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“For heaven’s sake, Obi-Wan,” Leia said the second he opened the door. “Did you really think this was going to work?”
Obi-Wan looked at her for a good long second, frowning. “That depends on what you mean by work.” Then he shut the door in her face.
The strangled sound of frustration that followed was remarkably reminiscent of Anakin, age thirteen, seething with rage about the fact that Obi-Wan still wouldn’t let him go jumping off buildings willy-nilly. As anticipated, the door slammed open half a moment later, Leia still standing in front of it.
“Oh no,” she said. “You do not get to go running off into the galaxy for retirement and leave the rest of us to clean up your messes. You are coming back.”
“Hm,” Obi-Wan replied, but he let her in anyways. Her hair was looking greasy enough that she’d likely bother him until she’d at least gotten a shower, and he certainly wasn’t getting any peace until she could get out of the omnipresent wind long enough to deal with the thousands of tangled wispies that had escaped from her braid. It wasn’t an easy journey out to his little island, especially with the nearest (and only) spaceport being half a planet away, and she was the living, breathing, mud-and-salt-spray-covered proof.
Leia huffed at the look on his face, threw her bag down onto the floor, and promptly stomped into the coat closet. She stomped out a moment later, having discovered that it wasn’t, in fact, the bathroom, and Obi-Wan was gracious enough not to comment on her mistake when he directed her to the correct door. This did not improve her mood.
When she came out, she was looking significantly better, though she had the look on her face she usually got when she was going to lecture him about the sulfates in his hair gel for the fifteenth time. To keep from having to hear it (or any lectures that might have built up in the two months, one week, and three days he’d been gone), he set a cup of tea in front of her. Leia glared at him to tell him she knew what he was doing, but took the cup anyways, though she spoke before she drank.
“He’s being downright impossible with you gone. Both of them, actually.”
“I haven’t the faintest clue who you might mean.”
She took a prim sip, then set the cup down with a controlled force that reminded Obi-Wan that he was lucky she’d learned to control her temper since the days where her tantrums broke every plate in the cupboards.
“I’m not their minder.”
Leia gave him a flat look. “I don’t care.”
“Hm.” He paused. “You can have the couch. I’ve only got the one bed.” Buying her silence (at least for the next few hours) with tacit approval of her stay was not, perhaps, the smoothest bit of negotiation he’d ever accomplished. But she was tired, and he’d come out to this miserable spot of land to get some peace and quiet in the first place, and anyways, it got the job done.
She took the deal with as much grace and alacrity as he expected, which is to say, none at all.
“Fine.” She downed the rest of the tea in a manner that would have horrified every master she’d ever had (and half the senate besides), paused to glare at him for one more second—a good effort, though ineffective—and stomped over to the couch to collapse on it. She was asleep within minutes.
The next day, she was up before he was, which mostly meant that he was woken up by a dangerous clattering in the cupboards when the sun was still a black spot on the western horizon. By the time he managed to make himself get out of bed, the sun was a faded grey behind the clouds, and the air smelled of rain. The latter part he wasn’t so interested in. It always smelled of rain.
“I’ve made you tea,” Leia said, and she had. Properly, even, with everything measured carefully and steeped at the right temperature for three and a half minutes, instead of the way she normally did it, which involved boiling water and no small amount of eyeballing.
For a second, Obi-Wan thought about rejecting it on principle—he didn’t want to give her any more advantages than she’d already gotten—but then again, it was cold and early, and he didn’t really have the energy for a principled stand. That was more Qui-Gon’s domain, anyways.
He took the cup and sat down, not at all surprised when Leia joined him.
“Getting to the negotiations early, are we?” he murmured, meeting her gaze.
Leia, as she did with most things, refused to be cowed by it. “You can’t like it out here.”
Obi-Wan did not glance outside the window, where his tiny, stony, forsaken island was threatening to drown under the huge, grey waves the oncoming storm was whipping up. “It’s peaceful.” At least it had been before she had arrived.
“It’s a depressing pile of rocks,” she countered. “Besides, have you seen what it’s doing to your hair?”
It was many, many long years of diplomatic training that kept Obi-Wan from reaching up to touch his hair, which had, admittedly, been a little less than neatly styled as of late. “Be that as it may,” he said, forcing himself not to speak through gritted teeth, “it still beats the alternative.”
