Chapter Text
Obi-Wan has, admittedly, thought many many times about his soul family. He yearns for them sometimes, longs for and wishes he could have one, knowing all the while it’s not the Jedi way and it shouldn’t be a thought that so much as crossed his mind.
He knows there are Jedi who look at their marks and talk about it, even if it’s forbidden. It happens. Everyone in his creche shared their marks when they were little. Siri, Bant, and Quinlin were delighted to label each other as their soul mates. They’d giggled and poured over each other’s marks for hours before finally swearing each other to permanent secrecy.
Obi-Wan will admit his heart ached more than it should to find out he didn’t have a single mark that matched theirs. That, mostly, strangely, his marks hadn’t even come in yet. His first one faded in, a strange purple-red fan-like object, at about twelve.
That was at the time he and the rest of his creche were already slowly accepting their soul family should never be named, much less matter.
He had wanted to belong with them so badly, but accepted – begrudgingly – that he didn’t belong with his creche, that his destiny and duty were to the Order and Order alone, as they should have accepted long ago
His next mark, a gold dragon, had drifted in four years later with burning intensity. Which is old to be forming a soul-family across the galaxy, and Obi-Wan long accepted he would never see the said person’s face once in his life. He had told himself it never mattered, too, that he had no time for a soul family or the complicated requirements it came with when his duty was to the Jedi Code and no one else.
He understands though, now, why they’re something the Jedi are taught never to know, because knowing means attached and as his heart aches with the grief over losing his master, he’s admittedly grateful he doesn’t know if Qui-Gon was part of his soul family, or who the said people even are.
He told himself for years that he’d believed and accepted it, but then as he and Anakin train one day, his padawan jumps forwards with a happy excited, “look!”, and he stumbles to a stop mid kata and looks.
His tiny (adorable) padawan is proudly showing off his wrist, and the soulmate markings with them.
“Anakin, we’ve been over it, you’re supposed to keep those covered –” Obi-Wan starts scolding, but lurches to a halt when he realizes.
He knows those markings.
The purple-red fan thing, whatever it is, and the orange lines that curve outwards to shape into a diamond.
Those are the same as… Obi-Wan’s, just replaced with a green swirling infinity mark instead of the gold of a snarling dragon’s head.
And he looks at his own wrist, to see the cloth all Jedi wear over them came off somehow, and he hadn’t noticed.
Qui-Gon’s death shook him, he’s supposed to be better than that. But he’s not. He is not the best choice to train Anakin. He knows that. But he promised. And Anakin gives him something to focus on where he’s got… nothing else.
And also, on Anakin’s wrist is a strange blue mark that sort of looks like eyes, but not quite.
Startled, Obi-Wan looks down at his own.
He has another one. A fourth mark fading in, meaning this is someone twenty-five years younger than him, which just doesn’t happen as far as he’s aware. They’re talking about something that’s beyond simple weird.
Everything with Anakin is weird, he tells himself, head spinning, dizzy and faint as he stares at the matching marks.
“This is sooo wizard!” Anakin yells with glee, “We’re a soul family!” And then his tiny, skinny arms are around Obi-Wan’s middle in a hug.
The last person who hugged Obi-Wan was Quinlin a year ago because he wouldn’t leave him alone… Qui-Gon has hugged him, maybe, but Jedi don’t hug, and it’s double the list of things his head can’t work out for the day as he stares wide-eyed at the boy hugging him.
What does he actually do?
Obi-Wan awkwardly pats his back.
The Force hums happily, or maybe it’s just the Force responding to his padawan’s wild moods – who can say?
He and Anakin are soul family.
“Mom says that means we’ll get to stay together forever!” Anakin continues happily gushing, “Or at least we’re supposed to!! Do you know who the other two marks are? The blue and orange ones?”
This is the happiest he’s seen Anakin since coming to the Temple, and it breaks his heart to cut that off, but the Jedi way is – different.
He’s not supposed to know.
It’s yet another jarring reminder that the boy grew up with totally different beliefs.
(Obi-Wan does not think about Satine’s utter disgust when Obi-Wan told her about the soul markings, and how he refused to share anything. Mandalorians are all about loyalty and community, no wonder Satine is so infuriating.)
“I know you’re excited, Anakin,” he says as gently as he can, “But attachment is not the Jedi way.”
