Chapter Text
Obi-Wan bit his lip, trying to keep his composure. It wouldn’t do to fall apart in front of the Queen of Naboo and her retinue, the Jedi Council who had all come for his master’s funeral, or the little boy whom Qui-Gon had insisted on picking up. Yet another one of Qui-Gon’s pathetic lifeforms who inevitably ended up being Obi-Wan’s responsibility. This was no different, except that now Qui-Gon was dead and the pathetic lifeform in question had a ridiculously-high midichlorian count and an expectation of being made a Jedi without much knowledge of what that actually entailed, since he had left his mother and their slavery behind on Tatooine because of Qui-Gon’s promises. Now it was up to Obi-Wan to keep them. He had been afraid that the Council would not see things that way, but it was irresponsible to send the boy back into slavery on that sand-blasted planet. What else could be done with him if the Jedi Order didn’t accept him, unless Obi-Wan were willing to disobey everything he stood for? Thank the Force it hadn’t come to that.
Qui-Gon had told the Council that Obi-Wan was ready for his trials, but it was hard to tell whether he meant that or if he were merely searching for an excuse to dump his twenty-five-year-old padawan, whom he had only taken on reluctantly to begin with. Now that his master was dead, Obi-Wan had wondered if he would be reassigned, expelled for failing to save him, or knighted. All three outcomes seemed equally likely. It was a relief to be told that his killing of the Sith counted as his trials and that he would be allowed to take little Anakin as his padawan, even though it was customary for new knights to spend a couple of years solo first. Since Obi-Wan was still a padawan at twenty-five when most of his age-mates had been knighted for a couple of years already, he was deemed ready, all things considered.
Deep down, however, he knew he wasn’t really ready, but he felt that he had to pretend that he was, for the sake of the boy. He had never been solely responsible for himself even, and now he was responsible for both of them. He used to think that he was more sensible than Qui-Gon and had certainly been responsible for an endless parade of plants and animals, but a padawan was different. How naïve of him to think that he was qualified for this. Anakin was too old to be a crecheling and too powerful to be just an ordinary Initiate, but he was completely untrained and a bit too young for a padawan. Obi-Wan remembered when he finally managed to become Qui-Gon’s padawan aged thirteen, which was technically too late. Obi-Wan had grown up in the Temple, starting in the creche and studying under Master Yoda as a youngling. Anakin had none of these experiences, and thus no foundation in Jedi life.
Anakin didn’t even know what the padawan braid was. When Obi-Wan first met Anakin, he had a blond bowl cut that wasn’t terrible but wasn’t great either, but Anakin had found Obi-Wan’s padawan hairstyle ridiculous. Objectively, of course, it was a ridiculous style, probably designed to keep teenage male padawans from attracting girls, but after being stuck with it for thirteen years, Obi-Wan had grown attached to the symbolic meaning of the braid. The silly little nerftail at the back of his head he wouldn’t miss, but the braid he did already. Anakin had been a little creeped out by its length when he saw it severed; thanks to its golden red color it did look a bit like a desert snake. Now Anakin himself had the beginnings of one.
Obi-Wan didn’t realize just how deeply lost in thought he was until a tap on his shoulder brought him out of his reverie. He turned abruptly to see Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine, whose home planet this was.
“That was a bit of hard luck for you, young man, but I’m sure the people of Naboo appreciate your late master’s sacrifice. I know I do. Your new apprentice is such a promising boy, too. I’m sure you’ll raise him well. If you ever need to vent to a non-Jedi, you can always talk to me. Here, let me give you a small token of my gratitude for what you did for our Queen. Keep your chin up.” The chancellor slipped something surprisingly heavy for its size into the pocket of Obi-Wan’s cloak and silently moved away to go mingle, ever the smooth, professional politician.
Later, in the quarters Obi-Wan and Anakin now shared in the royal palace of Theed on Naboo, Obi-Wan took off his cloak and fished out the chancellor’s gift from his pocket. It was a medium-sized bottle of Corellian whiskey. How thoughtful of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, knowing exactly what Obi-Wan needed to take the edge off! It was incredible that the chancellor had known Obi-Wan’s favorite brand and drink. Qui-Gon was not much of a drinker, believing as he did that alcohol clouded his connection to the Living Force, but this never prevented him from driving his padawan to drink. Obi-Wan had always been careful, of course, to not get too impaired or spend too many credits, not that he needed to hide the fact that he sometimes visited Dex’s Diner alone for some Jawa Juice, especially since he was well over the required minimum age now. He hadn’t indulged until he was eighteen, which was the legal drinking age on Coruscant.
