Chapter Text
Fulcrum doesn’t go far.
The ship they took has a galley, if not a particularly large one, and she finds Plo seated at the little table. She joins him, right across, and starts to pick at the paint that’s been chipping away from the metal surface for Force knows how long.
“Fulcrum?”
“You know how there was stuff about the future I couldn’t tell you, because it was Anakin’s story and not mine? The stuff we really only told Masters Windu and Yoda?”
He does. He doesn’t need to answer her, really, but he does anyway. She appreciates it. “I imagine it was something darker than just the empire you told me of.”
“More personally impactful, at least.” She reaches up and rubs at the curve of a montral, trying to rid herself of some of the tension. It doesn’t work. “It might turn out well, but it also might… really not.”
She thinks of what Anakin had said of Mustafar.
What Qui-Gon had said of the bodies in the Temple.
“What do you expect, my dear?”
“I have no idea,” she huffs. “And I’m a little mad that I can’t guess at it. I have no idea if they’re going to hug it out or blow up at each other or just give each other the silent treatment for the next fifty years. I don’t have faith in Obi-Wan’s ability to keep himself from putting his foot in his mouth, and I also don’t have faith in Anakin’s ability to keep his temper in check. I don’t expect it to get violent, but I won’t be surprised if it goes there anyway.”
He eyes her, inscrutable behind the mask, and reaches out to put a clawed hand over hers. “Have faith, Fulcrum. That young man is doing better than could be expected, and all is due to your care.”
“He broke out there, with Rex.”
“Would that break have been violent, before?”
Probably, but that hadn’t been her fix. It had been Qui-Gon Jinn’s. She’d come in later.
There’s a spike of rage, unbridled and hateful, from the next room. She’s on her feet before she can stop herself, already moving when the sensation is pulled in and back and stifled into a burning ember of resentment. She hesitates, but there are no raised voices. She knocks.
“Everything alright in there?”
“—did I do, Anakin? I can’t apologize if you don’t tell me!”
Ah, no, there it is. There are the raised voices.
Anakin’s reply is too low to catch, but she can imagine something in the shape of how Obi-Wan’s apology won’t mean anything since he doesn’t remember doing something that never happened in this timeline.
She opens the door and leans in just far enough to catch their attention. None of them say anything for a few long moments, and the room is silent save for Anakin’s heavy breathing.
“Skyguy, I felt Vader-hate.”
“It’s fine,” Anakin bites out at her. “I’ve got it under control.”
She looks at the back of his head, and then past him to Obi-Wan. The knight looks… tired. Frustrated. Near tears, maybe.
“Is this about Mustafar?” she asks, her voice as low as she can make it.
Anakin twitches. “Get out.”
“Anakin—”
“Get out, Snips. This isn’t your conversation.”
She’s supposed to keep an eye on him. She’s the one that’s supposed to stop him if he loses it again, and just now, he’d been on that edge. She doesn’t want to leave these two alone together, doesn’t quite trust Anakin to refrain from violence or Obi-Wan to… survive.
“Tell him why you’re angry,” she finally says. “So he knows what baggage you’re working with, and what to avoid joking about.”
“Ahsoka—”
“And don’t kill him,” she tacks on, because that’s really the most important part. She’ll even ignore the slip-up with her name for the moment.
“I’ve no intentions of ending Kenobi’s life.”
She sees the way Obi-Wan stills, and Anakin flinches a moment later as he realizes what he’s done. The words are straight from Vader’s mouth, not Anakin’s. Neither of them are okay with that.
“I’ll be in the galley with Master Plo,” she says, after the moment of regret on all their parts. “Just… call me before anything goes somewhere it shouldn’t.”
She can’t decipher the look Obi-Wan gives her. She’s not sure she wants to.
The timing really is terrible.
--
Obi-Wan is frustrated. He’s angry. He’s heartbroken. He’s a lot of things, but he’s trying to keep as much of it under control as he can, because Anakin needs him to be calm.
Anakin, who’s apparently a future-former Sith Lord, and older than him.
Force, he has a grandpadawan that’s older than him now.
“You didn’t do it,” Anakin mutters, again, grinding the heels of his palms against his eyes. Obi-Wan wants to tell him to stop, that he’s going to put himself at risk of astigmatic deformation this way, but he’d be lecturing a thirty-something knight… lord… whatever.
“Didn’t do what?” Obi-Wan repeats, not for the second or third or fifth time. He’s been saying the same things, again and again, but they only go in circles. “Anakin, I can’t—”
“You cut off my legs and arm.”
What.
“One of my arms was already a prosthesis, you left that one alone,” Anakin continues. “And then you—you left me to burn.”
None of that makes sense.
“What?” Obi-Wan croaks out.
“Mustafar is a lava planet. I was… unstable. Erratic. I was killing a lot of people. Younglings. Padme. You.” Anakin drops his hands from his face, and looks at Obi-Wan with an expression that can be best described as just… exhausted. “Padme was pregnant, and the whole thing was… it was all for…” his breath hitches, not for the first time. “The first major Fall of a Sith is often the most… uncontrolled and intense. I cannot speak for any logic behind any of my actions, after a certain point. My morals were gone the entire time, of course, but… after a certain point, so was all sense.
