Preview of the stubborn in the bones remix, aka, it's Obi-Wan's turn to be a big cat. ;]
Anakin is 12 here, and having a very odd day.
—
In his distraction, Anakin misses the rustle of birds taking flight in the distance. He misses the sudden electric snap in the air as the Force coils.
What he doesn’t fail to notice is the j’ali dropping on him. And it’s a fine time to remember that’s what they’re called, when his mouth is full of dirt and grass, the air knocked out of his lungs by the karking massive animal pinning him down.
Five seconds later the pirates burst through the vegetation and all hell breaks loose.
Maybe all they see is a big cat in attack mode. Or maybe they’re already jumpy and have their blasters out, because the next thing Anakin knows, the smell of ion and burnt plants is everywhere. Singed fur, too, if he’s not mistaken.
The weight is suddenly off him. Anakin rolls to his feet, pulling out his lightsaber, deflecting a few blaster bolts back at his assailants, though it’s hard to be satisfied when he sees that they’re not paying attention to him—they’re panic-shooting at the j’ali.
Ignoring Anakin completely. Like he’s no danger.
Anakin grits his teeth, but never let it be said he’s impractical. He switches his lightsaber to stun mode, changes his grip on the hilt, and springs forward with a shout.
By rights, this should be Anakin’s trial by blood, a fight against real combatants who will kill him if he slips up.
That it isn’t irks him to no end. Worse still, if someone were keeping score, the j’ali is winning. It bounces in and out of reach in a blur, knocking disoriented pirates directly into Anakin’s path, easy pickings for him to deal with. There’s no other word for it other than they’re working as a team. A good one.
All without spilling a drop of blood.
When the last pirate hits the ground, knocked out, Anakin wipes his forehead.
“I’m not thanking you,” he declares, avoiding the blue-eyed stare that’s too intelligent and self-aware to belong to a dumb animal.
The j’ali huffs at him and pads forward, opens his jaw, and clamps his sharp teeth around Anakin’s sleeve.
“What are you—hey!”
And that’s how Anakin is dragged back to the village like a recalcitrant kitten.
The poll has decided! Still stubborn about keep this a oneshot and not a multichapter (I may be a bit of an idiot) so here's an extra chunky preview.
Anakin chose Padmé during AOTC and left the Order. Now he's widowed and struggling with his newborn children. Obi-Wan is still super normal about all of this.
Three years have passed since Obi-Wan last laid eyes on Anakin.
Intellectually, he's prepared for the changes. The holonet had lovingly chronicled every step of Anakin's life once news of the wedding broke and journalists took a close look at Senator Amidala's scandalously young husband, tapping directly into a vein of headlines that they never tire of mining. Former Padawan, expelled from the Order, had screamed the first segment post-marriage announcement, and once the public got a taste for the drama, for the fairytale tragedy of it all, the machine was set in motion.
Obi-Wan might not have chosen to keep such close tabs on his former student, but he’s made a pained truce with maintaining a connection to the youth who used to follow him around everywhere, under his care, the first and last person he thought of when he woke up and when he went to sleep—
Yet Anakin Skywalker-Amidala in the flesh is not something he could ever be prepared for.
Nor is he ready for the first thing Anakin says to him.
“My wife was murdered.”
Obi-Wan’s spine stiffens. He takes stock of the man sitting across from him in the solarium, choosing to be analytical rather than maudlin. Excluding the last few months, life outside the Temple has been kind to Anakin—he’s grown into the width of his shoulders, no longer resembling the ungainly silhouette he made on training mats, long-limbed into slenderness, muscles struggling to catch up to the sudden stretch, his balance shot by his altered center of gravity, by the seemingly endless growing reserves of power at his command.
The skin under his eyes is bruised mauve. Tension has thinned out the corners of his mouth and while his hair—long enough that curls brush the collar of his dark green fineweave robe—is clean, it’s unstyled, messy. Typical parent of a new child.
