Forget my promises for more Bo-Katan this chapter - I've had a change of plans. Needed to fix AotC first. Get ready for some vastly improved Master-Padawan communication.
"Do you recall, Padawan, the day that we first met Korkie when you and I had a conversation about love at first sight?"
Obi Wan was reclining, feet on the dashboard, looking at his holo-pad while Anakin did all the hard work (okay, not exactly hard work) flying back from Ansion. He had a dangerous smirk on his face and Anakin couldn't help but flush.
"Kinda. Why do you ask?"
"Because we've been allocated a new mission," Obi Wan answered calmly, gesturing at the holo-pad.
Anakin tried to keep his voice level.
"With Padme?"
Obi Wan nodded serenely.
"With the Senator Amidala, yes. There's been an attempt on her life."
Anakin couldn't help it; he cursed in Huttese.
"I take it that you're still quite enamoured with her, then?"
Anakin jolted the ship slightly to shake the insufferable smugness off his Master's face.
"It's just no fair, the way the Confederacy pulls these stunts," he protested. "She's the most courageous person in that stupid Senate, she opposes the Military Creation Act and their answer is to force it through by killing her? I thought we lived in a democracy!"
"We don't know yet who has tried to kill her, Padawan," Obi Wan reasoned. "But that seems a likely motive."
"We'll soon find out," Anakin muttered grimly.
Coruscant was coming into view. Padme was on-planet. He would see her again, finally, and not just from a distance. Stars, he'd hate to admit it to Obi Wan but he'd never stopped looking out for her when he travelled past the Senate.
"I don't think we're supposed to find out," Obi Wan mused, squinting at the mission briefing. "Our role is in protection only."
Anakin shrugged.
"Lucky there's two of us."
Obi Wan snorted.
"You just want me to leave you alone with her, don't you?"
Anakin scowled ferociously. He was nineteen-standard and wouldn't be teased like a child.
"Obi Wan-"
"I'm not opposed to the idea, Padawan," Obi Wan interrupted. "But let's not make any plans yet before we've met the Senator and done our research. We will be approaching this mission with our heads and not our hearts, alright?"
Anakin rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, like you approached your mission to Mandalore with your head."
Obi Wan snickered, and sat upright to lay a placating hand on Anakin's shoulder.
"Bright one, you are better than me at almost everything. Let this be no exception."
"Ani! My goodness, you've grown!"
The Senator was hardly subtle in her appraisal of his Padawan's new appearance. Obi Wan grimaced and hoped that Anakin, who had been tense from the moment they'd stepped into the elevator, would not say anything stupid.
"For my Master's sake, Senator, we must pretend that he is still taller than I am," Anakin replied smoothly, accepting her handshake. "It is good to see you again, Padme."
The Senator flushed at the use of her first name and the gentle squeeze that Anakin gave her hand.
Obi Wan cocked an amused brow. Contrary to Anakin's claim, he and his Padawan seldom griped about their height difference – although it came up often between Obi Wan and Satine. (He was, to be perfectly clear, exactly one centimetre taller than her, never mind Satine's incessant claims that they were of equal height.)
So it seemed that Anakin had learned something useful after all, in the years of missing lessons in the Temple and making visits to Mandalore; somewhere along the line, the boy had learned to flirt.
"He still adores her, it's delightful."
"Be nice to him, Obi Wan."
Despite the reprimand, Satine was smiling brightly at him through the holo.
"You remember being nineteen-standard, no?"
"How could I forget?" Obi Wan asked. "It was torturous. Do you remember how many nights we wasted in that blasted tent, lying beside each other without touching?"
"Exactly," Satine answered firmly. "It is a difficult age. So be nice."
Obi Wan smiled as he shook his head and shovelled a few mouthfuls of dinner. He would have to swap with Anakin and return to active guard duty with the Senator soon. Zam Wesell may have been dead but whoever had hired her was not. The sooner they could get Padme off-planet the better.
"I don't know why you assume I'm not being nice," Obi Wan went on. "I'm giving them a far better chance than Qui Gon ever gave us. He abandoned us on blasted Draboon for three days. I, in comparison, will be letting them have a romantic vacation to the lake country on Naboo, while I do all the hard work finding this assassin."
Satine raised her brows, impressed.
"I'm rather envious. If there were an attempt on my life, could you and I go for a vacation on Naboo?"
"I do not wish there to be any attempts on your life," Obi Wan answered, sobering.
Satine gave a tight smile.
