Chapter Text
Ben had almost forgotten just how messy a teenage boy could be. He sighed as he looked at the total mayhem that was Obi-Wan’s room. They’d been Master and Padawan for three years now, Obi-Wan was well into seventeen, and Ben was seeing more and more the difference a change in master could do for a padawan. For one thing, Ben had never let his room get like this. Qui-Gon would have strung him up by his toes if he’d left dishes and dirty laundry on the floor.
For his part, Ben had never seen the point of haranguing his padawans about their private living spaces. Unlike his old master he didn’t intend to intrude on their space with pathetic life forms that needed caring for or poisonous semi-sentient plants that didn’t get along with all the other plants piled throughout the apartment.
Normally a little clutter in Obi-Wan’s room wouldn’t have bothered him, but they were out of bowls and spoons and he’d discovered over the years that without a master disapprovingly looking over his shoulder, his padawan was actually in fact a typical teenage boy. Meaning that he never put his midnight snack dishes back in the kitchen where they belonged, much less actually put them in the dishwasher.
Sighing again, Ben shook his head and resolved to make Obi-Wan actually clean up his room when he got home from his Astro-navigation class. That was at least one thing that didn’t change. Though he, like Ben, was a good pilot, Obi-Wan still did not like flying.
He couldn’t wait for Obi-Wan to get home, though. His normal lunch partner, Tahl, was off planet on a mission and Ben wanted to make himself a Tatooine stew for lunch. For that he needed bowls and spoons. Taking another look around the room in fond exasperation, Ben waded into the abyss.
“Ugh.” He grimaced as he plucked the third damp towel off the floor and muttered to himself, “At least I know where all the bath towels have been disappearing to.”
Underneath the towel he spotted two bowels and a spoon. Wonderful, he thought dryly, at least the food residue hadn’t achieved sentience yet. He bent down and picked the dishes up, stacking them in the bend of his arm. He left the towels behind. After all, he couldn’t make his padawan clean up his room if he did it for him.
He unearthed his long missing favorite tea mug and a dinner plate with the remains of leftover Nabooan noodles that they’d eaten last week. Another three bowls with the dregs of oatmeal, cereal, and what could be soup or could be a science experiment, it was hard to tell. Once he’d excavated a fairly large pile of dishes, Ben held a short debate with himself then shrugged and decided to do what he did to Anakin and Ahsoka when she’d decided to stay with them in their still shared apartment. And that was to stack the dirty dishes he didn’t immediately need on Obi-Wan’s bed.
It might be passive aggressive, but if his padawan didn’t want moldy silverware on his bed sheets, he should have put them in the kitchen when he was done with them. And sure Ben didn’t stand over his padawans’ shoulders and demand they keep their rooms to military cleanliness standards, but he was not above teaching them the benefits to cleanliness in other ways.
Ben had just finished arranging two of the mugs and several of the forks into an approximation of a sad face – sure it’s a little juvenile, but if he has to go on an archaeological expedition to find a bowl he thinks he’s entitled – when his hand brushed Obi-Wan’s wrinkled white pillowcase.
Ben had the stray thought that he should make the boy change his sheets more often as well a split second before he was pulled into a Force-vision.
Some Force-visions were strictly visual, some strictly auditory, some were a full immersion of all five physical senses. This vision was a mix of sights and sounds.
That being said, it took Ben a moment to realize he wasn’t seeing himself, he was seeing Obi-Wan. Even with the divergence in their shared history and experiences, physically Obi-Wan looked exactly like Ben had at seventeen. The only thing that immediately gave it away was the hair style and padawan braid. Ben would still know his own padawan braid on sight even nearly forty years later, like he knew Anakin’s and Ahsoka’s. Of course, he knew Obi-Wan’s.
His padawan’s hair had grown out over the three years they’d been together, his braid now naturally reaching past his shoulder. Obi-Wan still kept one white ribbon woven into the braid, along with his Battlefield Achievement bead, his Beast Control bead, his general Force Manipulation band, and the other beads and bands he’d accrued during his padawanship so far.
With the realization that Ben was looking at a vision about Obi-Wan, he was then able to notice other things. Like the architecture of the room his padawan was standing it. It was all shining steel and glass, diamond shapes and sharp angles, bright almost white sunlight streaming into the room. Ben recognized that specific brand of design. It created both fond and painful feelings inside him.
Then a sound caught and held his attention, drawing him away before the memories could distract him. It was so familiar, that sound. He’d heard it before. Where, he just couldn’t place. He couldn’t even really put a name to what exactly that sound meant. Visions in the Force could be like that. Familiar things were unknown, strange things were so very familiar.