“I’d married Padme when I was nineteen. She became with child when I was twenty-two. I was having—having dreams, visions, about her death in childbirth, and I’d already been burnt on such a subject with regards to my mother shortly before the marriage. Dreams and visions for weeks before the event, and when I finally acted on them, it was too late to do anything but hold my mother in my arms as she died. When—when Palpatine said he could save Padme, could save my wife and children, I believed him. I believed him, and I fell, and I lost my mind so thoroughly that I tried to kill my wife, even though she was the entire reason I’d chosen to Fall in the first place.
“You fought me, Obi-Wan. You relieved me of my remaining limbs, and then you left me to burn on Mustafar,” Anakin finishes. “You had every reason to kill me in that moment, and no reason to believe I would survive the experience. I blamed you for a long time, but no longer do, and even if I did, you are not the same person who did it.”
Obi-Wan can’t feel anything except horror.
Anakin just looks so damn tired.
“Obi—”
“I set you on fire?!”
“No,” Anakin says, with an air of forced patience that Obi-Wan thinks is unwarranted, considering how completely terrible this conversation is. “You left me to burn. You did not set the fire. I jumped into the lava myself. I was unable to catch myself, but I assure you that your only contributions to my situation, in that regard, are that I couldn’t stand to remove myself from the magma, and that you did not pull me out… which given that I was a raving madman and you were trying to save my wife from my own stupidity, I do not actually begrudge you for.”
Obi-Wan stares at him, and he’s sure the horror is more visible on his face than usual.
He might need a thesaurus. ‘Horror’ is the only word he can apply to himself right now.
“Or I suppose you could have killed me,” Anakin sighs. “And that would have saved us all quite some trouble.”
“Please stop talking,” Obi-Wan croaks out. “Anakin, I left you to die in a truly excruciating manner. I understand why you would still be angry—that’s not something a person just gets over.”
“But you didn’t,” Anakin stresses, again with that almost condescending feigned patience. “A version of you from a future that hasn’t happened did, and even him I’ve mostly forgiven, because it was a violence of context, and I quite frankly deserved it.”
“Anakin, I can’t just—” Obi-Wan gives up with a noise he’d normally be ashamed to make, uncouth and hard, and stands to round the table they’ve been speaking across. He sees Anakin stiffen and even wince as he approaches, but Obi-Wan steels himself and doesn’t let it stop him. “I need you to stop talking.”
And with that, he draws Anakin into his arms, rests his chin on the boy’s head—he’s almost too tall for this, already—and tries not to let the burning of his eyes turn into real tears already. “Anakin, just… what you went through was horrific. What you did was terrible, yes, but what you went through was not some… some justified punishment, cosmic or otherwise, it was just… a horrible sequence of events. You don’t need to justify that it happened to you.”
“No, but I need to justify not hating you, Obi-Wan,” Anakin mutters into his chest. He hesitates, and then adds, “Please don’t stop hugging me. I find myself requiring the comfort physical affection provides… to an embarrassing degree.”
“Okay,” Obi-Wan says, and pulls his brother in closer, cupping the back of his head like they’d done when Anakin was small. He closes his eyes and tries to press affection and peace into the bond between them, twisted as it may be. “That’s perfectly alright, in these circumstances.”
“I should think,” a new voice says, sounding far too amused and far too alive, “that it would be acceptable in most circumstances, padawan mine.”
Obi-Wan stiffens. Anakin huffs a breath, but doesn’t even attempt to pull away.
When Obi-Wan opens his eyes, it’s to the sight of one glowing, translucent, blue-rimmed individual who’s several years dead.
“Master.”
Qui-Gon smiles at him, eyes creasing in a way that is all too familiar, and gestures at the two of them. “Don’t mind me, boys.”
Anakin hisses, shuffling closer when Obi-Wan makes a move to step back. “Jinn, you are insufferable.”
“You are far from the first to tell me that, Ani,” Qui-Gon says. “I’m glad to see the two of you are getting along well, even in light of your rather… complicated history.”
The noise Anakin makes is only barely human.
“Qui-Gon, I…” Obi-Wan has no idea what to say. “I’m—I’m so sorry, I—”
“I’ve heard it,” Qui-Gon says, lifting a hand to silence him. “You and I have much to speak about, Obi-Wan, but I’ve heard what you have to tell me already, even if you have no memory of it. I am only here for if something particularly negative were to happen.”
“…are you as worried as Fulcrum that Anakin would try to kill me?”
“Not quite,” Qui-Gon says, his voice nearly a laugh. “Rather that Ani would find himself caught up in his darker memories and risk a Fall.”
That doesn’t seem like a laughing matter to Obi-Wan.
Anakin huffs in his arms. “I’m in no place to think it a good idea to take leave of my senses, thank you. Force knows how poorly that ended last time.”
“It sounds like it couldn’t have gone much worse,” Obi-Wan hedges, passing a hand over the back of Anakin’s head.
He can’t see Anakin’s face, but he can see the smile fade to a grimace on Qui-Gon’s.
