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.x.
Kethra could no longer count the times she had held Obi-Wan in her arms. It was a privilege very few had, as the Jedi Master tried to remain distant as his Order dictated, and even as a child he was stubborn.
The first time she remembers was when she was a young knight, little Obi-Wan apart of the small creche she tended to at the time, barely even an initiate, the younglings still learning how their letters and numbers. The creche dorms were modest as everything Jedi was, and she was doing her last nightly check on the children when she felt Obi-Wan’s disturbed sleep. A nightmare, something he would continue to struggle with into his adulthood, certainly not without cause, but a common enough grievance that Kethra slipped to his side with practiced ease, wrapping her mind around his like a blanket and stroking his hair.
Whatever he saw scared him, as the boy gasped awake with tears in his eyes and chest heaving. Kethra shushed him gently, stroked his hair, his cheek, rubbed his shoulder and started to fix the covers when the boy suddenly scrambled into her arms, clutching at her with a desperateness he would not allow to show again for many, many years.
Kethra held him tight, kissed his hair, stroked his back, and spoke quiet affirmations until he fell asleep again. She’d like to think she knew their lives would be entwined then, that this was a special moment, a beginning. She didn’t. Holding onto a child was second nature, the easiest response the togruta had, an affection she stubbornly continued to offer to any who needed it.
Obi-Wan was not the only child she had lulled to sleep in her arms -- far from it -- but he’d become one of only two men she’d cling to in turn.
.x.
When he was six he fell from a tree (one she had told the group not to climb too high on, but when did children ever listen when something was climbable, and a dare was made?). He broke his arm and struck his head, the latter bleeding, and Kethra didn’t need to hear his sudden cry to come rushing, already feeling his pain like a wave through the Force. He passed out, and Kethra scooped him up in her arms, pressed the sleeve of her robe to his headwound, and shouted at a nearby knight to watch the rest of the creche while she went to the Halls of Healing.
He was fine, of course, but later Yoda chewed her out in his own calm, disappointed way.
“Care for the group, you must.” He harrumphed, “Sent young Obi-Wan with another, you should have. To the creche, your duty lies.”
“Is Obi-Wan not part of that creche, that duty?” Kethra said back tightly.
“And what of the others?”
Kethra shook her head. “I’d do the same for any of them. It’s my job to care for them.”
Yoda harrumphed again. “Care for them, as a whole. Not hold such affection for the individuals.”
“The group is made of individuals!” Kethra grit her teeth. “We can cater to the good of the whole as much as we’d like, but doing so without remembering the people who make it up isolates us.”
“Balance, we must have.” Yoda said, eyeing her. “Distance, you need.”
.x.
When he was thirteen, his anxiety vibrated from him and into her as if she were a bell he was constantly hitting. In fairness, it was an anxiety she shared.
“I’m almost fourteen,” Obi-Wan had said quietly one day, clearly reluctant to confide his fears but anyone who knew Kethra understood she’d feel them anyway. “No one’s picked me. I -- I don’t have a lot of chances left.”
Kethra gripped his hand, shoving her own worries away to send soothing waves to him. She knew full well how much Obi-Wan wanted to be a Jedi, how much he fought for it. Of course many children could say the same, but she’d known many who had realized the path of a warrior was not theirs -- it certainly wasn’t Kethra’s, despite her designation. But that was much more… political, to keep her from getting too attached , for the Order to pull her from her talents to apply them elsewhere without risking her leaving the order entirely.
But Obi-Wan? Obi-Wan was no farmer. He would not thrive with plants, earth, soil. He would not find comfort and purpose tending a sprout to grow, not find fulfillment in growing a fruit and handing it to a family in need. Kethra thinks she might have, had the Council not arranged her and Master Tiin for the attempted betterment of both.
“They will,” Kethra said softly, with a certainness she couldn’t feel through her own anxiety. The Force refused to clear it for her, not on this.
“Why can’t you?” The boy asked, softly, and Kethra could see the way he bit his trembling lip, and she couldn’t help herself. With a soft oh, sweetheart, she gathered the young teen into her arms, Obi-Wan’s limbs moving awkwardly but not reluctantly.
“I’ve told you before, dear one. I would if I could. The Council has already denied it, said I’m too close to you. They won’t let me take on any of my crechelings as a padawan.”
Obi-Wan trembled in her arms, and she tightened her embrace, tucked her face into his red-blonde hair. His voice shook, muffled and wet against her. “I’m going to be a farmer. Everything -- everything I’ve worked for -- it won’t -- it won’t matter.”
“It will matter, Obi-Wan,” Kethra said fiercely, “It will, not matter what your path holds for you. Your work, your experiences, your life will never go to waste, no matter how it seems.” He just shook his head, hunched further into her embrace, so Kethra stroked his back and hair. “You must let go of what you can’t control, and trust in the Force. You can’t control others, you may not be able to control the exact direction of your future, but you can control how you meet it.”
But, as Kethra thought of her lover, perhaps she could control this just enough to tip it in Obi-Wan’s favor.
.x.