Chapter Text
The datapads in the archives are for everyone, right? So Obi-Wan shouldn’t feel guilty about reading readily available texts....
Right?
Obi-Wan lurks behind a glimmering gold statue, poking his head out like a spy on reconnaissance. The section he desires is across the hall, past no less than two Jedi Masters, one Padawan, seven Younglings, and one Archivist. It appears to be a creche field trip. And at a most inopportune time!
They’re waiting for him. To catch him in the act.
No, no, Obi-Wan tells himself. He’s being ridiculous. They don’t care what he’s doing. He could skip right across, but he just can’t. His legs won’t let him. Why? He had felt less afraid when charging into battles where actual danger waited.
There are no enemies here.
Obi-Wan’s traitorous little heart drums in his chest. He wonders if everyone else can feel it, too. Shaking the halls.
Ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum
Poking his head out behind the bronze head, Obi-Wan watches a drooly little initiate wipe his nose will his dangling sleeve. The spitting image of danger. Obi-Wan smiles a little despite himself. What can he say? Initiates are cute.
Suddenly the Force prickles in warning. Behind him!
Obi-Wan turns with a startled shout, knocking the figurine from its place in his haste. He reaches not for his lightsaber, but for the strap on his belt that once sheathed a vibroblade. He jumps back, eyes trained on the threat.
On the very threatening old woman who has been nothing but kind to him these past months. The statue wobbles in its stand but thankfully doesn’t fall. All eyes are on him. Obi-Wan flushes in embarrassment.
“My apologies, Madame Nu,” Obi-Wan bows his head. “I should have been more mindful of my surroundings.”
“That’s quite alright,” she says, understanding in a way Obi-Wan doesn’t deserve. “Is there anything I can help you with? You’ve been standing here for quite some time.”
“I was just,” Obi-Wan grabs the nearest datapad, holding it up, “finding a source to use in my report. I think this one will do.”
Madame Nu quirks her brow. “You’re writing a report about fruit?”
Obi-Wan looks at the glowing rectangle in his hands titled “Edible Fruits Around the Galaxy.” Well, he thought to himself. He could have picked worse.
“Yes.”
Jocasta sniffs. She opens her mouth to speak when another unfortunate soul catches her eye. “Put that down, Initiate!”
Obi-Wan drops his shoulders. The group floats elsewhere, away from him, and Obi-Wan slinks into the other row unnoticed. He is allowed to be here, he tells himself. This is not a restricted section. The restricted works have their own section partitioned off behind lock and key. Even the smallest younglings in the creche could come here if they wanted.
Obi-Wan tucks himself away in a shadowed corner. He’s not doing anything wrong.
He’s just reading.
While also avoiding Jocasta Nu as she, none the wiser, makes her rounds.
Guilt truly is as the Masters say; A guilty conscience needs no accuser.
________
Obi-Wan came back from Melidaan with...an impulse. He doesn't know how else to describe it, them, these feelings he sometimes has. They sort of came about one day— unpleasant, unwanted thoughts that hurt only him. They took their time, lurking beyond sight. Waiting. Fermenting. Festering beneath his skin like an infection hungering for flesh. An invisible ache.
It hurts! Force, it hurts. What is this discomfort, this need?
They never, ever, go away. And seem to get worse at night when he has nothing better to placate his thoughts.
Obi-Wan lays on his sleep mat in a lightless room. Tossing, turning. Restless but bone tired. There is something in him; some poison bubbling beneath his skin. He is not sure what he needs, only that he needs something—anything—to make that invisible pain relinquish its hold over his body. His mattress is unbearably warm beneath him. The sheets cling to his sweat-soaked back.
The memories come without call, as memories of this sort like to do.
Obi-Wan thinks of the war.
The worst part of fighting was, ironically, when it ended. When those surges of adrenaline faded to his new baseline and he could think beyond immediate survival. Through victory or utter defeat the Young stumbled back to the sewers they called home, a melancholy dirge on their lips. The stillness of those nights felt unnatural, as if the shallowest breath could summon the destructive wrath of the Elders. Nield would pull them close– him and Cerasi. They lay for hours listening to each other's heartbeats. Silence was always the worst for it meant their enemies were cloaking their sound.
His room is silent. He clenches his eyes tight and fists a clump of soft blanket in his hand.
It's almost like he is still there.
