Just want to say a big thanks to the people that comment and have stuck with this story so far. I do read and appreciate every comment. I will admit to be a total noob about how the responses work - it's so different from AO3, which is the platform I'm use to. Also, this fic will probably get a little smutty in the future. I will try to edit and stay within the M rating for this site. The un-edited and smut-ridden version will have a home on AO3. 😊
"What in the name of the Force were you doing? We were meant to be escaping that cavern, not falling further into it!"
Obi-Wan's feet kicked up a plume of rust red dirt behind him as he and Anakin ducked and wove through the jagged rock formations that covered the world of Rampa. Huge spikes of sandstone jutted out of the ground like the broken, blood-stained teeth of a rathtar. Above them, blotting out the sun in a screaming flurry of shadowy wings, their hunters swooped and swirled through the air, wheeling around the razor-edged structures in deadly pursuit.
"I spotted something…" Anakin said between panting breaths. His long legs were keeping pace beside Obi-Wan's, only splitting away when a shrieking bolt of wings and teeth broke from the mass above them, darting down to swipe at their backs with sharp, serrated pincers.
"Spotted something?" Obi-Wan yelled at Anakin when he swerved back towards him, a ragged tear in the fluttering cloak trailing behind him was the only indicator of how close those pincers had gotten. "Well, it obviously wasn't your common sense!"
A fallen pillar loomed up and Obi-Wan cut off his rant, taking in a deep breath and drawing on the Force to help him leap as close to the surface as possible without smacking head first into the rockface. He righted himself with a flip before his feet touched the ground, drawing another breath as he continued his tirade. "We're being chased by a nest of shyracks; so unless you spotted a laser cannon down there, what could you have possibly seen that would make you risk a nosedive to the bottom of an infested cave?"
"Uh….it was nothing," Anakin yelled back, and even though they were both running for their lives, Obi-Wan nearly stopped dead in his tracks with disbelief.
"Really?" he said, his voice rising in pitch to match his incredulity. "Nothing? I nearly died trying to drag you out of there for nothing?"
Another screech came from above, and this time two creatures swooped down in unison. They were not, however, the only ones who could coordinate their movements. With little more than a glance of agreement between them, Anakin and Obi-Wan veered sharply towards each other. While his padawan leapt gracefully overhead, Obi-Wan swept underneath him, close enough that the edge of Anakin's sleeve brushed against his ear. The shyracks were so focused on their individual targets that when they swept down to take advantage of the sudden vulnerability of their prey, they collided in mid-air instead, quickly descending into little more than a squawking bundle of wings and claws scrabbling in the billowing dirt.
"Is it really wise to argue about this right now, Master?" Anakin asked, sparing a quick glance behind him as they both picked up their previous pace, boots pounding against the dry, compacted ground.
"You do not get to lecture me on wisdom, my very young apprentice," Obi-Wan managed to gasp back in reply, his lungs and legs equally burning from the prolonged exertion. They really had been out of the field for too long - Obi-Wan would have never been this out of breath a year ago.
He recognised a familiar cluster of dusky purple foliage up ahead, nestled between two huge, fang shaped rocks that towered either side. That was where they had hidden their transporter on arrival, trusting the dense canopy overhead to conceal it from unwanted eyes. Now, it practically called out to them; a beacon of safety in what had otherwise turned out to be a horrifically wild and dangerous planet.
As soon as he spotted the rear port of their ETA-class shuttle, Obi-Wan reached out with the Force to trigger the entrance hatch. It seemed to take an agonizingly long second, but eventually a thin ramp could be seen extending from the ship's undercarriage. With one final push of his flagging muscles, Obi-Wan increased his speed, ignoring the screeching from above as they disappeared under the trees and pounded up the ramp hard enough to set the durasteel rattling underneath their heels.
"Inside...get inside!" Obi-Wan barked back to Anakin, though he had little need to; his padawan was a hair's-breadth behind him. Obi-Wan's palm hit the panel to seal the entrance ramp hard enough to make his hand ache.
