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It was a common belief that intimacy and affection was not allowed within the Jedi Order. For the most part, that was true. And yet, there was a tradition, millenniums old, that was perhaps one of the most intimate things most Jedis partook in.
The telltale sign of a Jedi Padawan was - for those species that grew hair on their heads - a small braid tucked behind their ear. When Padawans grew and developed and began their focus in more specific fields, bands were added to identify their fields of study.
The braiding of a Padawan’s hair was not done by just anyone, no, it was done by the Padawan’s Master.
But Anakin was a Jedi Knight now. He would, perhaps, always be a Padawan in Obi-Wan’s eyes, but it had been a couple of years since Anakin’s trials. He had his own Padawan now. Many Jedi took on two Padawans, some more given the species’ lifespan, it was not a foreign concept. It was still a little strange to Obi-Wan, however, for this was the first time he had chosen his own Padawan.
A stubborn but kind young thing, the youngling had first branded herself into his mind when he caught her smuggling a frog into the temple. He was with Master Windu, who, judging by his tone and questioning, had caught the youngling in similar positions before.
She was quick-witted and stubborn, having answers to each of his questions and a strong defence as to why the frog should be allowed to come back with her into her room, It’s raining heavily and the garden has flooded, Master Windu, and it’s injured its leg, see- and Obi-Wan remembers thinking that she’d do well leading negotiations in the Council. (Years later, he hears she practically single-handedly led the negotiations regarding troops that helped them win the Clone Wars, so his hunch was right.)
He taught a class one day when no one else could, and she lived up to her reputation of being, well, a distracted klutz as Master Yoda had commented once. She had a short attention span, picking at her nails and glancing around, gazing off into the distance as she lost herself in her mind. She tripped over her feet whilst trying to twirl around and knocked over three other younglings. Yet she not only managed to follow along the lesson, but excelled in it, and it didn’t take Obi-Wan long to realise how talented she was with the force.
Obi-Wan finds himself oddly amused by her, and from then on keeps tabs on her progress. When the time came for her to further her training, he found quite a few fellow Masters suggesting that Obi-Wan take her on.
He doesn’t think he’s ever agreed to something with so little reservation or contemplation before.
She cranes her head up to look at him, squinting slightly in the sunlight. “Ugh,” she says, and then looks down and kicks at the gravel.
“Is something the matter?” He asks, surprised at her first words to him since he asked her if she would like to be his Padawan. Out of all the reactions he had considered, “Ugh,” was not one of them. Anakin was much older than most Padawans were when they were chosen, so it was safe to say Obi-Wan had no idea what to do with a child of her age.
“You’re too tall,” she says, not as a complaint, but a statement. She kicks at the gravel again, as if nudging some pieces towards him. He pauses, and then carefully nudges some gravel back towards her feet. “My neck might hurt.”
He thinks he’s going to laugh. He manages to hide a smile, watching the way she’s enraptured with her little gravel-kicking game. The question he posed seems to be forgotten by her already. Suddenly her head shoots up to study him again, and he evens his features out pleasantly. She frowns, taking in his height and the way he’s looking down at her, and after what looks to be some very serious contemplation, she adds, “Although maybe your neck will hurt too, so I suppose it's even.”
He barely manages to stifle a snort.
So that’s how Obi-Wan finds himself sitting behind a little youngling- Padawan, now- braiding her hair. His movements were quick and fingers deft in the braiding, careful not to make it too tight or too loose lest the braid comes undone.
She’s sitting alarmingly still, her full attention on the braid he’s tying off with a little yellow band.
“All done,” he says, and the words are barely out of his mouth before she’s padding up to the mirror and tiptoeing over the too-high counter to see her braid. He follows behind her and lifts her so she can admire it. He doesn't realise quite how much she liked it however, until two days later she’s this close to throwing a tantrum about having to shower and ruining her hair.
“As soon as your hair dries, I’ll do it again,” He promises, and that seems to leave her content. She turns around expectantly, and it takes him a beat before he realises she’s waiting for him to undo it for her. He obliges.
The years pass and her hair grows longer and they transition from made-up stories to stories of his latest missions (heavily censored), to elaborately long tales of her interactions away from him, to his latest missions (slightly less censored), to proper conversations.
He’s exhausted, and annoyed, because it’s been a long fucking day and she needs to hurry up and shower and just let him braid her hair so he can go to sleep. But she’s late. His annoyance teeters dangerously on the edge of frustration and anger, and he has to start meditating.
