Title: Jedi Kiss

Rating: T (16+)

Summary: Obi-Wan is meant to be a Jedi Knight. The Force tells him it's true, loudly and at length. If only someone would tell Bruck Chun that. (He wasn't Knight material yet; far from it. He was still too much of Ben Lars, hollowed out and hurting. If only someone had thought to tell Master Sifo-Dyas that.)

No one said anything about this in the Code.

Warnings: Accidental bonding, non canon-compliant, AU, out of character, that's not how the Force works, not beta read, other tags to be added as the series progresses

Chapter Title: Miracle and Misery

Chapter Rating: K+ (10+)

Chapter Summary: Obi-Wan Kenobi was born shortly after Owen Lars, if you look at it from a certain perspective.

Chapter Warnings: Minor character death, mentions of depression/anxiety, nightmares

Author's Note: So. I really wanted to post this in time for May 4th. And I did! Kinda? It wa still before midnight in my timezone when I posted on AO3. Does that count? ^_^;

I've been sitting on this idea for a month now, and all I've got to show for it is an outline (complete on the plot, if not fleshed-out on story beats), and this first chapter. But that's still more than I've jumped into a story with before, so that's nice! I've got plans. This is either gonna be a sizeable fic, or a series. I'm not sure which direction I'm going with that, yet.

By virtue of how I've altered this universe to fit within the confines of the crossover (and the ways that I tossed BOTH series canons out the window when things just... didn't mesh well (to that end, you don't need to be familiar with KSS at all)), some characters hold strange roles or act oddly. Suffice it to say that this is one of those stories where the Force Just Doesn't Work That Way. Some things are gonna seem REALLY out of place until I have time to worldbuild. Just trust me, okay? We'll get there!

Thanks for taking a chance on this, and May the Fourth be with you!

—

The first sign that Ben Lars was sensitive enough to be worthy of Stewjon Temple's creche was both a quiet whisper of wind nobody noticed and a shrieking hurricane whose presence couldn't be denied. It all depended on perspective.

To anyone who wasn't Ben, it was a wind of nothing. The boy didn't outwardly change, his mannerisms didn't shift, nothing odd began to happen around him. As far as those in his town were concerned, the Lars boy was as mundane as the rest of them – no Jedi potential to be found here. After all, the last Jedi to come out of Stewjon had been a woman over 900 Standard years previous, so long ago that her name had been lost to the community. It was almost a running joke, that Stewjon's own Temple had to be stocked with non-natives because Stewjon just… didn't produce Force sensitives like most other planets.

To Ben, however? It was glaringly obvious that he was different. He didn't know why, or what it was that affected him without touching anyone else he knew, but he was different. Nobody else had dreams like Ben did.

Ben had no idea what to do about his dreams. In his dreams, he went to wonderful places and saw a thousand people. He was cradled by the land; claimed and owned and loved by a thing greater than himself. His steps grew flourishing plants, and his touch cleared cloudy waters. He climbed mountains and brought back precious flowers, descended into valleys and returned with coveted stones. A cloak of purpose and guidance mantled on his shoulders, and he felt young and old at once. A deep burr of warmth weaved through his dreams, speaking words he didn't know and making him feel so very deeply, emotions he hadn't known the complexity of and wouldn't quite recall upon waking. Familiar-unfamiliar hands caught his own, larger and smaller, clutched his shoulders and tugged at his calves; scooped him up against a broad chest, and gently brushed his long-long hair; positioned him like a dance or a ritual. Children came before him, features always shifting, hundreds of different youths all at once, but all with the same beseeching and adoring and devoted and trusting gaze. He dreamed of a lush, blue-green planet. He dreamed of lakes and fountains; beautiful buildings; foreign peoples among foreign peoples, who nonetheless felt like home. He dreamed of fleeting lips brushing his own, a startled gasp of air and wonderful buzzing under his skin.

When he was young – around six or seven Standard, though as he got older, that time grew fuzzy and indistinct – Ben began to wake from screaming nightmares. It was waking with utter terror in his chest, breath stoppered in his throat, and a violent reactionary shaking that he couldn't still for hours after the fact. He dreamed of pleasant things and horrific things, both, but it was definitely the horror that caught his family's attention.