His face scrunches. “But soul families are supposed to –”
“We are never to know them,” Obi-Wan explains, gently peeling the boy off him, though his disappointment and confusion are pouring clean enough into the Force probably half the Temple senses this whirlwind. “I explained about attachments earlier – they are dangerous.”
“But the soul family is anyone’s greatest strength!”
“The Jedi all have a sense of community with each other. It is not any particular one, or two people,” Obi-Wan tries telling him.
Anakin is his soul family.
They shouldn’t even be near each other, but they are and he swears the Force brought them here for a reason. It shouldn’t matter but it matters, and he wants to cling to it desperately because Anakin is all he has now that Qui-Gon is gone.
What would the Council do if they knew?
“It is best if you never mention it again,” Obi-Wan tells him firmly. He really, really wishes he wasn’t the one who had to deal with these conversations. It’s not easy.
Time drifts on, and he keeps thinking about it. He keeps noticing how right the Force feels whenever they’re together and tries burying it deeper and further away to block it from mind. It feels traitorous to think about, even more wrong to hide, but he buries it deep down where he tries to cut it off from mind.
Qui-Gon’s loss broke something in him, but Anakin gives him something to think about, someone to think about, and while it’s terrifying and he’s terrifying, it’s still something to hold onto.
He has to keep telling himself not to get too attached.
It’s another week before Anakin brings up the soul families again. “The purple-red thing is Padme,” he blurts out before Obi-Wan can tell him to please stop talking.
And then it leaves him frowning in confusion. Why would a Jedi be bonded to some random person on a planet he’ll likely never see again? Padme had been nice, but Obi-Wan sensed nothing like what he feels towards Anakin, and it doesn’t matter. But he’s seeing more why it’s considered distracting. He can’t think about ever seeing her again when he has Anakin to raise.
“Remember what I told you about this?” he chides gently.
“But I don’t understand!” the kid bursts out, “A Soul Family is the most important thing anyone can ever have! No one can take away what’s in your heart.”
Obi-Wan has no idea what he’s been through. He reminds himself to be patient – Anakin wasn’t born a Jedi, he’s nine, but he’s no normal padawan. He’s… a former slave, whatever that even means for him. He’s seen things most adults never do.
The way he says take makes him think it’s something beyond what he knows.
And also, why did no one tell him raising a child was so hard? Thank you, Quinlin, Obi-Wan is never asking his advice again.
“A Jedi’s only allegiance is to the Order,” Obi-Wan reminds.
No one can take what’s in your heart, the kid says, and he remembers his master with a lightsaber run through his chest and his throat feels tight.
“I don’t understand,” Anakin protests, “I’ve spent my whole life wanting to meet mine!”
Obi-Wan… wants to. But it really doesn’t matter. “It distracts from our duties,” he replies firmly, “The attachment can cloud our judgement. We cannot sacrifice the lives of others even for our own.”
“But I would do anything for mine,” Anakin tells him in all the innocent earnestness a nine-year-old kid could have. “I would for you.”
His throat is ridiculously tight from emotion, and Obi-Wan is simultaneously very, very tired. “You need to let it go,” Obi-Wan tells him firmly.
If anyone finds out about this, chances are, the Council will have Anakin taken away, and the mere thought sends a spiral of panic through him, and he knows he shouldn’t operate on fear, but he promised Qui-Gon he would raise this kid, and that’s what he’ll do.
Anakin gives him something to live for. Something to fight for… something to die for.
This isn’t the Jedi way either, it’s not the Light or the words of the Code, this is about him and Anakin, for the short month they’ve known one another.
But if Anakin keeps talking, someone will hear and the Council will eventually take him away, and Obi-Wan refuses to let that happen… Soul Family or no.
He’ll have to figure out a way to tell Anakin that someday.
The thought of losing him is way too terrifying for it to end well. Jedi are not supposed to…
He can’t let it go.
The boy is becoming his world.
If Qui-Gon ever felt like this towards him, he never appreciated it enough.
But Obi-Wan finds himself wondering more and more if Anakin really will… make it as a Jedi. He has the heart, and he means well, but his passions drive him too hard, his past clings on with claws and never let’s go, and he loves too deeply to not let it cloud him.
Obi-Wan’s seen him digging through whatever he can get his hands on about Padme more than he cares to count, and always tries to look away, telling himself he’ll grow out of it.
His creche mates went through the same thing. Other Jedi have, too, but they figure it out.