“Which is what?” she folded her arms. “Retiring on a nice, sun-soaked, tropical island somewhere in the Mid-Rim? Leaving a postage address so people can send you gifts?” Leia leaned forward, face dark. “Do you know how long it took me to find you? I went through six godsforsaken spaceports in this system before I even got word of you.”
“That was rather the point. It’s much harder to interrupt someone’s peace and quiet when you can’t find them.”
“And you couldn’t have just asked everyone to leave you alone.”
Obi-Wan raised one very pointed eyebrow. To her credit, Leia backed down.
“Fine,” she said. “We’ll continue this discussion later.”
Obi-Wan waited until she had begun clattering around the kitchen again in search of breakfast to mutter, “I’m sure we will.”
She brought it up again on the third day of her stay. They’d spent most of the second one discussing the coursework she’d done last semester while doing the thousands of little repairs that a house situated on the crumbling edge of a constantly windy cliff always seemed to require. The subject of coursework had led them into a case study she’d studied for an ethics in policymaking class, the circumstances of which Obi-Wan had himself been a part of, and the topic carried them through most of the morning and a good deal of the evening. (Obi-Wan had taken a nap in the afternoon, as he was wont to do now that he didn’t have visitors knocking on his door at all hours of the day to try to drag him into what could politely be termed massive disasters, and more accurately be termed political clusterfucks the size of a black hole.)
The break, however, had been temporary, as she’d begun again right after breakfast on the third day with a “Please, Obi-Wan,” evidently having decided that guilting him back was going to be more effective than convincing him his home wasn’t worth living in.
Obi-Wan could happily say it had as much effect on him as the next statement—none at all.
“They’re being infuriating.”
“More than usual? That’s impressive.”
Leia gave him a betrayed look. “My father keeps moping around the garage and disassembling all our speeders, and when he isn’t doing that, he’s writing long speeches about love and loyalty he keeps trying to give to anyone who’ll stay still long enough to listen.”
“He does that whenever someone insults your mother’s outfit at a gala.”
“Well, yes, but this time he’s been at it for months.”
“Hm,” Obi-Wan said, with all the empathy he could muster.
“And Qui-Gon is worse, if you’ll even believe it,” Leia said, getting into a groove. “We can’t even invite him to casual dinners anymore, let alone formal, because he keeps starting arguments with anyone else we invite. He’s terrorized twelve senators already, and more than thirty aides. And he keeps trying to drag me to tea with him so he can beat me at holochess, only he gets mad when he does beat me because what he really wants is to be thrashed by you.”
“Truly, my heart bleeds for you.”
Leia let out a disgusted noise. “Oh, it’s all very well for you to sit there, far out of their reach, but some of us have to go back and deal with them every day.”
“I did deal with both of them myself, alone, for some ten years, you know.”
“Yes, and you came out of it with the bright idea that you should move to the most depressing island in existence and pretend you don’t hate it.”
Obi-Wan sighed. “I really am perfectly entitled to a peaceful retirement. Neither of them has any cause to object.”
“Oh, they don’t.”
He cast her a disbelieving look.
“Not in theory, at least,” she amended, deflating. “But my father doesn’t understand why you couldn’t just live with us, and Qui-Gon is fuming about the fact that you didn’t take him with you.”
“I wanted a peaceful retirement,” Obi-Wan repeated.
“And neither of them understand why you had to do it without them.”
“Of course they don’t,” Obi-Wan sighed. “You do see why I won’t come back, don’t you?”
She eyed him, frowning. “And you see why I can’t leave until you do.”
Obi-Wan shrugged. “I suppose I can’t stop you from staying, so long as you’re alright sleeping on the couch.”
“It’s comfortable couch,” Leia said. “I can manage.”
They managed two weeks in a state of relative harmony. Leia worked with him around the house when there were chores to be done, and began her new semester’s coursework when there wasn’t. He brought her along on his twice-monthly shopping trip when the weather cleared from a stormy grey to a lighter, less dangerous looking grey, and was very thankful for the fact that she’d taken a small ship from the spaceport, as opposed to the sea-speeder he’d bought. The latter only had one seat, and was very conducive to getting soaked besides.
The interruption came one afternoon when he’d just decided to have another long nap and lain down to take it. There was a knock at the door, sharp and bright, and then second one a few seconds later.