He dreamed of faces he'd never seen before, laughing and delighted; quiet and solemn; then twisted in agony, grief, despair, choking rage. He dreamed of sparks of bright starlight left to violently collapse in wordless, red-yellow shrieks. He dreamed of a tangerine yellow planet, whirling around two suns that ate and ate; of a stormy gray-blue sphere with little land to speak of, drowning in its own tears; a planet with calm waters and green-gray earth, radiating iron and will; and a planet so taken over by its inhabitants that it sparkled silver-white and bronze-brown and iron-gray, all metal and city and a dying scramble towards more. He dreamed of a Darkness deeper than the dark could ever be, rolling upon the galaxy like a noxious cloud. He dreamed of blaster burns and savaged skin, the smell of blood and smoke, the odd pop of ancient slugthrowers mixed with explosions and an odd buzzing snap, and saw severed limbs and staring eyes. He dreamed of stumbling desperately through a battlefield, knowing they were going to die, and knowing there was nothing he could do. He dreamed of being hollow, broken and alone, surrounded on all sides with nowhere to hide. He dreamed of a bloodied mouth pressed hard to his own, and the taste of iron and dying.

At first, his parents were careful and worried and conciliatory. But the nightmares continued, to the tune of four or five a month (when he did scream; his parents didn't know about the handful of others where blank fear pushed him to silence instead, or the dreams that left him soothed and content), and Ben still couldn't tell them why. He didn't have the understanding to piece together images and random feelings, couldn't explain what he was dreaming about or how it left him so rattled. His mother, Aika, hated it, and worried and fussed over him harder. His father, Cliegg, grew annoyed even in his concern, and began to push the idea that Ben was acting out, was doing it to get their attention for some reason.

Then Ben began to have flashes during the day.

Like the dreams, they were good and bad. Unlike the dreams, the bad only left him breathless, so there was no real distinction from the outside. His friends and family agreed that they were obvious: Ben would be doing something (anything) and would suddenly stop. Not freeze, no – more like his brain shut off and left his body in limbo. His eyes would glaze over, his mouth might go a little slack. Any motion would stop, and he'd hold his pose, almost absently. He'd stop speaking in the middle of a thought, and be utterly unaware of everything going on around him. They only ever lasted for a few seconds, but it was enough.

Cliegg grew angry when doctors and droids couldn't explain. Aika feared seizures and brain-death.

When he was ten, something clicked. Ben stopped fighting – didn't even know he'd been fighting to begin with – and 'woke' from a midday lapse to find both of his parents pretending desperately that everything was fine, and he hadn't dropped right off the radar. He didn't need a moment to think. He just knew. It had been his mother's scent of jasmine and thyme, dimming, and his father's metal-and-growing-things smell pushed aside, overcome by a simple sweetness and the taste of milk in the back of his throat; the feel of a precious warmth cradled in his arms, solid and soothing and alive against the weight of loss, even as there was a rounded belly beneath his fingers and mother's familiar laughter in his ears; time, time, time, the passage of it flying like a blink; a horrible ache in his chest overshadowed by a love greater than he'd ever known; big, blue, hazy eyes blinking up at him, clearing up with every blink and shifting to brilliant hazel, like his mother, as he watched.

"You're pregnant, Momma." He didn't need them to confirm the pregnancy; he knew. It was as simple as that. They needed it confirmed, though. They sputtered incredulously at him, and it took them four hours – as long as it took the local medical droid to pay a visit to the farm and run the necessary tests – to believe him.

You will die soon, he did not say. Instead, he swayed dizzily and sat down hard. He was ten, and didn't want her to die. So he closed his mouth, and let the better news sink in. Perhaps, just perhaps, if he said nothing, nothing would happen. He can't be right about two things, no way. Right…?

His nightmares focused solely on his mother's death after that. Ben learned how to bite his own lip hard enough to muffle sound, and how to function on restless or entirely-lacking sleep. Ben learned to hate sleep, even if it wasn't all nightmares, because most of it was.

He dreamed, and it was horrific. Too many ways for a pregnant woman to die – a full quarter of them, even, have nothing to do directly with her pregnancy. They're just accidents. Stupid, pointless accidents. And he can't tell them because he's ten, and he doesn't want to face the not-yet-reality of her death. There are too many ways she dies in his dreams, they couldn't all come true! And that meant they might none of them come true, either. There was a chance. There had to be.