Obi-Wan was grateful for the screw-top cap on the bottle, since this would make it easy and discreet to open. The good chancellor from Naboo thought of everything. Obi-Wan unscrewed the cap and took a hearty swig. Ah, that’s the good stuff. The familiar burning sensation of Corellian whiskey warmed him from the inside, loosening up the tightly-knotted threads of his mind. I should have thought of this sooner. No, the logistics were impossible. It doesn’t matter now, as long as this bottle doesn’t get confiscated—and there’s no reason why it should, I deserve this—I can manage. He was going to be all right. Anakin was going to be all right. The boy was warming to him already, despite a less-than-stellar first impression that had been Obi-Wan’s fault.
Back in a hidden chamber off of his private office, Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine let his genial, avuncular mask slip and indulged in a truly diabolical cackle. That fool Qui-Gon Jinn had been so easy to deceive, thinking that the child with the ridiculously-high midichlorian count and sob-story background with a slave mother whose freedom nobody remembered to buy was the Chosen One of the prophecy, when the boy had been carefully engineered into existence to be an albatross around the neck of the true Chosen One. With his bleeding heart Jinn would ensure that the boy would be brought into the Order, and given young Kenobi’s strong sense of duty, killing off Jinn would all but force him to train the boy. If the Council refused this, Kenobi might leave the Order, making him easier to turn. The entire Jedi Order were fools not to see that it was Obi-Wan Kenobi, dull, responsible, rule-following as he was, who was the true Chosen One.
For a while, it looked like he was going to be stuck as a farmer on Bandomeer until Darth Sidious himself engineered the crisis that forced him into the arms of Qui-Gon Jinn. Xanatos had been a great unwitting collaborator. It didn’t really matter who Kenobi’s master was, as long as he was trained as a knight, but Darth Sidious had been glad that it was the heretic Jinn and not uptight Mace Windu or Yoda. Darth Sidious preferred to cherry-pick apprentices who had been trained in the Light by someone else first, because it was simply easier to corrupt a Jedi knight than train a Sith from scratch. Really Yan Dooku would have been the best choice for Kenobi’s master, but he was not available to be his mole. Darth Sidious would always curse himself for failing to turn him to the Dark Side. He had come so close.
From observation Darth Sidious had learned Kenobi’s weaknesses. He was responsible, yes, but this manifested itself as a tendency to carry the world on his shoulders silently. The man was incapable of asking for help when he needed it, always taking on more responsibility than what anybody could reasonably handle, absorbing the stress and worry into himself. If he only learned to channel this into mastery of the Dark, he would be unstoppable. Instead, he focused on the love and compassion claptrap that got him into those predicaments in the first place.
Kenobi’s midichlorian count was high but not outrageously so. This was misleading of course, as someone having raw, overwhelming talent without guidance and discipline was no match for someone like Kenobi, who paired above-average but not spectacular talent with solid technique and a strong work ethic.
A fatherless slave child was the ultimate “pathetic lifeform” to weigh him down. The boy would be adorable but emotionally needy and hard to train, causing his master plenty of grief and worry that could feed his Dark capacity without him even knowing it. Sooner or later the child would either turn Dark himself, taking his over-attached master with him, or else get himself killed or permanently injured, which would provide the necessary grief and anger to spark enough desire for revenge to turn his master.
Kenobi was also delightfully unaware of his own strengths. He was humble to a fault, believing himself to be everyone’s last choice in all things. His early troubles in getting himself picked to be a padawan had left a mark on his psyche. He obviously saw himself as an inadequate master for the boy, a poor excuse for a Jedi, a second-rate fighter, a mediocre scholar, and unattractive to women, perhaps due to his ginger hair. None of this was objectively true. Becoming an expert in a defensive style such as Soresu while he was still young, instead of the more flamboyant Ataru style of his late master was hardly the mark of a second-rate fighter. Proficiency in several languages, including some from the Outer Rim, was not a matter of course. Kenobi must be blind if he thinks that women find him plain at best. Doesn’t he notice the way they stare at him, especially now that he’s no longer stuck with that ridiculous padawan hairstyle? For that matter, doesn’t he ever look in the mirror? Not that any of this was skin off of Sheev Palpatine’s nose.
