Chapter Text
Twelve years ago, during a diplomatic function on a Mid-Rim world, a padawan caused a small incident.
The way Obi-Wan remembers it is a lot of laughing, an anxiety that refused to leave – odd, given how the Force has always been better home for such things than the minuscule, oppressingly confined space of himself – and many apologies from many directions. For better or for worse, he’s never been able to remember the actual part where his body almost suffocated itself on something that hasn’t at all been a problem for it to process, until that very moment.
Other things he remembers are much more granular, information rather than memories: their hosts were wholely unprepared to treat an anaphylactic reaction in a human, so Qui-Gon and he ended up with a corner of the private medwing and their own medkit, brought over from their ship. A lot of different people came by to visit for many different purposes, all of which Qui-Gon deterred with ease and style from pestering them for longer than a minute or so. Obi-Wan now suspects his master was keeping him entertained, lest he went and discovered more things to be allergic to.
He remembers sitting on the bed, practically swaddled in both his own traveling cloak and an orange blanket their hosts had determinedly and valiantly tried to cover Qui-Gon with beforehand, telling Qui-Gon for the umpteenth time, “There’s no need to babysit me, Master. One’d think we don’t trust our hosts one whit, with all of this.”
Qui-Gon, on a certainly too small visitation chair next to his convalescent bed, just hummed serenely. “And one does. Aht—” He holds up two fingers at Obi-Wan’s protest about to be uttered, “It is their assumption. Much as that may ail them, my words wouldn’t cure it now.”
Obi-Wan crossed his arms, once Qui-Gon was done speaking his piece. “Aren’t we at a diplomatic function?”
Qui-Gon smiled at that. Obi-Wan remembers the expression – not directly, he’s never so gifted with memories of sight. It’s always one step removed, processed and analysed. Pointers and maps and presentations about a monument long lost. He remembers the smile to be… an odd kind of relieved. As if, for that one moment, Qui-Gon was finally certain of what he was. “See, padawan,” he’s said to Obi-Wan, sitting an arm’s length away on the bed, “diplomacy and trust have very little to do with each other.”
That mission has capped without much more fuss afterward, one of the rare ones where no lightsaber was involved. It was a source of exasperation as well as amusement for Obi-Wan back then, the amount of fights they got into, despite being diplomats. Data bias, Obi-Wan can hear someone like Nara or Kit tell him, even Jedi consulars are often asked to involve ourselves specifically because we carry lightsabers. Saves folks the cost of more protection details, he hears someone else chime in. Consulars do often end up a rather cynical bunch, them.
“The Force gave us that one, I’d say,” he’s mused out loud while following Qui-Gon into Ataru’s fourth kata, in their ship’s cargo bay, on their way home. Qui-Gon’s only laughed, nudging Obi-Wan’s shoulder further back with a flick of his hand.
“Be nice to your master. Did he not work hard back there?”
“That’s not what I said,” Obi-Wan rolled his eyes. “It’s just— you can’t say it isn’t a steep climb from having a medical emergency in the middle of a celebratory dinner to the, hm, surface.”
“I’d be hard-pressed to give the Force the credits for that.”
“Oh, certainly,” Obi-Wan shut up for the flip – he was often doubting his momentum back then – only coming back to the conversation after he was steady enough on his feet again. “That was all me.”
Qui-Gon was waiting for him to catch up. “You were better than most at it,” he said, a gentle mirth in his eyes. That shook a surprised laugh out of Obi-Wan.
“Better at— anaphylactic shock? Was I record-breakingly fast about it?”
“We can look that up,” Qui-Gon was smiling. The sight’s no longer there, leaving not even a gap – Obi-Wan is someone else now. Made of different things. By different hands. It feels like he’s never done enough mourning for it. “But it’s more that you were remarkably calm through the ordeal. Kept so much of your head that you were able to tell me it was the broth in a full sentence before sitting yourself down on the floor.”
Obi-Wan was certainly surprised at that. “Oh. I… don’t recall that happened.”
That in turn surprised Qui-Gon, but his master only considered it for a moment then shrugged. “Well, you were otherwise occupied.”
