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Although Obi-Wan stayed until he knew that Padmé and her children were out of danger, he knew they couldn’t travel together for long: the very idea of Negotiator and the Senator of the Naboo in one place was too fresh a reminder for everyone, most of all to them. There was supposed to be a third in-between, cracking jokes and sending glances full of admiration.
And even without Anakin they were too recognisable a pair, so Obi-Wan said his goodbyes and went… somewhere. It was safer to travel without destination in mind, and later on it became safer still to not attach himself to a community.
Those were a liability: everyone knew, after all, that the Jedi were to be compassionate, to give themselves up for others’ sake.
In the end Obi-Wan became just Ben Kenobi, a smuggler with a face hidden behind a scarf and a breathing apparatus that was in reality a voice decoder: there were enough recordings of his speech to make identification easy. He managed to find a ship for himself, and even if the Organas provided the initial credits, he had paid them tenfold since, in money, and people brought to safety as well as goods delivered where they were needed.
It was easy: a routine of hyperspace or various cantinas that were in the end similar enough yet could always be interrupted by an Imperial patrol, or another smuggler trying to destroy the competition, or, in one spectacular situation, an actual revolt against the local government.
This Ben Kenobi had run away from, mostly because he knew that whatever the grievances the actual moving force behind the people on the streets was too closely connected to the Empire for this to be a natural procession of events. He did send all the information he could to the nearest Rebellion spy he knew.
This continued on for several years – too long to count, too short to forget. He still sometimes woke up in cold sweat remembering the fires of Mustafar, and he still avoided some planets – Tatooine being one, Coruscant another.
And somewhere around the tenth anniversary of the greatest atrocity of their age, namely the establishing of Palpatine’s Empire, Ben Kenobi sauntered into yet another cantina, ready to meet yet another client – and almost stopped short, recognising a good friend.
Still, he knew his role, had perfected it for just this kind of occasion.
“What can I do for you, fair lady?” he said instead, even if he didn’t manage the tone to be light enough.
The flirting was to be expected from a smuggler, even if the smuggler had long since buried any feelings he had for this specific woman.
“Sit down, Ben,” Padmé replied, carefully looking him over.
She didn’t change too much: a few more lines, quite a number of gray hairs, unless that was a new cover, a more subdued cloak more reminiscent of the order’s robes than her usual wardrobe – but it was still Padmé.
“You are easier to get hold of as a transport than as a friend,” she said and thinly smiled her negotiating smile.
“I now have a reputation to uphold, and it includes being somewhat easy to find,” he replied, and then, mostly because he didn’t have many friends left, he added: “but a few of our mutual acquaintances do know how to contact me. Was Bail too busy..?”
“I didn’t want to bring him and Breha into this. They already did so much for me, it would be reprehensible to saddle them with yet another secret,” Padmé intercepted. Then she looked around, to see if they weren’t watched, – a gesture Kenobi had never seen her do before but then a decade had passed, – and continued in a lower voice: “I do want to hire you.”
“Where do you need to go?” Kenobi asked, and slowly exhaled, letting go of the slight hurt that was brought on by the thought of Padmé wanting him only for business.
“It’s more complicated than that,” she replied and explained her predicament.
Leia and Luke, whom Kenobi had once delivered with her to Naboo and then haven’t seen for a decade, were now identified as force-sensitive. A routine check in a hospital brought Luke’s medichrorians’ level to an unnecessary attention, and once they escaped that, Padmé had Leia’s blood checked as well.
It did bring some pranks into better perspective, as well as Leia’s tendency to guess with deadly accuracy inner motives and even thoughts of people she conversed with, but it also posed a problem: they both had to be trained.
And Padmé wanted him to be their teacher.
“But.. I can’t! You know what happened last time I was a master to a padawan,” Kenobi said, almost ready to leave.
She grasped his hand, her touch deceptively light: it was obvious that he wouldn’t have an easy time throwing her off.
“I know, Ben. I know and I trust you to see my children as themselves, not as a shadow of their father,” she said pleadingly.
It was very much an act, Kenobi knew that, and yet it wasn’t. Padmé might not have that much of a choice – how many grown up Jedi were left, he, Ahsoka, Quinlan, Magister Yoda? – but she could find another to instruct. Could even get her hand on a holocron or two.
The fact that she trusted him – after everything that happened, after the way he acted back then, after Mustafar! – was overwhelming.
“How do you know I won’t make the same mistakes?” Kenobi asked.
“You changed. We all did,” her smile was now full of genuine pain, and he twisted his hand slightly to give hers a reassuring squeeze. “If you do want to atone for your mistakes, then help my children learn their legacy.”
“I don’t stay long in one place,” Kenobi replied, and realised too late what a give-away such a sentence was: were he not seriously tempted, he wouldn’t think about the practicalities.
Given how Padmé glanced at him, she noticed his slip too.
“Leia would love that. She is never contained for long,” she said, almost teasingly.
Kenobi wanted to know Leia. And Luke. And see for himself just how much Padmé changed in the decade that passed.
“And I’ll be there, for them and for you,” Padmé finished, her gaze steady and certain. “I know I should have contacted you earlier.”
“I might have not been ready to move on earlier,” Kenobi replied and then nodded. “I must warn you that my teaching record is abysmal and that I have only trained one padawan before.”
“And helped him train Ahsoka,” Padmé replied.
He nodded.
“And that my ship is not the best for long-term habitation of four people.”
“We might find another,” she said, and added: “You should continue with your cover. Luke loves piloting.”
Surprisingly enough, Kenobi wanted to learn whether there something else in Luke or Leia from Anakin? Was there anything that would be too much for Obi-Wan to handle, something that he would again notice too late?
Padmé’s hand was reassuringly warm around his, and that alone seemed to shatter his doubts: he knew almost next to nothing about Luke and Leia, and thus it was not logical to worry just yet.
“Well, I do happen to be a good enough pilot, so they’ll at least learn a proper profession,” Kenobi said and actually looked forward to something for the first time in a decade.
He also promised himself that he would be more attentive this time, both to the children and to Padmé herself. Were he a moment too late on Mustafar, she might have died at Anakin’s hand.
“Do not doubt yourself,” Padmé said sternly, and Kenobi masked his surprise by chuckling.
He wondered just how soon he would regret his decision.
***
“Are you our father?” Leia asked a day into their new life, right as Kenobi took a sip of caf.
That naturally went flying, and as Leia explained her reasons – an ex-Jedi general, nice to mother, good-looking or so mother thought, – Kenobi slightly adjusted his expectations.
It seemed that he should have regretted his chosen path even since he first saw Padmé Amidala, a day or two earlier than he met Anakin Skywalker.
And what was that about him being good-looking?