
“Oh, you know, if you need a fast ride.” Anakin shrugs, all infuriating nonchalance. “Or if a mission’s going wrong, and you need a distraction.”
Obi-Wan hums as he passes over his comm. “Something tells me you can be very distracting, when you set your mind to it.”
At first his eyes linger on Anakin’s (pupils blown huge in the low light, fixed on Obi-Wan even as his fingers fly across the comm keys). Then they dip down to Anakin’s lips, plush and liquor-laced. As Anakin presses the comm back into his hands, Obi-Wan leans forward-
“Kriffing hell,” Anakin exclaims, eyes snapping up to something behind Obi-Wan’s head.
Obi-Wan turns to see a new headline flashing on the holo. “Nute Gunray named Viceroy in Aftermath of Federation Leak …”
“I- the hacker proved that Gunray’s part of the corruption,” Anakin splutters. “They can’t put him in charge of fixing it.”
Disoriented, Obi-Wan squints at the holo, reacquainting himself with the facts of the case. “It’s an internal Neimoidian issue. Once they pay the fines, they’re free to do what they like.”
“The Galactic Courts should stop them.”
“The Galactic Courts?” Obi-Wan scoffs, eyebrows arching. “They can’t dictate how individual systems govern themselves. Not unless you just want to declare a state of emergency over it.”
“Why not?”
Before he knows it, Obi-Wan’s reciting the outline he’s writing on the Seven Battles of Ruusan, and all the facts from that paper he wrote last year on accommodating cultural differences and respecting different systems’ autonomy. Ordinarily spikes of emotion leave him muddled and incoherent, yet somehow he gets more and more eloquent, the more Anakin pisses him off.
“‘So what’ is not a convincing comeback when discussing a potential galactic spiral into authoritarianism! Honestly, Anakin.”
He’s genuinely exasperated (breathless, color rising to his cheeks). Yet Anakin’s expression softens into something almost nostalgic.
“Okay, yeah,” he concedes, ducking his head. “Democracy’s worth the headache. You’re right.”
Something tells Obi-Wan that Anakin’s just humoring him, that he’s not properly convinced and they ought to continue the argument, but then Anakin knocks all coherent thought out of his head by putting his hand (bare, rough skin that catches) on Obi-Wan’s and squeezing. “I’ll see you around.”
The warmth of his touch lingers, even when Anakin’s long vanished from his sight.
3.
This is meditation, Obi-Wan thinks as he brushes his nose and breathes it all in. I am growing closer to the Living Force.
The lights waver hypnotically from sapphire-blue to violet and back, as layers of Warbat trance music twine into each other, thrumming in his teeth. Beautiful people clad in jewels and little else graze his shoulders as they pass by. Then their heads turn, and their gazes follow him further. The will of the crowd sweeps him up, like he’s merely one more wisp of shimmery gauze.
Obi-Wan drifts through the dance floor, lingering at the edges of different groups. If he closes his eyes, he could pretend to be part of their gossip-
“I hope they’ll pick a closed casket. I mean, Neimoidians are … bulbous on a good day, but imagine, after all those worms got through with him!”
Obi-Wan turns elsewhere. Tonight, he’s not interested in news headlines, particularly the grotesque ones. Two hungry kouhun are enough for an assassination, so why anyone would drop a hundred of the crawlers in Viceroy Gunray’s bed is not a question he cares to dwell on.
He shakes his head to clear the image away and glides into the thick of the dance floor, where the Living Force grows tangible even to him, beating like a heart to the music.
Energy spikes through the Force, followed by a rush of noise and turning heads. Obi-Wan bends with the crowd to spot a head of not-quite-golden curls, weaving from the door of the club towards the gambling tables.
A live Podrace is splashed for the gamblers’ pleasure across the far wall: the Tatooine leg of the Constella Championship. Having secured his place as finalist with his win back at Malastare, Anakin Skywalker could easily skip the competition. Still, Obi-Wan forgets quite how to breathe at seeing him on Coruscant instead, in this very club.
Everyone else turns back to their own conversations, coolly ignoring Anakin as if embarrassed to have been caught caring. Obi-Wan ignores them and heads directly for the gambling. He comes to a stop directly behind Anakin’s chosen chair and then leans down, folding his arms across the top like he owns it.