Darth Sidious rubbed his hands in glee as he thought of the intelligence he had received on young Kenobi over the past few years. A fondness for alcohol was useful indeed. Not only would it dull his senses and connection to the Force, helping to mask Darth Sidious’ actions and intentions, but the guilt from being impaired when bad things were engineered to happen would help alienate him from his elders and keep him too ashamed to seek help or advice. In human Force-sensitives without training in Dark techniques, the higher the midichlorian count, the higher the risk of developing an addiction.
If he could be made to develop a dependence on alcohol, he would be easy to manipulate and blackmail. Alcohol would be easier to supply and encourage than deathsticks. It was wonderful to find out that Kenobi already had a taste for spirits and that he also felt a need to hide his tippling. He was halfway there already.
“Master, wake up.” Obi-Wan winced as the nine-year-old boy for whom he was now responsible flopped himself on top of Obi-Wan’s belly, knocking the wind out of him in the process. A pair of overeager blue eyes pierced into his.
“What time is it? Our flight back to Coruscant wasn’t at sunrise, as last I checked.” Obi-Wan propped himself up on one elbow and peered at the chrono on the wall as soon as he had his breath back. Force, it was still half dark outside. Their flight wouldn’t leave for another three hours. Oh yeah. Children tend to wake up much too early, especially when they are excited about travel to new places, starting new lives, etc. Obi-Wan put a hand on his head, which was pounding. He had been so proud of himself of stopping just under his limit for whiskey last night. Obi-Wan knew from experience his threshold for getting a hangover. On the other hand, that was when he was still a padawan with less responsibility, stress, and of course grief than he had now. Perhaps his tolerance level had been affected by his change in circumstance.
Obi-Wan sent Anakin to the fresher first, then stealthily took a tiny mouthful of the whiskey. He would need to be alert and functional to travel with a child; he couldn’t afford a hangover. This was the first time he had ever tried the old hair-of-the-dog remedy, since he had always woken up with Qui-Gon in the other bedroom before, but now Obi-Wan was the master. What Anakin didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. He was doing it for the boy, anyway. He needed Obi-Wan to be composed and strong right now, not confused, scared, and grieving. If he had to drown those negative emotions in order to start building the training bond with Anakin, then so be it.
When Anakin finished in the fresher and it was Obi-Wan’s turn, he almost gave a cry when he saw himself in the mirror. His unshed tears and hangover made his blue eyes red and baggy, while the stress of the past few days had etched some fine lines around his eyes almost overnight. Obi-Wan was only twenty-five, and had not had any wrinkles before. Losing his master, killing a Sith, dealing with the Council, and taking on a padawan while he was still reeling from all these events had aged him. Something else was wrong with his reflection. Oh yes, that’s right. His padawan braid was missing. His head felt different on the pillow without the stupid nerftail, too, which had affected his sleep. Obi-Wan brushed his teeth and splashed cold water on his face, but didn’t feel up to shaving. He had been old for a padawan, but was now the youngest master in the Order, saddled with a baby face besides. Stubble might help.
At breakfast Obi-Wan chose greasy foods for his hangover while encouraging Anakin to eat up. He knew that Anakin had been a slave without access to a steady supply of good, nutritious food, and that he would need to eat well in order to grow. The boy was impressed by the spread before him and didn’t notice what his master was eating. Come to think of it, he didn’t know that Obi-Wan usually didn’t eat such heavy, oily foods for breakfast, since this was their first morning meal together.
Once they were on the transport, Anakin insisted on watching the pilots and trying to give them “helpful” advice on how to do loop-the-loops and other crazy maneuvers that Obi-Wan would rather they didn’t, until someone mentioned the Queen of Naboo in passing. Anakin immediately fell silent and looked down at his feet. It was not hard to see that he had grown attached to the teenaged monarch. She had been nice to him, after all, and would probably look into freeing the boy’s mother. She seemed similar to Qui-Gon in her reaction to people and creatures who could be considered pitiable. Amazingly, she had managed to get Jar-Jar Binks’ banishment rescinded. Freeing a slave woman on Tatooine seemed like a good project for her.