“Anakin?” Obi-Wan asks, something dawning on him. “You mentioned losing all your limbs, but… it occurs to me that that doesn’t quite explain just how much your fighting style has changed.”
There’s a shudder from the small frame in his arms.
“Anakin you were… you weren’t even forty,” Obi-Wan says, the math taking a moment. “You…”
“You must remember that I did lose all four limbs before I hit twenty-five,” Anakin reiterates, forcibly calm. “And there was the fire. The prostheses given to me were trash intended to keep me in pain, to leave me only as competent as Sidious would allow, like a built-in leash. I could not lift my arms higher than the shoulder, couldn’t move faster than a brisk walk. I was being injected with these Sith chemicals—”
“I'm sorry, with what?”
Anakin makes a small noise. “It’s nothing. It’s over. Sidious made the life support system more painful, just because he could. I think the torture was intended to keep my closer to the Dark, because pain is good for that. I don’t need to think about it now.”
“Anakin, you—” Obi-Wan pulls away, putting his hands on Anakin’s shoulders to push him out to arm’s length. “Anakin you can’t just—can’t just not talk about it, this is a serious topic, and—I already thought you needed a mind healer, but this is beyond the pale. The amount of pain you went through—”
“Well, I suppose that’s one thing you and Sidious agreed on,” Anakin snaps, and there’s a pulse of that heavy, dark hate from before. The smile that twists across his face is cold and jagged. His eyes aren’t distant, but fixed on Obi-Wan unerringly. “You both wanted me to suffer. I can’t say I didn’t deserve it, but—”
“Ani.”
Anakin shuts up at Qui-Gon’s voice, and looks away. The pressure in the air smothers them all, but Anakin is aware now. Moment by moment, the anger drains away. They can still feel it, sulfurous and stifling, but less by the second. Obi-Wan thinks he can feel Fulcrum’s anxiety in the other room, hovering by the door in case of… in case.
“My apologies,” Anakin says, stiff and uncomfortable.
It’s all Obi-Wan can do to stare in horror.
“Speaking as someone who watched the Obi-Wan who did such things self-flagellate for a decade and a half in the desert, specifically because he was mourning you and wishing he could have done better by you,” Qui-Gon says, soft but unyielding, “no, Anakin. He really did not want you to suffer at all, let alone the way you did on Mustafar and in the armor.”
“I know that,” Anakin mutters, closing his eyes and staying where he is. “Not past the first moment, I imagine, but it’s difficult—”
“What do you mean, not past the first moment?” Obi-Wan demands, utterly horrified and in no state to stop himself from expressing such.
“I’d killed younglings, friends, my own wife,” Anakin says, not for the first time, and rather a lot like he thinks Obi-Wan is being deliberately obtuse. “I’m… if you had been gratified to see me tortured by circumstances as a direct result of my own actions, to burn on Mustafar the way I did, then I cannot blame you… or rather, the you that did the deed.”
“Oh, this is going splendidly.”
“If you could refrain from fanning the flames, Master Jinn,” Obi-Wan grits out.
He’d forgotten, in his grief, just how completely frustrating his teacher could be. The bland, humoring smile and ‘oh, do go on’ gesture he gets from the ghost right now, however… that is reminding him. Obi-Wan glares a little, and as per usual, it accomplishes nothing. Qui-Gon just smiles.
Anakin reaches up and puts a hand on Obi-Wan’s, the one still on the smaller boy’s—man’s?—shoulder. Obi-Wan just barely catches the movement out the corner of his eye. As his hand is pulled away from his padawan’s shoulder, he throws caution to the wind and pulls Anakin to his chest, right into the hug from before. Anakin flinches, and then reaches up to clutch at Obi-Wan again.
“I am not leaving you,” Obi-Wan swears. “And you said you needed this, so here we are.”
“Thank you, Obi-Wan.”
--
When they return to Tipoca City, Anakin is aware that everyone’s noticing how differently he and Obi-Wan are acting.
They can tell that Anakin’s clingier than he should be, that Obi-Wan hesitates before saying things in favor of getting his teenage padawan’s opinion. The clones aren’t stupid, and any inexperience they may have is far from a problem in their trainers. Fett doesn’t say anything, just watches, and Anakin isn’t sure how worried he needs to be about that.
“He knows we’re strange, even for Jedi,” Fulcrum assures him, voice low as she plays with Anakin’s hair; she’s always been fascinated with such things. “This is just another step in how.”
“He’ll be suspicious.”
“He already is, Skyguy.”
Anakin… lets the issue go, mostly. He lets himself be herded by the ‘adults.’ He dotes on Rex, though it’s probably only Fulcrum that recognizes it for what it is. He is badgered enough by Fox that he ends up forming some kind of friendship there as well. He teases Fulcrum about her own new tendency to just carry Glitch everywhere, like a toddler-shaped handbag.
He notes it, of course, when Obi-Wan uses a free afternoon to push Jango up against a wall, growls something too quiet to discern into the man’s ear, and then disappears into the Fett apartment for a few hours.
“I’m betting on at least three hickies,” Fulcrum muses, seconds after they observe the disappearing act. “They’re both stressed as hell. I think they’re going to want it rough.”
