Chapter Text
"I hear Anakin has returned from his sojourn abroad."
Trust the Duchess of Mandalore to fearlessly approach when he'd gone out of his way to separate himself from the crush of the ton by lingering on a darkened balcony. Obi-Wan sipped his sherry to fortify himself against his old friend and one-time paramour's sharp wits. "So I have heard," he replied, striving for an air of nonchalance.
The Duchess, resplendent in an elegant gown with a diamond necklace that matched the gleam in her eyes, wasn't fooled one bit. "Are you not the least bit curious about his travels? How he has fared?"
Obi-Wan lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug. "Curiosity, my dear Duchess, is a luxury I can ill afford. Mr. Skywalker's exploits, however intriguing, are none of my concern."
"None of your concern?" She let out a bubbling laugh. "Who are you trying to convince with such a poor pretense? Not me, and certainly not Society. You dote on that boy. Everyone knows the vested interest you have in Anakin's welfare."
"Had." Obi-Wan's grip tightened momentarily on his glass. "Had, Your Grace. Mr. Skywalker is a grown man who walked away from—who left. His welfare is his own responsibility."
"Perhaps," she conceded, her expression troubled. She touched his sleeve. "Tell me truthfully, what happened between you? We all thought—"
"You all thought wrong."
The Duchess stilled. "Is that so?"
"Satine," Obi-Wan said quietly, his voice belying the storm of emotions he kept tightly leashed. "If you have any love for me in your heart, I beg you to drop this line of questioning. There never was anything between young Mr. Skywalker and myself that should be of interest to you or anyone else. I was his friend, his guardian after Qui-Gon and Shmi's passing. Nothing else."
Faint strains of music swirled through the night air. A waltz had begun, the melody sweet and sweeping. Satine glanced over her shoulder—she'd likely promised the dance to some eager young buck.
She turned back to him. "Be on your guard, old friend. Do not underestimate Anakin. He may surprise you yet."
As she drifted away to rejoin the festivities, Obi-Wan swirled his sherry, contemplating her words. The Duchess was seldom wrong, and he agreed with her. Anakin would surprise him, somehow, that much was undoubted. But Obi-Wan was resolute.
There would be no second act for them. The curtain had already fallen on everything they once had, and anything that might have been.
Inside the glittering ballroom, Anakin navigated throngs of elegantly attired guests. He cloaked his anxiety behind a veneer of confidence, nodding at acquaintances while deftly avoiding conversations in his search for Obi-Wan.
Fear prickled the back of his neck. Sweat gathered on his palms inside his gloves. No matter how many times he reassured himself that he had changed, that he was older, taller, different from the child who had fled—being back made him feel…
It made him feel like that fool again. Like that lovesick, pathetic, fool he'd tried so hard to bury.
During his time abroad, traveling to places where no one had ever heard of the ton, he had sent Obi-Wan a dozen missives to confirm his continued survival. No replies had come. The silence had echoed Obi-Wan's rigid stance from their last night together, that fateful conversation when Anakin—
No. Thinking about that stolen kiss sapped his courage. Now, buffeted by twirling skirts and extravagant displays of wealth, he needed to show Obi-Wan that he was no longer a child. He had grown up.
The chandeliers cast a shimmering glow over the attendees. Windu hosted only one ball per year, and in attendance would be all members of the Order of Jedi—the not-precisely-secret organization of noble lords and ladies whose interests united in maintaining the peace of the land. As the adopted son of Qui-Gon Jinn, Anakin had automatically inherited membership, but he hadn't decided yet whether to join when he finally came of age. Since he'd been gone, officially he was still not quite in the Order, though he belonged just enough to warrant a standing invitation to the ball.
So did Obi-Wan, as one of the Order's members. In all the years Anakin had known him, Obi-Wan had always attended. Why would this time be any different?
Finally, he spotted familiar auburn hair and a well-tailored green coat on the far side of the room. Obi-Wan stood by the balcony doors, his posture impeccable, a calm presence amidst the lively crowd.
Anakin's heart skipped a beat. He took a deep breath to steady himself.
I am not a pathetic boy anymore. I have lain with women and men. I have been in duels. I have built wondrous machines. I have gambled and paid my debts. I have been in jail. I have smuggled medicines. I have saved lives.
Anakin straightened his shoulders. The moment had arrived to confront his past and shape his future.
With renewed resolve, he made his way toward Obi-Wan, each step closing the distance. The crowd seemed to part for him, the noise fading into the background as his focus narrowed. It was just him and Obi-Wan now, everything else a blur.
As he neared, Obi-Wan turned around—alerted by instinct, perhaps.
Their eyes met. Anakin faltered. A flicker of surprise crossed Obi-Wan's face, quickly masked by composure.
Anakin offered a bow.
"Lord Kenobi." The title fit oddly in his mouth, his tongue ill at ease in giving it shape. "You appear well. It's good to see you again."
Obi-Wan's eyes softened just a fraction, then cooled. "Mr. Skywalker," he replied neutrally. "Welcome back."
"... Thank you." Anakin sought something other than indifference on that beloved face, only to be confronted with a wall so sturdy and built so high that the loftiest mountains would have no other option but to gaze upwards in awe, the very top lost to the clouds.
All right. That was not promising.
A part of him had hoped that Obi-Wan, overcome with regret for their parting, would reciprocate his affections. But that old, soft self quietened as Anakin's mouth pulled upwards at the corners in an approximation of a smile. Oh, yes, it hurt like the blazes to be greeted thus by the man who had been the keystone of Anakin's hopes. The man that Anakin had fantasized about, his hands, his lips, his beard, the red and gold hues of his hair. His future husband, once upon a time.
A stranger, now, implied Obi-Wan's aloof distance. An unwanted stranger, indicated the way Obi-Wan gazed past his shoulder.