But then she bursts through the door in a flurry of pure joy and excitement and Obi-Wan’s mood improves significantly.
“I assume there’s a good reason for your tardiness,” he chides gently, watching as she practically skips towards him.
“Hold out your hand,” She grins, bouncing on her feet. He obliges. He always obliges when it comes to her.
Then she’s placing her first-very-own-brand-new-made-all-by-herself lightsaber in his palm. It's significantly smaller than his, slimmer and lighter, and when he presses it back into her palm it fits perfectly. Her smile falters as she waits for his reaction, and he gives her a gentle smile.
He pats the seat beside him, an invitation. “Tell me how it came about.”
And then she’s sitting cross-legged in front of him, launching into a detailed recollection of events of exactly how she crafted her first lightsaber. All the while, he engages with her, slowly braiding the strand of hair.
She hesitates one day, a childlike inquisition on her face that she’s too shy to ask. He cocks an eyebrow, amused smile on his face as he brushes through her hair.
“Could-“ she starts right before he starts braiding.
“Yes?”
“No, it’s silly.”
“Half the things you say are silly anyways,” He teases, and she scoffs.
“I-I was wondering…” She starts, trailing off when she gets unsure again. He starts brushing her hair again, buying her more time.
“Wondering? That’s never good,” He tries to poke fun at her again, but gets seriously worried when she deflates a little.
“Padawan, what’s the matter?” His tone is much more serious now, gentle and probing, but no longer teasing.
“It’s fine,” she insists. She’s not a young child anymore, walking the ambiguous line of child and youth, and Obi-Wan knows to respect her boundaries, he knows not to push.
“I believe you,” He concedes, fingers beginning their deft movements in twisting her hair. “If there is anything, though, I’m always here.”
Two nights later, she’s sitting in front of him again, sitting on her hands.
“Ready to tell me?” He asks her.
“Willyoudosomethingdifferent?” She rushes out, and he brushes a final stroke through her hair. “Something different?”
“As in-” she straightens, embarrassed. “A- a different braid.”
Ah.
Obi-Wan smiles.
It takes him a moment, but he’s twisting the strands of hair in a way he’s not entirely sure will work, but eh. It takes longer, much longer, and he hasn’t been this concentrated braiding hair since the first time he braided Anakin’s.
It’s not particularly fancy, or detailed, and Obi-Wan is extremely unsatisfied with it as he ties it off. He looks at it for a moment and pulls a face. He reaches forward to restart, but she’s on pushing off the end and scrambling to the bathroom to peer into the mirror. Maker, he thinks, she’s going to hate it.
And then he’s being tackled in a hug and she’s beaming and giggling and admiring the braid and Obi-Wan watches her indulge in this little moment.
And if his braiding skills improve around the same time he starts paying Senator Amidala some visits, well, Anakin doesn’t tease him for it.
She grows older, and her braid grows longer, and Obi-Wan continues to indulge in her desire to have different designs. She lingers before her showers again, much like the first time. She doesn’t want to undo her braids, and Obi-Wan has gotten into the habit of undoing it for her because otherwise she’d procrastinate. She sits pouting as he undoes a new one, (honestly, he had said, anyone else would think you’re a child of 6, not 16), and he files away that she likes that pattern.
It’s one of the more complicated ones, but he doesn’t mind, not really, because it means he gets to braid her hair for longer.
It’s in the middle of one of their discussions of the latest mission the Council has put them on that Obi-Wan is stuck with the realisation that he misses how it used to be.
He swallows.
It’s a day till her trials. He ties white and black bands into her braid now, and his fingers falter as he finishes up. That was… that was the last time, he thinks, and he exhales. Fuck. Fuck, if he had known, he would’ve done her hair in the way she liked best, he would’ve taken his time and made it pretty and-
She’s standing and giving him a controlled smile and bidding him goodnight.
She’s so much older now. She’s an adult, a few hours away from becoming a Jedi Knight- he has absolutely no doubts that she’s going to excel in her trials- and something hollows out in his chest.
She’s a green saber, he thinks dumbly as he stares up at his ceiling. It’s the middle of the night, and he can’t sleep.
Anakin… Anakin is a blue saber. Like him. Obi-Wan knew that Anakin would not be far from him. But she…
Once she passes her trials, once she becomes a knight… she’d have options, paths to choose to go down, but none of them led to him.