Ben couldn’t for the life of him figure out what that sound was while in this vision, at least not until a door behind Obi-Wan opened and an older, finely dressed being stepped into the room. The teen spun around to face the newcomer and when he laid eyes on them Ben could recognize him.
It was Adonai Kryze, the current Duke of Kalevala, a man that had been dead for forty years, for Ben at least. Now he was very much alive. It was a jarring realization.
“I’m sorry,” Adonai was saying to Obi-Wan, in the vision his words echoing strangely. Ben had to strain his hearing to understand. “She won’t see you.”
“I understand,” Obi-Wan murmured his shoulders slumping a little, but then that maddening sound came again and his entire body visibly stiffened. “Is that- is that him?”
The question was asked with such wonder, such fear that Ben was taken aback, confused and curious at his padawan’s demeanor. It wasn’t until the older man glanced down that Ben realized he was cradling something in his arms.
“Yes,” Adonai answered Obi-Wan’s wonder with a fond, though slightly sad smile. “Would you like to hold him?”
It hit him then, like a hover-train, exactly what Ben was seeing. That sound he’d recognized, but couldn’t name; it was the gentle coos and exploring squeals of an infant. The thing Duke Kryze was cradling in his arms with practiced ease was a baby.
“I-I- Yeah,” Obi-Wan gasped, his stuttering yanked Ben away from his shocking realization. “I think I do. Can I?” he asked shyly hopeful.
The older man smiled at the teen’s frightened eagerness and held out his arms. “Watch his head,” he instructed kindly.
Obi-Wan held his arms out in an unpracticed, but sturdy cradle. When the baby’s weight settled against him, surprisingly heavy for such a small package, the teen blew out a trembling breath. He peered down at the child in his arms and just breathed for a long moment, his chest hitching slightly with suppressed emotion.
Finally, a tender, awed smile curved at Obi-Wan’s mouth as he looked upon his son for the first time. “Hello there.”
Ben snapped out of the vision as he yanked his hand away from Obi-Wan’s pillow. He was breathing heavily, almost gasping for air, his entire body trembling. It has been a very long time since he’d had such a vivid, coherent vision. That wasn’t what had thrown him so much though. It was the content of the vision that had him collapsing to sit on his padawan’s unmade bed, the dirty dishes rattling as the mattress shifted.
He put his hands on his knees to keep himself upright and tried to breathe. What was he supposed to do? What was he supposed to do with this new terrifying information? What purpose did the Force have for showing him this?
No answers were forth coming. Not even when he dipped into a wavering near frantic meditation and prodded urgently at the Force for more clarification. Apparently all he needed or was going to get was what he had already seen in that vision.
Rising from his impromptu meditation, Ben felt neither calmer nor more centered. Instead another series of realizations came to his mind. Things he’d willfully or subconsciously ignored, shoved away so he didn’t have to think about them or work through his feelings.
He knew exactly who it was this vision had shown him. It was Korkie Kryze, Satine’s nephew. Or the boy Satine had claimed as her nephew.
His heart gave a painful lurch and Ben gasped, pressing the heel of his hand to his chest. She’d lied, he thought almost hysterically. She’d lied to him. Took the secret of his son with her to the grave. She’d died in his arms and simultaneously denied him ever knowing his child.
A sad, choked chuckle suddenly burst out of him. Memories of the considering looks Ahsoka had turned on him after her trip to Mandalore as an instructor. The sly smirks ever so lightly tinged with envy Anakin had kept shooting him after meeting Satine and being briefly introduced to Korkie.
Oh, great Force he was blind. No wonder Palpatine was able to corrupt Ben’s padawan right under his nose. He hadn’t even been able to tell his own son was standing right in front of him. The puzzling recognition Ben felt in the Force the first time he laid eyes on Korkie should have been clue enough.
A wave of grief swept through him and Ben clapped a hand over his burning eyes. Korkie Kryze had died. He’d escaped the Siege of Mandalore, but was captured and killed attempting to resist the Empire within the first couple of years after its rise. His death had actually made the news, being the nephew of the late Duchess of Mandalore. Ben remembered feeling a puzzling, sharp pain in his chest a few days before he’d gone into town for supplies and caught the news blurb in the local bar.
His son was died and he hadn’t even realized it.
Tears slipped past his control and dampened his palm. He gave a strangled sob as he hunched over. Somehow, someway, Korkie Kryze may still come to be in this life, but he won’t be Ben’s son. No, the boy Ben had helped create, had helped give life to, his son was gone.
The man that once was Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Master, and GAR General mourned for lost opportunities. For lost experiences and love and family he hadn’t realized existed. The man that had been Crazy Old Ben Kenobi, Wizard of the Waste mourned a loss of hope. Because that’s what Korkie would have been to the sad exiled desert hermit. He would have been another sign of hope for the future, hope that Ben had very little of in his life on Tatooine.
