More than a year after the Battle on Geonosis, Anakin finally shed the padawan braid and became a Jedi Knight. They were no longer master and apprentice, Obi-Wan and Anakin were now on equal footing as Jedi Knights and Generals of the Grand Army of the Republic.
The wars proved to be a great distractor, for better or worse. He and Anakin were constantly dispatched for days, weeks, sometimes months on end and often to the outer rim. It afforded no time for Obi-Wan to dwell on his broken heart over Padme, but it also distracted him from looking too closely on her interaction with Anakin. Whenever they returned to Coruscant to report to the Council, Obi-Wan said nothing when Anakin would steal away and be gone all night. He suspected he knew where he was going, and he deliberately avoided any confirmation one way or another.
Obi-Wan knew there was something still happening between them. He convinced himself that he was oblivious. He convinced himself that it was because he did not want to rob the war of a formidable warrior if Anakin was expelled.
It was easy to dance around the topic, to play dumb, and to ignore his own feelings on the matter so long as duty kept the barrier between him and Padme. But then came the orders for the two Jedi knights to escort Senator Amidala to negotiations in the Q'oor System in the outer rim. This system was caught in the middle of a tug-o-war between the Separatists and the Republic, neither able to convince the Q'oors to choose a side. And yet, they had a vast amount of valuable ore on their planet that would serve in building more weapons and warships.
The only diplomat that the Q'oors seemed even remotely interested in listening to, was the Senator of Naboo. They were aware of her stance in the senate, that she was critical of the Separatists, but also of the Republican Army itself. Her interests were not in any party, but in ideas of peace and democracy. She had also become familiar with the Q'oors when she was young, before she was queen, when she went on relief missions to planets that neighbored Naboo.
Padme was already on Naboo speaking long distance with the Q'oor leader, Ubo Nor, but it was delicate and could only be finalized in person.
Enter the Jedi.
Ordinarily, two Jedi Knights would not be sent at once to escort one politician to a neighboring system, but the journey was a perilous one. The stakes too high. The space between was littered with blockades, infested with enemy fighters and starships who would not pass up the opportunity for a politician bargaining chip. Or to stop her from making these negotiations. To say nothing of the risk that they would invade Q'oor and take the resources by force. They were never above occupation.
Obi-Wan volunteered to fly them to Naboo from Coruscant where they were to rendezvous with Senator Amidala and they were given authorization to land and await the senator. They were both in their armor, as they were going to be passing through a war zone. When the ship touched down and the engines were shut off, Obi-Wan looked to his friend.
The co-pilot seat was empty, Anakin was already on his feet and opening the hatch, letting in the sweet smells of Naboo. All the way here he could sense Anakin's anxiety, no matter how cool he tried to play it. For his own part, Obi-Wan felt surprisingly disconnected in their mission. After all, that was all it was, like any other they had been on in the past few months of this war.
R2-D2 whirred from the cargo, following Anakin down the ramp as obediently as he always had. When Anakin graduated to Jedi Knight, Padme had gifted him the droid, and Obi-Wan played along that it was a friendly gesture and a symbol of gratitude for protecting her from the assassin. It was obviously more, as R2-D2 seemed to take it upon himself to stay close to Anakin.
Obi-Wan actively didn't think about the time that Artoo had been a courier for more sinful messages from her.
While Anakin and Artoo waited at the base of the ramp, Obi-Wan stayed at the top of it, calmly admiring the scenery from there. They had landed on an elaborate mosaic of stone that was outlined in mossy green, and in the distance were the green domes of Theed, looking as if they were floating on the clouds of waterfalls. The sky was the purest blue of any planet in the galaxy, only a few perfect puffs of clouds along the horizon.
He had almost forgotten how beautiful this place was. He had no time to admire it in his youth when they were in the middle of an invasion.
Anakin was pacing a little, and Artoo was reeling back and forth in an attempt to follow. If droids could get dizzy, then he certainly was. Captain Typho had told them to wait for her at the landing platform so that they could depart immediately.
"She's late," Anakin said so quietly Obi-Wan wasn't sure if he was meant to hear it.
"She's a politician," Obi-Wan said with a shrug. It would not have been the first time they were kept waiting by some diplomat or another. And that was all she was, another diplomat.
Anakin stopped in his pacing and looked up at his former master, head low, eyes sharp with disapproval.
