@captain-jaybird @solo-by-choice - i love you guys XD
So, the fic in question was originally a collection of ten location-based vignettes following the development of Obi-Wan and Padme’s friendship from AotC to RotS. I wrote it seven years ago and only ever showed it to my sister and @dyingsighs, so unless I fall hard back into Star Wars at some point, I probably won’t ever post it in its entirety, because I don’t think I have quite enough energy to do the kind of rewriting it would need in order for me to feel like it meets my current standards. HOWEVER - given your replies, I pulled the only two vignettes from it that I do actually still like, because I know it has been literal years since I made any Star Wars-related work for you, and I feel like this is the least I can do to thank you for your many years of fandom friendship! 😊
@all my old Star Wars peeps: Ancient fic snippets under the cut! Consider this an affectionate “hello there” from me - I hope you guys are all doing well out there! <3
-naboo-
Anakin is insistent.
“Come on, Padmé,” he cajoles her. “Just a little walk. I get to be here without breaking any rules for once and you want to just sit inside?” He flings open the embassy’s balcony doors and gestures out over the city. “Look at this day!”
Sunny skies or not, Padmé can’t quite wrench her gaze away from the festival itinerary in her hands. However many times she’s been over it, she can’t help but feel they must have missed some small detail, and in a situation as precarious as this one, the slightest slip could be deadly. “I can’t, Anakin.”
Anakin’s carefree expression starts its rapid but familiar descent into a scowl. “Why not? No one’s going to bust a Senator for showing one of her Jedi guests around. We can just walk the perimeter of the Festival platform – ”
“Anakin – ”
“You can pretend to show me the security arrangements or something – ”
“Anakin! You’re supposed to be here to prevent an assassination attempt on the Chancellor. This isn’t a social call.”
Anakin lets out his breath in a huge gust, waving a hand dismissively. “That? We’ve got that under control, Padmé. Don’t even worry about it.”
“I am worried about it.” Anakin opens his mouth as if to make another placating remark, but Padmé cuts him off. “This is serious. I can’t leave the embassy right now. I’m not going out for a stroll. I’m not doing anything until the Festival is over and done with tonight.” When Anakin’s scowl does not subside, she sighs and makes a passing attempt at smoothing things over. “I’m sorry, but the Festival of Light is enough of a headache without adding assassination threats into the mix. I’m just a little tense right now.”
Anakin comes extraordinarily close to signing his own death warrant by rolling his eyes at her, but he stops just short of an irrevocable mistake. “Yeah, you and everyone else,” he says instead, a very particular brand of irritation edging into his voice. “But whatever. Go ahead and read that thing again. I’ll just come back when everyone’s got their bad feelings under control.” He sweeps out of the room with the type of stormy bluster only he can manage.
Wrestling down a surge of irritation of her own, Padmé tosses the itinerary onto the desk. Anakin, for all his moodiness, is partially right – she has the elegant program memorized back to front, and poring over it further is only going to make her feel worse. And, come to think of it, there are a few other security measures she needs to double check with the rest of the Jedi task force.
Pushing back her chair, she sets off in search of Anakin’s derisively referenced “everyone else.”
Most of the embassy’s guests, including the recently arrived contingent of Jedi knights, appear to have vacated the premises – emulating Anakin’s shining example and enjoying the day, perhaps, or, in the case of the Jedi, probably walking the security perimeter in preparation for tonight’s festivities. After making inquiries, Padme finds a staff member who directs her to the rear of the ornately decorated building, where she discovers Everyone Else in the courtyard, boots and cloak discarded against the wall, dappled sun playing over his inner tunics.
She hesitates on the steps. It’s bad form to interrupt a Jedi in meditation, not that she has much opportunity to commit such faux pas. Anakin rarely meditates, resorting to the ancient art only when he has failed in his attempts to outrace or outright beat his troubled thoughts into submission.
But this doesn’t seem like meditation, exactly, not the kind she recognizes. Obi-Wan is performing what looks like some kind of kata with a ritual slowness, pivoting and stretching with unhurried grace, flowing smoothly out of one stance and into the next, like liquid filling a clear vessel. He holds himself suspended for an interminable count between each position, bare feet rooted on the sun-warmed flagstones, the only thing moving around him dust motes drifting through heavy beams of sunlight.
She doesn’t really mean to stay and watch, but there’s an almost hypnotic quality to the rhythmic motion – exertion of the body, sun and warmth and muscle and bone intertwined with stillness of the mind, an empty calm space, peace in the eye of the storm.
He sinks into a low stance with his back to her, head bowed, upward-facing hands loosely fisted, elbows bent and tucked in at his sides. Then, after a long, still stretch of time, the calm murmur of his voice, rippling with something like amusement. “Good morning.”