“Generous description, thank you.” They chained the fourth kata’s last swing into the fifth’s opening. “Glad to hear I’ve earned a good mark on having an allergy reaction, though. We could use the skill better in the future.”
The holovid of the memory would cut there, in Obi-Wan’s mind’s eye – or, well, everything but eye. Nothing is ever so distinct in the lulls inbetween spoken words and clues and pieces of a puzzle, handled so much in the last three years to be worn down, fitting ill against each others. The bed isn’t in a castle’s medwing but in a portside clinic, with the accommodations scaled to measure. The visitor’s chair is small to him, which would make it unusable to someone of Qui-Gon’s stature. The additional blanket over Anakin’s frame isn’t orange, and neither is the one forced upon Obi-Wan on entry. The whirr of a scanner and the pad stuck on the back of Anakin’s hand are new. So is the grotesquely large mug of tea with enough insulation to survive a direct blaster bolt inbetween his hands.
In the Force, the memory of Qui-Gon said, somewhere a person and a half away, “I should like for us to never revisit the experience, rather.”
Obi-Wan doesn’t know what that meant. What it means, now, is this: he sets the mug down on the bed, keeping half an eye on it while the Force is still out of his reach. Then he takes the blanket draped over his shoulder and tucks it around Anakin.
Kyber freighter serial KWBR-74-7TH, once known as the Crawfish, was wrapped up and transferred to the relic vault on arrival. That has been the plan from the beginning, of course – it’s never a good idea to leave a Force artifact out in the relative open. The only deviation was Lange standing in for Obi-Wan on observation.
Obi-Wan, on his part, has been… tied up elsewhere. It was a lot of noises he can’t recall too clearly and questions he suspects he didn’t answer very efficiently – What triggered the allergic reaction? He didn’t know, and there’s really no way to learn now. Does your padawan have a history of similar reactions? Certainly not; Anakin… did this. To himself. What do you mean by that?
What did he mean by that? Obi-Wan’s tried his best to meditate, sitting on a chair seemingly made to deter bedside vigils, after Anakin’s woken up and gotten some water in him. The Force was there, he still knew that, but he found nothing when reaching out. He kept enough of his head not to push through anyway, at least. In the absence of meditation, he pulled out his journal and tried his best to write everything down instead.
Curious that this very thing survived, he added at the end of his recollection. Has it become so integrated into myself, that the Force Itself remembered it to be with me? In the same pocket.
The conclusion he came to, then, was that the written recollection was going to be what he’d give the Archive either way. He didn’t write that answer down.
The calls started coming in a while later – Garen and Nara both called, the two who must be best tuned into whatever hubbub would be going on at MisCom over this mission; Garen asked him to sit fucking still, do not walk off, I’m so going to kill you, which is his usual way of saying I’m glad you’re alive, and Nara told him a Knight Teffir was sent after them when they missed the check-in two days ago. Knight Lowa confirmed this on her call on MisCom’s behalf, a handful of minutes later.
“You lot freaked the folks out a fair bit,” she informed him with feigned annoyance, “the way those last two messages outright ignored ours. Got a few ‘ficers stayin’ awake at the comm ‘round the clock over your clever head.”
The reminder made Obi-Wan reach a hand up to scrub at his eyes. It’s been just a week, he thought. Stars, people were worried… “May I have the names?” He asked, only half-jokingly. “For the apology gift baskets.”
Lowa’s eyes softened. “Come home, I’ll show you ‘round the block then. Get enough mint tea for seven while you’re there and they’ll forgive just about anything. No red betal mixed in.”
Obi-Wan huffed a laugh. Lowa seemed awfully proud about that. “Terrible taste noted. Does MisCom require anything else?”
He nodded off at the chair for a couple of hours with the knowledge that Tenkay has submitted her log the moment she had a connection, and that Knight Teffir would arrive early the next day. Despite feeling wrung out and bereft from the Force, he couldn’t sleep any more than that. He spent the rest of the night, instead, staring at the medscan, watching the readings run into the dark of the room.
Anakin slept through the night. He was silent when Obi-Wan stood up – he ought to be tired, after— after what he did. Obi-Wan doubted he would wake up for another few hours. Still, he called Lange, asking them to come by the clinic to sit with Anakin while he came to the port to see Knight Teffir, who turned out to be the one nine years his senior, not the one freshly knighted a few months ago or the one periodically calling back from Wild Space every other year.