Obi-Wan raised his shoulders innocently. "Correct me if I am wrong."
"She'll be here."
"Oh, I don't doubt that she will be here. Eventually." Obi-Wan idly stroked a finger on his mustache. "And as politicians go, she will be in an awful hurry to get where she's going. I suspect she will not be pleased when we tell her what route we intend to take."
"She'll agree once we explain it to her," Anakin said confidently.
"I'm not so sure…" Obi-Wan murmured. "A crucial part of negotiations are timing…"
"She'll agree. You'll see."
Obi-Wan folded his arms. "Why do I have the feeling we won't have much say in the matter?"
"You don't know her."
It was bold for Anakin to insinuate that he knew her better than Obi-Wan did. Whether or not it was true, Obi-Wan had to pretend that he didn't know how much time his former padawan stole away with her. Maybe Anakin did know her better, Obi-Wan never dared to spend too much time with her. Anakin knew her in a way Obi-Wan never would and he had to pretend he didn't care.
He watched Anakin curiously, gauging his posture and energy. He was anxious, but he was in control. Obi-Wan felt a pang of envy—it stung every once in awhile—to know that Anakin and Padme had that connection, to look forward to seeing one another, and the luxury of missing each other when apart. Obi-Wan was not entitled to either of those things, he had made his choice. He chose the Order.
And he was at peace with that. He found some joy in allowing them to be happy together, and he could live through the doses of loneliness that occasionally racked him when things became too quiet and he was not occupied by war. He was content with his choice.
That is, until a speeder halted in front of them and Padme stepped out with only a small bag and C3PO shuffling behind her. She smiled broadly to Anakin, the Naboo sun glinting off the edges of her tightly bound hair. She was dressed for the field, in knee high boots, tight pants, and a tactical jacket. She looked prepared for anything. She looked beautiful.
Anakin's entire persona melted at the sight of her, even though he made himself stand taller. He nodded respectfully to her, and Obi-Wan wasn't oblivious to the small smirk on the young man's face. Obi-Wan himself wished he could duck into the ship and pretend he didn't notice her arrival, but it was too late.
"Milady," Anakin said smoothly, taking the bag from her hand.
Their eyes were locked, even as they walked together up the ramp of the ship, R2-D2 behind them.
"Hello again, Senator," Obi-Wan said coolly. He felt quite pleased with himself for regaining some indifference to seeing her again.
That broke her gaze from Anakin's and she stopped in front of Obi-Wan as Anakin continued on into the ship to deposit her things in the aft compartment. The breeze picked up just so that it carried the scent of her towards Obi-Wan, and he came undone.
That fragrance triggered every intimate memory of her, from the way she felt to how she tasted. Worst of all, it reminded him how much he treasured her company and how badly he had missed it. How he felt he never had enough of it. She was staring at him as if seeing him for the first time, confusion deep in the brown of her eyes.
"Hello again, Master Kenobi…" she put on a smile and it seemed forced.
"We need to go," Anakin's voice sounded from within the ship.
Padme blinked rapidly and walked past Obi-Wan without a word. He expected the usual professional greeting, a friendly but distant exchange, if anything. That was exactly what he got, and it left him cold. C3PO was just now making his way inside as well, and Artoo whistled loudly at him.
"Well, if it isn't R2-D2!" Threepio annunciated in his usual, perfect way and set a gold hand atop the astromech's dome. "How are you my little friend?"
Artoo let out a series of beeps and whistles and trills and C3PO straightened up. "Oh my! That is a little too much information and none of your business! Really, you should have been programmed not to gossip…"
Droid conversations were not exactly the most titillating of noises, and frankly, Obi-Wan had other matters on his mind. He hit the button, pulling in the ramp and closing the hatch. Padme had taken her seat in one of the passenger chairs in the cockpit, C3PO sitting dutifully beside her.
Obi-Wan moved to the navigation, to pull up a hologram map of the system. The planets and stars were displayed in generic, translucent spheres, but the position of them were recognizable to anyone familiar with the different systems.
"There are reports of a Separatist fleet in the system between here and our destination," Obi-Wan explained without looking to Padme, though he was speaking to her. "We will have to take a wider route around them to avoid detection and to see you safely to Q'oor… It will take longer, but it will be the path of least resistance."
Padme studied the map, her eyes following the drawn line of light that demonstrated their flight path. She was frowning.