A cut direct might have drawn less blood. "Let me not keep you from enjoying your evening, my lord."
He bowed again, and did not inquire if he could call upon Obi-Wan in the morning. Did not beg for permission to be allowed back into the cozy house they had shared, to curl up in his old bed, in his old bedroom, surrounded by his belongings. Surely all of that had been thrown out after he'd left. Why preserve the reminders of a mistake?
"... Mr. Skywalker," was all Obi-Wan said, then turned away.
Mace Windu, the Earl of Essel, was waiting to ambush him at the top of the stairs when Anakin started up them, and then it was too late to deviate without drawing attention. With a groan clenched between his teeth, Anakin met his fate.
Mace was a severe man, with an equally severe manner. Anakin had heard tell from Obi-Wan that the earl was not an eternally humorless disciplinarian, but as Anakin had yet to witness that with his own eyes, he had doubts.
"Mr. Skywalker," Mace said.
"My lord." Anakin bobbed his head, a beat late. He'd grown too lax and accustomed to the casual ease of walking amongst commoners like himself, amongst the desperate, the criminal. "Your ball is a success."
"A credit to my wife, not to me."
"Then her ball is a success," Anakin retorted. Then he winced. "No disrespect meant, my lord."
Mace snorted. "So you have remained your irredeemable self. How reassuring to discover a constant in the world."
That's me. The constant fuckup.
Anakin didn't reply. As the head of the Order, Mace had been in and out of his home for most of his life. Upon the dissolvement of Qui-Gon's title and lands, due to Anakin being an adopted son, and therefore not eligible, it had been the Order that had taken him in. Though he recalled little in the way of details from those miserable days, he knew that it had been a close call that he hadn't become the Earl's ward.
A close call, and Obi-Wan's doing, for he had argued for his right to be made Anakin's guardian, despite being only five and twenty at the time.
In a slightly different timeline, what shape would his live have taken, Anakin wondered. Was he doomed to love Obi-Wan in all lifetimes? Or would his path have led elsewhere?
"Have you made up your mind regarding the Order?" Windu asked, drawing him back to his present circumstances.
"... I haven't thought about it," Anakin hedged.
He hadn't. His plan in returning to Coruscant was to try one more time with Obi-Wan. If Obi-Wan's answer proved immutable, then Anakin knew he could waste no time. As a commoner raised above his station, he made a poor prospect in the cutthroat marriage market.
Quite literally a poor. Whoever would choose him?
The shame from Obi-Wan's dismissal blistered. This was his folly, Anakin knew—his goddamn pride, his moodiness, his impulsive nature. All his faults tumbled together as he opened his mouth. "Would you sponsor me, my lord? My future is uncertain without a wife or husband."
Mace paused and then spoke slowly. "Are you certain I should assume that role for you, Mr. Skywalker? Your guardian—"
"Former guardian." Former guardian, former friend, formerly mine. His thoughts contradicted themselves, clashing in fury until it seemed that he could not possibly contain such violence within his breast. "There is no one to undertake this on my behalf."
If Mace found this odd, he hid it well. "A sorry state of affairs that your parents would not tolerate. You may count on my aid. Where do you lodge now?"
Anakin named the inn he'd found on the border between Coruscant's upper crust and its less desirable citizens. Compared to the weeks he'd spent in Corellian hovels, avoiding the owners of the local disreputable hells, it was downright quaint.
The Earl's face twisted with dismay. "That is not acceptable, Mr. Skywalker." He slanted a glare down at the happy crowd, brows pinched.
Anakin suspected that he searched for a certain viscount. "It's what I can afford."
"I find it hard to believe that O—" Mace inhaled sharply. "Never mind. Come back tomorrow, after the bell strikes noon. We will speak at length on this business." He peered at Anakin shrewdly. "Best you prepare yourself, lad. Once your purpose becomes known, the fields will be awash with blood."
Anakin choked on his laughter. "Hardly, sir. None know what a small catch I am better than I." And if he had forgotten, Obi-Wan's reaction had been an apt reminder.
Obi-Wan was no more capable of departing from the ball than he could seize the moon and drag it down to the earth. The mind and the heart argued, even as his eyes traced the sharpness of Anakin's new profile, no longer tender with the delicacy of the first bloom of youth, seeking to reconcile the past and the present, finding only changes. Even his hair had grown overlong, lightened by the sun, messy curls pushed back and away from his forehead in a style that rakes spent hours and a heavy application of lacquer to achieve.
What are Anakin and Windu discussing with such intensity?
Ten days after Anakin had packed a valise and left, Windu had visited Obi-Wan's office to ask why his ward had not yet entered Society, as had been the plan. Obi-Wan had fended him off with a curated version of the truth, excised of the slick heat of Anakin's mouth, the sweetness of his tongue, the greedy clutch of his fingers. A hollowed-out truth that boiled down to, "We agreed to part ways. He seeks to explore the world. He'll be back."
A travesty.
On some nights, he still woke in a dazed stupor, returned to that night in the library, on that settee that he could no longer look at without flushing, with Anakin sliding into his lap like it was the most natural thing. His Anakin, his darling, heavy-lidded with desire and, Obi-Wan had suddenly understood, ripe for the picking.
Beautiful, capricious, dangerous.
Up above at the top of the stairs, Windu and Anakin shook hands. Perhaps Anakin intended to take his rightful place in the Order. And if he did, it set the stage for their torn relationship to mend, for Obi-Wan to one day apologize for leading Anakin to believe that they would, could, ever be anything but friends.
Someday. When the dreams of Anakin's hands winding into Obi-Wan's hair, tugging at his cravat, needy and vulnerable with words of love on his lips, no longer haunted him.