They seemed a bit lost when he came up to them on disembark. Lost, and oddly relieved. “The situation appeared on the dire side, last I was briefed,” they tipped their glasses at him. “Where’s your padawan?”
Obi-Wan thought he ought to start at the beginning on this, but. The only thing that left his mouth was, “At the portside clinic.”
Teffir’s eyes softened at the answer. “Oh, dear.”
“It was just an allergic reaction,” the justification tumbled out before he could stop them. “He’s recovering well, so far.”
Teffir leaned on their cane for a moment. Obi-Wan didn’t try to commit the way they looked at him to memory. It took more effort than it ought to, he realized with a muted sense of surprise, not to just… start telling them everything. Let the excuses flow into a story, right here in the open, for a fellow knight to hear. For everyone to hear.
He didn’t say anything more, in the end. They went to the vault together; Obi-Wan could feel Teffir’s attention on him the whole way, even while they read through updates and Tenkay’s log. Even now, standing next to each other in front of the old kyber freighter, Teffir is still looking at him more than at their responsibility. Obi-Wan leaves it. He can’t imagine what he would even say about it, and as well… he catches himself looking at Teffir too. At a person there beside him. Showing up from a place a week away, a place that for a while seemed to have disappeared.
“It’s almost gone,” Teffir tells him after they’ve done their lap around the freighter. “Whatever the kyber did to keep this thing together has run its course.” They tap their cane on the floor idly. “Was that related…”
Obi-Wan is caught in the moment, looking up at the viewfinders closest to him – a few of the lenses have fallen off, exposing the mechanism inside. The rest are so dulled and scratched he doubts any clear image can be captured anymore. Some of the plating next to the viewfinders have fallen through, exposing the support beams underneath. The freighter now looks… empty, the way a corpse is empty. An errant thought strikes him, wondering if it’d be cool to the touch in the same way. It was cold before, wasn’t it? When he climbed inside.
“Knight Kenobi?”
“Oh, hm,” Obi-Wan blinks, and looks away from the ruins of the ship. “It’s… Were you working on the archival project before, Knight Teffir? With this one, in particular.”
Teffir tilts their head lightly. “Yes, a few times. None of us ‘own’ the project, so to say. The custom’s to rotate hands every half-a-day.”
“Do you remember it ever feel… hungry?”
“Hm.” Teffir, on their turn, looks up at the ship. Obi-Wan watches them consider all of it, consider him, too, certainly. They measure their words carefully, maybe as the Force demands it of them. “...No, I wouldn’t say it was hungry. Seeking, maybe. But then, I could hardly blame whoever left such an impression on it. The time made such beasts of anyone.”
Obi-Wan lets out a breath that sounds too much like a laugh. At Teffir’s questioning look, he shakes his head. His journal lays with an insistent quiet in his outer robe’s pocket. “I, ah. My padawan and I witnessed certain things on our way here.”
Teffir tuts. “Very passive role you’ve given yourself. Seems you did more than just looking at some things.”
“It’s a long story. I’ll… digitize this record as soon as possible. In any case, we may have solved some leftover mysteries for the Archive.”
Teffir doesn’t react as strongly as Obi-Wan’s thought. They only tilt their head in consideration, their gaze not leaving the old ship. “You went through such grief for something like that.”
I’ve hoped Master Nu would kiss our hands in thanks for the materials, Obi-Wan thinks. Teffir chuckles at the colors of the thought, projected clear if fragmented through his shields. “A lot more grief went into writing it,” he says, finding his own voice light, “so I thought ultimately it could be a yarn.”
Anakin wakes up fully that afternoon, while Obi-Wan’s half-way through typing up what he’s written down in the journal. He hears more than sees his padawan pushing into a sitting position against the headboard. A cup’s found its way into Anakin’s hand before he can offer it himself.
Obi-Wan thinks of staying quiet, but also, at the same time, that he’d never get better at any of this without talking. “Seems your Force sense is still in working order,” he says, and turns off the datapad.
Anakin blinks at him over the cup’s rim. Obi-Wan feels a slight pressure somewhere that ought to have nothing to do with him, that he knows to be the bond being checked upon. “Oh, huh,” Anakin mumbles. “That’s rough.”
