Tumgik
#give me obi-wan standing back while anakin has a conversation with a diplomat and pressing the clicker every time he says the right thing i
lilredghost · 5 months
Text
Everything would've been fine if Obi-Wan had just clicker trained Anakin actually
52 notes · View notes
tessiete · 4 years
Note
16 (“If you want, we could go together?”) or 46 (“Shut up, I am a delight!”) for Obi-Wan & Padme, but no pressure whatsoever <3 <3 <3
Pressure! Pressure! Pressure! Lots of pressure. You know how my vanity requires that everything I write be capital P Profound.
This was a lot of fun to write - I forgot how much I love Padme. Now I’m contriving how to have her and Satine in the same fic and see how different they are.
In the meantime, here’s 2k of Padme just staring at Obi-Wan. Hope you’re at work @tree-scapes 
AND NEVER DO HARM TO THE WORLD
She asks him before she’s certain of the wisdom in it, herself, and he looks at her as if he’s only certain of its absence.
“If you want,” she says, “We could go together?”
The hitch in his step makes her wince as they reach the top of the Temple steps. She’s trapped him now, she knows, and feels guilty, but there’s no way for her to withdraw without causing further injury to both their dignities.
“I only suggest it since I know it’s a burden to - to me,” she explains. “And my usual escort is indisposed.”
He smiles. It’s a stiff and awkward line, as though drawn across his face by the unpracticed hand of a child, but he bows, and acquiesces with grace.
“Of course, Senator,” he says. She’s senator again, though moments before with Masters Windu and Koon she’d been Padme, so she knows it’s not the company.
“If it’s no inconvenience. I wouldn’t want to impose on your schedule, if you’d only meant to go for a short -”
“It’s no inconvenience at all,” he insists. His smile is kinder now, his awkwardness eased by the desire to alleviate her own obvious discomfort. “It would be my pleasure.”
“Good. Then I will know to expect you,” she says. With one more shallow bow, and the press of his fingers to hers, she hurries away, anxious to escape the louring gaze of the Temple guardians, and Obi-Wan’s curious stare.
She expects that he will show up, as promised.
She expects he will be, in all ways, gracious and prepared.
She expects stilted conversation, and wonders how often her tongue will stray to speak of Anakin, hoping the wine and frizz won’t alleviate one problem only to create another.
She expects she will spend the evening regretting her impulsive invitation, and making him regret it, if he doesn’t already.
What she does not expect is to be met at her door by a man she hardly recognises.
She has known Obi-Wan Kenobi since she was a girl, and he, hardly more than a boy, though in her eyes even then he’d been a man well beyond the reach of her childish ambition. Met again, he’d seemed...not ancient - one could hardly call him that - but aged, perhaps. Somber. Solemn to the point of serenity. He had an authority of a kind she’d only seen in grandmothers and wild prey, a sort of amused resignation to the motions of life, and an understanding gained through loss and sorrow. Whatever it was, it was something very distant from her, as if he’d grown out while she’d been busy growing up.
But the man that stands before her now is young, and sparkling. And nervous. It is a side of him she’s not seen before, and it has her counting the distance of years in her head. Is it ten? Less than? Surely not more. Are they truly peers?
He wears a skirt of muted blue, with three deep pleats pressed the full length on his right side. The creams of his traditional tabards are replaced with a stiff white tunic, and a thigh-length jacket with wide sleeves that drapes soft as the sky over his shoulders and down his back. It is a curious mix of imposed structure and natural elegance.
“Jedi formalwear,” he explains beneath her curious inspection. His fingers twist at the inside of a sleeve where the fabric hangs just long enough to hide his hand. He extends his opposite arm to offer her proper support. “Shall we?”
“We shall,” she agrees, and instead of the more sophisticated and out-dated practice of simply laying her hand atop his, she tucks her arm beneath, and steps close until their arms are pressed between them, more like comrades than indifferent chaperones.
They stay that way until they reach the Feano Lyceum, Obi-Wan’s arm against hers. She is presented first, and his name follows. She thinks he may pull away here, in public, but his hold remains neither loose enough to encourage release, nor tight enough to prove her suspicions about his disquiet correct.
A few ambassadors and fellow diplomats nod in greeting at their arrival, but they are not questioned about their connection. This, Padme realises with some relief, and then worries that the Jedi may sense some of that and go looking for its source. She isn’t certain, yet, what lies within the power of the Force to provide. Anakin seems as attuned to her moods as she is at times, and then so oblivious at others that she thinks they must be total strangers. It would be unfortunate if Obi-Wan were to tend towards the former. If he knew about whom she thought of so often and so well...