Obi-Wan remembers feeling Cerasi’s heart jump as a crack echoed through the tunnels. He remembers trailing blindly behind Neild through the pitch-black darkness. He remembers the disappointment in Cerasi’s eyes, and the sharp flare of anger in Neild’s own when they found the teenager– he was a boy, really– clutching a mangled wrist to his chest as he cried away precious water. Obi-Wan remembers his eyes flickering between the uncompromising concrete wall and the fragile sinew of skin and bone. He remembers the shock he felt as Nield charged forward, grabbing this boy by his shirt collar, shouting “Why did you do this? Why?” He remembers watching on as the boy trembled in pain and fear, weeping over the loss of a sister. He remembers Nield simmering down to cold anger, gesturing for them to wrap the boy's wrist but proclaiming the boy would get “No bacta this time.” He remembers Nields dark eyes shining in the candlelight, looking right at him as he said, “Bacta isn’t for self-made wounds”.
He remembers shuffling back to bed in a daze, knowing they had impending plans for tomorrow. There was no time to process the boy or consider what happened to him. He had to keep going. To keep spinning the wheel. By day, Obi-Wan’s thoughts were consumed by strategy and survival. By night, he had Cerasi and Nield to stave off the creeping cold. A frayed thread to keep the fracturing pieces of his life together.
Until Cerasi died in his arms and the thread unraveled.
Obi-Wan blinks frantically up into the darkness. He tries to blink away Cerasi's terrified face. Tries to replace it with better thoughts. She had such a beautiful smile, sunny and bright and steady like her Force presence. Everyone in the Young loved and admired her. She held them together. And Obi-Wan tore them apart.
He is a nobody. Worth less than nothing. He had nowhere to go but the war-torn streets of a planet that hated him.
Exile from the Young wasn’t enough. Wandering empty streets wasn’t enough. Not when he can see Cerasi’s final moments in his inner eye and know he was to blame for her fate. He didn’t save her. Why does he get to live on unscathed?
"I'm so sorry, Cerasi," Obi-Wan mouths. He hopes she can hear him.
He called for her on Melida/Daan, too. No one answered.
In one of his lower moments, Obi-Wan plucked a shard of shattered glass from the ground. He wanted to drag it along the flesh of his arm and just feel something besides his overwhelming grief. It was only fear of infection that stayed his hand. Roenni might have spared him some bacta, but he would rather go septic than burden any of the Young. He let the shard fall to the ground.
His memories and their implications had buried themselves deep when he returned to the Jedi Temple, as did most other memories of his time away. They threatened his second chance, so he cleaved them from his thoughts.
Only to come back after his run-in with Kalei.
Obi-Wan sits up in bed, chest heaving. They just won't leave this time.
________
The saber class following Obi-Wan’s unfortunate duel began as usual. The other Padawans kept their distance as if his failings were viral. Kalei finds him stretching after class. That somebody would willingly interact with him was a shock, and their fellow Padawans watch with open curiosity.
“I’m so sorry, Obi-Wan.” Kalei says with a bowed head. “What I did was wrong and inexcusable.”
Obi-Wan places a hand on her shoulder, the healing skin of his burn pulling uncomfortably. It was his fault for leaving and casting doubt on his entire age group. He deserves it. “It’s alright. You helped me more than you know.”
She smiles, relieved. “I hope we can be friends.”
“Of course,” Obi-Wan replies genuinely.
That evening, Obi-Wan found his Master and excitedly told him about his new friend. He spoke animatedly for the first time in months, and he watched in real-time as the tenseness in Qui-Gon’s shoulders relaxed.
Anyone could see he was getting better. He was making Qui-Gon proud. He was also getting more adept at hiding the pain. He needed to keep Qui-Gon proud of him.
Qui-Gon’s eyes were open now. He took a more active role in his Padawan’s life, inspecting his Padawan with a discerning gaze whenever the boy said he was “fine.”
Many of Obi-Wan’s hurts came to the surface.
Others did not. He was afraid of what they’d look like in the light.
________
Obi-Wan has an appointment with the mind healer once a week. Probation is a blessing in disguise, he supposes, because he doesn’t need to balance his appointments with missions. It is also a curse because, after only a few meetings, Healer Sayulli expects him to bare his entire heart to her.
“Your classes are going well?”
Healer Sayulli’s office is a small, colorful room. She sits across from him and to the left on her vibrant red chair, directly under creatively painted canvases and younglings’ drawings. He takes the couch with the embroidered pillows, right beside the shelves with toys and colored pencils. Her white noise machine hums outside the door.
“Yes, Master.”