Obi-Wan groaned, and, when it was clear that Leia wasn’t going to get it, muttered something half-formed and unflattering about young people these days. He was inclined to mutter something even more unflattering when he saw who was at the door.
“Obi-Wan!” Luke said brightly, the same way he said most things that weren’t ‘my tooka died’ or ‘my father nearly punched a senator again.’ “You’re here!”
Obi-Wan pressed back a sarcastic comment and sighed. “I don’t suppose you’ve come to collect your sister?”
Luke snorted as if the idea was laughable—which, really, it was. Leia could be nothing short of an unmovable object when she put her mind to it. “I’m here for you.”
“Of course you are.” He sighed, and let Luke in. “Wipe your feet on the doormat.”
Luke followed in his sister’s footsteps and took a long, hot shower before he did anything else. When he came out, he was looking considerably more tired, though that might just have been the fact that Obi-Wan hadn’t been able to really see his face before under all the mud. Still, it was an advantage, and Obi-Wan was loath to give one up when it came to Skywalkers or Naberries, and the twins were both.
“I think I’ve got an extra sleeping pad in the closet, if you’d like to take nap before dinner,” Obi-Wan said. “That is, unless Leia would like to give up her spot on the couch.”
Leia, who was stretched out on the couch in a tangle of extra blankets, staring grimly at her datapad, looked up at both of them, askance. “I would not.”
“Floor it is, then. The linen closet is the first door after the bathroom.”
Obi-Wan watched with satisfaction as Luke tramped down the hall and pulled the sleeping pad out of the closet, along with a plethora of extra blankets and sheets. He continued watching until Luke was safely ensconced in what resembled a nest more than a bed, and went down the hall to take his nap.
Luke was up again that evening and bouncing around the kitchen. Obi-Wan had entertained some half-formed thoughts about having dinner ready by the time Luke was up, so he could say he’d already eaten and skip the very unsubtle guilting that was sure to come the second Luke could get him in a room for more than ten seconds, but by the time he’d made his way out of the bedroom he’d found Luke hard at work cooking. Obi-Wan wasn’t, admittedly, horribly disappointed. Neither he nor Leia were very good cooks, and Luke had learned from Shmi.
Luke nodded at him as he came in, did something complicated with a knife that had Obi-Wan’s instincts screaming at him to take it away before Luke could injure himself with it. Luke did not injure himself with it—Shmi has also apparently passed on her talent with knives—and a moment later he looked up.
“Do you have a garlic press? Also, my mother says to tell you you’re being an idiot.”
“I don’t even have garlic,” Obi-Wan said after a moment, declining to reply to the second half of the statement. Padmé was entitled to her opinions. It didn’t mean those opinions were right.
Luke made a face. “You’re really living here?”
“I’ve lived significantly worse,” Obi-Wan said mildly.
“Yeah,” Luke replied, opening the pantry and rifling around inside of it in the hopes of discovering garlic that wasn’t there, “but that was on missions. If you’re really retiring—” his tone made it very clear what he thought of that possibility—“You should live it up a little. Like, somewhere with grocery deliveries.”
“I’ll take that under consideration,” Obi-Wan murmured, and that was that.
He expected a second assault that night after dinner—even if Leia had declined to insult his circumstances further, he was certain Luke would make at least one or two more pointed comments about them—but it never came. Nor did one the next morning, nor the day after. In fact, the only time Luke had opened his mouth for what looked like it was going to be a loud remark on the wallpaper that had come with the house (vaguely floral, in tones of maroon, orange, and something that could only be referred to as “puke green”), Leia had pulled him aside and whispered something in his ear. Luke had shut up after that.
It was, Obi-Wan admitted, nice to have them in the house with him. He hadn’t spent so much time alone with the twins since their summers in Varykino twelve or thirteen years ago, when he’d been running away from the committees gunning to make him Supreme Chancellor while he let Qui-Gon and Padmé sort out the details of that set of reforms. Were it not for the horrible weather, terrible location, and the fact that he had the sense that they were both waiting for something very specific to happen, he might have enjoyed it even more than he had Varykino. After all, sometime in between being squabbling eight year olds and squabbling adults, they’d figured out how to fight dirty, and that meant a lot less screaming for Obi-Wan to deal with, even if he did catch them threatening each other at least once a day.