Obi-Wan can’t help but laugh.
The clinic isn’t willing to discharge Anakin – a full day under observation, the nurse coming over to check the scans and give Anakin a cup of sugar jelly tells them, unless they have a way to know what exactly caused the reaction. Obi-Wan’s explanation of their situation was certainly inadequate, purely because it was hard to believe. Anakin insisting on the same story now, while not being able to elaborate any further than his teacher, doesn’t help their cause. The argument leaves Anakin fuming, no matter that he should be too tired to sustain such emotions; Obi-Wan taps on his shoulder, once they’re left alone in their corner again.
“They’re so— I’m fine! This is nothing!” He flings his arm in emphasis. “Right?”
“They have legitimate medical concerns, from their point of view,” Obi-Wan replies, absently, as he looks for better words.
“They can’t decide that! They don’t know the half of it. The least they can do is trust us—”
Before Obi-Wan can find his words, Anakin’s eyes find his, and immediately the fight seems to bleed out of him. He blinks, and heaves a breath, and scrubs at his face. Obi-Wan, bereft of the waves lapping against his shields in the Force, reaches for It, only to realise with a pang: oh, right.
Without the Force sense at his disposal, Obi-Wan can’t see how immense Anakin is anymore. His padawan curls up on the bed under all the blankets, staring at the disposable cup the jelly came in still cradled between his hands, and for a moment Obi-Wan fears he’ll be lost amidst the fabrics. The feeling falls off the side of his ribs, a nonsensical flash of something morphed beyond recognition, into the rest of what’s been in there. He distracts himself from trying to release them all into the Force by putting a hand on Anakin’s shoulder.
“Often it has little to do with trust and more to do with due process,” he says, then sighs. “We all try to do our best by what we know, Anakin.”
Anakin doesn’t answer, sitting there deep in thought. Resignation rises in Obi-Wan’s ribcage, frozen and insistent and green. He pushes it aside and himself off the terrible chair.
“Can you wait here, padawan? I will be back in a bit.”
“Mm-hm.”
Obi-Wan leaves the clinic to wander down the roads of his memories. It is… slow, this walk. Especially without the Force’s help. The sounds don’t lay right across the dying light of day, the frost a bit more distant than he remembers it, and the streets themselves have looped and turned every which way. The church adjacent to the stand he visited what feels like a lifetime ago has gotten new paint, that has in turn aged and silvered. The fountain isn’t there anymore, replaced by a humble showpiece that serves more to light the way than to decorate. Still, he finds what he needs.
Evening has properly settled in when he returns to the clinic, along with the cold. It takes little effort, even without the Force’s direct aid, to huddle inside and hurry back to Anakin’s corner as if he’s running from the frost. His padawan seems mildly offended at the amount of ice he carried in on his hair. “That looks like a bad time,” he comments.
Obi-Wan huffs. “A bit of chill brightens the complexion, don’t you know.” He takes off the cloak and folds it up on his lap, pulling the brown pick-up bag out from a pocket. It’s set down on top of the cloak, in front of Anakin’s confusion that turns quickly into something like glee.
“No way,” Anakin breathes out in wonder. “You’d do this? Really?”
The question catches between Obi-Wan’s ribs as he pulls out a skewer of caramel mushroom jerky. He busies himself with tearing a strip off the side for a moment. When he holds it out to Anakin, he looks at him carefully, and returns the question, “Well, am I or am I not doing it?”
Anakin’s eyes soften at the question, curiously enough. But it doesn’t keep him from flinging out a hand to bypass the whole process.
Obi-Wan moves the piece of jerky out of the way before Anakin can snatch it up. “Now, we both will be in trouble if someone sees any stains on the beddings,” he says, finding the familiar exaggerated lecturing tone from somewhere he just then realises he still can reach into. The feeling leaves him slightly giddy, as he flips the piece of jerky to behind his fingers, fully out of the range of Anakin’s outstretched arm. “And if someone hears the commotion and comes in to check on us right now.”