“Why is it,” he asks, bending forward until his nose is nearly buried in Anakin’s curls, “that the Force glows whenever you’re near?”
Anakin twists around to look up at him with a smirk. “Well, what are the chances?”
“May I sit with you?”
“Sure.”
Anakin looks on either side, but the seats are already full for tonight’s race. Obi-Wan had already absorbed and analyzed this fact, so he slides around to inspect Anakin’s own chair. It could fit them side to side, but not easily.
Another pair’s solved this dilemma a few chairs down, where a Twi’lek woman sits draped over a man. Obi-Wan copies her and drops onto Anakin’s lap.
“Uh, yeah. Okay,” Anakin says. “Efficient use of space.”
Obi-Wan shifts, making himself more comfortable. “I thought so.” Then he cranes his neck to inspect the possible wagers. “I’d bet against Quadinaros finishing. Given Tatooine’s climate, his engines might just overheat.”
“Yeah, 50-50 whether they’ll even start-“ Anakin stops short. “You looked Podracing up.”
Obi-Wan carefully keeps his face still, confessing nothing.
Still, a slow, wicked grin stretches Anakin’s lips.
“You looked me up.” As he puts down money against Quadinaros, and Sebulba too, he chuckles. The rumble shakes Obi-Wan too, pressed against him like this. “Were you impressed?”
“I was impressed,” Obi-Wan replies primly, “by how quickly all your common sense abandons ship, every time a race begins.”
Anakin’s face is very close. Obi-Wan can’t see anything outside Anakin’s delight, shining on his face, sending up loose sparks in the Force.
Anakin laughs, with a puff of breath that warms Obi-Wan’s cheek. “Are you drunk?”
“No.”
Anakin’s expression morphs into deeper disbelief. When he speaks, he lowers his voice like it’s a secret. “Are you high?”
“The local suppliers and I have been building up trust. Turns out I’m finally on the whitelist.” With this declaration, Obi-Wan beams. It’s not as if drug dealers will just stroll up to any random Jedi and offer them death sticks; this victory required extensive negotiations.
One of Anakin’s arms has looped around his back, strong and steady, yet the other hand starts running over his hair, tentative and soft and wildly destabilizing.
“I know there’s rumors on the HoloNet,” Anakin murmurs, “saying I need stimulants to perform the way I do. I hope you haven’t been reading those.”
The words take a while to float to Obi-Wan’s brain, distracted as it is by the tiny frown embedded in Anakin’s forehead.
“No,” he replies. It finally occurs to him that he’s been impolite. “Oh. Sorry, did you want some?”
“… No. No, I just want you to stop doing risky things because of me.”
Obi-Wan blinks. “I don’t do ‘risky things’ because of you.”
Anakin doesn’t seem to have an answer to that.
“Do you feel dizzy at all?” he finally asks. “Too hot?”
Eyes closed, nerves set aflame by Anakin’s touch, Obi-Wan cannot decide on an answer. He lets out a low, involuntary purr, hopefully too quiet to be heard.
Anakin’s voice gains a note of concern. “Are you having a hard time thinking?”
He shakes his head. “No more than usual.”
“Okay,” Anakin breathes, before resting his forehead against Obi-Wan’s. “I’m going to take you home now.”
It is a command, not a request. That tone brooks no argument. Even so, he looks surprised by the speed with which Obi-Wan leaps up, ready to leave.
Before he knows it, he’s in Anakin’s speeder: a gorgeous sleek black machine, with engines that roar under Anakin’s handling, responding to his every move. What seems like paint at first turns out to be richly textured, expensive baffleweave: a material of questionable legality, designed especially to thwart sensors. It’s a convertible model, and the roof is down, leaving Obi-Wan open to the sharp tang of exhaust and to cold air whipping his face. All around, Coruscant glitters like starlight.
“Is your master off-planet right now?” Anakin calls over the engines.
“Hardly,” he replies as Anakin swoops up off the main road, into some inner tunnel Obi-Wan’s never encountered before. “I trained with him this afternoon. He called me a protocol droid.”