The healer herself is a young humanoid with shining black eyes and orange skin. She is completely hairless but wears a sheer wrapping around her head. And she always has a nice flowing shawl to compliment her head wrappings. She reminds Obi-Wan of those stereotypical mind healers in the Holovids.
“How are your interactions with the other Padawans?”
“Fine, Master.”
“Hmm,” Healer Sayulli pauses, squinting at her patient. He blinked innocently. His eyes wander about the room, uncomfortable under her gaze. He spots a few new trinkets tucked away on her shelves.
“Any more fights?”
“No, Master. Padawan Kalei and I are actually friends now.”
Well, they started to partner together in saber class. The other Padawans don’t like it, especially when they are the ones left without a partner. Yesterday, the straggler was Aalto. Obi-Wan rubs his thigh. It did not go well.
Healer Sayulli must spy something on his face. “So you haven’t had any conflicts? None at all?”
“I lost my temper with Padawan Aalto yesterday. I yelled at him,” Obi-Wan admits. He doesn’t want to tell her, but it feels worse to lie. Like he’s wasting his and Qui-Gon’s time. His probation is to learn from his mistakes. How is he to learn from his mistakes if he can’t bear their consequences?
“I told him he’s not worthy of being a Jedi,” Obi-Wan says simply. He tells her his crime, knowing that he fell lower than Aalto had in that moment. “I was angry and I let my emotions control me.”
“I see,” the Healer nods, blank of emotion. Is she angry? Disappointed? “Why?”
“What?”
“What made you lose your temper?”
Obi-Wan stares at the ruffled carpet in thought. It happened so fast.
Aalto followed him out after class. Padawans filtered through the door behind them, and Aalto spoke in a hushed tone. “Kalei has always been my partner.”
Obi-Wan sighed. And before Kalei, it was Bruck. “I’m sorry. Kalei was the one who asked me.”
“So?”
“What?”
“Are you going to find someone else?”
Obi-Wan shook his head. “Sorry,” he said earnestly. No one else tolerated him besides Kalei. He said goodbye and hastily took off down the hallway, wanting to be alone.
In the empty hall, Aalto called out to Obi-Wan’s back, “No one wants you here.”
Obi-Wan kept walking, trying to keep himself numb. Aalto is right, no one wants him, but he must keep going. He must prove himself worthy of the Jedi.
”You don’t deserve to be here, Oafy-Wan! Why won’t you just take the hint and leave?”
Obi-Wan spun around, fingers twitching. “Why won’t you just leave me alone?! Have you considered that maybe you’re not a worthy Jedi, either?”
“It was stupid,” Obi-Wan says. “He was mad that I took his sparring partner and got angrier when I said I wouldn’t find someone else to work with. I guess I felt bad, and I wanted him to feel bad, too.”
“Well, I think it is very good that you can pick apart the situation like that,” Healer Sayulli says gently. “You told me before that you used to get into physical altercations with Aalto and Bruck. That one such fight was the reason you were dismissed from the Temple early.”
Obi-Wan nods. He did say that. During their first session, she asked what he hoped to get from their sessions. He told her what the Masters told him, that he was an impulsive, angry boy prone to attachment. She promised him, with an encouraging smile, that they’d work on it.
“You kept yourself calm enough to avoid attacking them. I should think that is progress. I’m proud of you.”
Obi-Wan nods again. She’s right. Back then, he would have defended his hurt pride and escalated the situation. This time he ran off before Aalto could say anything else. He punished himself before anyone else had to. And it worked! Healer Sayulli is proud for once!
“However,” she starts. Obi-Wan shrinks again, feeling like a disobedient Youngling under her sharp eyes. “What you said was very hurtful. You recognize this, yes?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Good. I want you to reflect on what you could do differently next time. Now, how are you sleeping?”
“Fine, Master.”
“About how many hours of sleep do you get each night?”
Obi-Wan gestures to a painting on the wall. It looks like a youngling painted it. “Is that a Jogan?”
“No,” she smiles. “It’s called a Durkii. I treat one Youngling who is obsessed with them. Very knowledgeable. She is– less skilled with painting at the moment.”
“Ah,” the Padawan nods.
“Back to the question I asked before you tried to distract me.”
Obi-Wan blushes. He’s been had. “I- I don’t know. Enough.”
The Healer does not look pleased. “I spoke to your Master, as well as Healer Vokara Che.” Oh no. Not her. Anyone but her. “They had some concerns that you weren’t taking care of yourself. Namely, you have not been eating or sleeping enough.”