She blinks. “Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“That’s quite all right.” He seems to come back from some far place, and straightens, turning to address her. Holding her gaze for a moment, searchingly, he draws some private conclusion. “You are disturbed.”
She presses her lips together by way of response, grudgingly impressed yet cursing Jedi perception to the lowest pit of Chaos. “It’s not important,” she says. “Just the festival.” She changes the subject. “What’s that you were doing?”
Obi-Wan paces over to the courtyard wall to retrieve his footwear. “One of the alchaka forms,” he says, pulling on the soft nerfhide boots. At her blank look, he adds, “It’s...a type of moving meditation. One of the oldest known to the Order.”
“It looks relaxing,” Padmé says. Would that she could expunge her own anxieties with such artfulness.
He shrugs slightly. “In theory.” He bends down and scoops up his cloak with an easy physicality. “The intended goal is to clear one’s mind. To...release troubled thoughts.”
Something about the crease in his brow seems to belie this statement. Thinking back, she remembers suddenly what Anakin had said earlier, and, surprised, frowns. “Are you worried about the festival tonight? About the assassination attempt?”
He blinks at her for a moment, as if she had only just reminded him about the possible catastrophe. “No. No, I don’t think so. Even if the intelligence we’ve gathered is accurate, I doubt the Separatist forces will be able to achieve much when they must first go through six Jedi. And Naboo’s finest,” he adds, glancing up at the overhead balconies, where far-away security personnel stand sentinel, their uniforms smears of dark red across the golden walls.
“But you are worried about something.”
A beat. Then, “No. Merely practicing good habits.”
She laughs humorlessly and sinks down onto the steps. “Tonight could be a disaster.”
Obi-Wan thinks for a moment before responding. “If so,” he reminds her carefully, “it is one which all your worries will be completely unable to prevent.”
“I know. But when it’s my people concerned...and the Chancellor, obviously...” She ticks things off on her fingers. “Public support for Queen Neeyutnee...the well-being of the Republic...”
“Fate of the galaxy.”
“Little things.”
They exchange almost shy grins, private smiles. Padmé feels one tiny knot of tension uncoil inside her, and she breathes out an exasperated sigh, ineffectually commanding the rest of her anxieties to untangle and be gone. “I need some of that alcha-whatsit business, clearly,” she says ruefully. “I’m a mess.”
Obi-Wan takes a step back and looks her up and down. “I agree,” he says.
Excuse me? Padmé suppresses a surge of indignation.
“You will forgive me for saying so, but a senator is no good to her people preoccupied. She must keep a cool head about her at all times.”
“I beg your pardon –
“Therefore,” Obi-Wan plunges ahead, and Padmé suddenly sees the glint of humor starting in his eyes, “I feel it is my duty in this case to help you attain such calm.”
She narrows her eyes at him in mock severity, but inside, she feels her mood beginning to lighten. “By insulting my competence?”
“By exposing you to some of that alcha-whatsit business,” he says. “If you like.”
Padmé hesitates. This is Jedi business for sure, far outside her arena. But Obi-Wan just smiles reassuringly at her and extends a hand.
“Not to worry, Senator. I have it on good authority that I am a reasonably competent teacher.”
Padmé eyes his hand for another moment, then slaps her own lightly into his open palm. “Very well then,” she says. “I submit myself to your reasonably competent tutelage.”
“Obi-Wan, I don’t think this is for me.”
Padmé looks down at her bare feet, torn between luxuriating in the warmth of the sun-soaked stones and fretting over the ever-widening stance Obi-Wan is asking her to assume.
“Patience.” He sticks his own soft-booted foot against the inside of her ankle and slides one of her feet out to the left.
“Obi-Wan – ”
Still applying a gentle pressure against one foot, he pushes the other further away.
“I don’t know how to do a split, Obi-Wan,” she warns him, tamping down on a little flare of alarm.
“That’s far enough.”
Thank goodness she’d worn a relatively uncomplicated dress today. Senatorial garb was nowhere near so flexible as the Jedi’s simple tunics.
She looks up at Obi-Wan, who, by virtue of her lowered, bent-kneed stance, is now slightly above her. “What now?”
“Now,” he says placidly, sinking into the same low stance beside her, albeit with considerably more familiarity and ease, “you do as I do.”
All right, then. She waits for him to begin, but the only thing he does is close his eyes, and she can’t close hers if she’s going to follow him, so she waits, doing nothing. Her legs begin to protest the prolonged exertion in this unfamiliar position, but the trace of fire starting to bloom in her muscles doesn’t bother her. It’s...ferocious. It burns the way she does inside, sometimes.