The rush of wind transmutes this into a funny story: a silly, meaningless joke, the way Qui-Gon must have meant it.
“Because you know too many languages?”
“Too many languages and too much etiquette,” Obi-Wan agrees, laughing. “And I’m as eager to please, and I roughly have the same level of connection to the Living Force.”
It’s a funny story, yet Anakin is looking at him strangely. The vehicle (whizzing along at twice Coruscant’s limit for closed spaces) jolts, barely veering out of a bike’s path.
This speeder has excellent automatic crash avoidance. That, or the Force itself is trying to keep them alive.
A few seconds later, Anakin tears his focus back towards the road.
They zip up unfamiliar roadways, higher and higher into the upper levels. Obi-Wan doesn’t recognize any of them, not until the Jedi Temple comes into view.
“I know shortcuts,” Anakin explains, when he notices Obi-Wan gaping.
The shortcut is impressive, seeing how Obi-Wan didn’t know about it after a decade and a half of living here, but that’s hardly why he’s taken aback.
“I thought …”
You were bringing me to your home.
Obi-Wan trails off. With a click, Anakin unlocks the door, only on Obi-Wan’s side.
“I thought this was very nice of you,” Obi-Wan at last sighs, as he drags himself out. “Thanks.”
“Anytime. And if you start feeling sick, you should tell someone. Masters will always want to help, when their Padawan’s in trouble.”
Obi-Wan throws his head back and laughs. “I don’t know where you got that idea.”
Anakin's expression twists, stricken. Obi-Wan keeps giggling over it, all the way inside.
4.
Obi-Wan’s chest aches. The bacta patches, stretched tight under his robes, do their very best to hold him together, but a certain soreness lingers in defiance of even the painkillers.
Through sheer bloody-mindedness, he maintains a straight back and a smile as the procession of Gungan musicians and impossibly elegant Naboo dancers advances towards Theed’s main square. By comparison, Qui-Gon’s smile comes easily, bestowing gracious approval upon the festivities, the flowering vines lacing every wall, everything but Obi-Wan.
When it’s over, Qui-Gon dismisses him to go amuse himself, gaze skimming over Obi-Wan like he’s not really there.
“We’ll discuss your choices with the Council,” he adds quietly, for Obi-Wan’s ears only.
This reception is meant for for important Naboo dignitaries (half of whom are younger than him, and twice as distinguished), all of whom will have to work together to clean up the Commerce Guild’s mess. That means Obi-Wan knows almost no one here. He glances towards Queen Sanandrassa’s handmaidens, but he can’t pick out the two he met earlier from the group of identical-looking women. Anyway, there's little point to conversation; given their security obligations, it’s likely that everything they say about themselves will be a lie.
A dark-cloaked figure catches his eye: loitering at the edge of the celebration, starkly out of place amidst the feathers and color. Obi-Wan’s pulse lurches, hammering wildly until the Force intervenes.
Not trouble, it whispers, before amending, Not for you.
The hood tumbles back to reveal wayward curls and a familiar face, eyes locked on him. Anakin Skywalker should not be here, and after all the chaos of the invasion, Obi-Wan ought to alert security at once. He deliberates for a moment before striding directly towards Anakin himself.
“I regret to inform you that you aren’t automatically invited to every VIP event,” Obi-Wan jests, but it lacks bite.
And Anakin doesn’t even snort, his usually loose frame drawn tight with concern. “The news said there was a Jedi casualty.”
“Just a flesh wound.”
Anakin nods. “What got you? A droideka?”
“... A lightsaber.”
Blue eyes flash. “What? How?”
“I lost my balance for a moment,” he admits, thinning his lips. It is the truth, in every damning sense. “After I ran into a … a child, who’d scrounged up a saber from somewhere.”
He struggles for his next words, still in shock at himself.
In the heat of battle, Obi-Wan had perceived only a phantom menace: a monster in red and black. He hadn’t looked past the screams of the Force, past the pain of a red sabertip slicing from his hip to his shoulder. Only afterwards did Qui-Gon point out what should have been obvious at first glance, that the would-be assassin was a Zabrak, and a young one. That he still had buds in place of an adult’s horns. That his movements seemed jerky and desperate due not to style but to severe injury, and that he was leaking pain into the Living Force, quite possibly screaming for help.