"Ubo Nor made it very clear that he wouldn't wait that long. The sooner we get there, the better."
Obi-Wan met Anakin's eye, the younger man's glare practically screaming Don't say it.
"Then what are you proposing, my lady?" Anakin's submission was laced with salt.
She leveled her gaze on him, fearless. "We go through it."
"Through it." Obi-Wan had to repeat it. "With all due respect—"
"The negotiations with the Q'oor cannot fail, Master Kenobi," Padme was looking to him now. "The delay in my arrival could unravel the negotiations I have been working at for months with Ubo Nor. I am willing to take the risk."
"It's an unnecessary risk—" Obi-Wan kept his voice calm.
"I know when to take risks for the sake of protecting democracy."
"Padme," he spoke more sternly.
He said her name and for the first time she wavered, hesitating, but recovered. "I've made my decision. We're going though."
Obi-Wan took in a small breath, to expel the creeping of a temper that threatened to rear its head and he looked to Anakin.
"Well?"
"Well what?" Anakin played dumb, and very unconvincingly.
"You're unusually quiet in the conversation of risk."
Anakin was suppressing a smile. "I agree with her, Master. Besides, if I'm flying, I can get us through it without a scratch."
"I've heard that before," Obi-Wan said dubiously.
"In hyperdrive I can fly us past the enemy fleet and past the Q'oor system, then back track. It'll only cost us a couple of hours. But coming from the other direction there shouldn't be any conflict."
"Shouldn't be?'"
"I'm pretty sure.
Obi-Wan raised his brows.
"I'm positive," Anakin went on.
"I think it's a sound plan," Padme spoke up, giving the final decision. "If it will satisfy you, Master Kenobi, we'll fly past the Separatist Fleet. I would rather sacrifice a couple of hours than several."
Both Anakin and Padme were looking at him now and he glanced between them, a long silence falling. "What? Obviously it isn't up to me. I'll follow your suicide mission. Someone has got to make sure you get out of it."
They were both mad. They always had been, and more than ever he realized what bonded them together.
Anakin let out a sigh, pretending not to be absolutely pleased with getting his way.
"All right, then," said the younger Jedi as he hopped into the pilot seat. "Let's do this."
They took off from Naboo, and into open space. Once he set in the coordinates, Anakin punched it into hyperdrive, the engines blaring around them. He kept his eyes on the nav controls, calculating their distance and trajectory. When they emerged from lightspeed, they were surrounded by asteroids, and patrolling in the field was a swarm of droid fighters from the Confederacy Navy.
"Anakin!" Obi-Wan blurted out, a hand bracing on the control panel beside him when they nearly crashed right into a large asteroid.
"Look out!" C3PO shouted needlessly, accompanied by alarmed beeps from R2-D2.
Anakin said nothing, all of his focus on piloting. He jerked the yoke and their ship made a sharp right turn, missing a massive rock by a hair. There weren't many things that made Obi-Wan's heart stop, but close calls while flying were one of them. To Anakin it was as easy as turning a corner.
They clearly hadn't been detected yet or they would have been blasted out of space. Their ship flew along the surface of the giant asteroid, circling around it and out of sight of the Separatist vessels. In one swoop, the ship dove into a particularly large crater, landing on the solid rock, the engines shut off, the lights out, save for a few blinking on the console.
Both of the Jedi could sense that they were undetected, it only made sense for Anakin to land them somewhere to hide. Of course, that raised more problems. It was supposed to be free and clear when they dropped out of hyperdrive on the other side of Q'oor, there weren't supposed to be enemy ships, and now they were forced to sit it out and wait in a crater on an asteroid. Dooku must have had the planet surrounded to prevent these negotiations from happening.
Obi-Wan knew he didn't need to say it. It was all apparent in how tight Anakin's lips were, the white of his knuckles on his hand as it gripped the yoke, even though they were no longer moving, the leather of his robotic hand squeaking a little.
"Well…." Obi-Wan said quietly. "You were right about one thing, Anakin…"
"Don't."
"We did get through…"
"Please stop."
"…without a scratch."
Anakin breathed out loudly through his nose. "I hate you."
When his own temper threatened to flair up, Obi-Wan often resorted to sarcasm. It was like loosening a valve, to let out the pressure. He resisted the urge to sigh loudly, and instead calmed his breathing and looked over his shoulder to where Padme sat. Her head was rested in her hand, fingers rubbing at her brow, her gaze hard with thought.
