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It should’ve been Obi-Wan’s mission. Obi-Wan’s alone.
He’d been a Knight for four months now. Four. And the Council had yet to give him a solo mission, insisting he and his new Padawan needed time to adjust to their sudden and rather significant life changes. Which, to be fair, they did. The transition hadn’t been easy, for the Padawan or the Master.
Which was all the more reason Obi-Wan needed to get out of the Temple.
And all the more reason it took years of carefully cultivated Jedi patience to keep him from audibly groaning when the Council informed him that the mission would be his, and his Padawan’s, and…
“Yo, old friend! Been too long!”
Obi-Wan felt himself physically shrink.
Quinlan Vos.
“I can’t believe they put us together,” Quinlan continued, striding down the Temple hallway. He threw an arm around Obi-Wan’s shoulders, and Obi-Wan very patiently did not squirm away. At least…not immediately. “But I was getting tired of solo missions, you know?”
That makes one of us. “Quinlan. So… nice to see you.”
“I was just talking to Bant about the last time I saw you. Ages ago, before I was off-world for a year or so—right? When we went clubbing on the lower levels and you and that guy were—?”
“Um, yes. I remember.” Stop talking, stop talking, stop—
But this was Quinlan Vos. Voracious and full of impulsive energy and, therefore—completely and utterly exhausting.
It wasn’t Quinlan’s fault. Obi-Wan often felt like this, around anyone, these days. He tried to ignore the way that the room swam, the way Quinlan didn’t exactly look real. He blinked, trying to place himself in this moment. Trying to make the universe seem concrete again, instead of something he was watching on a holoTV.
“So, you’ve been briefed by the Council?” he managed to say.
Quinlan nodded. “Sounds simple enough. Just some trade negotiations in the Mid Rim.”
Obi-Wan sighed. Simple enough indeed. Simple enough that Obi-Wan could’ve handled it alone. And gotten a much-needed break from…
“Anakin will be joining us,” Obi-Wan said. “My…Padawan.”
He still stumbled on the word.
Quinlan was kind enough to pretend not to notice.
When the three of them boarded the ship together, Obi-Wan already had a headache.
“Whoa! Is this a T-6 shuttle? Nevermind, I know it is,” Anakin was blathering. “I can tell from the rotating engine block. Also the hyperdrive—did you know it’s Class 1?”
Quinlan raised his eyebrows. “Little dude knows his stuff.”
“Plus there’s no armory. Which sucks. But that’s a dead give-away that it’s a Jedi vessel,” Anakin continued. “Really though, why aren’t there weapons on board? Seems like there should be some way to defend ourselves if—”
“Jedi are keepers of the peace,” Obi-Wan replied automatically.
“Doesn’t peacekeeping ever get…I don’t know…messy?”
Obi-Wan willed his mind not to go there—to another trade negotiation, one that was supposed to be easy. One that ended in a generator shaft with a double-bladed lightsaber, and a goodbye.
Messy indeed.
Instead, all he could do was repeat himself. “Peacekeepers.”
Anakin, accurately, took this as a sign that the conversation was over.
The journey was short. Quinlan spent the time teaching Anakin to play sabaac. They kept inviting Obi-Wan to play, which he should’ve appreciated, but found more of an annoyance than anything else. His temper was short these days. And for some reason, something sharp and bitter churned within him at the fact that Quinlan and Anakin seems so…so jolly about all this, when he couldn’t seem to feel anything at all.
He was pretty sure he curtly excused himself before retiring to the small sleeping quarters.
He was sitting on the bed, massaging his temples with two thumbs when the door slid open again.
“Hey,” Quinlan said. “You okay?”
Obi-Wan nodded. “Just thought I’d meditate before we land.”
Quinlan didn’t answer right away—he looked once over his shoulder, before sitting awkwardly down on the bed adjacent to Obi-Wan. The gesture, so friendly, so concerned, made Obi-Wan somehow livid.
“Shouldn’t you be out there teaching my apprentice to gamble?”
Quinlan shrugged. “I just taught him solitaire. Should keep him busy for a while.”
“Maybe you should go play too.”
“It’s a one-player—”
“I know that, Quin. Obviously. I was just suggesting that perhaps you entertain yourself elsewhere.”
He didn’t know where that sour tone had come from—not that Obi-Wan was a stranger to anger, or just plain irritation. But he was usually fairly good at keeping it from others. Part of him wanted to apologize. Knew that he should apologize. But the rest of him, the part that called most of the shots these days, just didn’t have the energy.