Children, Obi-Wan corrects mentally. There are two.
“Do you have proof?” is all Obi-Wan responds, which is a mercy. He’s agonized over what he could, should say to Anakin if the Force willed their paths to cross again. By his thigh his fingers curl together, servos whirring under the pressure of synthetic joints grinding. This may not be preferable, but it’s less personally fraught.
Clink. Anakin has withdrawn a datapad from his robe and set it on the table. The screen gleams black under the sunlight coming through the open windows. A steady breeze eddies in along with it, billowing the tied-off curtains. Naboo is as picturesque as ever, unperturbed as though war doesn’t rage across the galaxy, decimating everything it touches.
“They were clever,” Anakin says. “But not clever enough.”
And it’s the utter lack of emotion that keeps Obi-Wan in his seat, stilling him from dissuading Anakin from this outlandish declaration, from dismissing it as the result of a grief that’s beyond anything he can comprehend. He’s lost a master and he’s lost friends, but no one he sacrificed everything for.
Anakin sounds tired. Beyond the weariness of a widower with infants to take care of.
Obi-Wan reaches for the datapad.
That is the thing about the passage of time; essential truths do not change. Surrender is not in Anakin’s nature. He refuses to accept a loss. Anger is his wheelhouse, a trait that had marked him unfit as a Jedi. Though now that Obi-Wan has lived through war, he recognizes that it’s what makes Anakin a survivor.
He swipes his fingers over the blank screen. It fills with code, schematics, logs cross-referenced against medical records and inventory. Someone has been meticulous. Has been at this for weeks. Obi-Wan parses the information with an ease that he would have been incapable of as a Jedi Knight, but now logistics and recordkeeping are what he spends his days wrestling into submission when there’s no weapon in his hand.
On reaching the end he cannot make heads or tails of it other than discerning its compiled data from medical droids operating in the same unit. “What is this?” he asks, since the answer doesn’t reveal itself no matter how many times he skims over the lines.
“I had nightmares that the birth would go wrong. Premonitions. We made plans. Went to a different hospital while deploying decoys to the one we were meant to be at. Only the few required to set this into motion had an inkling of what we were up to.” Anakin’s head jerks up; he turns to face the closed doors, at attention.
Is it Obi-Wan’s imagination or does he hear wailing?
A beat passes. Anakin’s shoulders slump. He massages his temples with his palms. “Sorry, they’re attuned to my emotions. It takes little to set them off.”
His children. Are they Force sensitive?
Of course they are, Obi-Wan chastises himself. How could they not be? What’s salient is that they’re able to sense their father’s emotions from a different room already. Do three-month-olds even lift their heads yet?
“Do you not want to attend to them?” Obi-Wan asks. Children are not his forte. Once out of the crèche, he had no reason to interact with the youngest of their Order. And even then, none would have been that small. That vulnerable.
“I already did. They’ll sleep for another hour,” Anakin dismisses. How he can say so with such certainty is impressive. On this subject his padawan has far outpaced him.
Anakin gestures to the datapad. “Go to the next file.” The humanity that had entered his voice vacates it abruptly, that strained flatness creeping back in. Because that’s what that is, a thread wound too tight, garrote-thin and sharp.
The next file is Padmé’s autopsy.
Instinctively Obi-Wan averts his gaze, flushing in discomfited guilt. He had considered Padmé not a friend, exactly, but someone worthy of his respect. A rare breed of politician who played the game to aid the Republic, not to line her pockets or stroke her ego.
This is an intimacy that is not for him to claim. She deserves better. Which is why he forces himself to read. If Anakin, loving, protective Anakin who would rather step into the fire than let someone he cared about burn, is giving this to him, then there is reason.
My wife was murdered. Anakin wholly believes that. The least Obi-Wan can do, that he owes him and Padmé, is to confront the proof.