Anakin begrudgingly settles back down onto his bed. Obi-Wan laughs at the determination still set in his eyes, but obligingly sits back and tears the piece of jerky into smaller bites. “Isn’t this gonna be frivolous use of the Force?” His padawan asks, eyeing the pieces.
Obi-Wan tilts his head in consideration, but he’s already holding out a piece. Anakin seems to contemplate something as well, while it floats over to between his hands held up, both coaxing the Force’s waves and to prevent flakes from landing on the blankets. He holds it between his teeth as he looks back at his teacher.
“I think,” Obi-Wan says, lightly, “that’s something we’ll have to learn together.”
Anakin huffs out a breath, and bites down on the jerky. Obi-Wan falls quiet watching him look at nothing as he does what he does, a gingerness foreign to him in his touch. Without knowledge, one wouldn’t know to notice it at all.
Their involvement with the Jedha side of the project wraps up faster than planned – Teffir confirms there’s nothing left with the kyber freighter now but actual Force echoes, fading more and more every day as the vessel carrying them becomes too distinct from what was there when it all happened for them to hang on. “Seems the Force is wrapping up with this one,” they tell Obi-Wan and Anakin, at a lunch meet-up outside of the vault. “A story done told, to borrow your words.”
Both the Temple and the Whill vaultmasters agree things can be handled by the Force churches on Jedha from this point on, so as soon as the papers are straightened out they’re at their leisure to go home. They’ll share Teffir’s ship, signing the freighter they came here on to the vault’s use and later retrieval, by someone else who will have the time then.
For the few days they spend on Jedha, Obi-Wan finds himself diligently re-typing the record he kept. He contemplates ripping out the pages to be scanned at one point, and then finds himself calling Nhạ Kì instead. Their chat is brief – Nhạ Kì is always busy and on a strict schedule, being a mind-healer at the Temple – with a tag on it to revisit once Obi-Wan’s home again. “We have been approaching the journal as a tool, yes?” They tell him, there outside their guest room at the Force church they’ve been staying with. “You don’t need my permission to use a tool. And you’ve never needed my approval on anything you do before.”
“It’s more that I need a…” Obi-Wan cards a hand through his hair. “Second opinion. A fresh pair of eyes, perhaps. I… think functional doesn’t mean what I thought it did, now. It’s not.” Not enough anymore, he swallows that back.
“Hold that thought,” Nhạ Kì advises him, “and bring it up next week.”
Obi-Wan huffs a laugh. “Did I mention I will explode if I use the Force right now?”
“Noted.” Nhạ Kì looks like they want to laugh at him as well, but is gamely holding back. “Do you or do you not have a Force-forsaken flimsy journal you can write into, Knight Kenobi?”
Obi-Wan crosses his arms. “Well, that’s one I’ll have to give you, if I must.” He looks at the hologram of Nhạ Kì, in an office he doesn’t recognise, still in their robes even though it’s long past sunset on Coruscant, and lets his shoulders fall a bit. “Thank you for your help so far, Nhạ Kì. I wouldn’t know the first thing to do with myself, here…”
“All deed goes home to the Force,” Nhạ Kì shrugs, though Obi-Wan sees their smile soften. “You’ll be sending the record to Teffir anyway, yes? That’s your second pair of eyes. They… well, we all, rather. We all know the shape of this.”
Obi-Wan closes his eyes, and nods.
The record arrives at Teffir’s datapad the day after. When Obi-Wan asks them about going to the incense bed at the church currently housing them, they puzzle it out quickly. Still, they ask him out loud, as if in disbelief.
“You want to set a light for… the thing that was in there.”
“I intend to do the same for the names we have at the Temple, of course,” Obi-Wan confirms Teffir’s idea quickly. “But the… Crawfish. It wouldn’t be appropriate, I don’t think, to do this for it there.”
Teffir taps their cane against the floor in thought. “You think it’s so distinct from what made it, to merit its own light?”
“I don’t think it’s our call to judge.” Obi-Wan says. “It’s more that…”
Teffir looks over at him, and then away. “A conclusion is a conclusion is a conclusion,” they say, more to themself than to him. Then they return their volume to the usual range again. “Your decision to make.” They tap their hand on top of the cane. “It’s where that final separation lays, is it not? You from I.”