"We will find a way to get you there on time, Milady," Obi-Wan felt confident.
"I should have just pushed through the asteroid field. There can't be too many Separatists in here…" Anakin seemed to be speaking to himself, his eyes peering out the window towards the visible stars.
"Now what are we going to do?" Padme was looking to the back of Anakin's head.
Obi-Wan spoke before his former padawan had a chance at another risky plan. "We wait. The enemy may simply be passing through this field and we'll have an opportunity to move unseen. If we fly now they'll shoot us down."
Anakin's shoulders rose and fell heavily. "I'm sorry, Padme…" he said over his shoulder.
The apology was deeply personal, it was evident in his tone and the guilt on his face.
"I agreed to the risk as much as you did…" she replied gently, but there was clear worry on her face when she looked to Obi-Wan, when Anakin couldn't see. "How long do you think we'll be here?"
"Hours, possibly," Obi-Wan looked out at the star field, to distract himself from looking too closely at her. "I'm afraid there isn't much to do but wait in silence and darkness. This would be an opportune time to get some rest, milady. We will wake you if anything changes."
"I don't know if I can sleep under the circumstances…"
"If it would please you, I know more than five thousand entertaining stories and anecdotes that I could regale you with!" Threepio chimed in. "My humorous stories are more than able to help the time pass much more quickly!"
"No thank you, Threepio…" Anakin sighed.
"Ah." The protocol droid turned his eternally wide eyes around the cockpit. "Perhaps you would like to hear some of the indigenous tribal chanting of the—"
"Silence will do," Obi-Wan said abruptly. He had to wonder why C3PO was even needed for this mission. But, he did have a more important question for his former padawan. "You built that droid?"
Anakin looked over his shoulder to C3PO, who stared with that blank expression back at him. Anakin then looked to Obi-Wan and nodded. "I had a lot of scrap parts to play with as a kid, most of them from trashed protocol droids I found in Watto's junkyard. All the programming was still intact, I just gave him a body."
"For which I am eternally grateful, Master Anakin."
"And I made sure the off switch was easy to access…" Anakin said much more quietly, a little bit of shame in his eye… and yet there was that smirk.
Obi-Wan smiled at the temptation to utilize it and he caught a smile on Padme's face as well. They all fell silent, an occasional beep of the controls, or Artoo, the whir of gears when Threepio so much as turned his head or moved a limb. Padme sighed, Anakin cleared his throat, Obi-Wan scratched at his beard.
"Maybe I will rest…" Padme finally said, rising from her chair. "There isn't much else to do. You can wake me the moment anything changes."
She looked between them both, making it clear that it wasn't a request.
"As you wish, my lady…" Obi-Wan bowed his head to her, their eyes meeting for just a moment. She blushed, and walked away towards the aft compartment that was separated by the door to the cockpit.
His heart was hammering. She blushed. That small hint of color in her cheeks spoke volumes and he wanted to scream in joy and rage. He had hoped the spark between them had been snuffed by the length of time that passed, that her affair with Anakin would overtake it all. It hurt to think he could be replaced—by his own padawan, no less—but he wanted the closure, the escape.
And then she blushed, because of him.
He felt a pain in his chest that he knew he needed to rid himself of. Drawing in a slow, deep breath, he somehow managed to keep his roiling emotions from appearing on the surface. He slouched a bit in his chair, lifting his boots to prop them on the console, ankles crossed, arms folded. He closed his eyes.
"You're going to sleep, too?" Anakin's indignant voice broke through.
Obi-Wan didn't open his eyes. "You got us in this mess, you can take the first watch."
"You make it sound like we're going to be here for days. I think we will only be here an hour. At the most."
"Then you can wake us in an hour." Obi-Wan said simply.
He did not intend to sleep. Not really. He needed to meditate, to cleanse his thoughts and rid himself of the ache inside. He didn't want to think about all the things he wished he could say to her, or the ways he wished he could just hold her in his arms. Or just feel the silk of her hair between his fingers.
But if he assumed the meditative pose, Anakin would more easily sense that there was some sort of turmoil. No, Obi-Wan needed to do what he did best and affect an air of dignity and calm, always. When his eyes were closed, however, he began to nod off.
Unfortunately, with sleep comes dreams, in which not even the Jedi are safe from.