Obi-Wan crossed his arms. He doesn't like them talking about him behind his back. It felt– well, deceitful. “How would they know?”
“That is another thing your Master wanted to talk about, and he asked that he be able to join us for the few minutes or so of our appointment.”
“Sure. Whatever. I guess I have no choice since you already decided for me.”
“Obi-Wan-”
“Just bring him in,” Obi-Wan mutters. He held his arms crossed and glared at the corner of the room until he heard the door creak open.
“Obi-Wan? What’s wrong?” Qui-Gon asks, glancing between the Healer's pleasant smile and Obi-Wan's sulk. “You called me in early.”
“Obi-Wan here is a little upset.”
“I’m not upset!” Obi-Wan says that louder than he’d meant. He quieted down, but then his Master and the Healer were giving him knowing looks that reminded him why he was angry in the first place. He absent-mindedly pressed his fingers into his outer thigh.
“Obi-Wan, please look at me. What is it? What's wrong?”
“I’m just- annoyed that you talked about me without telling me. I'm sorry, Master.”
Qui–Gon is so patient with him and that is partly why Obi-Wan feels so bad. He's just a problem, isn't he? He should be a better Padawan. Less angry. Less troublesome. Why can't he just be better, like the Padawan Qui-Gon deserves?
“You are not in trouble right now, and we do not mean to ambush you. Do you remember why we started you with these appointments?” Qui-Gon waits for Obi-Wan to answer.
Obi-Wan glances between Qui-Gon and the Healer. “To help me?”
Healer Sayulli nods. “Yes, Padawan. To help you. And I can’t help you unless you want to be helped.”
“There was no need to yell at the Healer, Padawan.”
“Sorry, Healer Sayulli.”
She smiles at him. “I’ve had grown Masters give me a harder time than Obi-Wan here. He’s like an angry little loth cat.”
If Obi-Wan had the ability, he would have hissed at her.
________
Obi-Wan isn’t allowed to stay in his old rooms anymore. It was decided that it would be in his own best interest to move in with Qui-Gon. To the dusty old Padawan room where Xanatos plotted his dastardly deeds before he left the Jedi. When they opened the door, finally freeing whatever poor spirits Xanatos had sealed away, the foul odor flowed forth.
Obi-Wan scrunched his nose. It smells like a teenage boy died in there.
Qui-Gon stands at the threshold with his arms wrapped around a small box of Obi-Wan’s personal items. Obi-Wan now regrets giving Qui-Gon his model starships to carry instead of his clothing, fearing that his Master would drop them.
Qui-Gon looks haunted. He hasn’t opened that door since Xanatos himself last closed it. Obi-Wan has unknowingly torn open an old wound.
Obi-Wan sets his box down and gently pries the one from Qui-Gon’s hands. He takes Qui-Gon’s larger hand into his own, rubbing his thumb over his Master’s hand. “One step at a time, right Master?”
“Right,” Qui-Gon agrees.
They systematically strip the room of everything old, unsalvageable, or inherently tied to Xanatos. His old clothing was to be washed and redistributed by the Quartermaster.
“How do socks even get this way?” Obi-Wan asks, holding up a cluster of stale socks.
Qui-Gon’s eyes widen. “Put those down!”
Qui-Gon steers Obi-Wan to the refresher and made him wash his hands thoroughly. Obi-Wan is still so confused. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Qui-Gon insists, biting back a laugh. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.” When they came back they were both wearing sturdy gloves.
________
This arbitrary morning, Obi-Wan awoke on his own. As usual, that meant bursting into the waking world while fleeing another nightmare. He unwraps the blankets from his legs and shakily stands. He felt for his Master in the Force, and was relieved his nightmare hadn’t woken the elder Jedi. What Qui-Gon doesn’t know won't hurt him.
Moving as quietly as possible, Obi-Wan threw on his Padawan clothes and his robes and tip-toed out the door. He checked the bond again. Qui-Gon was still asleep. Good. Obi-Wan’s not-waking-his-master streak is progressing quite nicely.
The archives welcomed their frequent visitor back for another morning escapade. This time, instead of getting ahead on coursework, he wanted to investigate something more- delicate.
Obi-Wan had a ritual; A secret one that he planned to hide from everyone forever.
Obi-Wan cuts himself every other day. He doesn’t know exactly why- or maybe he does, but it's no one's business but his own. He needs it. One could say it keeps him sane.