“Please do not speculate on my errant Master’s sexual habits in range of my hearing.”
“Uh-huh. Coronet hallway.”
“We promised we’d never talk about it again.”
“We promised that Obi-Wan, not this one.”
Shamefully, Anakin does consider this argument for a few moments. Then he makes a face, and shakes his head, and half-heartedly ignites his saber to swipe at Fulcrum. She dodges with a laugh, one shaped out of his clear emotional upset.
“Brat,” she accuses, still smiling.
I’m older than you, he thinks, even though he can’t say it. Instead, he turns off his saber and shoots back, “uncouth rebel scum.”
She outright cackles, and does not take the deactived saber as a sign to stop. Instead, she pulls him into a headlock. “You little shit.”
“Please do refrain from calling me that,” he grumbles, as he struggles to extricate himself from her hold.
“Never. I’m still taller than you. I will always be taller than you.”
“Not if I replace my legs with longer, mechanical legs.”
“Which you will not be doing.”
Anakin doesn’t comment.
“Which you will not be doing, Anakin.”
He shrugs.
She chases him into a sparring room and makes him eat his words.
--
Fulcrum leans back in her seat with the passably tasty caff that Fett has access to, and revels in the fact that they’re almost done with this planet.
(She loves the clones, she does.)
(They’re her boys.)
(And girls or other, in some cases.)
(But the constant storms really are hell on the montrals.)
“Everyone thought you were going to be the one kissing Prime,” Wolffe informs her, plopping into the seat at her side. She’s pretty sure that the only reason he’s not being more descriptive than just ‘kissing’ is that Boba and Rex are sitting two feet away. Rex is maybe developed enough to know what kissing leads to. Boba, however, is actually five, physically and mentally, and surely does not.
She raises a brow ridge at Wolffe, and glances across the table at Jango. He seems uninterested, but he’s definitely aware of the conversation. Obi-Wan, the poor bastard, is flushed bright red a few seats further down. Definitely listening, then.
Anakin’s studiously ignoring the whole mess in favor of losing a game of dejarik to Fox and Cody.
“Even though Jango was flirting with Obi-Wan?” she asks, much to her grandmaster’s ire.
Wolffe shrugs. “You bantered. Knight Kenobi kept looking for a reason to leave.”
“Valid,” she allows. “I’m guessing you made bets?”
“I lost.”
“Sorry,” she says, not feeling sorry at all. “But for future reference, it wouldn’t have happened. I tend to prefer women.”
“And I,” Jango interrupts, with a look of amusement that has hackles raising all around, “don’t.”
It takes a moment to process, but Fulcrum snorts as she recognizes the joke he was trying to make. She holds out a fist to bump against Fett’s. He rolls his eyes, but indulges her. Wolffe squints at them.
“But…”
“If I’m going to kiss someone, it’s usually a woman,” she explains. “I’ve had some guys in my life, but… overall, way more girls. Also, sorry, but Fett Prime isn’t my type.”
“I’ve never enjoyed kissing a woman,” Fett says, seeming mostly focused on his datapad again. “If we’re to go with that phrasing.”
“’That phrasing,’ as opposed to…” Wolffe prompts.
Jango raises his head for a moment, judging, and tilts it in the direction of Boba.
Wolffe looks away, nose wrinkling. “Right.”
“Do you have a girl you’re kissing?” One of the clones nearby asks, eager for gossip. Bly, she knows, though he isn’t going by it yet.
“No,” she tells him. “I haven’t had much time for such things recently.”
“Are you gonna?” He presses.
“I don’t know,” she says. She’s wondered, here and there, if there’s even anyone in her new age group that she’d feel comfortable explaining the whole time-travel thing to. Her mind pings off of Depa and… well, the woman is attractive, but Fulcrum isn’t even sure if Depa likes girls. Or anyone, actually. “Maybe.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get to meet a girl that isn’t a grown-up,” Bly mopes. His little feet kick under the table, out of sight. “All the girls we know are trainers, or Kaminoans… or you, I guess, but you’re scary, and an adult.”
Fulcrum snorts, and pats him on the head. “I know at least a few of your siblings are girls.”
“Yeah, but they’re sisters,” Bly explains. “Sisters don’t count.”
“So what you want is to meet a girl your physical and developmental age that isn’t related to you,” Fulcrum summarizes.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sure you’ll meet some of the Jedi girls eventually,” she promises him. “Depending on how long it takes, I can even guess who you’ll match up to.”
“Who I’ll… like you matched up Cody and Knight Kenobi!” Bly asks, eyes practically sparkling. “Really?!”
“Mm-hm,” she says. She considers how much to tell him. “But I don’t want to tell you her name until she’s been read in on the whole clones situation, you know? And you’re much younger than her right now, so it would be best to wait a few years if you want to be on equal ground.”
“But if she’s going to be my Jedi, I’m going to be listening to her anyway.”
“And trust me, you’ll want her to see you as an adult to work with, not a teenager in her care,” Fulcrum tells him. “It’s just a few years, but it’ll help.”
Bly pouts at her, and she can’t help it. She ruffles his hair. He’s adorable.