Obi-Wan cracks an eye open and looks at her. Padmé doesn’t flinch. “What?” she challenges. “You aren’t doing anything yet.”
He raises an eyebrow at her. “I am breathing,” he says.
“So am I.”
“Not yet, you aren’t,” he says, and in the span of a moment, he seems to grow in authority before her. His voice shifts into the calm certainty of a millennia of tradition, the well-worn tracks of an ancient, unbroken line of instruction. “Attend.”
He closes his eyes again, and this time she watches the slow rise and fall of his chest, the slight shift of tunic as his ribs expand. “All meditation begins with the breath. You breathe in life, I breathe in the Force; without either of those things both of us are nothing.”
What a strange thing to say. “I’m not Force-sensitive, Obi-Wan.”
“It does not matter. You are not Force sensitive, but the Force is in you nonetheless. We are all of us full of it. Your people are full of it. Your planet is full of it.” He breathes in, slow, and she attempts to follow him. In. Full. “Your breath must fill more than your lungs. Without breath, the body starves. Without the Force, life starves. Therefore you must let it suffuse you. Breath; the Force. Everywhere. Small, forgotten places. Empty places. You must allow yourself to be full. A gas expands to fill a container – your breath will expand to fill you, if you allow it.”
She does not answer. She is breathing. He falls into silence beside her, joining her rhythm. Inhale, beat, exhale, beat. She does not count the minutes. They slip by into nothing.
“Now,” he says. “With me.”
She trains her eyes on him and follows as he moves, one bright light and its smaller, slighter reflection, moving in a bumpy sort of unison. The fire in her leg muscles climbs higher, but it doesn’t faze her. She breathes it out, from everywhere, the small, forgotten places. She exults in it.
“Balance,” he says, maneuvering her hands to the proper places, the knuckles of one fist pressed flat against a vertical open palm, two hands meeting just in front of her lower abdomen. “Two opposing forces.” He sticks his foot back against the inside of her ankle, and she slides her feet apart without needing to be told, dropping back to the correct position. “Close your eyes. Breathe.”
In. Full. Small, forgotten places.
“Now,” he says, stepping back from her. “You will count.”
“How high?” she asks. Her legs are screaming with a pleasant sort of exhaustion, but she’s wobbly, and this position isn’t easy to maintain.
“One hundred,” he replies. Then – “Three times.”
Her eyes fly open. “Obi-Wan, that’s – ”
His eyes are glowing with suppressed mirth. “Three times, apprentice.”
If she starts laughing, she’s going to fall. “Obi-Wan, three times is too many – ”
“Protest again and it shall be six.”
“You know,” she grunts, wriggling down in an attempt to find a slightly more comfortable position, “I’m beginning to think I’ve done Anakin a disservice.”
He raises an eyebrow archly. “Because...?”
“All this time, he was telling the truth about you.”
Obi-Wan snorts. “Impudence. I’d have been running circuits around the Temple for that kind of insolence.”
“Somehow I doubt that ever stopped you.”
And there’s the smile – trademark Kenobi, dimples and all, subtle and half-hidden behind the close-trimmed beard. “No,” he agrees. “You are quite correct. I became an accomplished marathon runner.” Dropping down to the same low, planted stance she is struggling to maintain, he returns to the matter at hand. “Let us begin.”
“Obi-Wan.”
“Mm.” He has already closed his eyes. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already made it to twenty while she’s still dithering around trying to get her breathing in order.
“This is the silliest thing I’ve ever done with anybody.”
He doesn’t open his eyes, but the corners his mouth curl up.
“But,” she says, never one to skimp on gratitude, “I like it.” Her legs are shaking and she can’t count the number of joints she’s heard crack since they started this ridiculous exercise, but the anxious tangle in her chest is now tiny threads blowing in the wind, unwound and strewn about by breath and motion. “And I do feel better about tonight. So thank you.”
“I come to serve, Senator.”
Formal response, for someone who just moments ago had been shoving her into positions more suited to a gymnast than a senator. She smiles to herself in private amusement and closes her eyes. Reminds herself to breathe, full, everywhere.
And begins to count.
-chandrila-
Padmé has to give Obi-Wan credit. By now, she has watched him extricate himself from Senator Se’lab’s clutches three times, and while a moonlit cocktail party in a garden of this size provides the Jedi with plenty of spaces to hide, the shadow cast by a group of hulking Ithorian senators is a more creative choice than she had expected, even from him. Observing him from her position on the other side of the lush garden, she bites her lip in an attempt not to laugh at the deadly seriousness with which Obi-Wan keeps the Ithorian delegation between himself and the beverage table towards which the Bothan senator had stumbled.