"It's been over ten years now, I'm overdue, really."
And Obi Wan felt her heavy tension despite all the enormous distance between them. They shared an unspoken understanding – Satine was never one to admit a problem – that with the formation of the Confederacy of Independent Systems and the consequent havoc wreaked on Mandalore's trade deals, the ever-grumbling voices of dissent on Mandalore had grown louder. The long-time critics of Satine's approach of fostering interplanetary relations could finally point to good evidence as to why Mandalore should simply fend for itself.
"You call me if you're at all worried, alright?"
"I'm not worried," Satine countered dismissively.
Obi Wan grimaced.
"Try to be a little worried, dearest, if anyone threatens to kill you."
Satine snorted.
"People threaten to kill me all the time. I practice politics on Mandalore. It's our way of saying, 'I don't like you.'"
Obi Wan sighed. He was not going to convince Satine of anything over comms.
"Call me if you're at all worried," he repeated. "Now, I'm afraid I have to go relieve Anakin and let him have some dinner."
Satine softened.
"Thank you for calling, my love. All the best with the Senator."
"All the best with the trade negotiations."
"They'll be fine."
Satine rubbed at her weary eyes.
"Obi Wan?"
"Yes?"
Her face found brightness again.
"Draboon may be no Nubian lake country, but it did the trick, no?"
Obi Wan relaxed into a smile. He remembered their first kiss in all of its disastrous glory.
"You are quite right, my love. As always."
"You ought to get some sleep, Anakin," Obi Wan advised, during their late-night patrol of Padme's apartment. "You and the Senator have a great deal of distance to travel tomorrow. I can keep watch on my own."
Anakin grimaced at his Master's kindness. How was he to explain-
"You've not been sleeping well?"
And Anakin couldn't help but smile at his ever-perceptive Master.
"Not so well," he sighed.
Obi Wan watched him expectantly.
"Dreams?"
Anakin made a soft noise of assent. Stars, he wanted to tell his Master everything. But the visions surely meant attachment and fear and the Dark Side and he couldn't let his Master down like that, when Obi Wan had allowed him to see his mother, when Obi Wan had stood up for him against the Council and told them that the bond was healthy and right. Obi Wan had given him everything and he'd kriffed it up.
Obi Wan laid both hands on Anakin's shoulders and caught his gaze again. The look in his eyes was so kind. Anakin's throat closed up and he worried he might start crying like a blasted kid.
He was pulled into a gentle hug, Obi Wan's hands steady and comforting on his shoulder blades. Haar'chak. Obi Wan was really trying to make him cry. He hadn't cried in years.
"Talk when you're ready. We'll figure everything out. I won't send you to Naboo alone if you're not feeling right."
His Master was too kriffing kind. Anakin cried, and the words poured out.
"Obi Wan, I- I've been having dreams of Mum dying and- and I haven't had anything like this in years and- and they just make me so scared, Obi Wan, and I know I shouldn't be scared- I don't want to let you down, Obi Wan, but I don't know how-"
"Anakin. Just breathe. It's alright."
The soothing words arrested Anakin's hiccupping explanation.
"I'm sorry," he managed.
"There is nothing to apologise for."
Obi Wan ushered him over to a window for some air. Together, they watched the lights of the night traffic streak past.
"We should be watching Padme," Anakin mumbled, wiping at his eyes. "Not talking about me."
Obi Wan shook his head.
"I don't sense anything. You?"
"Nothing," Anakin admitted.
They watched Coruscant in silence. There were so many lives, out there, alight in the Force. Sentients fighting and sentients in love. Sentients with fear and sentients in agony. And the streaking lights of the ships. Yellow, green, blue.
"Have you contacted Shmi recently?" Obi Wan asked gently. "Do we know that she's alright?"
Anakin nodded.
"I call her after every nightmare. She's fine."
The next words rose with bitterness.
"It's just me being crazy."
Obi Wan shook his head.
"That's not true, Anakin."
Anakin grimaced his disagreement.
"I am no expert on such visions, sadly," Obi Wan went on. "They may be prophetic, they may not. Which makes a course of action difficult."
"You think I could be seeing the future?"
"I think you could be seeing the future," Obi Wan clarified. "Perhaps not. But I do think it unusual that these frightening visions would arrive to you without reason. When you were a child, when you were first apprenticed to the Order, of course you had nightmares – because you were frightened and separated from your mother. But you've been strong and at peace in the Force in recent years."