If anybody can do it, it’s going to be Anakin.
Obi-Wan believes in him – though his padawan is still struggling. He can’t let go, He certainly won’t let go of Obi-Wan… for which he is actually selfishly glad.
But he won’t let go, and even if he does keep his marks covered, Obi-Wan knows it’s always that he’s just begrudgingly conceding instead of accepting it.
He certainly doesn’t do it because he wants to.
Obi-Wan has been having too many questions for his liking about whether Anakin will pull through when his padawan himself comes up to him after a meeting with Palpatine, hands him his lightsaber, and tells him he’s leaving.
He wants to argue. He wants to yell and demand that he stays and this is the stupidest thing he’s ever heard, but – he’s not trapping the kid somewhere he’s not happy.
Many Jedi go through a phase like this. If Anakin left, he might find the family he craves for so badly. He can only say with overwhelming relief that Master Yoda sensed something, somehow, and sends them on what’s supposed to be one last mission together.
It’s another normal negotiation mission, searching for an old distress signal and crashing into a planet torn apart by war.
Obi-Wan has seen many like this over his days, but Anakin always seems even less phased, blinking war and violence in the face without a twitch.
At his age… Obi-Wan wasn’t even a padawan yet. It took him years to realize how normal war is.
He’ll – probably – leave the Order if Anakin does. He won’t let him be on his own out there, but he still clings to the mission if it somehow turns out to be their last ever mission together. He tried his hardest to teach Anakin the Jedi way, but somehow Anakin simply doesn’t fit.
If he couldn’t protect his Jedi Master, who was a Jedi Master, how can he protect Anakin? He’s only thirteen, even if he can hold his own fairly well.
He still worries. That comes from losing his master, no doubt, or maybe it’s the attachment the Jedi warned him about. It can’t be normal to get this attached – but Anakin is special. He’s the Chosen One, he needs to be trained well.
He can’t leave the Order in the middle of his training when the entire galaxy needs him.
Obi-Wan tries not to think about how many times he’s stared longingly at the golden dragon symbol etched onto his wrist and wished he had faces for the other marks, that it was something he could think about – but it’s not the Jedi way, so he doesn’t let himself think about it.
Too much.
The war they’ve been sent to settle is just another, vicious and brutal, a planet that’s been torn apart for perhaps centuries without the Republic’s awareness or involvement.
The children Anakin’s age here, he knows for sure, know nothing about a world outside of war.
And then Anakin gets kidnapped. It’s not the first time it’s happened, but he has to trust his padawan will be fine…
And he is.
Anakin comes back, freed himself all on his own and got the other children together to help him end the war, or at least to try to.
Obi-Wan can do nothing to forcibly stop these people from fighting, but he was Qui-Gon’s padawan and he’s not walking away from a planet at war and doing absolutely nothing. Anakin would never forgive him if he did that; he’d probably never forgive himself. So, he calls the Republic in with a made-up story about finding fuel reserves, which will bring the Republic’s forces in and have them overtake the planet, hopefully enforcing peace between both sides.
“The Republic did not come because of Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he tells his padawan in the aftermath of the battle and as the Republic ships arrive and settle over the planet, “They are here because a Jedi called. Being a Jedi is not just about power, or lightsabers, or even skill with the Force. It is about connection, being part of something bigger. I am stronger as a part of the Jedi Order than I ever could be alone.”
Anakin says nothing on the way back to Coruscant, his face thoughtful, and Obi-Wan knows he’s thinking about it. He doesn’t know what to do, except to wait – and worry about what the outcome will be, but in the end it’s still Anakin’s choice, and he belongs with the Jedi, but he still struggles with it so so much.
Yoda had told him not to worry. Not specifically, but implied it enough.
Obi-Wan still worries. He’ll train Anakin even if he’s not with the Order, but he doesn’t want to leave. This is the life he has and it’s where they both belong.
It’s back on Coruscant that he finally turns to Anakin and offers him the lightsaber he’d entrusted Obi-Wan with throughout the mission.
“The road lies before you, Anakin Skywalker. Will you walk it alone?”
“No, Master. As a Jedi,” he replies, eyes burning with all the love and passion Anakin Skywalker has, with the adoration and respect that Obi-Wan knows a Jedi should never have for another. “If you’ll show me the way.”
Anakin stays. He stays where he belongs, and Obi-Wan will take that… gratefully.