Chapter Text
Every head in the yard turned when Jango dropped his weapon. He didn't notice a single stare. A torrent of emotions suddenly flooding his mind. Ben's shields had dropped and, given the overwhelming grief and anger choking him, Jango didn't believe his soulmate had let them down purposefully.
Jango felt the pull in the back of his mind and he let it drag him into Ben's. They'd met in their dreams, and Jango had felt Ben peering through his eyes once or twice, but he had never slipped into Ben's mind while the man was awake. Certainly not for the last few years. The man's defenses too high and his refusal to accept a soulmate too stubborn.
"It's... it's too late..." the voice was quiet, gruff. Jango felt Ben's anguish as the man in his arms spoke. His skin pale and his breath gasping. The bearded man was dying. Jango's gut twisted when he watched the tears gather in his soulmate's eyes.
"No!" Ben shook his head, hand cupping the man's face. His voice trembled and Jango felt his own rage simmer as he took in the wound. There was no blood. And the faint smell of charring. Lightsaber.
"Obi-Wan." The man focused on Ben. It startled Jango. The name. It felt more true than Ben ever had.
A wave of calm was pushed over him, over Ben. Over Obi-Wan. The serenity. The acceptance. It didn't belong to either of them. The man in his soulmate's arm nearly smiled.
"Promise... Promise me you will train the boy."
It was one thing to know his soulmate was a jedi. Jango had long since accepted that ugly truth, after Galidraan and the arrogance of one Yan Dooku. The harsh words as Dooku had rubbed his mercy in their faces. His reason.
Here though, watching Ben's - Obi-Wan's - master die in front of him...
"Yes, master," Obi-Wan agreed, voice shaking. His grief overcame the serenity his master was trying to gift him. A shaking hand moved over the old man's wound. Obi-Wan drew in another shaky breath and the next words out of his master's mouth fell silent before they could escape his lips.
Jango gasped when the pain rushed over him. A desperate, angry pain.
"Please don't leave me," Obi-Wan begged as he channeled every ounce of his power into healing his master. Jango could feel the tears on his face, the bone-chilling fear in his heart, and then he was ripped from Obi-Wan's mind.
In the yard, his eyes fluttered open. Jango looked up into the worried faces of his fellow Mandalorians. The weapon that had fallen from his fingertips was yards away. He lost consciousness again before he could wonder just what his soulmate had done.
-.-.-
Obi-Wan had, possibly, been awake for too long. A fact made all the more obvious by the dark circles and splotchy skin decorating his face even. Anyone would be able to tell, even those who couldn't feel him in the force.
He was an open wound. Bleeding anguish. Exhaustion throbbing like a sore. Even Anakin, untrained as he was, could feel the disturbance.
"Obi-Wan?" the child in question tentatively called out from the doorway. Obi-Wan turned his head from the large bed to beckon the boy with a simple nod. Anakin immediately scrambled over to the small couch Obi-Wan had occupied for just as long as his master had occupied the bed in front of him.
The hospitals on Naboo were overflowing with people from the camps. Once Qui-Gon had completed a short stint in a bacta tank to finish the work Obi-Wan had started, the healers had placed him instead in a room in the palace. It was grand. Spacious. Entirely too formal for all involved.
And quiet. Far too quiet for Obi-Wan, for his desperate desire for a distraction. For something to do besides sitting there, waiting for his master to lecture him on his behavior. His... attachment.
"Are you going to stay here till he wakes up?" Anakin asked tentatively, eyeing the fine fabrics drapped around the room. His shoulders were hunched slightly. More nervous than curious.
"That is my plan," Obi-Wan smiled at him and shifted on the couch. He beckoned Anakin once more, this time with a small hand gesture and the boy quickly climbed up beside Obi-Wan.
"Are you worried he won't wake up?"
Anakin was incredibly intuitive and with his eyes staring up at him, Obi-Wan could not lie.
"I am," Obi-Wan admitted. He sighed, sagging back against the plush cushion and reaching for the dark brown robe slung over the back. He wrapped it carefully around Anakin, tucking him in as the boy curled into his side.