But Ben found he couldn't look at his mother's face without seeing it slack in a thousand deaths. He cried when he thought no one could see. He grew silent and despondent. He couldn't help grieving a death which hasn't even happened yet, not when he saw variations on a theme three nights a week in confused snapshots and snippets of sensation that patch together to form an outcome.

He knew he wasn't hiding well enough when his Aika's nesting and hovering grew worse. Cliegg side-eyed him constantly, and frowned every time Ben neatly side-stepped his gentle prodding. They both constantly took him aside and walked him through what having a younger sibling was going to be like, reminding him with every other breath that they would always love him and they weren't replacing him. As his mother grew, so did her anxieties, both about her existing son and her impending child. As time passed, his father grew more tactile with them both, seeking to soothe and comfort the only way he knew how.

While his dreams were busy drowning Ben in horror, though, the flashes were busy from other angles.

Over the months of his mother's pregnancy, Ben found that if he paid close attention to the world around him, he could learn things. He had to let the world go by, and be part of it without being overwhelmed by it, but if he could do that, a flash might come. He would know exactly when and where a fruit was going to fall from the trees in his father's orchard. He had warning of incoming storms, and the damage they might do. He knew to step away before a fight broke out in a local shop. Ben knew things, and he had no way to keep it from his family for long, not when they were both keeping such close eyes on him.

This worked in his favor. It, after some trial and error, made it much easier to get his parents' attention, to get them to believe him, to get them to do things about what he saw. When Ben said that the night would bring a ravage of storm winds, his father and the droids worked to cover the crops and spread the word to others. When Ben knew to charge in and drag a young girl away from the skyway landing site just before an out-of-control speeder crashed, he was hailed as a local hero. When Ben could off-handedly mention to his father what his mother would be craving later in the day, it helped ease just that bit of tension out of the house, because this was one less unknown for the day.

He was still only ten, and impulsive – sometimes he didn't sit still and listen long enough, and his intuition was wrong. He would recall a flash, but only after paint would spill and stain the rug, more like deja vu than any pre-warning. He'd put aside a sense of urgency in order to go play, and find out later that he'd missed his window of warning. He'd see a calf burst through their neighbor's fence, and shore the fence up so much that when the calf later rammed into it, nothing happened at all. He'd see the fish jump in the brook and himself catch it barehanded, and run to do just that… only to forget that life after the flash ends still continues, and yelp as the fish wiggled right back out of his grasp with a splash. The future was always dependent on factors, and sometimes those factors were out of his control and changed too fast for his flashes to be of any real use.

Still, for as much as he got wrong, he got four other things right; Ben was clearly something special. But the skill was two-fold, because the more he was right about most everything around him, the more his nightmares haunted him. The better he helped to make his family and his community, the more he felt Aika's death looming over the Lars homestead. There was still a chance she wouldn't, but it wasn't likely. And this haunted Ben terribly.

One didn't necessarily have to be religious to pray to the Temple. Knights, their Padawans, and Masters the galaxy over were duty-bound to protect those who sought it. The Jedi were Light, and everyone, regardless of afterlife beliefs, was entitled to the safety of the Light. Every world with a Temple, to that end, ensured that every home – and specific public spaces, even – held a Jehdaikenh: a 'Jedi bell', from the earliest language used by the Jedi. A standard, home Jehdaikenh was a round, hanging bell about the size of an apple; public bells were much larger, often at least four feet in diameter, to reduce accidental ringing, but also to easily stand out. Made by Force-manipulated material, the silver bells rang clearly when flicked by a fingernail or slapped by a palm, but most importantly: The noise was insistent in the Force, and was enough to alter the Temple that assistance was required.

Ben didn't live a broken life; nor did he lived a charmed one. There was a gentle balance of contentment at work, and he'd never felt the need to reach out in all of his ten years. His parents, too, generally got on with life. The Jedi were careful about how and where their Force skills were put to work, too – they were protectors, defenders, and guardians – and the Lars household stood by that philosophy strongly. Their Jehdaikenh was faintly dusty.

But the day that his mother went into early, anxiety-induced labor, Ben held out for a grand total of five minutes before scrambling over to the bell. Nerves and tightly-coiled terror making his face numb, he flicked the bell and prayed that whoever the Temple sent would be skilled at healing.