She cannot pass up such a rare opportunity to tease him. Excusing herself from her group of colleagues, she sidles across the garden towards him, ensconcing herself in the shadows behind the wide backs of Ithorian senators Stonk and Bendon. “Master Kenobi,” she greets him, smoothly.
Obi-Wan’s cool voice betrays nothing. “Senator.”
Padmé fights to keep a straight face. “I see you’ve made Senator Se’lab’s acquaintance.”
“I have made his acquaintance several times,” Obi-Wan replies. “He had little memory of our first meeting at our second, and no memory of our second at our third. Forgive me, but if I can avoid a fourth such performance, I will. I grow tired of introducing myself.”
Padmé stifles a smile. It isn’t fair, that one so skilled in diplomacy to earn himself a galactic-wide nickname should hate it so much. “And did the Honorable Senator from Bothawui tire of your company?”
“Sadly, no.”
“Then how – ” She narrows her eyes at him suspiciously. “You didn’t – ”
Obi-Wan gives her an affronted look. “Senator Amidala, what sort of nefarious rogue do you take me for?” He chances a harried glance past the Ithorians, checking for any signs of his unwanted companion’s return. “Along with the memories of our previous two meetings, the good Senator appeared to have forgotten how exactly it was that he’d been able to achieve such an impressively amnesiac and befuddled state. I merely reminded him about the open bar.”
“Formidably underhanded,” she says, approvingly. “But then, that’s why they call you the Negotiator.”
Obi-Wan makes a face at the nickname. “Yes,” he says. “And if I could only negotiate myself out of this whole affair, I would perhaps believe the title to have been aptly bestowed.”
“Obi-Wan,” she chides him. “The best negotiators know when to call for assistance.”
He raises an eyebrow, just slightly, in what might be a faint feather-brush of amusement, then follows her gaze over his shoulder, to where the clearly intoxicated Bothan senator is making his weaving way through the festive crowd back towards them. Obi-Wan’s eyes widen very slightly, in definite alarm. “Indeed. Very well said. In that case, my lady, consider my distress signal activated.”
She extends an arm to him formally. “Walk with me.”
Thanks to the friendship she and Bail share with Mon Mothma, Padmé knows the Chandrilan Diplomatic Gardens better than most in attendance. She knows Obi-Wan, too, better than most, not because he opens himself to her, exactly, but – well, being in her position, one hears things, and Padmé is well-practiced at extracting trivia and truth from Anakin’s well-worn litany of complaints, worries, and fears.
She guides them serenely down a lesser-used path, the raucous festivities behind them fading into a murmur. “Here,” she points. They turn through a simple, cream-colored arch into a wider space, far-away party sounds now faint, distant enough not to grate on the nerves. All about them, only the cheerful babble of water, tumbling from multiple small falls into a network of mossy pools and rock-bordered streams.
Obi-Wan turns his head from side to side to take in the shimmering falls and eddying pools, chin rising as if in response to some sound only he can hear, features lightening. “We’ve a place very like this, in the Temple,” he says. “The Room of a Thousand Fountains.”
Padmé knows this. Knows too that it is a favorite haunt of his, though she will not tell him so. Better he think her fortuitous choice a welcome coincidence, for she knows what she knows about him from Anakin, and, strictly speaking, should not have access to such confidences.
“I’ve heard of it,” she says instead. “It’s much larger than this, though, I think.” She waves a hand at the small garden.
“Size matters not,” Obi-Wan intones, as though reciting an oft-repeated adage, and extends a hand gracefully under one of the falls’ streams. To Padmé’s surprise, the water curves around his upturned palm, bending as if repelled by an invisible barrier before continuing its swan dive into the clear pool below.
“Just a game,” Obi-Wan says, in answer to her unasked question. “And an exercise in control. One practiced by Temple younglings.”
Not any game Padmé knows. She and her sister – then later, her handmaidens – were more apt to occupy themselves with jumping straight into the water, shrieking with glee, than with avoiding its flow. “What’s the objective?”
“Just this,” he says. “Stay dry.” He curls his fingers up to his palm and then flat again in a gentle wave, the water above his hand twisting in a delighted dance before resuming its tumble around an untouched sleeve. “Even the youngest initiates, when exhibiting proper control, can easily redirect a flow of water around their forms. One stands under the falls, keeping dry, while their agemates or teachers attempt to break their focus.” He quirks a smile, one laced with equal parts memory and mischief. “One gets distracted, one gets wet.”
She smiles at him. “I take it you were good at this game?”