It’s been six months since she’d wed her knight, and she’d heard lots about Obi-Wan second-hand, but only as a father, or an overly strict mentor. He is neither of these things tonight. And he is neither of these things to her. So what is Obi-Wan Kenobi?
A Jedi, certainly. Wise. Accomplished. Just. Driven. Demanding. These were all revealed to her by Anakin, and proved to her by history. But he’d said more she was less convinced of.
Stern? Perhaps, though she might instead say serious.
Aloof? Not that. Not judging by the way he leans into her at the approach of the senator from Alk’Lellish III who courts him with a lascivious flick of her tongue, and lingering prehensile limbs.
Cold? Not by the way he nudges her to draw her attention to the buffet table where two politicians abandon a vehement argument to fall into an enthusiastic embrace, stifling a smirk.
Pretentious? Not in how he coaxes her to try some sort of elegantly twisted hors d’oeuvres only to break out into genuine laughter as he watches the spice hit her tongue.
“You knew,” she accuses, trying in vain to wipe at her mouth with a synthcloth napkin in an elegant fashion.
“I might have,” he acknowledges, before mercifully passing over a cocktail from the bar. “It’s a White Knight. Made with nerf-milk. It’ll soothe the sting.”
She throws the drink back with the steel of a seasoned professional, and Obi-Wan’s brow rises in surprise.
“I’ve been in politics a long time,” she says, a warning in her tone.
“Ah,” he says, signalling for two more. “So have I.”
His own drink disappears as quickly as her first, and he calls for a flute of frizz while she sips at the Knight.
“I was under the impression you’d be above all this,” she says. “You know - as a Master of the Order.”
“I had similar delusions,” he agrees, taking a long draught of his drink. “However, it turns out there’s rather more politicking in times of war than of peace.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, it seems that now we are required to be paraded about as the face of the Republic at these things as often as possible. To show we are here. To demonstrate our investment. To prove that the Chancellor is doing something about the Separatist threat.”
He finishes that drink, and reaches for another passing by on a tray. Padme’s smile turns to a frown as she watches that one disappear nearly as rapidly.
“You sound as though you don’t approve,” she says.
Obi-Wan tenses beside her, and turns away to set his empty glass aside. She cannot see his face, so must read what she can in the rigid line of his back as he says, “I lost many friends on Geonosis.”
“I’m sorry.”
When he turns back he is smiling softly once more, and she can’t tell if it is the Knight or some otherworldly radiance of his own that makes him blur at the edges, disguising his hurt, and transforming his disgust into dust, swept away by the fine skirts, and elevated company.
“Don’t be,” he says, deliberately applying her apology to a far less serious wound. “That’s why I came tonight with you. I had hoped you might ease my way, and perform all necessary flattery for me.”
“Oh, I hardly think you need my help in that,” she says, rolling her eyes, content to follow him to safer ground. “Maybe only to keep your admirers at bay.”
A short, sharp exhalation of air, and he falls silent, looking away.
“Why, Master Kenobi,” she cries, entranced and in utter delight, “Are you blushing?”
“That would be rather undignified for someone of my rank,” he denies. “It’s only a flush from the heat of the room.”
“You are blushing!”
“I am not,” he says. “It’s the ventilation that’s lacking.”
She waits. He watches her out of the corner of his eye, until she catches his gaze and holds it. His lips twitch. She can see his facade begin to splinter. It only pushes her to a higher mirth, and she laughs outright as it gives way entirely, leaving them both breathless and gasping.
Their joy catches the interest of several nearby dignitaries, one of whom is the Lellish ambassador with the wandering appendages, and before Obi-Wan can revert back to the blandly pleasant stoic he plays at, she takes him by the hand and leads him to the floor.
“Dance with me,” she says.
His smile remains, though his head tilts in confusion.
“This doesn’t seem a particularly effective way to solicit political support,” he suggests.
“No,” she says. “Not at all. But then I don’t find myself particularly interested in politics tonight, do you, Master Kenobi?”
“Obi-Wan,” he corrects, eyes shining.
“I thought not,” she says, and a smirk winds its way across her lips like the arched spine of a smug felinx.
They dance one set, and then the next, twirling away in a flourish of colour and light the moment anyone steps too near, or looks too close, and for a time they cannot be touched, and when they are spent, they fall laughing, out of line, upon each other.