He runs off, after a minute, the teenyboppers already distracted by something else. Fulcrum kicks at Obi-Wan under the table. “You look like a Nabooan lobster.”
“Maybe if you stopped trying to embarrass me—”
“Obi, if I wanted to embarrass you, I’d put in at least a little effort,” she says. “You forget how long I’ve known you.”
He goes from red as a rose to pale as a lily in seconds.
Fett looks from Obi-Wan to Fulcrum and back. “The hell does she know about you to get that reaction?”
“Many things,” Obi-Wan mutters, and rubs at one eye with the heel of his palm. “And unfortunately for me, I don’t know which ones.”
“I do know you’ve now ‘kissed’ with multiple Mandalorian leaders,” she says, and laughs as chaos erupts, Fett immediately rounding on Obi-Wan with questions.
--
Obi-Wan isn’t prone to the absolute worst decisions; that’s Anakin or Quinlan or Qui-Gon or, well, lots of people, including most of his lineage. That said, when he finds himself waking up in Jango Fett’s bed for the second time in as many days, now with far more bruises and scratches, he has to question his own sensibility.
“Stop thinking so loud,” Fett mutters, one hand reaching out to pull Obi-Wan back into the bed. Said hand lands on Obi-Wan’s thigh, and tugs. For a second, Obi-Wan considers slipping back under the covers and dozing away the rest of his free time this morning.
“I don’t suppose you have any bacta?” he asks instead, shifting to get his feet on the floor.
Fett opens an eye. “Of course I have kriffing bacta. What, you regretting last night or something?”
“I don’t want my padawan asking questions,” Obi-Wan defends, rolling his neck to get rid of the cricks. “Or your sons, for that matter. My robes cover up plenty, but without any cosmetics in my skintone on hand, I’d like to at least get bandages on there. I’m hoping they’ll assume it’s from a spar.”
The man closes his eyes and seemingly goes back to sleep. Obi-Wan digs into the shelves behind the ‘fresher sink to find bandages and some small packs of bacta. He showers first, washing off anything stiff or sticky or smelly, but then he can handle the things that are skin deep. There’s a certain ease and tedium in applying the necessary gels and such. It’s not meditative, but it is calming in its own way.
He has no illusions that Anakin will be fooled, for all that he’d claimed such to Fett. Even when he’d actually been this age, Anakin hadn’t been quite so ignorant. Still, covering them up is polite.
When he feels a bit more like a person, washed and bandaged and clothed, and a bit less like the bruise he woke up as, he finds Fett in the kitchen. He’s already making breakfast.
“I feel pampered,” Obi-Wan drawls. He considers just sitting at the kitchen table and waiting, but this is technically their last day on Kamino. There’s plenty to do, and he needs to be ready early. He sets about doing morning stretches, the kind of thing that loosens muscles and gets blood flowing without working up a sweat.
Fett rolls his eyes. “You’ve got half an hour before we have to do rounds and finish up negotiations. I’m assuming I can leave you alone for five minutes while I shower.”
“I’m going to burgle your entire apartment.”
“No breakfast for Jedi, then.”
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, my dear.”
“Mm-hm, I’ll remember that the next time you use it,” Fett tells him. “Eggs are done.”
They eat. Fett showers. Obi-Wan checks his wrist comm and ignores the teasing message from Quinlan, who’s apparently been getting gossip from Fulcrum while Obi-Wan was otherwise occupied. She’s terrible. Obviously, this means she fits right in.
Anakin rolls his eyes when Obi-Wan enters the small conference room with Fett. He knows exactly what happened.
Fulcrum visibly bites back a smirk, but doesn’t look up from the table she’s at. There’s a toddler in her lap, and crayons and paper, and Obi-Wan wonders in the back of his mind if she’s planning to take the poor boy on as her own in ten years. They’re already rather… attached.
He focuses back on Anakin, because this one actually is his responsibility, and Fulcrum is not.
“Did you enjoy the, ah, sleepover?” Obi-Wan prompts.
Anakin looks at the children he’d spent most of the night entertaining, levels a particularly unimpressed look at tiny Boba, and then turns back and blinks flatly at Obi-Wan. “Did you enjoy yours?”
“You do remember I’m still in charge of you, right?”
“Not for long.”
“Yes for long, Anakin, nobody’s letting you out of their sight for a few years yet.”
“Fulcrum is more than qualified to be my preventative escort.”
“Is she going to keep you from getting arrested again?”
“That’s not her job. Her job is to keep me from committing murders. Other crimes are fine.”
“Are those crimes arson?” Fett interrupts. He looks far too amused with the byplay. “You look like the type to enjoy arson.”
Anakin tilts his head, and Obi-Wan just sends a ‘you’re not helping’ look at Fett.
“Usually prefer it with explosions,” Anakin says, to Obi-Wan’s eternal exasperation. “But my most consistent crime is definitely illegal racing. I’m—”
“Not discussing this anymore,” Obi-Wan cuts him off. “Please.”
