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As things go, Obi-Wan would like to think that he’s been a decent teacher to Anakin. For a man knighted at twenty five, in grief over his lost master and faced with the rising threat of an enemy unseen in one thousand years, he probably did quite well with a ten-year-old child. Of course, he thinks, by any other standards, he probably did very badly. Anakin is not, per se, an excellent Jedi— he’s always had a tendency towards stretching even the most liberal interpretations of the code, because, well, he’s Anakin— and given Obi-Wan's one job was to make him an excellent Jedi, this whole situation raises doubts as to Obi-Wan's success.
Because Anakin is married to Senator Amidala.
“Uh, Obi-Wan?” Anakin asks, unsettled by how Obi-Wan has been staring at him with an increasingly pained look for the last minute and a half. “Is everything okay?”
Everything is most definitely not okay. There’s a war on, Obi-Wan is a high general only by virtue of the fact that he’s slightly less underqualified than all the other candidates, there are multiple Sith roaming the galaxy, and Anakin Skywalker— Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker— is married. To a senator.
“Everything is fine,” Obi-Wan says faintly. “Why do you ask?”
“You look...” Anakin pauses, searching for the right word, “tired.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi is famed for his incredibly high tolerance for insanity. His teen years were one clusterfuck after another, trailing behind a man whose propensity for attracting dangerous situations was matched only by Obi-Wan's own. His twenties were spent raising an extremely precocious child who seemed incapable of following a single direction, and his thirties have been spent in the middle of a war that he's partially responsible for. He might have been, well, not fine, finding out that Anakin had disobeyed one of the most basic and fundamental tenets of the Jedi order and yet remained a Jedi, but he might have been able to sort through it. There is a war on, after all, and Anakin, while perhaps not a paragon of Jedi-ness, would never abandon his duty to help, so it is conceivable that he might have hidden it until the end of the war. Obi-Wan probably could have been able to process the utterly insane knowledge, and then gone on with his day, if only it weren’t for the way he had found out.
“You’re married,” Obi-Wan says, very glad that they’re having this conversation in his apartments on Coruscant, instead of on a starcruiser surrounded by extremely nosy clones.
“What?” Anakin says, looking so utterly shocked that Obi-Wan might have actually been convinced that he had been mistaken if it weren’t for the literal fucking proof.
Yesterday morning, Obi-Wan had sat down to meditate, and immediately been struck with several visions of Anakin and the Senator. One of their marriage, then one of their tearful reunion on Coruscant that must have been just a few days before, and then one of their children.
Obi-Wan, not inclined towards melodrama, had of course concluded that he was seeing a possible future, and so had gone to find Anakin and have a talk with him about birth control and duty and other things that they hadn’t had to talk about since he gave Anakin a well-meaning but ultimately useless sex talk when Anakin had turned twelve (forgetting, of course, that Anakin had been raised on Tatooine and therefore already knew quite a bit more about the subject than Obi-Wan was willing to teach him). His search had led straight to Senator Amidala’s apartment, wherein he had found the force signatures of two very familiar people having very enthusiastic sex while calling each other increasingly nauseating epithets.
Obi-Wan hasn’t been able to speak to Anakin since then, and he certainly doesn’t intend to reveal the fact that he both heard and felt him having sex, because that would require reliving an experience that was something akin to the time Obi-Wan accidentally took some spice and got food poisoning at the same time and was knocked out for thirty-six straight hours, feeling like he was vibrating out of his skin on the fresher floor.
Instead of thinking any more about it, he resorts to the tried-and-true Jedi strategy of telling someone something technically true, from a certain point of view.
“The Force spoke to me,” he says.
“You misheard.”
“I misheard,” Obi-Wan says scathingly, “the Force.”
Anakin pauses, then blinks. “Uh,” he says, “yes.”
Obi-Wan knows there are a lot of problems with his lineage— Qui-Gon never listened to anyone except to spite them, force knows Obi-Wan himself isn’t exactly a paragon of sanity and obedience, Yoda is a troll, both figuratively and literally, and of course, Dooku is a Sith Lord— but at least they’ve all been excellent liars. So where, Obi-Wan wonders, did he go wrong with Anakin.
“Alright,” Obi-Wan says. “If I... misheard,” he pauses, letting the empty space drip with sarcasm, “the Force, then you won’t mind going over to the Senator’s apartment and having a nice, long, chat, with her.”