The something that the twins were waiting for happened about a week after Luke had arrived, when there was yet another knock on the door. Obi-Wan, in a brief fit of uncharacteristic optimism, dared to hope that it was Padmé come to collect the twins and apologize for all the trouble. His hopes were dashed the second he opened the door to see a grinning Togruta, carrying three bags, one of which had a garlic press clipped to the outside.
“Ahsoka.”
“Master Obi-Wan.”
He grimaced. She’d never quite got out of the habit of calling him that, despite the fact that they were twenty years and change away from his first retirement. “I see you’ve come to augment my kitchen.”
“Or to drag you back to civilization kicking and screaming,” she added cheerfully. “I haven’t decided which one yet.”
“Of course you haven’t,” he replied, but he let her in anyways.
Both the twins looked up, grinning, when she walked in, but, Obi-Wan noted, neither of them looked particularly surprised. He was tempted to hope that that was the extent of their plans, but given that optimism had so recently failed him, he chose to take a more reasoned approach and assume that it was only the first element of their new form of attack.
He and Luke helped set up a place to sleep in the corner of his living room—she’d brought her own roll-up mattress, which was proof that she’d been in contact with at least one of the twins—while she showered, and when she came out and got to the process of unpacking, he tried not to feel too relieved that she’d thought to swing by an ag-market on the way down. They were running low on fresh fruit.
By the time she’d finished, Luke had already begun dinner, and Leia was thoroughly sunk into what looked like a very dense paper. Obi-Wan, belatedly, made some noise about going to check on the water heater outside—it had been making some worrying noises that morning—but it was too late. Ahsoka had seen her opportunity.
“I’ll come with you!” She said, and she did.
He hadn’t gotten two seconds into trying to figure out whether it was a screw that needed to be tightened or whether one of the rusted pipes was finally about to give up before she started in on him in typical Ahsoka fashion.
“Are you really running away?”
Obi-Wan sent her a sidelong glance that was meant to convey a sense of how dare you as much as it was meant to convey a sense of if you know what’s good for you (hot water), then you’ll leave me alone (to make sure you can get some). “If I were running away,” he said clearly, “then that would imply that there’s something I’m running from.”
“It would, wouldn’t it,” Ahsoka agreed. “Which is why I asked.”
Obi-Wan realized too late what she’d really wanted to find out.
“You know, I was just thinking,” she continued. “If you really wanted some peace and quiet, you could just kick us all out. It’s not like the twins are going to tie themselves to the house if you do.” They had once in Varykino, but they’d been eight then. Ahsoka was right. More importantly, Ahsoka was calling his bluff.
Obi-Wan hummed noncommittally, then turned to prod at the welding on one of the larger pipes. “If you all start being a nuisance, I’ll be sure to do that.”
Ahsoka frowned at him with the sort of expression she got when she was sure she was missing something. Obi-Wan ignored her. Either she’d take his very obvious hint or she wouldn’t, and if she took it, then so much the better. It would, at the very least, hurry things along.
“Alright then,” she said at last. “Keep your secrets.” Then she turned to go inside, leaving him to poke at the water heater in the hopes that it would show him exactly where it was going to break. Predictably, it didn’t, and instead gave one large groan before settling entirely.
Their peace lasted another four days, though peace was a relative term. He kept catching Ahsoka and Leia talking to each other in low, intense voices, though they always cut themselves off when they saw him approach. Luke didn’t seem to be privy to those conversations either, but he was equally unwilling to tell Obi-Wan what he did know, which would have been helpful in the extreme. Obi-Wan could deal with concerted attacks, but he preferred to go into them with advance knowledge. It was almost a relief when the knock at the door came, though the relief dimmed considerably when he saw who it was.
“Ah, good,” Qui-Gon said, stepping past Obi-Wan with an energy that no man his age had a right to have. “They told me you’d be here.”
“They?”
“He!” Leia called from her spot on the couch. “I didn’t say anything!”
“Neither did I,” Ahsoka said, with an approving look at Luke that made Obi-Wan nervous. He could live with a concerted attack so long as it was all argumentative. Scheming was a different matter entirely.
Qui-Gon looked a bit put out by the revelation that his arrival wasn’t unanimously sanctioned, but whatever disappointment plagued him disappeared entirely when his gaze turned to Obi-Wan.
“So this is where you’ve run off to.”