“Master Kenobi,” Anakin says, with a high Coruscanti accent that’s more in line with Obi-Wan’s own than the voice of military brass he now knows to call Vader. There’s a light in his eyes that says he’s actually enjoying this, and not in the sadistic way. Obi-Wan thinks he should encourage that, but he doesn’t like the conversation that’s bringing it out. “I’m given to understand that such conversations with one’s padawan are—”
Obi-Wan claps a hand over Anakin’s mouth and drags him away from the table. “There are little ears here, Anakin.”
“Little soldiers,” Fulcrum points out drily. “They know about things that go boom. You don’t have to—Glitch, honey, no, get that out of your mouth. You don’t know where it’s been.”
The toddler continues to try to cram a crayon into his mouth. There’s drool everywhere. Obi-Wan is glad to not be the one dealing with the tiniest clone in the room.
Fulcrum sighs and pulls the crayon from her charge’s grasp. “This is why I shouldn’t be a crèchemaster.”
“You’re good with him,” Master Koon assures her, a clawed hand delicately passing over said toddler’s head. Obi-Wan wonders if he should envy the ease that Master Koon has with children. “I do believe young Glitch enjoys your company, Fulcrum.”
“Mm!” Glitch hums an approval around his fist, which he’s stuck in his mouth in lieu of the crayon. This is unfairly adorable.
Fulcrum huffs. “I’m not actually good with kids, Master Plo.”
“Of course,” Master Koon says, likely holding back a laugh at how Fulcrum is holding Glitch like he’s absolutely precious and the most delicate thing in the world.
Obi-Wan almost pushes the subject a little, but then Anakin’s lifting his arm and sliding in underneath, one bony shoulder pressed into Obi-Wan’s ribs, and that is its own kind of distracting.
“Anakin?”
“’m just cold,” Anakin defends.
Obi-Wan can feel the petulant shame through their bond, awkward as it is these days, frayed and patched and lumpy, and still seemingly unbreakable.
“Of course,” Obi-Wan says. “That makes plenty of sense.”
--
Tatooine may have been hell, but Anakin is very much of the opinion that Kamino is, while not necessarily worse, nearly as bad.
Endless rights abuses, generating slaves, and the thrice-damned weather. Awful, just awful.
“It’s twenty feet, Skyguy.”
“Twenty feet too many.”
“We have to reach the ship somehow.”
“I don’t like it,” he grumbles, glaring at the endless rain with an expression he’s aware is childish at best.
“You’re not going to drown.”
“You don’t know that.”
A hand comes down on his hair and rocks his head from side to side. He twists away and bats at it, glaring at Fulcrum with all the poison he can dig up. It’s not much.
“You’re so small,” she coos, pulling him into her side, and then further into a headlock so she can dig her knuckles into his scalp. “Tiny, tiny Skywalker!”
“Let go, Snips!”
She cackles, spinning a few times and then letting go to push him into—metal. Not smooth. Not a wall. Unyielding, still.
Anakin takes a moment to regain his sense of balance and steps back.
Jango Fett looks down at him, unimpressed.
“Mand’alor,” Anakin greets, just to see the immediate irritation on the man’s face.
“Don’t call me that.”
“But you look so annoyed when I do. How could I help myself?”
Fett lifts his gaze to meet Fulcrum’s, exhausted and displeased, and Anakin takes the opportunity to skirt around him and make for Obi-Wan.
“Do you have an umbrella?” Anakin asks.
“No.”
Then what’s the use of you? Anakin almost says, words and sass dragged from another life, but not yet right for this one. Obi-Wan doesn’t have that same history of banter, and certainly not with the cruel sarcasm that Anakin developed as Vader. It’s not inherently terrible, but it’s not exactly harmless, and it’s something that still infects his reactions. Bitching away at his master isn’t actually in the cards.
Still. No umbrella.
“You can hide under my robe,” Obi-Wan offers. “It’s only twenty feet.”
“Twenty feet too many,” Anakin repeats, glaring out at the rain with the kind of distaste that only a desert boy faced with floods can achieve. “Where’s Master Koon? I thought we had a schedule to keep.”
“We do,” Obi-Wan agrees. “But he insisted on some last minute—”
“Fulcrum!” a tiny voice screeches, and Boba comes barreling out of the hall and across the atrium, slamming into Fulcrum’s legs and clinging. “You gotta say bye to Glitch!”
“I already—what?” Fulcrum sways on the spot at Boba tries to shake her by the hip guards. “Boba, stop, I already said goodbye.”
“Nuh-uh!”
The desperate look she sends at Jango to come get his kid is hilarious, and very ineffective.
Master Koon exits the hall, crossing to Fulcrum and handing her a squirming, teary toddler. “I believe this is yours.”
Glitch buries his face in Fulcrum’s lekku and whines, hugging the closest tail with tiny, tiny fingers that Anakin knows from experience are still strong enough to hurt. This is especially relevant on something as sensitive as a lek. Anakin doesn’t quite pity Fulcrum.
Anakin is, by this point, on guard enough to have a warning when Fox announces himself from a place just behind his elbow.
“Skywalker.”
“Stop trying to sneak up on me,” Anakin tells him. “It’s not going to work.”
“For now,” Fox says, mild as anything. His head is tilted, and he looks like he’s trying to untangle Anakin’s brain through sight alone. “Maybe I’ll be able to do it the next time you see me.”