It’s not the perfect answer Obi-Wan wants. After all this time, he’s still reaching towards something, still taking one step after another. He still says, “I’m grateful for your council,” because someone is still here as he does it.
He and Anakin spend an hour or so choosing an offering satchel at the market – the church already keeps enough incense for all the visitors and then some – while he tells Anakin what he’s doing. “There, it works a bit differently here,” he says, holding up a satchel made of sheer fabric that shows off the dyed grass grains inside, then puts it down to check out another, more traditional one made of green fabric, “but the incense part is similar enough to what we do every year for Grandmaster Jinn.”
Anakin nods. He doesn’t ask more about the rites; instead he pulls a blue satchel towards them with the Force. In the end, it’s the one they get.
Teffir’s ship has a small unused cargo bay, which makes good running around space for an Anakin bored of finishing his coursework and shunned from bothering the droids. Tenkay, who declared she was to be in hibernation until a decade from now has passed the moment she hooked herself into the charging post in the galley, shows up while Obi-Wan and Teffir are coordinating Obi-Wan’s record and her logs, datapads strewn around them, to drop Anakin onto the floor. Anakin lands on his feet, but still seems miffed about the whole affair.
“Control your little busybody,” Tenkay says, each syllable loud and clear, “before Longevity runs him over.”
Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow at Anakin, who rolls his eyes in response. “Was just checking in on them,” he grumbles.
“And your coursework?”
Anakin seems fit to start yelling, but eventually only crosses his arms and looks away. “I can’t focus.”
Teffir, who has already started putting the datapads away, smiles and rises to their feet, Obi-Wan following a second after. “Well, there’s something that may help,” they say. At Obi-Wan’s bewildered look, they tip their glasses down to look at him directly. “Come now, a few days away and you’ve forgotten already? Speaking of, how is your Force touch doing, Kenobi?”
Obi-Wan feels his own face flush at the tease. He really has forgotten. Some teacher he is... “I, ah. It’s probably wise to leave it until Bant can yell at me properly.”
Teffir smiles. “No problems. May I?”
Obi-Wan nods and takes the datapads from their hands, as Anakin finally can’t hold it in anymore and pipes up, “What are you two talking about?” At Obi-Wan’s glare, he adds hastily, “Profs.”
“A bit of meditation, padawan,” Teffir answers, their voice light. It’s a voice Obi-Wan recognises from somewhere else – some of his friends, in the past right before they took on a padawan of their own. The way their voice carried in classes they led, the confidence they finally held, that they had something worth teaching. “I gathered you prefer moving meditation?”
It’s like a light turned on behind Anakin’s eyes. “Oh— yeah! Uh, yes, Prof Teffir.”
“Excellent – I’ve been splitting my time between static meditation and moving meditation for a while.” Teffir taps their cane at Obi-Wan, who obligingly backs up to the racks near the cargo door. “Helps with my joints, you see. Which kata are you most comfortable with?”
Anakin kicks his leg, embarrassed. “Shii-Cho, prof.”
“Ah, now, that’s nothing that merits shame. It’s my favoured form, myself, as someone a tad too concerned with how the Force may tie itself into a knot near this object or that. Saber out, padawan.” Teffir sweeps their cane into the first kata’s opening stance. They tilt their head at Anakin’s unlit saber. “You can light your saber on low, if you wish. We have enough space.”
It takes a second for Anakin to register the permission, but then he flicks his saber out with enthusiasm. He and Obi-Wan both freeze at the sight of it – lighting up a…
Teffir twirls their cane and leans back upright again. “Is something the matter?”
“No, um,” Anakin says, at the same moment as Obi-Wan’s “Well, not exactly—”
In the space of the cargo bay, Anakin’s saber shines a brilliant blue. Obi-Wan has half a thought to compare it to the color of his own saber, but he… doesn’t have that image with him. He’s not made to hold the view of something, never that. Here, now, Anakin’s new blue takes up the space where that image should be. The fit is seamless enough. The frames, in his mind, superpose.
“This is new,” Anakin says. Teffir looks over to Obi-Wan, who finds he can really do nothing but laugh.
“Blue, for doing.” He inclines his head towards the meditation they were supposed to lead. “I’ll add that to our report. We were doing something here, weren’t we?”