Anakin, instead of paling, shivering, or going bug-eyed, just shrugs. “She won’t be there. She’s busy until ten.”
Obi-Wan looks at him for a moment, wondering if Anakin has heard what’s just come out of his mouth. Great, Obi-Wan is going to have to spell this out for him.
He puts his head in his hands, and lets out a very long sigh, and resigns himself to having a flashback to one of the worst experiences of his life, which, considering his life, is quite a statement to make. “Anakin,” he says, “I heard you two having sex. She called you ‘my love’ and you called her ‘the most beautiful wife in the world.’ I know you’re married.”
“What!?” Anakin squawks, voice having jumped three hundred decibels. “You— I— what?!”
Obi-Wan sighs deeply, not looking up.
“You—” Anakin’s voice is much smaller. “You’re not going to have me kicked out of the order, are you?”
Obi-Wan grimaces. He’s thought about it, of course, but given that they have multiple Sith roaming the galaxy and a rapidly diminishing Jedi order, it’s probably not the best idea to kick out one of the Order’s most effective generals. “Not in the middle of a war.”
There’s a pause, and when Anakin speaks his voice has gone icy cold. “I see. And after?”
Obi-Wan blinks, then lets out an annoyed huff. “Anakin, why would you want to stay in the order? You have a wife! There’s nothing here for you!”
Anakin is silent for so long that Obi-Wan chances a glance up. Anakin, normally expressive far past the point of decency for a Jedi, has gone still.
“You don’t even have to stay now,” Obi-Wan says, a little more gently. “I’m sure the GAR would be happy to take you on as an officer, given your record.”
“You want me gone,” Anakin says, the anger and hurt that must be hiding behind his shields making themselves known in his tone.
Obi-Wan scoffs, because honestly Anakin, what in the genuine hells. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Anakin is silent.
Obi-Wan looks up, flabbergasted. Has he truly been so reticent and distant as to make Anakin think he wants to be rid of him? “I’m not— I’m not trying to get rid of you.”
Anakin flinches. “Then what are you trying to do?”
Obi-Wan lets out a long breath, and spares a second to reflect on the absolute clusterfuck that is his life. “I want you to be happy,” he says, “and clearly you’re not happy as a Jedi.”
“I am,” Anakin says, so stubbornly that Obi-Wan knows he’s lying to himself. “I was meant to be a Jedi— I’m the chosen one.”
Obi-Wan blinks, then he snorts. “The prophecy doesn’t say you have to be a Jedi to bring balance to the Force. It’s not as if you can’t access the Force without being a Jedi.” Obi-Wan looks around his apartment, spotting the dent in the wall from the time Anakin sent a droid flying into it and the burn on the counter from his ill-fated attempt at making dinner as an eleven-year-old and a thousand other memories of Anakin that linger even without his presence. “I don’t want you gone, Anakin.”
Anakin’s face softens. “It seems like it,” he says, a touch petulantly.
Obi-Wan raises one eyebrow. “Yes,” he says, “I’m sure that me advising you to voluntarily leave the Order, in such a way as to maintain your reputation so that your wife doesn’t feel the fallout and I face no reproach from visiting you, must seem very much like I’m attempting to get rid of you.”
Anakin blinks. “Oh,” he says, chastened. “Yeah.”
Obi-Wan, for the first time in two days, does not feel the urge to put his head through a wall. He thinks about dinner, then thinks about the conversation he’s just had, then thinks about Anakin’s proclivity for not thinking things out. “As your wife is gone until ten,” he says, “would you care to get dinner with me?”
Anakin grins. “You’re paying.”
Obi-Wan stands up and stretches, feeling his back crack. “I’m not certain my meager salary as High General will be able to take your bill, but fair enough.”
Anakin snorts. “Gotta use it while you’re on leave, right? It’s not like you’re saving for retirement.”
“Are you?” Obi-Wan asks, surprised he even has to ask.
“Nah,” Anakin replies, “Padmé makes so much it wouldn’t even matter if I contributed.”
“Well,” Obi-Wan says philosophically, “I never did expect you to end up as a trophy husband, but I suppose it’s par for the course.”
Anakin squawks in denial, and Obi-Wan turns away so he can’t see his smirk.
Anakin hasn’t ended up a great Jedi, but Obi-Wan thinks that he’s not half-bad as a man. Maybe he didn’t fail entirely after all.