“Look,” Quinlan said. He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable across from Obi-Wan now. “I know things haven’t been easy since…since everything happened. But I don’t want you to see this mission as—”
“I know precisely what this mission is.”
“It isn’t that they don’t trust you to do it on your own.”
“Isn’t it?”
He hated the look on Quinlan’s face—hated that he was in on it, that they all were. That this was like some grand intervention, to drag poor Knight Kenobi from whatever hole he’d slipped into.
But hate wasn’t something he could hold in his heart. Even if there was fear there, and frustration, and grief. He took a deep breath.
He let it go.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m being impatient.”
Quinlan shrugged. “You have every right to be.”
“I don’t,” Obi-Wan instantly replied. “Actually. But thank you.”
He wanted to say more. There were so many things he could’ve said—that was far from a sufficient apology, and he knew it. But he just hadn’t known how to talk to anyone these past four months, and the words kept getting stuck in his throat, and before he could make a real effort there was a beeping noise from the cockpit, and both of them turned.
“We’re dropping out of hyperspace,” Quinlan said instead, and the moment was gone. “Must be approaching atmosphere.”
Obi-Wan nodded and moved to stand, but Quinlan waved him down.
“I’ll go. And let you finish.”
“Finish what?”
Quinlan raised an eyebrow. “Meditating.”
Right. Obi-Wan exhaled, feeling the frustration bubble up again—this time at himself. Quinlan stood, squeezed Obi-Wan’s shoulder once.
Obi-Wan’s eyes were closed before the door hissed shut.
He did have to admit—it was good to be off Coruscant again. The four months he’d spent stationary had been the longest in his memory since he’d become a Padawan, and much as he’d always denied it to his old Master, Obi-Wan did have a restless spirit. He liked to be doing something, to have a purpose and succeed.
Not that training Anakin wasn’t purposeful. But you could have a purpose and still fail.
The boy was walking alongside him now, between he and Quin—well, almost running actually. Oops. Obi-Wan wasn’t particularly tall, but he did have a quick pace, and wasn’t used to someone much smaller trailing behind. He slowed, and felt Anakin slow too.
“We’re to meet the Abaarians in two standard hours,” Obi-Wan said. “We have until then to find our accommodations and get settled.”
They were walking through the Abaarian central government building now, in a rather ornate hallway. It wasn’t anything Obi-Wan hadn’t seen a hundred times before—much like the Coruscant Senate Dome, with its long windows and corinthian columns and marble floor with a red curling pattern on the tiles.
But Anakin’s eyes flickered everywhere. “Do people live here?”
“They work here, mostly,” Quinlan answered. He was walking on Anakin’s other side, and patted him lightly on the shoulder. “But there’s personal quarters for the highest ranking officials. And visiting dignitaries.”
“Like us?”
Quinlan considered. “Yes, I suppose like us.”
Anakin pointed to a statue of a Rodian man with very little clothing. “Who’s that?”
“I’m not sure,” Quinlan asked.
“And what’s that for?” Anakin gestured to a chandelier high above.
“A light fixture,” Quinlan answered. “A fancy one.”
“And—”
Anakin kept talking, and Quinlan kept answering, and Obi-Wan knew it shouldn’t have bothered him. He knew he should’ve just answered Anakin’s questions too, and smiled and nodded, and enjoyed the time he had with an old friend.
But his mind kept going back to another palace corridor, and all at once his heart was pounding, and his throat was tight.
Maybe he’d rather have been back on Coruscant after all.
They turned down a quieter hallway. Here, there were no other passerbys, no government officials to nod at. Just the private quarters, and some offices and rooms that weren’t marked. Somewhere down the way, they’d find the rooms they’d been assigned. Obi-Wan busied himself counting the numbers on the doors— 514, 515, 516…
“Hey, what’s that?”
Anakin again, pointing. Obi-Wan turned to look, though he wasn’t in any rush. He expected Quin to jump in again and answer for the both of them.
But this time it wasn’t a statue or a fountain or a chandelier. It was a vault. With black letters on the door reading, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan answered. “But it appears to be none of our business.”
“What do you think’s inside?”
Quinlan leaned his head up to Anakin’s ear, and whispered with a smirk, “Probably the other little Jedi Padawans who ask too many questions.”
Anakin squealed with laughter. And for once, Obi-Wan actually did smile—just a little. For a moment or two.
Until Anakin said, “Let’s see, then.”
And reached for the door to the vault.