“And he hurt you?” Anakin demands.
“Not severely.”
That’s what Qui-Gon told him the Healers had said. Only two ribs were singed.
With a sharp breath, Obi-Wan forces the rest of the truth out. “I sort of … beheaded him first, before he got the chance.”
It is an insufficient confession, dull from painkillers and sheer disbelief, yet the earliest pangs of shame have started worming their way into his gut. Already, Qui-Gon has turned away from him in revulsion.
Obi-Wan falls silent, waiting for the next rejection.
“Beheading.” Anakin cocks his head to the side. “That should stick.”
That should stick.
Of course, most people have no socially appropriate response prepared for an unexpected confession of beheading.
But that should stick?
“It’s a shock he even made it to Naboo,” Obi-Wan rambles, just to fill the odd silence. “The investigators just found his ship; the hull took a direct hit from a turbolaser before jumping to lightspace. That alone should have killed him.”
“You would think,” Anakin mutters. Then he claps Obi-Wan on the shoulder. “But you saved yourself, and that’s what matters. The Council might just knight you over it.”
The impact of his hand triggers a spike of pain. It newly bisects Obi-Wan, and he flinches as a cold chasm splits open between himself and the man before him.
For all the ways he feels like a kindred spirit in the Force, Anakin Skywalker understands nothing about being a Jedi.
“They might,” Obi-Wan lies, numb and frozen through. “What about you, what are you doing here? Naboo’s hardly known for its Podracing.”
It’s a striking coincidence. It grows more striking, the more he considers it. The chances of randomly coming across Anakin here are low, so miniscule they strain credulity …
“Naboo’s perfect.” Anakin swings an arm out to gesture at the sun-dappled plaza, fragrant with spring blooms. “I visit whenever I get the chance. My wife’s from here.”
The cold gives way to searing fury.
“Your wife,” Obi-Wan repeats, voice colored by only the lightest surprise.
Anakin hums, still wrapped up in this planet’s beauty. His face softens into fondness, a dreamlike smile stealing across his face as he watches a cluster of Naboo’s Youth Legislators in the center of the square. Obi-Wan glances over at them: fourteen at the oldest, already imbued with more grace than he will ever acquire in his life.
He sniffs. “Coruscant has more to offer.”
This claim, which should retroactively earn Obi-Wan failing grades in every diplomacy class he’s ever taken, steals back Anakin’s attention. He turns towards Obi-Wan again, jaw dropped in indignation.
“Wait. Are you mad that I’m married?”
“Not in the slightest,” Obi-Wan replies, seething.
Anakin scoffs. “We don’t all have to follow Jedi rules.”
“No, because we’re not all Jedi,” Obi-Wan returns. This is a true statement: just as trivially obvious (and frankly ridiculous) as Anakin’s.
Still, the Force flares around Anakin, magma-red.
“I’m glad you’re fine.” Anakin gives Obi-Wan a curt nod and then leaves him, striding off with his navy cloak billowing behind him.
Obi-Wan narrows his lips for one moment, waiting for Anakin to reverse course and explain himself. He does nothing of the kind, instead closing in on the group of children. After a moment’s surprise, they rush to fold him into their circle with impeccable poise.
With concerted effort, Obi-Wan draws himself tall and manufactures the same air of self-confidence. He is a good Jedi.
He can pretend to be a good Jedi.
He returns the gaze of a kindly-faced older official who happens to be looking his way. The man’s presence is inoffensive in the Force, so bland it could be entirely overlooked. Nothing like the turbulence Anakin left in his wake.
“You’re the young man who chased down that horrid assassin, aren’t you? I remember your face from the security footage.”
“I am,” Obi-Wan says. After an overlong moment of racking his brain, he remembers this is Naboo’s Senator, though the name completely escapes him.
“Well, I speak for all Naboo when I say we’re all very grateful for your intervention.”
Obi-Wan smiles: a tremulous, fragile thing. “I'm only trying to do my duty as a Jedi.”
“Oh, my boy.” The Senator places a hand on his uninjured shoulder, gently. “In that respect, you exceeded all our expectations. Your Master must be proud.”