It was bizarre, but Anakin had barely considered such a possibility. He'd assumed, from the very first time that Shmi answered his holo-call healthy and well and happy on Tatooine, that the problem had been his, that the dreams represented some failure on his part.
"I was worried they meant I was falling to the Dark," Anakin confessed.
"Certainly not," Obi Wan assured him. "You are far from the first Jedi to grapple with fear."
Obi Wan sighed and drummed his hands pensively on the windowsill.
"We will trust Shmi or Cliegg to contact us if anything is amiss," he decided. "Of course, you can continue to contact them yourself but perhaps not after every nightmare. We will practice sitting with the fear and finding peace, Anakin. It is an important skill required to resist the Dark Side."
He laid a hand over Anakin's.
"Of course, the truth of it all is that one day, inevitably, your mother will die. In some ways it will be a terribly sad day. But she will join the Force and be with us forever and you will remain in the Light despite it, Anakin."
Anakin nodded.
"We can't do anything to stop it," he agreed.
And the words hurt but he knew they were true. Obi Wan gave his hand an encouraging squeeze.
"As I said, we will of course respond to any calls for help. But we cannot obsess over manners of averting what you have seen."
Anakin nodded.
"Grand Master Yoda told me last year that all love is lost," Obi Wan went on, pensively. "I don't think he's right, exactly. What he meant to say is that everyone we love will die one day. But the love is not lost, Anakin. It returns to the Force and it grows and keeps us strong."
Anakin looked at his Master.
"Is that what happened for you with Master Qui Gon?"
"It is."
Anakin contemplated this.
"Why were you talking with Master Yoda about love?"
Obi Wan snickered.
"Not the Grand Master's favourite topic, to be sure," he conceded, with the shadow of a smirk. "But he gives good advice. I went to Master Yoda because I was having similar dreams myself."
Anakin couldn't help it; his jaw dropped slightly.
"You?"
Obi Wan laughed gently.
"Why not me?"
"Because you're the best Jedi I know."
Obi Wan rolled his eyes, not unkindly.
"I'm honoured, Anakin. Perhaps being the best Jedi does not equate to being fearless."
Anakin nodded, and hesitated.
"What do-"
"What do I see?" Obi Wan finished. "I see the return of the Sith who killed Qui Gon. Sometimes I see Satine's death. Sometimes I see Korkie taken by the Sith as his apprentice."
Memories returned to Anakin, as Obi Wan spoke, of childhood years as a young Padawan when Obi Wan would rise from his bed at night.
"You've had these dreams for years."
"Yes."
"And you never told me?" Anakin asked, pained.
Obi Wan sighed with a faint smile.
"I wanted my Padawan to know that the teacher looking after him was strong enough and wise enough to do so. You had nightmares of your own at that age, Anakin."
Anakin leaned into his Master's shoulder.
"Thank you for telling me now."
"Thank you for telling me of your dreams."
A traffic dispute arose, and horns blared. But the Force between the two Jedi was impenetrably calm.
"Will we follow the Council's instructions and split up?" Obi Wan asked, eventually. "Or would you like to stay together, so I can help you with your dreams?"
Anakin finally found his smile and humour of old.
"And have you babysitting Padme and I on our getaway to Naboo? No thanks."
Obi Wan snorted.
"A romantic getaway, is it?"
Anakin flushed and shrugged.
"I… I still really like her, Obi Wan. But it'd be a miracle if she felt the same way. It'll be a non-romantic getaway unless she says otherwise."
Obi Wan hooked an arm around Anakin and gave him a squeeze.
"Good. You are in a position of power and are not to make any unwanted advances, understood?"
"Yes, Master."
Anakin looked slyly at Obi Wan.
"Speaking of not making advances in a position of power, didn't you kiss Satine first?"
"Who told you that?"
"Satine."
Obi Wan scowled.
"Her feelings were obvious. And I was delirious. I'd been bitten by a venomite."
Anakin smirked.
"Venomite toxin has no effect on cognition, Obi Wan."
Obi Wan folded his arms and shook his head ruefully.
"You're all too well-educated. Satine knew that too."
So all of the problematic dialogue in AotC can be resolved by Anakin watching Obi Wan and Satine flirt over the years. Phew! Now that's a big improvement.
Next chapter, the Shmi saga unfolds. Then later on we can return to Mandalore for all that sisterly drama I've promised you.
Let me know your thoughts! I'm covering so much more territory than I originally envisioned when I started writing a short-story about a placental abruption - and having lots of fun with it - but always appreciate some guidance.
xx - S.