“Anakin won’t believe this!” she says, her voice still rising with the excitement of the music. She doesn’t realise what she’s said until Obi-Wan’s eyes turn cloudy, and a wedge forms between his brows as he looks on her with a strange regard. “Next time I see him,” she amends. “I’ll tell him your secret.”
The Jedi coughs to clear some stray thought from his throat before it can be said aloud, and looks out over the room.
“Yes, I - I’m sure he’ll be amused,” he agrees. “Though we have attended many functions such as this before. Growing up. On a variety of worlds. It can be of little surprise to him - it seems that such civilized negotiations are common everywhere.”
Padme settles her skirts, and treads cautiously. “I suppose that’s true,” she allows.
“Though I imagine he little suspects that I am capable of such delight.”
“He has never said that,” she says, unwilling to slander Anakin even in her denial of him.
“But evidently, he thinks it,” Obi-Wan says, then sighs, gathering himself again. “Forgive me,” he says. “I find myself more and more uncertain what Anakin thinks, and feels. He doesn’t come to me as - Forgive me. You’re much too young, but I suppose one day, when you have your own younglings eaten up by adulthood you’ll feel it, too.”
“You’re not so old as all that, Obi-Wan,” she chides. “Hardly older than me, and not much older than Anakin. Certainly not old enough to be his father.”
“I was his master,” he corrects. “And now that he is knighted, I’m not certain what I am, anymore. He is changing faster than I am.”
She watches him as he watches the room spin, whirling by him in a wild array of colour and form that he cannot possibly follow - or if he can, then he is even more distant, even more removed from her ability to reckon. He is different. He is set apart, even from Anakin, and she suddenly wonders if that is because of the Force, or because of himself. Is it he who feels removed? He who feels shut out? He who feels divested of his place in the world, defined only by the title others call him and lacking the distinction of earnest comprehension? It isn’t enough, she thinks, to see in him what Anakin sees, or what she might expect. She needs to see him for himself, and appreciate him for that.
“His brother then,” she concludes, and she takes his hand. “And my friend, whatever else besides, no matter what he thinks.”
“If you say so,” he says, and she can feel him yield beneath the pressure of her hand, and the firmness of her conviction.
“I absolutely do. Let’s not think of him. Let’s be whatever we are right now. Let’s be delighted and delightful together, and have just one more dance.”
122 notes · View notes
jasontoddiefor · 4 years
Text
Title: death by any other name [1/6] Summary: While on a mission during his years as a Padawan, Obi-Wan escapes the tight hold of death transformed into something not quite human. In the years following, he isn’t always so lucky. Or: Five Times Obi-Wan Kenobi should have stayed dead and one time Anakin Skywalker nearly did. An: Happy birthday @bigdickobiwan! Here, take a cheesy Vampires but in space AU except I never use the term vampire.
Read on AO3
Obi-Wan’s entire apprenticeship was cursed by troubles and disasters. He stumbled from one war into another, every conflict tearing more at his soul, sending him into the healing halls far more often than his friends. He knew they eyed his situation warily, as did many Masters given his rocky start as Qui-Gon Jinn’s Padawan, but Obi-Wan didn’t feel like they had any right to interfere. They didn’t care enough to look after him when he was thirteen, angry, and hurting with nobody willing to take him on. Nothing had changed since then, except that despite his many failures, he seemed to have become worth something in their eyes. He wasn’t enough, not yet, but apparently he had more potential now that they hadn’t been able to spy before.
It only took a few near-death experiences.
Most Padawans didn’t engage in as many combat missions as Obi-Wan, but their Masters also didn’t have a penchant to favor aggressive negotiations. Or maybe they decided to listen to common sense as well as the Force and not just rely on the latter. Obi-Wan didn’t know, he was merely guessing and now it soon would be too late for him to ever learn.
He had lost too much blood, he could feel it. His life was slowly ebbing away. The pain had already disappeared completely and so had all sense in his fingertips. At least his death would be painless. He wasn’t drowning or suffocating or being tortured to death. His side had merely taken a terrible hit and he was bleeding out faster than his Master could come to save him.
He just hoped he wouldn't be causing Qui-Gon too much grief with his death. The man deserved at least one apprentice who didn’t screw up and he could see to their knighting. Obi-Wan was distinctly aware that he should be afraid of passing away like this, but all he could feel was regret.
All his missed opportunities seemed to play out in front of his inner eye, weeping. There were so many people he had wanted to talk to still, apologize and laugh with them one last time, but it wasn’t the will of the Force.