“He …”
“If he isn’t, he certainly ought to be.”
As the Senator continues lavishing praise Obi-Wan glances towards the Youth Legislators. Now engrossed in an animated conversation, Anakin doesn’t look back once.
Obi-Wan’s chest aches.
5.
“Sorry to bother you, Flo. I was just wondering if you still have any-”
The diner door clatters behind him. Obi-Wan turns, and Anakin halts in the entryway.
“You,” Anakin intones.
There are circles under his eyes. His hair has zoomed past “windswept” to “uncombed for at least two days.”
“What are you doing here?” they demand, simultaneously.
After a moment’s gaping, Anakin walks past him to the counter. “Just picking up my usual.”
Flo promptly wheels over with a bag. “Raxus sliders, medium-rare, sub jerba cheese, with a squeeze of Bimm mustard.”
She hands the bag to Anakin, all while rattling off Obi-Wan’s comfort order.
Anakin holds his stare, even as he takes the bag from Flo and fishes out the credits.
“Alright,” Anakin finally huffs, with a wry twist of the lip. “Why don’t you help me eat these? I’ll get a Jawa Juice too, and let you take most of it.”
The smell of grilled nerf and onions wafts from the bag, tempting. Come to think of it, Obi-Wan hasn’t ordered the Raxus sliders in years.
“Sorry,” Obi-Wan replies after a moment. “I’m with someone else. And you really shouldn’t encourage underage drinking.”
He internally cringes as Anakin opens his mouth to protest. Dex’s is a relatively small establishment; their voices will carry to the tables.
“Since when-” Anakin cuts himself off, gaze suddenly locked on the figure rising from a booth, gliding up to stand right behind Obi-Wan.
“Ah,” Obi-Wan says. “Anakin, meet Sheev.”
“A pleasure, I’m sure.” Sheev extends a hand to Anakin.
For the first time, Anakin seems truly caught off-guard.
Slowly, he shakes his hand. “Senator.”
“Oh, there’s no need to stand on ceremony,” Sheev chuckles. Once free, his hand takes up a friendly place on Obi-Wan’s waist.
“I wouldn’t expect to see you down here,” Anakin says, brow wrinkled in genuine puzzlement. “I associated you more with ballet or opera. You know. Fancy Naboo things.”
Certainly, fancy Naboo things must be Anakin’s taste.
“I certainly enjoy a little theater,” Sheev replies. “But Obi-Wan mentioned how he likes this spot, and how, regrettably, it’s never met his master’s standards. I was glad for an opportunity to treat him.”
“Right.” Anakin’s eyes shift from Obi-Wan to Sheev, and back to Obi-Wan again.
Dipping his head towards Sheev, Obi-Wan murmurs, “I’ll be back in a moment.”
“I am happy to wait,” comes the reassuring reply.
Sheev returns to the booth, and Obi-Wan finally remembers to ask Flo if she’s still got any of that hot sauce Dex somehow wrangled from Concord Dawn. As she clanks around in the back supply closet, Anakin leans in towards Obi-Wan, lowering his voice, brow still marred by that tiny frown.
“I don’t like how Palpatine looks at you,” he says.
Flo rolls back out and tosses the sauce over with a jaunty "Here ya go, honey." Obi-Wan catches it and looks back at Anakin.
“My regards to your wife,” he says, before slipping away.
+1.
The mistake, Obi-Wan thinks as bones crunch against a brocaded wall, was listening to the Force.
His own bones are intact, if unsteadied as he wobbles his way from the mattress to verify that yes, Sheev Palpatine is lying unconscious at the chamber’s opposite end. This disaster is not, unfortunately, just the conjuration of a fevered brain. Fumbling under the Senator’s stiff collar, Obi-Wan’s hands shake too heavily to identify a pulse, but the hot air at his lips is harder to miss.
That’s good. At least one of them is breathing.
Arm lashing out blindly, he summons his comm to his hand from the pocket of his robe, thrown on the floor somewhere. He has to call Coruscant’s emergency line and beg for a medic. Yet his fingers outrace his head and punch out a different number, burned even deeper into his memory.
Anakin picks up like he was waiting for the call, before Obi-Wan can grab hold of himself.