"Well that was close," Anakin spluttered, doubled over with his hands on his knees, his padawan braid dangling just below his chin. A thump, followed quickly by a squawk and the scrape of talons on glass, drew their attention to the vast silhouette of a shyrack clinging to the transparisteel dome encapsulating the flight deck. It's rounded mouth, bristling with endless rows of teeth stretching back until they disappeared into a voidless maw, scratched and scraped against the clear bubble of the viewport, the semi-translucent membrane of the wings glowing a dull violet where the light seeped through.
"We'll have to stay here until nightfall," Obi-Wan said, watching the creature desperately claw for traction over the smooth surface of the vessel. "If we try to take off during daylight, these shyrack's will swarm the ship, and could possibly knock us right out of the sky before we even attempt to break the atmosphere. Best to wait it out until they go back to the caves to roost at dusk."
"So what do we do until then?"
"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm going to wash this planet off my skin, and then spend the next few hours meditating over how much of an unmitigated disaster our assignment has turned out to be." Shucking off his cloak, Obi-Wan took a moment to tut over the long tear ripped through it. Yet another cloak he'd have to replace; at this rate, the Requisitions Master was going to report him to the Council for inappropriate use of Temple resources. "If I'm very lucky, I may even get a few mouthfuls of food in before something else invariably goes wrong."
"That's the fourth lead that's ended up getting us nowhere, Master," Anakin said. He dropped down onto one of the hard benches and started stripping off his boots. After a second, Obi-Wan sighed and settled down beside him, unbuckling his own boots.
"I know, we've been chasing dead ends for weeks now. I feel like we're missing something…" Obi-Wan replied, pushing aside his boots and frowning down at the red dusting of dirt coating his feet. He felt like there wasn't a crevice in his body that this planet hadn't seeped into. "I sensed no deception from our Aqualish contact, and he was certain that Doge Motrz Knuqat's vessel was last spotted in this sector."
"Maybe he is actually dead," Anakin said, scratching flecks of cave rock out of his short hair onto the ship's floor. "He could be rotting at the bottom of a Malastare sinkhole right now."
"No," Obi-Wan said, rising up onto his bare feet, "I don't think so. I sense there's something else going on here - something lurking around the edges, just out of our reach. What are we missing?"
"What I'm missing is food that's not rehydrated space-rations. I can't remember the last time I had a proper meal."
"Yes well, we've got bigger things to worry about than your stomach." Obi-Wan turned just in time to watch the shyrack slide off the viewport window with a thunk, its mouth leaving a thick trail of venomous pink saliva in its wake. "I'm heading to the refresher."
The refresher cubicle's on ETA-class shuttles were meant more as a stop gap for when the calling of nature couldn't be delayed until landing, rather than a standard hygiene solution for long-term travel. After retracting the toilet and handbasin into the wall, Obi-Wan stripped off his filthy robes and set them aside, not bothering to keep them out of range of the shower's spray. His belt and lightsabre he placed just outside the door. With only one other set of robes stored on board for him to wear, Obi-Wan would have the tedious pleasure of hand-washing these ones after cleaning the dirt off himself.
As the lukewarm recycled water hit his skin, swirling rusty dirt down the floor drains, Obi-Wan took the time to reflect back and examine their progress over the last nine weeks. Well, if you could even call it progress; it felt more like wading through waist-height Kashyyyk mud while trying to unravel a Cerean puzzle knot. The initial mission brief from the Council was simplicity itself. The leading member of the Dug Council, Doge Motrz Knugat, had disappeared right before a vote on plans to approve the building of a massive communications hub on Malastare, boosting comm lines for any ships and worlds within the Hydian Way hyperspace route. Until he was either found alive or confirmed dead, no vote could take place and no-one could be elected to replace him. The Senator for Malastare had reached out to Chancellor Palpatine, who had in turn contacted the Jedi High Council, in the hopes that this matter could be resolved without further delay.