Knight Jumi was an Arconon, and passingly familiar with Human reproductive physiology. By the time he arrived, Aika had been in labor for half an hour. With the Jedi's gentle coaching, and some use of the Force, Owen Haren Lars was born three weeks early, with thin wisps of his father's brown hair on his tiny head. Ben was invited in and watched, feeling distant from his own body, as his mother curled around his younger brother, looking tired and strained but well. Cleigg dropped a heavy hand onto Ben's shoulder and grinned brightly at him, whispering, "Do you see that, Ben? That's your brother!"

After months of warning, it was almost like a let-down (though it was the best let-down Ben could ever imagine).

He thanked the Knight profusely, and when his parents pressed – because they'd gotten along with him just fine, ten years ago – he finally, haltingly, spoke of his nightmares. Tears dripped down his face without end, and he shook desperately at the release of tension. Aika's face grew horrified, and Cleigg looked as though he didn't know who he wanted to comfort first. The man finally simply solved the dilemma by wrapping an arm around each of them and pulling them close. Since Owen was still tucked into Aika's arms, it was a full family embrace, and Ben sobbed desperately, unable to stop even when Cleigg pushed Ben's face into his shoulder, or when his noise woke the baby.

For a whole tenday, all was well.

For a whole tenday, Ben Lars did not dream a thing.

And then Ben went slack in the middle of the morning – Owen squalling, tiny and filled with hiccups, startled and unhappy; Aika's bronze hair spread out across the tiles, hazel eyes wide and staring; the smell of baking bread; the faintest of sighs, that was a sense but not a sound, like a candle flickering out – and only had enough time to register the scent of fresh bread before he was moving. He leapt from his chair just in time to catch Owen, saving the infant from hitting the floor. Aika was not so fortunate.

Cleigg was summoned from the field by the sound of screams. Droids took over the work while medics were called. Owen was fine, if tired and hungry. Ben, throat raw from screaming, was blank and listless, shocky. Aika was dead. The medic said she wouldn't have even felt the fall, it was that quick: an aneurysm. It was a shame, Ben heard the medic sigh to himself, packing up. If only they'd had a warning, it could have been averted.

Every inch of Ben's skin crawled. It was his fault. He'd known. He had known, and not told anyone.

He was the reason his mother was dead.

—

Ben disappeared that night. He hadn't spoken a word to Cleigg since the night before, if one didn't count the screaming (and Cleigg, stunned and heartbroken, did not). Suddenly a single father to a newborn, there was nothing Cleigg could do on his own to search for his wayward boy. When no direct news from his neighbors helped, and no one in town had seen hide nor hair of Ben, his father gave in.

For the second time in eleven days, the Lars Jehdaikenh was struck.

This time, a Bothan Jedi, Knight Zohali, answered the call. The sight of a frantic, bedraggled Cleigg, wailing baby in arms, and the roiling, desperate echoes in the Force around the two was all it took – she scooped them up and brought them to Stewjon Temple's Healing Halls. By that point, Cleigg had worked himself up into too much of a state, pale and shell-shocked, unresponsive. In the Halls, both father and infant were cared for, the man soothed by mindhealers and the infant supplied for from the younglings' creche. His most immediate worries assuaged, Cleigg was able to order his thoughts enough to stammer out his plea at last.

"My son. My Ben. He's gone missing – I don't know why, and I don't know where, and I just lost his mother, I can't lose him, too."

The Master of Stewjon's Temple, herself, came to Cleigg's rescue, once Knight Zohali made it known that she was searching for a Human boy named Ben Lars. Master Shaak Ti was a tall, kind Togrutan woman, and had been the Stewjon Temple Master for as long as Stewjon had written record of a Temple: thousands of years, at least. Masters bound themselves to their Temple, and the planet, and lived in connection to that; Jedi and their Force connections to each other and the Temples were just… like that. The Temple Master – the Guardian of Stewjon – was unmistakable to a native like Cleigg, even if he'd spent his whole life being as normal and unremarkable as possible. As she settled in front of Cliegg, her hands tucked into her voluminous sleeves, he gaped like a youngling as her ancient gaze met his own blue-green eyes.

"Ser Lars, I have heard you are seeking out young Ben?"