“What’s wrong?” he demands.
Obi-Wan’s gaze clings to Anakin’s face, fuzzy and blue and so dear to him that he’s briefly struck dumb.
“Sorry,” Obi-Wan finally says, working through one syllable at a time. “I shouldn’t have pulled you into this.”
Anakin begins his reply. Obi-Wan cuts the call off first.
The Jedi’s path must be exhausting, Sheev had whispered, for a heart that grows attached so very easily.
Every limb crying out in exhaustion, Obi-Wan manages to find his tunic on the ground, and at least he's still got his trousers. He shrugs the shirt back on before he has to stagger back towards the bed, vision swimming. He’s running fever-hot, on the edge of delirium.
I can show you pleasures that the Jedi would never dare name, Sheev had crooned in the backroom of a dark, sumptuous restaurant earlier in the night, as he surreptitiously pressed an overfull goblet of wine into Obi-Wan’s hand.
Unlikely, Obi-Wan had thought, seeing how he had access to the HoloNet and also to Quinlan Vos. Still he had held his tongue and played the good Jedi and taken the wine, tasting it hesitantly, like it represented some forbidden novelty.
And then he suddenly found himself stumbling in the hallway outside the Senate apartments, his brain flooding with liquid delight. Sheev had caught him with a tight grip and then pulled him inside, chuckling, The wine must seem quite strong to you, given your inexperience …
Not just wine, Obi-Wan realizes as he sprawls on the bed, begging the chandelier above to stay still. The mistake was, in retrospect, not disputing Sheev’s claim at once.
A disturbance outside forces him back up, off the bed. Footsteps get closer, some kind of security detail coming to investigate the crash. Obi-Wan searches fruitlessly for some explanation besides I threw him across the room without really thinking it through, just because for a second I thought the Force was screaming …
The bedroom door slides open, and it’s Anakin. Obi-Wan nearly buckles again.
“How’d you find me?”
“That paneling.”
Obi-Wan looks to where Anakin’s gesturing, at a strip of gilded panels curving down the wall. It’s a tiny motif throughout this apartment building. Why Anakin would recognize it from the flickery background of a five-second holo-call, Obi-Wan can’t imagine, any more than he can explain how Anakin swanned past the downstairs security and Palpatine’s triple-locked door.
For his part, Anakin seems to have precisely as many questions about the body on the floor.
“He’s alive,” Obi-Wan whispers as Anakin crouches down, inspecting Palpatine. “I wasn’t trying to hurt him, the Force just. Just flung him off me-”
Anakin’s head jerks up in alarm. “Are you alright?”
“Of course,” Obi-Wan replies automatically. He isn’t the one who deserves concern, just now.
Anakin surveys the room once more. His eyes now linger on Obi-Wan’s robes, strewn across the floor. The Force starts to crackle around him, like the warning sizzle of an ion cannon.
Obi-Wan seizes a breath and then forces himself to study the situation too, as a detached outsider would. It’s all his fault, he realizes. He’d encouraged the Senator. He’d taken the drink. He’d disobeyed clear orders to stay down, keep your eyes closed and turned around anyway on a whim, because he’d just wanted to see a face, because even in someone else’s arms he’d somehow managed to feel alone-
He’d turned, and was greeted by glowing yellow eyes and a screech of the Force. The yellow was, in retrospect, an obvious trick his eyes played on him, and he must have misinterpreted the Force’s warning, just like he did on Naboo. It grows so obvious that Senator Palpatine wasn’t manipulating him at all. Who would go to all that effort just for him?
Obi-Wan looks back up to find Anakin studying him, gaze dark. Downright thunderous.
“I’m going to call a medic,” Obi-Wan hears himself say, “and turn myself in to the authorities. You need to go.”
“You want to turn yourself in,” Anakin repeats, sounding strangled. “Of course you do.”
“I shouldn’t have called you in the first place,” Obi-Wan breathes, apologetic, stomach twisting in equal parts horror and shame.
Anakin stares at him, through him, before snatching up the saber from Obi-Wan’s belt on the floor. In one expert motion, he ignites it, the blade shooting straight through Sheev Palpatine’s heart.