He didn’t know how long he sat there mourning, crying near silently in his padawan’s room, but it must have been at least over an hour, because he distantly registered the apartment door opening.
“Master?”
Glancing up, Ben found his padawan standing in the doorway staring at him with wide eyes. “Obi-Wan.” Ben cleared his throat and attempted to wipe away the last of the drying tears from his cheeks. “I thought you had class for another half hour,” he said, voice still strangled as he flicked his eyes to the clock on the teen’s bedside table.
“We got out early,” Obi-Wan replied, his face quickly creasing in a frown the longer he stared at the older man. “Master, are you alright? Why are you in my room? Are you um-,” he hesitated and bit his lip, “are you crying?”
Huffing in self-deprecation, Ben resigned himself to an awkward conversation. “To answer your questions, Padawan, I came in here because we are out of clean bowls in the kitchen and you have a habit of hoarding them.” Obi-Wan flicked his eyes to the dishes piled on his bed with embarrassment.
“And no,” Ben sighed and ran a hand through his hair as he continued, “I’m not exactly alright at the moment.”
The teen’s confusion melted into concern and he moved into his room reflexively stepping over towels, around laundry, and dodging the random datapad on his floor. He made it across the room unscathed and began stacking the dishes scattered across his bed into a pile.
“Did something happen, Master?” he asked tentatively as he unceremoniously dropped the dishes on his cluttered desk. Then he took a seat on his unmade bed next to his slumped master.
Ben didn’t know exactly what to tell him. He couldn’t very well tell Obi-Wan that he just realized that the woman he’d loved had lied about his son and that said son was dead, in a manner of speaking. There, of course, was a number of problems with that, but it didn’t feel right to outright lie.
Eventually, he took a steadying breath. “I just found out that someone I knew long ago was gone.”
Obi-Wan hesitated then asked, “Were they- were they very important to you?” Then he grimaced at the potentially callous nature of his question.
Ben just gave the boy a wan smile. “I didn’t know just how important they were until they were gone,” he replied honestly.
“Oh,” Obi-Wan bit his lip with internal debate, then came to a decision based on the suddenly nervously determined expression on his face. “What can I do, Master, to help you?”
Seeing the expression on his padawan’s face, Ben’s smile became more genuine. He laid an arm around the teen’s shoulders and pulled him into a half hug. A sound of surprise escaped the boy before he relaxed into the embrace and wrapped his own arm around his master’s back. Giving in to the affection suddenly swelling in him, Ben pressed his mouth to the top of Obi-Wan’s head in a silent secretly paternal kiss.
“You’re doing everything you can, Obi-Wan,” Ben told him. “Just being here with me for now helps more than anything.”
His padawan gave a sigh and leaned more heavily against his side. Ben looked down at the ruffled red hair under his chin and felt a great deal of his grief dissipate into the Force.
Truthfully, Obi-Wan could not have come at a better time. His presence reminded Ben that while he had missed the opportunity to know his son, to be a father to him, he was gifted with the chance to care for and teach Obi-Wan. The Force had granted him a second chance not just in saving the galaxy, but to be a master to a wonderful padawan. It was a second chance to watch not only Anakin, but Ahsoka, and - if that vision was anything to go by - Korkie grow up as well. He may not hold the same places in their lives as he had before – or could have had -, but he will still be there.
That brought up another thought, though. If Korkie’s existence was inevitable, and Ben was pretty damn sure he wouldn’t be part of the boy’s conception this time around, that left only one other option.
Blinking down at his padawan leaning against him, Ben rolled his eyes. Alright, so Qui-Gon’s safe sex talk had been lack luster at best. Ben could give himself some slack for not having a particularly thorough working knowledge of birth control when he was a teenager. Obi-Wan had no such excuse.
For that matter neither had Anakin. Ben had tortured both of them with an extremely detailed lecture on safe sex and birth control and consent. The fact that Padmé had ended up pregnant in the middle of a galaxy wide civil war was a testament either to Anakin’s strength in the Force or his ability to ignore his master when he was imparting important information.
The lecture he’d inflicted on Obi-Wan two years ago had been just as thorough and detailed. While he knew that if the Force willed a child to be born there wasn’t much Ben could do about it, not that he was sure he even would do anything to stop it if he could, one surprise child from his padawan was enough. It wouldn’t hurt to give Obi-Wan a safe sex refresher.
But that would be later, Ben thought as he rested his chin on Obi-Wan’s head and tightened his arm around the boy’s shoulders. Right now he was going let the last stains of his grief slowly ebb away while he soaked up the comfort of being close to his kind, generous padawan.
*
TBC...