At least he had managed to get the princess out of the camp she had been held in and found them shelter. Qui-Gon would be able to find them and return her to her family, restoring the peace of the planet. The dark woods of this world weren’t a terrible grave either. Obi-Wan had been supposed to go to the AgriCorps, perhaps it was just right that he fell asleep amongst trees so old, they had seen the rise and fall of the Republic many hundred times.
“I’m sorry, Obi-Wan,” the princess cried.
“-alright,” Obi-Wan managed to reply, half his sentence swallowed by his breath.
He was so, so tired.
But the princess was going to be fine. Obi-Wan would die with honor, doing his duty as a Jedi. The poor girl would get to go home and hopefully leave all the memories of this kidnapping behind her. She didn’t look to be a day over eight, she might learn to forget this day yet. Her family hadn’t been particularly forthcoming on why she had been kidnapped, had only stated that she possessed a valuable gift and no negotiations would be happening until she was home again.
“I can- I can fix this,” she stuttered and wiped her tears off her cheeks. “I can make this right.”
She didn’t have to do anything. Obi-Wan had accepted his fate and he would become one with the Force and watch as the storms over Mon Calamar, the winds on Cato Neiomoida, and the deserts of Tatooine.
“You didn’t deserve this,” she said. “And they will all just stop fighting if I give it up. Stupid traditions. Just watch, Obi-Wan. I bestow upon you my gift of life.”
Obi-Wan couldn’t make out what she was doing, but next thing he felt was a sharp pain in his neck. It felt as if somebody had jagged two knives into it. The pain didn’t dull, it burned and slowly spread. It felt as if somebody had set him on fire. Then, just when he thought it couldn’t get worse, the princess pushed her hand into his mouth. Out of reflex, Obi-Wan bit down on it. He tasted something sweet that reminded him distinctly of the teas he drunk back in the temple.
For a moment there was silence.
Then he started to scream. The last thing he heard before unconsciousness claimed him was the princess’s unwavering voice. “You’re not dying on me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
The darkness lingered for long. It felt as if centuries passed all while Obi-Wan was just vaguely aware of his surroundings. When he did wake up, he felt even more exhausted than he had before he had passed out. Above him stood Qui-Gon Jinn, looking more torn than Obi-Wan had ever seen him. Obi-Wan tried to reach out to him with his mind, but their bond felt like it had been torn to shreds, was only now starting to connect again.
“Master?” he tried to say, but all that escaped him sounded more like “Mashe’?”
“Rest,” Qui-Gon said and Obi-Wan closed his eyes once more.
It continued like that for a while.
Obi-Wan woke up, feverish, confused or in pain, and his Master was sitting at his bedside, watching over him. When Obi-Wan finally woke up for good, the very same view greeted him once more. Qui-Gon was sitting in a chair, engrossed in a datapad. They were not on their mission anymore, but back in the temple. Obi-Wan could feel it in the Force, he was home, a place he had believed to be lost to him.
And once more he was back in the healing halls, though he didn’t recall them being so bright.
“Master?” Obi-Wan said, squinting through his eyes. “Can you turn off the light?”
Qui-Gon packed away his datapad carefully by throwing it on the table next to him.
“Obi-Wan!” He exclaimed. The worry in his voice honestly took Obi-Wan aback. He hadn’t expected his Master to care so much. “How do you feel?”
“Tired,” Obi-Wan replied honestly. “But if you tell me to go back to sleep one more time-“ Obi-Wan paused, fading memories echoing in his mind, “-or attempt to put me under with a Force-suggestion, I will protest.”
Qui-Gon smiled fondly at Obi-Wan, making him feel much more like a youngling than an adult. Obi-Wan wasn’t old by anyone’s standards except that of the children in the temple – and even that varied. There were many Jedi whose lifespans were much longer than Obi-Wan’s would be.
“I will not try so, Padawan.”
“Thank you,” Obi-Wan said. “Lights?”
A dark expression flashed over Qui-Gon’s face, the like of which Obi-Wan had never seen before so that he even considered whether it wasn’t just a trick of the light. Qui-Gon stood up and disappeared out of his field of vision, soon after the lights dimmed to a more bearable level.
“What happened?” Obi-Wan asked when Qui-Gon sat down again. “Did we fulfill the mission?”
Qui-Gon hesitated. That was the first sign something was wrong.
He was a Master of the Living Force, always moving like the currents of a river, never still, never hasting beyond the passage of time. His strange behavior was starting to worry Obi-Wan.