Without even scorching the floor, Obi-Wan notes, before he can process anything else.
“Now you’re alright.” After powering the saber off, Anakin hooks it on his own belt and stalks over to Obi-Wan. He firmly cups Obi-Wan’s face, grounding him with warm flesh and cool leather.
Pathetically, Obi-Wan presses into them both.
“Hey,” Anakin murmurs. His thumbs stroke Obi-Wan’s cheekbones as gently as a crechemaster's, as if he didn’t just murder a man. “Think about how many other people Palpatine would’ve hurt, if we didn’t stop him.”
That is an awful argument, used to justify nearly every atrocity Obi-Wan’s ever studied in history class, and yet it loosens the knot in Obi-Wan’s gut and lets him breathe. Anakin sounds so persuasive. Eyelids fluttering closed, Obi-Wan could imagine that the Force itself agrees.
“You still planning to turn yourself in?” Anakin’s face is serious, yet there’s a knowing smile in his voice.
The assault charge has just been rather substantially upgraded; so too have the punishments. Even so, Obi-Wan might have given himself up, but he is not alone in this anymore.
He will not give up Anakin.
“You can … circumvent this building’s security,” Obi-Wan utters after a moment.
Anakin confirms this with a nod.
“Can you remove us both from their records? Make it seem like we were never here?”
A devilish grin spreads across Anakin’s face, as he realizes he’s won Obi-Wan over. “Consider it done. You want to fake an assassination? I can get some kouhon-”
“No,” Obi-Wan cuts him off, even as he pulls Anakin’s hands from his face and folds them in his own grip, holding tight for stability. “Some Jedi can reconstruct a murder from even a bit of the … remains.”
Anakin nods. “So I’ll take the body out in my speeder and get rid of the whole thing.”
“Dex has a disruptor from Concord Dawn. That’s a more elegant disposal method than whatever you’re contemplating right now.”
Anakin confirms this with a snort. “I’ll send Naboo a ransom message. Delay the full murder investigation until the trail’s basically ruined.”
Obi-Wan tips his head. “Can you write a convincing ransom note?”
“Like I was born in a Hutt palace.”
“Right. So you’ll clean the surveillance systems, and I’ll clean the apartment.”
“And I’ll be your alibi.”
Obi-Wan shakes his head.
“Why not?” Anakin presses. “You can trust me.”
“As if that was in question,” Obi-Wan retorts, only a little hysterical. “But no, Anakin, I don’t want to rely on your word.”
“That’s … fair,” Anakin says with a self-deprecating duck of the head, though that’s not how Obi-Wan meant it.
If they play this right, Obi-Wan won’t even need to mention Anakin’s name. He means to shield Anakin, even now.
“I want to give hard proof, that I couldn’t have been here in his apartment.” An idea rapidly unfurls, springing to his tongue. “I’ll go to Aurabash. That’s a club-”
“As far from here as you could get,” Anakin immediately fills in.
An accurate assessment. It’s on the other side of Coruscant down in the lowest levels, at least a three-hour journey. Quinlan warned him off the place, claiming it was too rough. Obi-Wan’s been yearning to go ever since.
Anakin frowns. “Nobody at Aurabash would be trusted as an eyewitness.”
“Which is why I’ll make sure to establish my location through official channels,” Obi-Wan replies seamlessly. “I’ll panic and call in medics or the fire department, as soon as there’s any sign of a possible emergency-”
“- and I’ll start an emergency if there isn’t one.”
Obi-Wan glares at him, all while suppressing the impulse to laugh. It feels as if he’s been covering up murders with this man for his whole life.
“If I show up there anytime soon, then I can’t possibly have still been in the Senate District when poor Sheev was being abducted. So the question, Anakin, is how quickly can you get me there?”
“Following traffic laws?” He smirks at Obi-Wan’s instant scowl. “About an hour, if I cut through the lower Industrial Districts. If I get a boost from some power couplings, we could push that down even further…”
The side of his lip is quirked with mischief. Obi-Wan can feel the same smile, playing at his own lips.
“In that case,” he orders, “you’re to fly through all available power couplings.”
Anakin squeezes his hands even tighter, now downright gleeful. “You've got it, Master.”
And the Force glows.