Strange really, because Obi-Wan knows that he’s going to be waiting for her path to lead to him till the end of time.
Perhaps it does, because she’s knocking on his door before the sun comes up, bouncing on her feet nervously.
“Little one?” He finds himself asking, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she bursts out nervously. “I’m sorry, I know you just did it last night but the trials are in an hour and I just-“
And he’s pulling her inside and sitting her down. She immediately crosses her legs, lets him undo her hair and brush it out. There’s complete silence between the pair, an unspoken understanding thrumming between them.
He braids, making sure to feel every inhale and exhale, his fingers trembling slightly as he tucks one section over the other.
“What… what if I don’t pass?” Her voice is quiet, small, and Obi-Wan pauses in his braiding.
“Now where did that come from?” He responds, adding her white band to the braid. She shrugs a shoulder, exhaling. She doesn’t speak again, perhaps to enjoy the way he’s twisting her hair. His movements slow, and he glances at the clock on the wall. He has 45 minutes.
He adds the black band, gentle in his movements so he doesn’t hurt her. When he ties it off, his fingers itch where they’re on his lap.
35 minutes.
“If I don’t pass-“
“You will,” he says with so much conviction, and dvd visibly relaxes. “I have no doubt that you will.”
A beat.
“If I pass-“
“When you pass,” he corrects her, and he’s moving to braid the rest of her hair back and away from her face. It’s a lot more hair than he usually works with, but it lets him enjoy the feel of doing this for her for the last time.
“When I pass, then,” he can hear the smile in her voice, and he hums softly. “What happens next?”
Obi-Wan falters for a brief moment. He sections out another strand to bring into the Dutch braid he’s doing for her, quiet as he ponders the question.
He knows what she wants to do. They’ve spoken on the topic multiple times before. She’s interested in diplomacy, in the nitty gritty details that he honestly hates. She enjoys nitpicking at every detail and unraveling them, poking at every crack and dent to see what gives.
She enjoys it, enjoys coming up with ways to make it better. He remembers one night, three hours after he sent her off to bed, she stormed into his room and slammed a report down on his desk, nevermind that he was literally in bed. It was one from fifteen years ago, the same age as she was then, and she points at one of the bullet points.
She then proceeded to go on a rant about how if they had done it this way and changed two points, so much could’ve been different, so much more could’ve been done. She had a whole argument too, the pros and cons and she had even scaled it back to the politics of then, and Obi-Wan has never wanted to kick her out of his room so badly before.
He hates this stuff. Honestly. He might be good at it but it doesn’t mean he likes it. But then she’s snatching the report away and bounding back into her room because she just thought of something else, and he rubs at his temples because he knows. He knows then the path she’ll choose to go down.
“What happens is that you’ll probably be made to study old and recent missions, to brush up on your knowledge of intergalactic politics,” he tells her, smoothing down a stray piece of hair.
“No, I mean, what happens to us?”
Fuck.
Okay, sure. He had been purposely avoiding that thought but now he can’t exactly brush her off.
“Well, you won’t be a Padawan anymore-“
“I’ll still get to see you, right?” She asks, turning to face him.
He studies her face, and he briefly wonders what it would’ve been like had the two of them not been in the order.
Beautiful, he thinks, and then smacks himself mentally. He smiles weakly at her, and watches her gaze flicker down to his lips. Perhaps if he were a bit more delusional, he would think she wanted to kiss him.
“If the Force wills it-“ he starts to say, but his voice gets caught in his throat when she drops her gaze away from him.
I’ll still get to see you right?
He doesn’t know.
She passes her trials. Of course she does. But Obi-Wan isn’t sure if he’s more proud or devastated.
It’s just the two of them in his room now. He runs her braid between two fingers, thumb rubbing it gently.
Her specialisation in healing as opposed to his in weaponry and fighting.
His eyes roam over the pattern he had done for her just this morning, and he remembers the first time she sat in front of him.
Her interest in covert operations as opposed to his piloting.
He picks up his saber, taking in a long, slow breath. He’s done this before. He’ll be fine.
Her force signature was aligned with those of the Consulars, while he was a Guardian.
He twists the braid ever so gently around his finger, tilting it away from her skin.
In no mission or situation would they ever be placed side by side again.
Obi-Wan swallows, switches on his saber, and slices off the braid with a clean cut.
You don’t flinch.