“... I’m sorry, I’m still not seeing—” Obi-Wan’s throat thickens with sorrow. Dying in childbirth is a rarity on an Inner Core planet but not unheard of. Padmé had hemorrhaged in the afterbirth and the bleeding could not be stopped in time. What else is there to be said? The autopsy confirms what the holonet had reported.
“Look at the date,” Anakin says.
Obi-Wan does. Blanches. This is from last month. Someone went into the tomb of the former Nabooian Queen and…? Anakin allowed it? Ordered it?
Briefly, he considers the possibility that Anakin has been driven mad by grief.
Anakin exhales, a thin, quick sound of disgust. “There was no cyklokapron found. Traces of all the drugs listed on the med droid’s records were present, but not that.” He looks at Obi-Wan with something resembling pity, as if envying his ignorance. Or resenting it. “The medicine to stop the bleeding was never administered.”
“Do you have an opinion, master j’ali?” Qui-Gon addresses the j’ali, who is now looking at Anakin.
Anakin doesn’t hear speech, but he hears… something.
Your self-control is poor, says a voice inside his head. You are too old and too powerful to be so careless.
Oh, great. Just what he needs. Another nag to join the whole army of them that thinks he isn’t good enough. Anakin bites down on his tongue and bows his head, slamming down as many shields as he knows how to construct.
Clearly though, the new bond bypasses it all, because he hears the next part perfectly well.
I will travel with you.
[While on a mission, Anakin gains a pet. Or is it the other way around?]
Haven't done one of these in a while and indecision has me in a death grip—thus, you shall choose what my next oneshot will be.
1: stuborn in the bones remix: while out on a mission, Anakin is gifted a strange beast. (featuring... ??wan?)
2: baby padawan Anakin goes missing and resurfaces years later. Obi-Wan is normal about all of this. (canon divergeance, possibly whump/DDDNE)
3: Obi-Wan married a child sight unseen to solidify a peace agreement, assuming the marriage would be annulled. It wasn't. (gffa adjacent AU)
4: Anakin chose Padmé during AOTC and left the Order. Now he's widowed and struggling with his newborn children. Obi-Wan is still super normal about all of this.
“Your boy is doing well.”
Obi-Wan smiles politely without lifting his gaze from his tablet. The parlor had started feeling empty without someone swinging by. “Is that so? I’m heartened to hear it.”
Shaak Ti bores holes into his head while stirring her tea. “He’s also wondering why everyone else gets to spend time with their mentors.”
Ah. That.
[Obikin + espionage = explosions.]
Three years have passed since Obi-Wan last laid eyes on Anakin.
Intellectually, he knows what's changed. The holonet has chronicled every step of Anakin's life once journalists learned about Senator Amidala's scandalously young husband, tapping directly into a vein of headlines that they never tire of mining. Former Padawan, expelled from the Order, had screamed the headline post-marriage announcement, and once the public got a taste for the drama, for the fairytale tragedy of it all, the machine was set in motion.
Obi-Wan might not have chosen to keep such close tabs on his former student if it were up to him, but he’s made peace with maintaining a connection to the youth who used to follow him around everywhere, the person he thought of when he woke up and when he went to sleep.
Yet Anakin Skywalker-Amidala in the flesh is not something he could ever be prepared for.
you should see what we do in my head [E][ch4] →[END]
Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Protective Obi-Wan Kenobi, Codependency, Brat Anakin Skywalker, Light Masochism, Tattoos, Older Man/Younger Man, Gentle Dom Obi-Wan
Obi-Wan closed his eyes in acknowledgement. When it came to Anakin, the boy was never far from his mind, and definitely not after the scene earlier. Or the rejection that had caught him off-guard. He was used to Anakin snarkily welcoming him back whenever he returned from his trips—early or not—but there was always a glint of relief in his eyes, gratification from his unwillingness to be apart from Obi-Wan for the rest of the day.
He was like a standoffish cat, pretending not to care but offended when not paid attention to.
Obi-Wan adored him; his very own perfect, bratty sub.
Except Anakin couldn’t be his sub.