Anakin willingly left the cockpit hand-in-hand with Obi-Wan. “Padme told me some great stories. Do you know any nice stories, Master?”
Obi-Wan tried out his repertoire, which consisted mostly of the biographies of famous dead Jedi, but none of the stories seemed to meet Anakin’s definition of a “nice story.” This was frustrating for both of them.
“She also sang me a song when I was scared. Do you know any songs?”
Obi-Wan surprised himself by breaking into an old Mandalorian love ballad. He had never expected to sing for anyone ever again after his disastrous stint on Mandalore, least of all a song he had learned from Satine. She had asked him to sing once before she stole a kiss, been amazed by his velvet voice and accurate pitch, and then taken to making him sing at every opportunity. Now Anakin sat, entranced, by the same song that Obi-Wan had once used to declare his forbidden love. Force, that was almost ten years ago. Anakin was barely born. This realization made Obi-Wan feel old.
Anakin had no personal belongings to speak of when he moved into Obi-Wan’s old room. Obi-Wan, being a tidy person, didn’t have much either, but what little he did have he moved into Qui-Gon’s old room. The curtains, bedding, the very furniture still smelled of Obi-Wan’s old master. It was a clean, spicy scent from the hair oil he used to tame flyaways, the only indulgence he allowed himself aside from tea. Obi-Wan had helped his master with his long hair enough times for the scent of his hair oil to be permanently embedded in his brain. Maybe Obi-Wan could use the stuff on his own hair, just as soon as it grew long enough to justify it, to maintain the fragrance in the room. He needed every comforting detail he could find to help him cope with the major transitions in his life.
“Hey, is that Master Jinn’s new padawan with Obi-Wan? Where is their master?”
Obi-Wan heard a knight he didn’t know well point him out to another knight.
“Don’t be silly, Obi-Wan is the boy’s master. You know that it’s impossible to have two padawans at once. Besides, if I’m not mistaken, Master Jinn was killed in action. Don’t you remember?”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. I’m not sure how he’s managing it, I know I’m not ready for a padawan!” the first knight said. This was not exactly a confidence-boosting conversation to overhear.
I’m not actually managing it well at all, Obi-Wan wanted to say. Master Yoda was some help with coming up with a curriculum for Anakin, but the boy had so much raw power and talent that the usual exercises designed to increase an Initiate’s power were inappropriate. Instead Anakin needed exercises to help him learn control. These were lessons normally taught to padawans, but Anakin didn’t have the study history or maturity needed to make the most of them. Master Yoda was fond of saying that he had been training Jedi for almost eight hundred years; the downside of this was that he was a bit stuck in his ways. His methods assumed that the student was a blank slate, not that he had bad habits to unlearn.
Anakin was certainly not ready to be trusted with a lightsaber. Even a training saber could be dangerous in his hands, since he had not yet learned about modulating how much of the Force to channel into his strikes. Obi-Wan had tried a casual sparring match with Anakin to see what he knew and what styles might play into his strengths best, but had been rather badly hurt by the boy’s wanton use of the Force. That night, Obi-Wan took a considerable swig from the bottle of Corellian whiskey he had received from Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. His injuries were not bad enough to trouble the healers, but he did need something to mitigate the pain so that he could sleep. Whiskey was the answer to that.
Obi-Wan had seriously considered using a Force-inhibitor on Anakin to make him learn the basics without relying too much on the Force. He even discussed the matter with Master Drallig, who thought it might be an option when Anakin was a little older and stronger, but Anakin himself had reacted with so much fear to the idea that Obi-Wan had been forced to give it up. How could he have been so insensitive? A Force-inhibitor looked very much like the collars put on slaves in Hutt Space. Naturally the idea would stir up old traumas and fears in Anakin. For all Obi-Wan knew, the boy’s mother may have been forced to wear such a collar, perhaps as a dancing girl who was sold off when she got pregnant. The fewer questions asked about Shmi Skywalker’s past the better. Obi-Wan made a mental note to look into what happened to her, and brought his attention back to the here and now.