He turned the handle before Obi-Wan or Quinlan could stop him. An alarm blared once and Anakin leapt back, and then they were flickering into place—
Red ray shields. Surrounding Obi-Wan, and Quinlan. Trapping them inside.
“Oh, bantha crap,” Anakin muttered. “Sorry, I didn’t know it would…”
Anakin had jumped out of the way in time, and stood safely on the opposite side of the wall of ray shields. He looked red now, filtered through the glow. The alarm had fallen silent, but the sound of Obi-Wan’s heartbeat felt louder, and he couldn’t quite figure out how to slow it down.
Quinlan, beside him, just smiled. “Is this payback for all the times I beat you in sabaac, little man?”
Some of Anakin’s ease returned. His smile flickered back. “Yeah. I had to get you somehow.”
Quinlan laughed. “Well. Better get help before the Abaarians think we’re trying to steal whatever is in that vault. We don’t need a diplomatic incident, now do we?”
“I’ll get help,” Anakin said. “Stay there.”
“Right, because I was thinking of running off,” Quinlan said.
“Wait!”
Obi-Wan surprised himself by speaking at all. There was a knot in his throat so big he couldn’t believe he’d gotten the words out.
Quinlan and Anakin both turned. “What?”
“He shouldn’t go alone.”
Quinlan almost snorted. “Well who exactly do you suggest goes with him? You haven’t learned to teleport while I was away, have you?”
Obi-Wan flustered. “No, I just—what if something happens?”
“I’ll be fine, Master. Be right back.”
He started to jog back down the corridor. Turned, and was out of sight.
Obi-Wan’s heart was racing it was racing it was racing his chest hurt—
“Kids,” Quinlan was saying. “I miss when Aayla would do crap like this. She’s too good now—better than me even. And that’s nearly impossible…”
When Obi-Wan didn’t reply to the joke, Quinlan turned. His eyebrows lowered.
“Are you alright?”
“He shouldn’t be alone while I’m—trapped here. I can’t get to him, and anything could happen—”
“Whoa, there. We’re in a government building. Literally among the least exciting places in the galaxy.”
“But we’re stuck, and—”
“And what, someone might try to campaign to him? He might get elected to Abaarian Congress?”
Obi-Wan didn’t laugh. He couldn’t get his lungs to do anything, actually, other than stutter one reluctant breath in after the other.
The red ray shields flickered.
And for a moment, he thought he saw—
“There has to be a way out of here,” Obi-Wan blurted out. He started to feel around the force field, around the floor. “Quin, help me look—”
“Obes, Anakin will be right back. We don’t have anywhere to be for two more hours.”
“Help me look!”
He dragged his hands down the floor again, feeling for a panel or a button or something, something that might set them free. But his hands didn’t feel like his hands and the floor didn’t feel like this floor and the hallway didn’t feel like this hallway, but one in a generator shaft four months again. And somewhere on the other side of the red flickering cage there was a Master who needed him, a Master he couldn’t save when the lightsaber ran him through, because he was too slow and the shields were too strong and all he could do was watch as it was all torn from beneath his feet—
Obi-Wan’s feet failed him now, too. And he was sitting on the floor.
“Obi-Wan.”
Quinlan’s voice. Obi-Wan’s chest hurt. He wasn’t sure how he was breathing, because he didn’t feel the air coming in and out. Just his lungs gasping for something that doesn’t seem to be there.
“Obi-Wan, hey. What’s going on?”
If he knew, he’d say. But Obi-Wan didn’t know.
Quinlan must have sat down beside him, because the next time Obi-Wan forced his eyes open, there he was. Watching him carefully, with the serious face that on Quinlan, anyone rarely sees.
“I just…want to get out.”
Obi-Wan’s voice broke on the last word. He swallowed, and his throat hurt. His hands shook at his sides, balling and unballing into fists. He had nowhere to run. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to run.
Obi-Wan hadn’t told anyone exactly what had happened that day. No one had asked—no one except Master Yoda, of course, who needed to know for security reasons—but the rest of his friends hadn’t wanted to breach the topic, at least not in detail. It’s a horrible thing to find that someone died. An even worse one to ask how.
But the security footage from the corridor on Naboo had been downloaded and saved, and so word had gotten around. Obi-Wan had heard them talking about it, the other Padawans, the Initiates, when he passed. The way he’d chopped the Sith right in half. Before that, how the Sith had slain Qui-Gon Jinn.
And before that, how Obi-Wan was trapped between ray shields. Helpless, and made to watch.