"I—Yes, Master Jedi. He and Owen are… all I've got left. I love my boys. Please, do you know where he is?!"

"I do," she hummed. Almost idly, she lifted a hand, and with beckoning fingers caused a pen to float in the air above her palm. It rotated slowly, and she continued, "Something you must understand about Force sensitives is that, even to those of us who go untrained, we can sense life, and it is inherently precious. We feel it when the Light of a life is snuffed out, in ways that I simply don't know how to articulate to a non-sensitive even after all these years. Something else you must know, especially ones predisposed to prescience in the Unifying Force, is that they are often led around by the nose until they learn to parse what the Force throws at them. These particular beings are shaped by their first untrained visions, and the more intense the vision, the harder it is on the mind.

"Your son has the distinction of being the first Force sensitive produced by Stewjonian natives in over 900 years, Ser Lars. We did not know to Search for him, and the Force saw fit to leave him where he was until he sought us out. The Force will do what it wills, and only sometimes does distance make the purposes more clear. Your eldest has known the Light of you and your wife's lives for all his own; he was there, too, when hers was abruptly silenced. That marks a person, even would do so to a non-sensitive, to be so near death. But in addition to this, he did not know that what he was experiencing were Force Visions – he is, in fact, still holed up with one of our mindhealers, and will likely be for some time. He believes, quite firmly, that he was the one to cause your wife's death, if only by inaction."

Cleigg sputtered, thrown, and tightened his hold on his youngest a bit, taking what comfort he could from the warm weight.

"The boy was injured very deeply, given how frequently he hid what the Force sought to show him. He is reeling, and lost. The Force has been made known to him, and already, he is learning how to use to it to lean on the more stable members here in the Temple while he heals. This is, I must stress, not your fault, Cleigg Lars. Nor is it Ben's. We do what we can with what we know, and – given Stewjon's history – he was never given the means to identify his own skills or needs.

"He is here, and he is safe, this thousand-year miracle of Stewjon. He is being tended to, and will be trained so that he no longer hurts himself. This I can swear to you, Ser Lars."

Cleigg leaned forward, driven, and blurted, "When can he come home? When do I get my Ben back?"

Master Ti's silence dragged claws over his heart, and he whined unconsciously. Grief and compassion lit her eyes, and she reached out to place her hand on his arm. "I do not know, Ser Lars. That will be up to your son. No Temple steals Force sensitive children away from their parents… But if a child comes of their own free will, neither will we throw them out. He came to us, in great pain, full of fear of himself, seeking to atone for his mother's death by honing his skills so he never 'ignores' another warning again. We will not begin teaching him until he understands that he is not at fault, given his age, his skill, and his knowledge (or lackthereof) of what was occurring. Anguish like that leads to mental instabilities which are too dangerous in Force users. But we will teach him, at least the basics, because once someone recognizes their own Force potential, there is no turning back."

She patted his shoulder, and the air around him warmed with affection and endless, ancient care. Against his better judgment, it loosened his shoulders and – though it did not remove his pain or loss – made the circumstances easier to bear. She stood and ensured that the blanket over his legs still covered his feet, patting and tucking like a mother hen without the clucking. She met his eyes once more, and said, "We will encourage him to contact you, and to keep contacting you. Family is important at this stage, when he could choose to go back as easily as he could chose to stay. You will not be left in the dark, Ser Lars. Return to your farm once you've healed here, and be at peace – whether your son stays with us or not, you and yours will be taken care of, for the sacrifices you've made today."

As she neared the edge of the Halls, she paused and turned back. There was quiet sorrow in her eyes.

"There is one other thing you should know, Ser Lars, especially about Temple traditions. While most of those we Search out are found very young, others – like your son – are found at an age, or older, where they remember life outside the duties of the Temple. And more often than not, these beings find their way to a Temple through… uncomfortable circumstances. It is not uncommon for an Initiate in that position to change their name, to 'reinvent themselves', if you will. Considering the depths of anger, or grief, or fear which drove them to seek out a Temple directly, it is often a comfort that cannot be otherwise provided. It is not always a sign that they are suited for our lifestyle – there are some who return to their old life, bearing their new name. So please don't fear that out of hand.

"But you should know that Ben Lars, as far as your boy is concerned, is no more. When you seek your son, Cleigg Lars, it will be Obi-Wan Kenobi who answers your call."