It was Obi-Wan's robe. One of the queen's handmaidens had appeared with both his and Qui-Gon's an hour after the healers had transfered the jedi master. Much to his own embarrassment, Obi-Wan quickly found himself wrapping his master's robe around his own shoulders at the time. A small comfort, really, with the man himself lying unconcious only a few feet away.
"You haven't been sleeping," Anakin piped up, voice quiet and tone soft. His gaze was on Qui-Gon when Obi-Wan looked down at him. Obi-Wan didn't respond. He combed his fingers through Anakin's hair and the boy yawned, "Mom says you should rest whenever you have a chance because you don't always know when you'll get another."
There were many things that Shmi Skywalker said that sounded eerily like the jedi masters Obi-Wan had grown up listening to. Though Anakin's retellings made her sound much easier to understand than any of those masters.
"She's right, your mother," Obi-Wan agreed. He swallowed, throat suddenly tight, "A very wise woman." Anakin's force presence lit up with joy and it washed over Obi-Wan like a wave crashing against the rocks.
It did not abate the anxiety currently clouding Obi-Wan's mind. He knew very well that he needed to sleep. He knew better than most that rest could be the difference between life and death. He even knew that Naboo was not yet wholly safe. He'd informed the council himself about the violence that had erupted when the droids in the camps stopped working.
"I'm afraid that rest has been alluding me regardless," Obi-Wan continued to comb his fingers through Anakin's hair. Whether he was comforting himself or Anakin remained unclear, but the boy's breathing was beginning to slow.
As if sensing the little bit of peace his presence brought, Anakin cuddled closer, fingers curling around the cream fabric of Obi-Wan's robes. Anakin yawned, "Can I help?"
Chuckling, Obi-Wan squeezed Anakin closer, "You already are, young one."
It was not quite a lie that sleep was alluding Obi-Wan. There was a possibility that a more accurate reading of the situation would show that he was, in fact, avoiding the activity all together.
But Anakin didn't need to know that.
There was no reason to worry the boy. Since his shields had broken, Obi-Wan had been at the mercy of his emotions. Meditation had proven impossible and the force itself only seemed to fan the flames. Since channeling the force to heal his master, each time he closed his eyes to rest Obi-Wan found himself right back at the power station.
Each time he replayed the moment, the moment when his master ought to have died. Each time, it changed, just a little different. His actions just a little more desperate. Each time he failed just a little more.
And then, as constant and reliable as the afternoon rains on Coruscant, Jango would pull him out of it. His shining knight in beskar. Though, in his dreams, the Mandalorian in question only wore his armor half the time.
Obi-Wan didn't know if that was on purpose or not. Once he was pulled from his nightmare, he fled every time. There was a time in his life, once, when Obi-Wan was much younger, when he had enjoyed sitting in a dreamscape chatting with his soulmate. Now... well, he hadn't spoken to Jango in five years.
They weren't uncommon in the jedi order. Soulmates. There were several masters with multiple soulmates even. Still... Obi-Wan had just the one soulmate. And it was difficult to wrap his head around the idea of Jango being the love of his life.
He'd been ten and Jango just thirteen the day the connection first snapped into his mind, mid-meditation at that. They'd both assumed the connection would be platonic.
Such relationships were the most common form for a soul bond after all. Especially those established at a distance. That expectation had been set early and Obi-Wan thought they'd fallen into a comfortable cycle of comfort and companionship.
They had been wrong. Very wrong.
For the last five years, Obi-Wan had kept Jango out of his head. Out of his dreams. His shields were strong, the walls he'd built were high, and he'd spent hours in meditation every day to ensure they'd remained that way.
Jango and soulmates were things he simply ignored. Just like his Qui-Gon's arched brows and amused smirks whenever someone asked about their mission to Mandalor.
One sith and a dying master later...
Obi-Wan was not prepared to deal with what he expected was some very well-deserved anger and bitterness from a Mandalorian prince.
"Obi-Wan?" Anakin mumbled, eyes blinking slowly as he fought off sleep.
"Yes?" Obi-Wan hummed, glancing from Qui-Gon's slowly rising chest to Anakin's heavy eyelids. A soft bubble of anxiety rose in Anakin, a nervousness.
"How does someone know if they have a soulmate?"
Force. Obi-Wan could not win.