Obi-Wan crossed his arms, determined to look very unimpressed. It wasn’t hard. Qui-Gon inspired that sort of feeling. “This is where I’ve retired. You might try it, one day.”
“I don’t feel the need to disappear to prove a point.”
Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows, noting with some trepidation the fact that Leia, Luke, and Ahsoka had paused in their conversation to watch him intently. “And what point might that be?”
Qui-Gon opened his mouth to reply, but something made him pause and look at Obi-Wan more closely. “I have no idea,” he said finally, “but I’m sure there is one. You enjoy making them.”
Obi-Wan gave him a flat look, sparing half a second for a glance at Leia and Ahsoka. The both of them had pensive looks on their faces, as if they’d run into an unexpected problem.
“In any case,” Qui-Gon continued. “I’ll need somewhere to sleep.”
“I regret to inform you,” Obi-Wan said, not regretting it at all, “that I’ve run out of bedding.”
“Obi-Wan’s bed has enough room for two,” Ahsoka said. “You can share.”
Obi-Wan shot her an ungrateful look, to which she replied by smiling. So that was his punishment for reticence—Qui-Gon’s loud snoring. It was a very Ahsoka solution.
“Excellent.” Qui-Gon barged passed him into the hallway. “I’m too old to sleep on the floor in any case. My knees are still aching from the flight over.”
“Your knees are fine,” Obi-Wan replied to Qui-Gon’s back. Then, in a mutter, “They’re as stubborn as the rest of you.”
Qui-Gon turned around, gave Obi-Wan an unimpressed, vaguely imperious stare, and huffed. “You’ll understand, when you get to be my age.”
“And I’m sure you’ll be around to remind me of it,” Obi-Wan replied sarcastically, and then went to find the kettle before he could let himself be pulled into another argument.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he said when he turned around to see Qui-Gon safely ensconced in the bathroom and Luke staring at him reprovingly. “He was still jumping off of buildings to chase assassins three months ago. I doubt he’s aged enough since then to justify his whinging.”
That, Obi-Wan reflected, was what a strong connection to the Living Force got one—barely a hint of aching joints, even well into one’s seventies, and the vigor to plague anyone who came near you. All one got from the Unifying Force was ten years’ worth of pointed nightmares everyone told you to ignore, one nightmare so pointed even Qui-Gon told you act on it, an impromptu trip to the Senate building, and a Sith slash (ex-)Supreme Chancellor dead at your and your padwan’s hands. It was extremely unfair.
At that point, even Luke had to agree that Qui-Gon was exaggerating—they’d all seen him thrashing that year’s crop of new knights a few months before, despite the fact that he was nearly eighty and had left the Order about five minutes after Obi-Wan had done the same—and when Qui-Gon came out of the bathroom, Luke didn’t look quite so sympathetic about him, especially after Qui-Gon’s hair started dripping on the furniture.
Dinner that night was a much louder affair than usual, as Qui-Gon managed to drag Leia out of her coursework with a non-sequitur argument about the current tariff situation in the Mid-Rim. Contrived as it was, it still managed to get the two of them yelling at each other, and Luke and Ahsoka were forced to separate them when it began to look like Leia was going to dip into the wookiee insults.
Dinner continued in the same vein for the next three days, and it was on the fourth one that Obi-Wan had to drag Qui-Gon to do the shopping with him—with all the company, he’d started having to go once a week instead of once every two—and bully him into agreeing that as much as Leia could probably use a break, starting rousing arguments was probably not the way to do it. Obi-Wan didn’t have the opportunity to see if his lecture had worked, though, because there was a very loud knock on the door right before they all sat down that night.
At that point, there were only a few people left who would have bothered to make the trip out to see him, and most of them had day jobs, so it wasn’t a surprise to open the door to see Anakin glaring at him.
“You’re coming back with me,” Anakin said immediately. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow. “I’m retired Anakin, not an invalid. If you want to bet on being able to knock me out long enough to get all the way back to Coruscant, you’re welcome to try, though I doubt you’ll be able to manage it.”
Anakin gave him one more furious look, and stomped into the house, seething with anger. When he emerged from the bathroom a good half-hour later, all mud and salt washed down the drain, he didn’t say a word to Obi-Wan and instead went to talk to his children (both of whom rolled their eyes at his display).
“I don’t suppose,” Qui-Gon murmured to Obi-Wan, “that this masterful argument has convinced you to move somewhere that at least resembles civilization?”