“I was passable,” he says with a diffident shrug. “But I did not win every time. My own clan members’ antics were at times difficult to ignore.”
“And Anakin?” she asks. She can’t help herself.
Obi-Wan pull his arm out from the falls, hand disappearing back into the long sleeve of his robe. “Terrible,” he says bluntly. “Without a doubt the worst in his class.”
Padmé refrains from making an unbecoming snort. So she will have something amusing to hold over Anakin’s head when she returns to Coruscant.
“You mustn’t misunderstand me, of course; Anakin is highly capable and could easily manipulate the water were he left to his own devices, but I’m afraid his mental discipline left much to be desired.” Obi-Wan sighs and shakes his head. “Anakin is so easily distracted – he reserved his limited ability to focus for very singular pursuits.”
“Such as...?”
Obi-Wan looks to be almost on the verge of rolling his eyes, but that would be un-Jedi, and he settles for a narrowing of them and crooking his fingers sardonically into the universal sign for quotes. “‘Fixing stuff,’ I believe he said.”
Padmé can’t help but laugh at that, and Obi-Wan indulges her merriment graciously. Looking re-energized, far more hale and hearty than he had in the reception area proper, he stretches out a hand. Ribbons of water arc away from the falls all around them, streaming through the air and coalescing into a shining globe above his palm, a miniature model of Mon Cala. The sphere’s globular surface ripples and turns slowly, casting small refractions of moonlight over the courtyard. Small-scale beauty, to be sure, but Padmé only has eyes for Obi-Wan’s face, lit with reflected light from below, a study in simple happiness.
A Jedi at play, she realizes. Most people didn’t believe there really was such a thing.
“That’s lovely,” she says, peering into the globe’s transparent yet distorted depths. Something about it...she is suddenly reminded of Anakin, in another time and place, levitating a muja fruit in much the same way, and with the same burst of simple enjoyment. “But I thought frivolous uses of the Force were discouraged.”
Obi-Wan raises his eyebrows at her, accepting the friendly challenge. “Frivolous?” He turns his hand so that the palm now faces outward. Rippling with light, the globe coasts several feet away and comes to rest over a pathetically drooping momus bush, its leaves yellowed and cracked, balmgrass spiky and dry around its exposed roots. Obi-Wan twitches his fingers downward, and the globe disintegrates, water sluicing down in a joyful shower onto the parched earth, transforming the yellow dust to a rich, wet brown. He gives her a significant look. “The preservation of life is never frivolous, Senator.”
Her smile climbs its way out of her with ease. Of course. An answer for everything. “I stand corrected.”
In the distance, a chorus of laughter rises above the sound of burbling water, followed by what sounds like someone calling for a toast. Obi-Wan casts a lingering glance at the falls, then back at the arched entrance to the grotto. “We should return,” he says, and if that is reluctance in his voice she will not comment on it.
She nods in agreement. “You’re right. Typho will start to worry.”
Taking her outstretched arm, Obi-Wan frowns. “I am quite certain I gave Captain Typho my word that no harm would come to you whilst I am your escort. He must learn to trust me.”
“He does trust you. But he’s a worry-woolamander. It’s his job.” It was, after all, why she had personally selected him to replace his retired uncle as her new head of security. But, at the same time, she had grown weary of the constant trail of guards orbiting her at all times, rings of human satellites, so many she can hardly blink without catching a glimpse of security burgundy in her peripheral vision. Far preferable to have an escort of one Jedi, especially this Jedi, than that wall of armed guards.
And besides, Obi-Wan had promised. While Captain Typho may not appreciate the import of such a gesture, Padmé does – Obi-Wan Kenobi’s word is worth his weight in solid aurodium bars and more. He has nothing left to prove to anybody, on that count.
At the threshold to the main garden, wide flowering pathways thronging with diplomats and officials and lackeys alike, Obi-Wan takes in a resigned breath. “Once more into the breach,” he proclaims, with tragicomic stoicism.
She cocks her head at him in sympathy. “Straight to the dance floor,” she advises, and they set off, she steering him in the proper direction. “I doubt even a Bothan will try to cut in on a Jedi.”
Obi-Wan snorts under his breath. “Her Highness is grown very devious, in her slippery Senatorial position,” he murmurs.
“And Master Kenobi very witty, in his old age,” she shoots back.
Obi-Wan favors her with a grin, a real grin, full and shining with rarely displayed pleasure. He bows to her, ushering her onto the formal dance floor with a graceful sweep of his hand. “You had better hope your earlier supposition is correct,” he says, eyes glinting with the same clever playfulness she’d seen in him earlier. “The Bothan senators have hooves, you know.”