“I found you and the princess and brought you back both back. She has been safely returned into the arms of her family and the negotiations picked up again, even if it was all under less favorable circumstances.”
That explained absolutely nothing. Jedi prided themselves on their eloquence, as much as they were allowed to be prideful. While they all jested about Master Yoda’s utter crypticness, they couldn’t deny that saying a lot and not much at all at the same time a necessary skill. Qui-Gon talked in riddles often enough, but never when it came to matters of such importance. Obi-Wan was not a foreign diplomat who needed to be appeased with Jedi wisdom, he was a Padawan who wanted to know whether his charge was alright.
“Was she harmed?”
Qui-Gon shook his head. “No, not as such. But your return did finally enlighten us on her family’s superior standing. The other Ancient Houses have been fighting about her gift and whom it should be used on, which was also the reason she had been kidnapped in the first place. They were displeased she used it on you.”
“I don’t recall,” Obi-Wan admitted. “I was very dazed and so sure I was going to die.”
“You did.”
Qui-Gon’s words weighed heavily in the room, seemingly dragging gravity down on Obi-Wan’s body, pressing the air out of his lungs.
“What?”
Obi-Wan tried to push against the force chaining him to his bed to sit up. He couldn’t hold such a conversation while lying down. Seeing his attempt, Qui-Gon quickly set to support Obi-Wan’s back, helping him up.
“But I’m not dead,” Obi-Wan said. He could feel his heartbeat, his thoughts was whirling and the Force kept humming at the back of his mind, a kind lullaby he didn’t know how to characterize.
“Not anymore, no, but trust me when I say that I felt our bond snap. It was a painful experience, Padawan. Worse than anything words could describe.”
Qui-Gon used the moment to gently tug and Obi-Wan’s messy braid. Nobody seemed to have cared for it while he was unconscious. Obi-Wan had always seen to ensuring that he looked presentable. His displeasure with its state must have shown as Qui-Gon smiled at him in amusement and something deeper Obi-Wan couldn’t decipher. It appeared to him to be relief.
“The princess,” Qui-Gon continued, “has the extraordinary ability to create one person who is like herself and she used it to save you. Her gift has been passed down in the Royal House for generations and they were quite eager to claim you as one of their own in the aftermath, but she stood up to them, saying that she didn’t give you a choice.”
All that was nice and everything, but it didn’t explain anything to Obi-Wan.
“Master, I still don’t understand. What did she do?”
“She gave you life,” Qui-Gon finally answered, the exhaustion of the past days catching up to him as well. “Eternal youth and protection against almost everything. It is not reversible. I’m sorry I could not prevent this fate.”
Eternal youth.
The words rang in Obi-Wan’s mind as if it were from a language he had never heard, couldn’t speak or write.
“But what does it mean?”
Obi-Wan hated being ignorant, being left out. This information was crucial and he just wanted to understand.
“I don’t know yet, Padawan,” Qui-Gon said. “But we will find out together. The Royal Family hasn’t been too forthcoming with their information before we returned to the temple, but I believe we can figure it out on our own. I already know you’re more sensitive to light.”
“I’m not sensitive,” Obi-Wan muttered. “It’s just bright in here.”
Qui-Gon leveled him with a dry look. “I have turned off the light entirely, Padawan, and you can still see as clear as day.”
Okay, maybe Qui-Gon had been right with his first assumption.
“I’ll have to learn how to adjust to these changes then,” Obi-Wan concluded.
The thought irked him. He had thought that he was finally making enough progress to start becoming more independent. He knew of his friends that their Masters had already begun considering them for Knighthood. Obi-Wan wasn’t jealous of them, he had been the first to tease Quinlan when the Kiffar Padawan had admitted what his Master had confessed, but his doubts had risen once more. He didn’t want to be left behind. Adjusting to whatever gift the princess had bestowed upon him would be another setback.
No, he couldn’t think like that. He had to take it as a challenge. Jedi didn’t focus on what blocked their way, they thought of solutions.
“When can I get out of the healing halls?”
“As soon as we’ve figured out what blood to feed to you.”
Obi-Wan stared at his Master with a deadpan expression, expecting him to be joking, but the man looked serious.
“Blood?”
“Blood?” Qui-Gon repeated. “It’s apparently one of your dietary requirements now.”
The world started to spin again and Obi-Wan dropped back into his bed. Maybe he should sleep some more before getting confronted with facts that made him nauseous.
48 notes · View notes