“The army’s big,” Anakin points out. “You might not ever see me again.”
“I’m command class. I’ll have the option of making requests for my placement.”
“Requests that may not be granted.”
“Fulcrum told us plenty about you; you’re grumpy, and a little insane. Very few are willing to take that risk, especially since I already called dibs.”
“Dibs, is it?”
He sees Rex giving Ahsoka a hug, tentative and a little shyer than he’d expect, and Cody looking up at Obi-Wan with the professional deference that always manages to make Obi-Wan uncomfortable. Wolffe is saying something to Master Koon, and Boba is bothering his father about… how he should be kissing Obi-Wan goodbye, apparently. Anakin decides this isn’t his business, and he has no reason to get involved.
“Kenobi is your legal guardian, yes?”
Anakin side-eyes Fox, unsure of where this is going, but sure that he won’t like it. “Yes.”
“He is, in effect, your father.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” especially since Anakin is the older one, now, and Obi-Wan was never particularly ready to let Anakin make the claim of Obi-Wan being a father figure in the first place, “but sure.”
“So if he and Prime got together, properly, would that make us clones your stepbrothers?”
“Jedi don’t marry,” Anakin says, “Obi-Wan would have to leave the Order to marry Jango, if he even wanted to, and in doing so he would cease to be my legal guardian.”
“There are exceptions to that rule,” Fox points out, and Anakin wonders where he heard that. “To save large numbers of lives, a marriage can be approved.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Marriage as a ploy to secure rights for us under Republic law does seem to be something Kenobi would agree to,” Fox points out, still so damnably calm and cool. “I imagine that would be allowed as a valid exception to the Jedi’s rules regarding marriage, yes?”
“Technically,” Anakin says. “But I wouldn’t hedge your bets on it. We’ve got about five years before it becomes relevant, I’m sure, and that’s plenty of time to find a solution that doesn’t involve Obi-Wan getting married to Jango Fett of all people.”
“But it could. And then we’d be stepbrothers.”
Anakin glares at him out the corner of his eye. “You’re only harping on this to annoy me.”
“Is it working? Sir.”
“You know damned well that it is,” Anakin tells him.
“Language, sir,” Fox quips, even though his tone stays bland as milk. “Glitch and Boba are only a few feet away. Imagine if they heard you.”
“I’m imagining,” Anakin drawls. “I’m imagining you leaving me the kriff alone.”
“What a lovely daydream.”
Anakin almost responds, but is interrupted by the loud, piercing noise that is Glitch wailing as Fulcrum tries to get him to let go of her so she can hand him off to Wolffe. The poor woman’s spent far too much time with the little clone since Finding him, and Anakin’s not surprised that the toddler has more or less imprinted on her.
He doesn’t pity her, because she definitely brought this on herself. Given that nobody else, from Plo to Fett to Obi-Wan to Cody, seems interested in helping her remove Glitch from her person, they probably agree. Rex, for one, is failing miserably at hiding his laugh from her.
Anakin watches for a moment longer, and then there are small, not-quite-skinny arms around his waist.
He stiffens, freezing, and looks down. “What.”
“I’ve been informed it’s called a hug, sir.”
“I know what a hug is!” Anakin snaps. “Why are you hugging me?”
“Everyone else is doing it,” Fox says with a shrug, still not letting go. He’s still just short enough to tuck his head under Anakin’s chin if he wants. He doesn’t, presumably because he wants to keep staring at Anakin to piss him off.
“I’ve been an asshole to you this entire time.”
“You really haven’t,” Fox says, dry in a manner precisely opposite of the weather outside. He steps back, hands tucked into the pockets of his little uniform. “You’re much less of a jerk than you claim to be.”
“You have no idea what I’ve done.”
“Are you planning to tell me?”
“Of course not.”
“Then it doesn’t matter anyway.” Fox pauses, just long enough to make a point that the following is an afterthought. “Sir.”
The little shit.
Fox does step back after a moment, tilting his head and looking studiously bland again.
“What do you require of me?” Anakin asks, after a few seconds too long of Fox’s staring.
“I’m going to figure you out,” Fox promises. “Not now, maybe not for a while, but I will.”
“Good luck with that,” Anakin says. “The truth may be beyond your comprehension, young one.”
This nets him an eyeroll.
Fox just grins at him, sudden and blinding, and shouts.
“Hey, Rex! Come make Skywalker cry again!”
Anakin hisses through his teeth. “I am going to strangle you.”
“Doubtful.”
Rex is staring at them. Fulcrum pokes him forward, apparently having divested herself of Glitch, who is now in Boba’s arms. Both are sitting on the floor.
“I’m not going to cry on you,” Anakin says as drily as he can.
“Hug him,” Fox orders.
Anakin ignores him. Rex spares his older brother a glance, and then looks back over his shoulder at Fulcrum. She gives him a wide grin and a pair of thumbs up, and when he turns back to front, she glares at Anakin and mouths be nice.
Rex holds out a hand, and Anakin bemusedly clasps forearms. Someone, he can hear, is slapping their forehead in the background. He ignores that too.
