A/N: So... I was talking with orelseatlastsheunderstoodit on Tumblr about the potential of Mara Jade being Obi-Wan's daughter, biological or adopted, and it... snowballed. Into this.
This is gonna be a long and big AU eventually, probably. :D

Disclaimer: I own nothing, you know the drill.

==The Family You Choose==

I. The Hermit and the Orphan

Chapter 1: Chance Encounters

Once a year, Obi-Wan Kenobi rented a speeder and travelled to Mos Eisley on a special errand. Bail Organa would put money into an account for "Ben Antilles," and Obi-Wan would withdraw just enough to see him through the year. In the past ten years since he'd arrived on-planet, these outings had never been very eventful. Tatooine, for all its harshness, was a planet which was dependable in that harshness, the vices of criminals and the tyranny of Hutts as steady and unending as the desert itself.

No wonder Anakin had hated it.

This year, however… as he stepped out of Mos Eisley's one bank, he heard the outraged shrieks of a young girl and the curses of grown men—noises that, heard together, never boded well.

Slinging his sack over his shoulder, he hurried towards the source of the commotion. A human man and a Weequay were trying to subdue one small girl, too small to be even a young teenager. The child, pale and redheaded, was putting up a good fight, twisting and punching and kicking and even biting when the opportunity arose, and Obi-Wan saw signs of basic combat training in her moves. More than that… heavens above, she was a shining beacon in the Force!

Nevertheless, she was only a child, and Tatooine was not kind to lone children.

He drew close and raised his voice. "Excuse me, gentlemen," he said in a reasonable tone and an Outer Rim accent. "Would you mind unhanding my daughter?"

The three combatants froze, although the girl blessedly caught on quickly enough and cried out, "Papa!"

"This your brat, mister?" the human snarled, giving the girl a shake.

"She's my daughter," Obi-Wan said with a calm he no longer felt. There was real fear in the girl's wide green eyes, and it tugged at his weary heart. "Be so kind as to let her go."

"Your brat's a thief," the Weequay spat. "Tried to snatch my pal's wallet. We have ways around here of dealing with little thieves."

The girl's fear and panic in the Force spiked, and that did it.

Obi-Wan moved.

A decade in the desert hadn't stolen from his body a lifetime of rigorous training and even more rigorous battle. He punched the human hard in the face and at the same time was already moving to deliver a kick to the Weequay's stomach. Howling, both men let go of the child, and she darted forward. Obi-Wan then kicked the human down and gave the Weequay a punch that also sent him to the ground, then spun around, grabbed the girl's hand, and ran, initially dragging her until she decided to stop fighting him and move with the flow. The pair behind them shouted in pain and outrage, and, soon enough, Obi-Wan and the girl were dodging blaster bolts.

"Where are we going?" shouted the girl, her accent now Coruscanti rather than Rim, and Obi-Wan nearly halted in shock. It had been a long time since he'd heard that accent.

Obi-Wan said nothing, merely nodded at the speeder ahead of them. As they reached it, he hauled her bodily into the craft, ignoring her indignant shout, and clambered into it, ducking again as a blaster bolt nearly singed his hair. He revved the engine, hoping that the blasterfire would not damage the rental, and shot the speeder forward, doing his best to weave around traffic without hitting anyone. "Blast," he gritted out. Get-away flying wasn't his expertise—that had always been Anakin's. He did his best to ignore the pang in his chest as he concentrated on flying.

"I think you lost them!" the girl called after half a minute.

"Perhaps, but best to get out of the city before we let our guard down," Obi-Wan told her. The green eyes widened at his own Coruscanti accent surfacing, but she didn't comment on it. The next moment, he felt her presence in the Force wink out of existence, and blinked—those were some very powerful mental shields she was employing. She had had training—who had trained her?! Most Jedi initiates wouldn't have been able to shield like that at her age, which he thought must be around ten.

Around the age Anakin had been when Obi-Wan had first met him.

As luck would have it, however, they cleared Mos Eisley in another minute without any sign of pursuit, and Obi-Wan decided that the danger was indeed over. He slowed the speeder a little and looked over at his young companion. "I do believe we're in the clear," he said dryly, hoping to get a smile out of her.

There was a flash of one, and then apprehension stole over her delicate features. "Thanks for helping me," she said softly.

"My pleasure," Obi-Wan assured her gently. "My name is Ben; what's yours?"

"...Celina." She grimaced as she realized how unconvincing she sounded.

Obi-Wan smiled. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, 'Celina.' Might I ask what a Core girl is doing out here on the Outer Rim alone? You are alone, I take it?"

"...yeah." She frowned. "Well, what about you? You're from the Core, too."

"Retirement."

She snorted. "Who retires to a place like this?"

"Perhaps," he said slowly, carefully, watching her, "a person who, much like a child showing up alone on the same planet, does not wish to be found."

She went silent, eyeing him suspiciously past the red-gold hair flying around her face. At last, she said, "Where are you taking me?"

"Back to my home, if you don't mind. I don't know where else to take a runaway child; Tatooine doesn't exactly possess child services. I can give you a decent meal and, more importantly on this planet, some water."

"And after that?"

He sighed. "Let's see how supper goes, shall we?"

She frowned heavily, then her face cleared slightly. "I don't… I don't mean to sound ungrateful."

"You're a young child wandering alone who has been picked up by a man you don't know," he said reasonably. "You should be suspicious."

"But you want me to trust you."

"I hope that you will. Enough to tell me what you are doing with yourself so that I can help you." Enough to tell me how you learned to use the Force.

She turned away to watch sienna and beige-streaked stone pass by them. "We'll see."