Obi-Wan had practically jumped at the offer of leading the investigation. Even better, there had been absolutely no scrutiny from the Council over his request to be reassigned to an off-world mission. He had been met with nothing but nods of agreement when he had mentioned that Emily was now fluent in Basic and perfectly safe within the Temple, and that after almost a year, it would be best for Anakin's training to resume assignments for the Order. Only a silent, drawn-out stare from Master Yoda had Obi-Wan worried that his motivations would be called into question, but the Grandmaster had said nothing, agreeing with the others that he and Anakin would be well suited for the task now assigned to them. But what on the surface had appeared to be nothing more than a straightforward case of a missing person, had quickly devolved into an endless mire of political machinations, corporate interference, bribery of officials, multi-world investment fraud and the possible assassination of a galactic leader to cover it all up. Once again, he and Anakin had found themselves trailing all over the galaxy; their leads even taking them out here, to the very edges of the Outer-Rim. Obi-Wan scrubbed his hands through his hair, rumbling a groan of frustration while dislodging layers of dust and grit. When the water finally ran clear, he picked up his tunic and pants and went to work on removing the worst of the stains in them as well.
As frustrating as the mission had been so far, Obi-Wan couldn't blame all of his poor mood solely on that. His sleep had been frequently...interrupted, shall we say, in the weeks following their departure from the Temple. Most nights found him dragged out of sleep, panting and painfully hard, flaring with oversensitive pleasure like an exposed wire, every breath gently brushing cloth against his groin as he tried to push back the after-images seared onto the back of his eyelids. Or worse, he'd not wake at all until morning, finding a cold, sticky mess drying uncomfortably against his skin, filling him with the kind of embarrassed shame he hadn't felt since he was Anakin's age. The indignity of spending his mornings over the refresher basin, cleaning the stains from his underwear, was frankly excruciating.
Obi-Wan threw the now partially cleaned robes over the wall rack, taking a moment to glare down at the offending appendage. It simply hung there, acting entirely innocent, as though it didn't enjoy interrupting his rest to torture him. Meditation before sleep hadn't helped, as it once had so long ago when he was still a padawan. His dreams were shockingly, breathtakingly vivid. Obi-Wan had never kissed Emily before; he didn't know the shape of her lips, the sharp nip of her teeth or the banked heat of her moans against his open mouth. He had no frame of reference for how the almost translucent skin down the column of her throat would feel as he kissed it, or how it would taste as he dragged his tongue down to her breasts. Where experience lacked, however, his sleeping mind was more than happy to fill in the blanks. Each time, it took longer and longer to reconcile his waking body from his dreams; Emily's warm scent still filling his senses, the press of her heated skin lingering like a ghost against him, his empty hands aching with the memory of traced curves and the tangle of silky curls.
A sharp twitch from between his legs reminded him that his body was just as eager to betray him during his waking hours. With a scowl he hit the button for the dryer, hot air - warmer than the water of his shower - gushed from the vents above him, sucking all the moisture down into the condensers under the floor. Obi-Wan ignored the rush of blood to his lower half and focused on smoothing his hair down as it dried, closing his eyes and emptying his mind until the sweet ache of arousal started to recede. He would have to find a way to get over this predicament. This was a problem to be faced by hormonal boys in the first blush of their youth - not for supposedly seasoned Masters already striding into their thirties. It was all terribly embarrassing.
Obi-Wan quickly dressed himself in his spare robes and wandered back into the ship's main hold. Anakin had tucked himself into a recessed cot, his knees pulled up and an empty ration-pack tossed amidst his scattered boots and abandoned cloak.
"You know, you were never this untidy as a youngling."
"I'll clean it up in a second," Anakin mumbled, through a mouth full of food. He had a second ration-pack balanced on his lap, shovelling its contents into his mouth with one hand while he skimmed through a datapad with his other.
"No…you will clean up your mess right now, my young padawan."
Anakin groaned, sliding onto his bare feet with a huff. "Fine."
"And you will do it with a little less attitude, if you don't mind." That received nothing more than a grumble of acknowledgement. Obi-Wan crossed over to his own cot, easing himself down until he was sitting cross-legged on the thin mattress, his hands resting on his knees as he slowed his breathing in preparation for meditation. He could hear the progress of Anakin tidying up as he shuffled around the room.