“I’ll be seeing you,” Anakin says, because Fox might be able to pick his own assignment, but Fulcrum will pitch a fit if Rex has to fight a war without her. Granted, they’re trying to avoid said war entirely, but she’ll probably be upset if she doesn’t get to keep in contact with him in some way even then. Since she’s not leaving Anakin, and Anakin isn’t leaving her, this means he’ll see Rex no matter what. “Captain.”
“I’m not a captain, sir, just a cadet.”
“You will be,” Anakin says. He can hear a dismissive tone in his own words, but it doesn’t seem to register with Rex.
“Agent Fulcrum said the same thing,” Rex tells him. “I’m glad to have your faith.”
Faith, he calls it.
Hm.
“Hers is more important,” he says instead.
Rex doesn’t seem surprised. “Because she’s to be my Jedi.”
“No, her opinion is more important than mine for everyone,” Anakin says. “Or at least it should be. She’s a better person than I am.”
Rex’s brow furrows, and he leans over to look past Anakin at Fox. Anakin ignores this, because he’s pretty sure Fox is continuing to try to ‘figure out’ what Anakin’s entire deal is, and most likely rolling his eyes at Anakin’s back. Rex probably doesn’t know what to make of Anakin’s insistence that Fulcrum is a better person, because that’s not the sort of thing anyone expects to hear from a jedi padawan, and especially not from the jedi padawan that dissociated and cried all over the anyone in question earlier in the week.
“I look forward to seeing how you grow into yourself,” Anakin says, shaking their clasped forearms a moment, and then stepping away and towards the rest of the Jedi. He does turn, and walk backwards, to eye Fox as he retreats. “You, however, would do well to stop annoying people who have a lot of power and difficulty controlling their tempers.”
“Your control is impeccable, sir.”
Anakin walks backwards right into Obi-Wan, still glaring at Fox. It’s mostly performative, at this point, and Fox knows it.
“I think we’ve far outstayed our welcome,” Obi-Wan quips, hands on Anakin’s shoulders and pulling him back to the ship. Everyone else seems to be done saying goodbye, but Anakin’s still refusing to break eye contact with Fox. Boba darts in and gives Anakin a hug, because he’s five and doesn’t recognize that Anakin’s a jackass of grand proportions. This does make Anakin break his glare, but only for the moment of patting this fearless child’s back.
Fox coos mockingly. Anakin immediately snaps back to glaring at him. Fox smirks.
(Good.)
(It’s not a smile, really, but it displaces memories of… of…)
(It’s good.)
Obi-Wan sighs, pulling him backwards into the ship. “Anakin, let’s go. We can come back for you to fight people later.”
The entrance hisses shut, and Anakin moves to buckle himself into a seat for liftoff. Fulcrum grins at him, and it’s only a little mean. “Only you would be this dedicated to fighting a five-year-old.”
“He’s six.”
“That’s so much better, considering you’re almost forty.”
He kicks her ankle. It doesn’t do much. She’s got greaves on.
She ruffles his hair. “You should take a nap. We’ve got lots of explaining to do, back on Coruscant.”
“Once we’re in hyperspace,” Anakin says. “And this body is fourteen, I don’t need a nap.”
“Obi-Wan does.”
The man himself sighs, as if he’s tired of them being childish, despite being the youngest on the ship, mentally. “I am not in need of a nap, Fulcrum.”
“Ehhhh, you kind of are.”
“I’m a grown man, agent.”
“Do I care?”
“Children,” Anakin drawls, and the individuals on either side of him both make noises of offense. “Are you done?”
“With talking shit? Never.”
Anakin rolls his eyes. He gives it a moment, and then says, “did you want to stop by Lotho Minor?”
“Ooh,” Fulcrum enthuses, as if she hadn’t even considered it; Anakin knows better. She smiles at him. “Let’s.”
“What’s on Lotho Minor?” Obi-Wan asks warily.
“Nothing we can’t handle,” Fulcrum assures him. “Just your second-worst nightmare.”
“Oh, only the second-worst,” Obi-Wan mutters. “What might that be?”
“Maul,” Anakin says. Obi-Wan makes a noise that indicates he’s not as surprised as he might have been. “I could talk him down.”
“It’s only been five years,” Fulcrum reminds him. “He might not be fully insane yet. He also might be worse. No way of knowing.”
“Former Sith. I could talk him around.”
“You look fourteen.”
“Don’t feel it in the Force, though, do I?” Anakin challenges. He stills his signature in the Force, calms it down to something cold and hard, not Dark but… with a history of such things.
“Fair point,” Fulcrum says, pretending to consider it. “Lotho Minor it is.”
“Lovely,” Obi-Wan sighs. “Does Master Koon know to put the correct coordinates in?”
“We’re heading towards the right hyperlane junction anyway,” Fulcrum assures him. “You know what else is out that direction?”
“Rattatak,” Anakin says immediately. “You want to do a rescue mission?”
“Well, last I heard, nobody’d had a chance to get out that way,” Fulcrum says, with an air of false gravitas. “So what can I say, but of course?”
Obi-Wan sighs. “We’re not getting home for a while, are we?”
“Never a dull moment,” Fulcrum assures him.
And Anakin wouldn’t have it any other way.