So Quinlan knew. And it was that moment when it dawned on him, exactly what was happening now.
Obi-Wan shuddered an exhale and pulled his knees to his chest. Quinlan’s hand landed lightly on his shoulder. He didn’t let go.
Obi-Wan didn’t know how long it lasted. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe thirty. It felt like an eternity that he searched for the air, waiting for the knot in his chest to dissolve. The red ray shields flickered, and he stared through them. Waiting to see Qui-Gon Jinn on the other side.
But the fog did clear, eventually. His heart rate slowed down some, though not enough. His hands weren’t steady, but they were his own again. And when he spoke the words came out clear, if not strong.
Obi-Wan looked through the red filter, and no one else looked back.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t…that shouldn’t have happened.”
Obi-Wan didn’t dare look at Quinlan, but felt him straighten up. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
If only he believed that.
There was a lot that could have been said. Obi-Wan could’ve explained, could have put words to what they’d both just seen. He could’ve told him, really told him what had happened on Naboo. Or how he’d felt since, how he’d woken up night after night in a cold sweat, thinking for a moment that his room was a red flickering prison.
Instead, Quinlan looked at him hard. And said, “Remember Bandomeer?”
Obi-Wan did. Though it had been years since that time had crossed his memory—a mission they’d taken as Initiates, to a mining outpost that had recently collapsed. It was a service project, in which the younglings were to help clear the wreckage and rebuild structures and homes.
But Quinlan was so young, so new to his power of psychometry. When he stepped foot on the planet he felt it all—the deaths of every single person in the mine, the way they’d been crushed or suffocated. He felt the grief of those left behind, every ounce of it, crushing him into the ground.
“You were there. You pulled me back,” Quinlan said now, simply. “It isn’t the same, I know. But, Obi-Wan…I’ll be here. And when you’re ready, I’ll help to pull you out of this.”
——————
Anakin returned at a jog, headed down the hallway with an Abaarian guard following along. He smiled when he saw them—oblivious to the way Obi-Wan’s heart still pattered a fast, uneven beat. But this time, Obi-Wan forced himself to smile back.
The guard released them, seeming only mildly annoyed at the inconvenience. He didn’t ask what they were doing trying to open the vault—hopefully the presence of Anakin was enough to explain that—and he left them alone soon enough, disappearing back down the hallway.
Anakin turned back to them, grinning. “See, I did it. Everything’s fine! No diplomatic incidents.”
Quinlan ruffled his hair. “Not yet, anyway. There might be one when I find a way to get you stuck in a ray shield. I don’t think that was exactly even payback for sabaac.”
“Hey!”
Anakin laughed, but then sobered when he looked at Obi-Wan. “Sorry, Master. I should’ve been…more thoughtful. That was an impulse, and I followed it without reflecting first.”
Obi-Wan couldn’t help it—the fondness that flooded his heart for this boy.
“Anakin, you’ve nothing to be sorry for.” Then, he let a real smile come—one he hadn’t felt for a long time. As he said, “Besides, you know Master Vos has done much worse.”
It was the first joke he remembered uttering in a long time, and the laughter that came after felt foreign. But it was warm—something inside his chest loosened.
And Obi-Wan let it go.
“Oh, if you wanna tell Padawan stories, I can tell Padawan stories,” Quinlan replied. “Anakin, have you heard about your Master’s delightful dance moves?”
Anakin’s head whipped around. “No!”
“Well, it was the Padawan Formal Dance, circa 27 B.B.Y…”
Obi-Wan released the last of the tightness in his stomach and eased out a sigh, listening to Quinlan’s story prattle on. He’d given up trying to stop his old friend from telling this one. And as they laughed their way down the corridor, Anakin looked up at both of them in a blend of amusement and disbelief.
“...and just as he’s about to finish break dancing, the butt of his pants just split, right down the middle—”
“No!”
“Oh, yes. It was quite a scene, quite a view…”
Obi-Wan snorted. Felt the last of his weariness evaporate, at least for now, filled with something else. A sort of…uneasy hope.
Anakin was laughing, and Quinlan was throwing an arm around Obi-Wan’s shoulders again. And he felt this—two pairs of hands. Reaching toward whatever sad place he’d fallen. He wasn’t ready yet to reach back. But for now, it was enough to know that someone was there. Waiting to pull him back.
And that love, that kindness—he had nowhere to run from that either.
Obi-Wan smiled and let himself be led down the corridor by Anakin’s tiny hand, Quinlan laughing and trailing behind.