***********
The first time he did it, he was fresh from his very first meeting with his mind healer, doubting that he’d ever get better. He needed the pain to leave! He needed it gone! With every breath, Obi-Wan wonders why he keeps on breathing. Cerasi is dead! Bruck is dead! So many Young, dead! This is Obi-Wan’s third chance to live the life of a Jedi, and here he was, squandering it. Obi-Wan looked blindly about his room, grabbing for his nearest model ship. He gripped it in his hand, feeling the fragile pieces give beneath his raging hand. Is that what his hands were meant for? Destruction? He needs it-himself-to stop. Quiet his mind and soothe his pounding heart.
Obi-Wan wasn’t thinking clearly when he grabbed a sharp scrap and sliced his hand. At this point, weeks upon weeks later, he can’t remember where he got the piece from. It might have fallen from his ship, it might have been laying around his room… But it was there. One clean little cut and he could see clearly.
There was a moment of nothing, and then tiny bubbles of red broke through his skin. It truly was a small cut, though he could feel its sweet pain when he moved his hand.
Obi-Wan looked at his hand like he’d never seen it before. Had he done this? Broken his own skin? It quelled the raging beast inside, and Obi-Wan knew this would not be the last time. The Padawan kept the wound on his hand as a reminder, but migrated to his outer thighs, knowing they would be hidden there.
Obi-Wan’s lightsaber was off limits. The gentle spark of life that was his lightsaber cried out at each of his injuries. He would not dare put it through the pain of hurting him. Burns, he also found, were harder to clean. From a practical standpoint, cutting made more sense.
Buying a set of thin blades just sort of happened. He was on an errand for his Master and stumbled upon the set of blades by accident. They were clean and sharp. If he kept them clean enough, the wounds could heal freely and bask in the grounding sting.
***********
Obi-Wan barely stifles his annoyed groan. Another datapad, another Master calling his little habit “self-destructive”. He wasn’t trying to destroy himself! It wasn’t self-destruction. It was- endurance. He did this because he wanted- had- to live.
The Masters of old didn’t understand. It seemed like no one did.
“Is everything alright, Padawan Kenobi?”
Obi-Wan snaps up to see Jocasta Nu standing above him. His smile was shaky at best. “Just reading, Madame.”
“Your frustration is leaking into the Force, young man. You’ll find life to be just that much easier,” she pinches her frail fingers together, “when you ask for assistance. Ask someone who knows.”
“I don’t need your assistance, Master,” Obi-Wan asserts. He slid the datapad he was reading down to the floor, trying to replace it with the back-up text he brought along.
Jocasta bent down and grabbed the other datapad anyway. Sithspit! He needs to work on his subtlety.
Madame Nu scans through the first datapad, and then another, and then another. Her expression is hard to decipher. That only made it worse. Other than the one outlier, any fool could find a common theme.
“These are rather outdated,” the old woman remarks casually. “I can help you find ones that are more accurate.” They hand the datapads over to a droid. “While I am hesitant to remove them from our library entirely, perhaps I should add archival notes to them.”
“I could help you with that,” Obi-Wan offers shyly.
Madame Nu smiled. “I’ll let you do your reading, first.”
Madame Nu ambled down the row of shelving. She turned to him, just as she was about to round the corner. “If you need help, any at all, you can come to me. You are more precious than you may realize, Obi-Wan Kenobi.” She gave him a meaningful look and then left. He had a feeling that she was talking about more than the archives.
________
These books, they were all him. Not about him, but they spoke to him. They understood. The voices immortalized in text understood him, reassured him that he wasn’t crazy. It wasn’t a personal failing to struggle. He wasn’t failing as a Jedi for succumbing to self-injurious urges.
So many other Jedi fought their way through such pain, and he could too.
“How?” He asked the texts. They gave signs and symptoms. Not a cure. He wanted someone to fix him. They gave him similar answers.
Tell someone.
Talk to someone about it.
Confide in someone you trust.
The first person he thought of was Qui-Gon, but he was afraid.
What if Qui-Gon repudiates him on the spot? What if Qui-Gon calls him crazy and abandons him to the Healers? Was there a limit to how much the mind healers would tolerate before they decided he wasn’t fit to be a Jedi? Healer Sayulli seems to be rapidly reaching it as it is.
"I have to do this," Obi-Wan tells himself.
He checked the Chrono. It was 8 in the morning, standard. He should be heading back soon anyway. Obi-Wan clenches his fists. He can do this. He will tell his Master over breakfast.