Obi-Wan gave Qui-Gon a scathing look.
“One can hope,” Qui-Gon replied philosophically.
Obi-Wan didn’t even dignify that with a response.
Anakin’s silent treatment lasted a full three days and fourteen hours, which was three hours longer than his average (Qui-Gon had begun timing them sometime around Anakin’s eighteenth birthday, when it became clear he wasn’t going to grow out of it). It finally broke when Obi-Wan invited him to spar and managed to send Anakin’s saber flying over the cliffside before either of them could retrieve it. Anakin found he had quite a few choice words for Obi-Wan then, and his eloquence didn’t diminish when it turned out that Luke had been oh-so-fortunately and completely coincidentally stationed in such a position that he was easily able to catch it before it went into the water.
The tirade lasted for a half hour after that, by which time Anakin had made his way through all the “how dare you”s and “I trusted you, Obi-Wan”s and “you said we were BROTHERS”s that had been building up in the three months Obi-Wan had been gone and had become thoroughly exhausted (which of course had been the point of the whole exercise). Anakin spent the rest of the morning and a good deal of the afternoon napping, and by the time he emerged he was feeling much more cheerful.
He also, Obi-Wan discovered, was laboring under the misapprehension that his righteous diatribe had convinced Obi-Wan to immediately abandon ship, so to speak, and to move back to Coruscant where he could continue his retirement in a house full of people who would love nothing more than to drag him out to so many political events he may as well have never retired in the first place. Obi-Wan attempted to explain this to Anakin, but Anakin, through either sheer force of will (or possibly a gross misunderstanding of his wife’s penchant for blackmail, manipulation, and general scheming), refused to understand Obi-Wan’s point.
“It’s three dinners a month, Obi-Wan,” Anakin said. “You can survive that.”
Obi-Wan refrained from the urge to reply that it was all well and good for Anakin to say that, since he was only ever toted along as arm candy when Padmé needed to look both patriotic and sympathetic, but Obi-Wan was liable to get dragged into at least four meetings for every dinner he attended (no matter how hard he tried otherwise), and each of those meetings would inevitably lead into two new ones, so by the end of the month he’d find himself right back where he began.
“But I don’t have to survive any dinners here,” Obi-Wan replied instead (though Leia and Qui-Gon’s amused looks told him they knew what he’d been about to say). “And besides, I like the fresh air.”
“There’s air on Coruscant!” Anakin protested. “Or—” He stopped for a moment, considering, but seemed to decide that the sacrifice he was about to make would be worth it if it got Obi-Wan off this nightmare of a planet. “You could move to Naboo. With us.”
Obi-Wan did not point out that Padmé, who was finally in the running for Supreme Chancellor, would not agree to any such move, let alone without having been consulted first. “I’m famous on Naboo.”
“Exactly!”
“Too famous. I wouldn’t be able to go out in public without someone taking pictures of me.”
“Oh.” Anakin frowned. “Well, I’m sure Padmé will figure something out.”
“Will she?”
Anakin looked up. “Of course. Didn’t I tell you? She’s coming here.”
The leadup to Padmé’s arrival was tense, though Padmé had much less to do with it than the fact that sticking six people in a one-bedroom house on a tiny rock in the middle of one of the galaxy’s most depressing oceans was bound to lead to a good deal of fighting. Obi-Wan would have been ready to throttle Qui-Gon by the second day just for his snoring, even if he hadn’t also been kept up half the night by Anakin’s incessant tinkering with the electrical circuits. In addition to that, Luke and Leia’s cold war had begun to break down into a war sans the cold, and aggressions were increasing at a rate that suggested that Obi-Wan would be lucky to have his house standing by the end of the week.
If his visitors’ aim was to make Obi-Wan want to leave, then they had certainly accomplished their goal—not that they really needed to. The wind and the rain and the hideous wallpaper had done their job for them months before Leia had even gotten there.
The day Padmé arrived, there had been two fights before breakfast (the first involving a stepped-on lekku and a not nearly apologetic enough Anakin, the second involving Leia’s overuse of hot water while conditioning her hair and Luke’s apoplectic rage upon finding out about it), and three after it (two of which involved Qui-Gon, who’d woken up just in time to set everyone off again by remarking on their short tempers, and one of which was the result of Obi-Wan’s perhaps less-than-delicate comment about Qui-Gon’s tact). So it was to a silent and fuming house that Padmé entered, perfectly composed, smelling of flowers, and without a hair out of place.