Obi-Wan cleared his thoughts, opening himself up, stretching his mind out as he welcomed the rushing flow of the Force channelling itself through him. As he sunk himself deeper into its currents, everything around him came into a sharpened clarity that dwarfed his bodies other senses. He not only could feel the hum of the auxiliary engines underneath him, Obi-Wan was those engines. He was the crinkle of the empty ration-pack in Anakin's hand. He was the slow drip of water from his drying robes in the refresher. He was the wind rustling through the branches of the Korla trees outside. He was the last retreating shyrack, its need for the safety of shelter overcoming the disappointment of an empty stomach. Obi-Wan stretched out further and further, hoping that the net of his awareness would snag on some small clue; some missing link that his tired brain had overlooked.
Skrrrrch
A sound scraped loudly against his eardrums, snapping Obi-Wan's awareness back into his body.
Skrrrrch
What in the… "Anakin, what are you doing?" Obi-Wan asked, slowly opening his eyes to the now dimly lit interior. Outside, dusk was painting dark violet streaks across the sky. His padawan had jammed himself back in his cot again, knees bent up and blocking whatever was cradled in Anakin's lap from sight.
"I'm working," Anakin said, not looking up. Another long screech echoed through the cabin, only stopping when he pulled his arm up to wipe a sleeve across his chin. Obi-Wan caught the gleam of a multitool clutched in his right hand.
"Working on what, exactly?"
"A gift," Anakin eventually replied, casting a wary glance towards him.
"Oh I see…" Obi-Wan said, lacing his voice with a sarcasm so heavy, only an idiot could miss it. "That clears everything up then."
"It's for Emily," Anakin reluctantly added. "I said I'd bring her back a gift so…you know."
"And what kind of a gift makes that noise?" Obi-Wan asked, unfolding his legs and stretching them out, straightening his back until his spine popped.
"It's not-" Anakin started, then stopped with a huff. "Just look."
Reaching down into his lap, Anakin scooped something up, turning just enough to present a palmful of…
"Rocks." Obi-Wan stared down at a small stack of around six pebbles, balanced precariously in his padawans open hands. "You're giving Emily rocks as a gift."
"It's not just rocks," Anakin bit back, his voice edged with frustration. "It's a rock from each planet we've been to so far. I thought, you know, because she like's the Galaxy Pool so much back at the Temple, that maybe she'd like to have something like that herself - that's just for her." Anakin blinked down at stones in his hands, biting his lip as he scanned over them. "Except, these ones will be even better, because I'm carving the name of the planet they came from into them - see! That way, she knows exactly where each one is from."
"Do you think she'll like it?" Anakin asked, looking more uncertain with each passing second of silence from his Master. Obi-Wan frowned down at the small bundle, lost in thought. This was another thing that was beginning to worry him. It was one thing to struggle with his own feelings for Emily, but it was quite another to try and caution his apprentice against his own growing attachment. Obi-Wan hadn't fully realised just how close Anakin had become to Emily, until they were a few weeks into their investigation, and his padawan was already itching to return to Coruscant. Usually, Anakin wanted nothing more to be out on a mission, flying through space and visiting new planets. The Temple had never really been the place of comfort for him, as it was for all the other Jedi who were raised within its walls.
That had all changed now. Anakin spoke about returning to the Temple with the kind of enthusiasm that would have lightened Obi-Wan's heart - in the past. Now though, he knew that it wasn't the call of home that had him muttering about how long their mission was taking, it was the thought of getting back to Emily. And what kind of hypocrite would Obi-Wan be if he confronted him over this? At least it was only feelings of familial friendship that Anakin was nurturing. Even this, all the thought and consideration that he had placed in his gift, was something Obi-Wan was loathed to discourage. Anakin's selfless, open-hearted generosity was one of his best traits - it was something he had possessed ever since Obi-Wan had met him; a small, bright little boy living in the sand-blasted wastes of Tatooine.
"I think she will like it very much," Obi-Wan managed to say, and the brilliant smile he received in return made his heart swell. They were, the two of them, totally lost. Obi-Wan scrubbed his hands over his face, looking out into the darkening night. He was too distracted to meditate further, and would probably be lucky to get an uninterrupted sleep tonight, either. They should make a start on their next lead.
"Alright, enough of that for the moment," Obi-Wan said, standing up and making his way towards the pilot's deck. He could hear Anakin scramble to his feet after him. "Let's get off this planet and back to the waystation. I think we should have another talk with our Aqualish contact. I have a feeling he's not telling us everything he knows."