She didn’t bother to knock (which was, Obi-Wan thought, for the better—the way they were going, there would have been another three fights about who had to get the door), choosing instead to stride in with all the composure of a woman who thought chasing down her own assassins was good fun.
“Hello, Obi-Wan.” Her voice was lilting and sweet, but the vicious edge to it made the hairs stand up on the back of Obi-Wan's neck. “How are you doing?”
“Better now that you’re here,” Obi-Wan said, and he meant it. “You’re several days behind Qui-Gon and your husband.”
She eyed him coldly, delicate as an icicle speared through someone’s neck. “So I am, aren’t I.”
The room was deathly silent, all gazes trained on the two of them. From the corner of his eye, Obi-Wan thought he saw something that looked suspiciously like a credit chit pass from Qui-Gon’s hands to Ahsoka’s, and from Ahsoka’s to Leia’s.
“It almost feels,” Obi-Wan said, “as if there was no point to me retiring at all—since everyone was kind enough to make the trip.”
“Hm.” There was a long moment in which she looked at him, then, finally, a sigh. “You win, Obi-Wan. I concede the point.”
Obi-Wan didn’t bother pressing back his smirk—he deserved it, after three months of life on a hellish planet designed to drain its inhabitants of the will to live. He let his victory carry him all the way outside, where he wouldn’t have to watch Anakin’s dawning comprehension turn to indignance that he’d been used to win an argument, or listen to Qui-Gon’s (admittedly good-natured) grumbling about upstart youngsters scamming him out of his hard-earned money.
The wind was brisk (as it always was), and the sky was very grey, but Obi-Wan didn’t let that stop him from enjoying the fresh air. He’d be gone soon enough anyways; he intended to take full advantage of the few advantages this planet had while he could, and a quiet place to think was chief among them.
His place didn’t remain quiet for long. Within a few minutes, he heard the creak of the door opening, and Leia’s light footsteps behind him.
She settled next to him on the steps before she spoke, glancing at him with the kind of half-amused look that reminded Obi-Wan of Qui-Gon and Ahsoka and Padmé all at once.
“What was your argument about?”
He looked over at her. “I thought you’d figured that out already.”
“Well,” she amended, “most of it, but I spent so long thinking you’d argued with Qui-Gon that I’ve got the specifics all wrong. I’d like the right ones, if you please. I’ve certainly stayed out here long enough to earn it.”
Obi-Wan couldn’t argue with that. “Two weeks or so before I left, I was complaining about one of those state dinners your mother likes to organize. As it happened, she’d grown so tired of my—I believe she called it interminable, childish, and downright obnoxious whining—that she told me to shut it, and that if I really hated it, I’d retire.”
Leia snorted.
“Quite. In any case, I replied that I wouldn’t be able to retire without Qui-Gon and Anakin chasing after me to drag me back into whatever mess they’d created for themselves, and she huffed and said something very uncomplimentary about the real reason for my avoiding retirement being the fact that I’d be bored without you all.”
“She was right though, wasn’t she,” Leia said with perfect confidence. “You got bored out here without us.”
“Obviously. There’s nothing to do here, unless you like sitting inside and staring at the rainclouds.” Obi-Wan paused. “Don’t tell your mother I said that. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said. “It’s too good as leverage.”
Obi-Wan smiled, not entirely unable to avoid a rush of pride. “Clever girl.”
“I did have some good teachers, you know.” Leia paused. “Even if one of them doesn’t have the common sense of a teacup, and hasn’t realized that spending three months on a planet that ruins his hair is a terrible way to win an argument.”
“Yes, well,” Obi-Wan said, staring at the horizon. It was grey, as always, but he thought—just in the very distance, where the dark line of the ocean met the sky—he could see a hint of pale blue. “We all have our quirks. Besides,” he said, turning to her, “I’m not the one who decided to spend a month here just to drag me back.”
“I managed it, didn’t I?”
Obi-Wan paused, surprised. “I suppose you did.”
There was a moment of smug silence, and then Leia grinned. It was a full, dazzling sort of grin, one that made Obi-Wan’s heart ache with fondness.
“I told you,” she said. “I learned from the best.”