Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Well,” Anakin says, draping himself artfully against one of the columns framing his landing pad. There’s a faint evening breeze in Coruscant that stirs the wisps of his hair, just cool enough that he can feel goosebumps break out over his exposed chest as his nipples harden. He considers tying his robe closed, but he knows perfectly well the pleasant picture he makes, and why ruin someone else’s good view over a little discomfort? “While I can’t say this is the first time a Jedi has shown up at my door, this is certainly the first time four have come at once.”

Mace Windu’s eye twitches. Anakin can’t stop the smirk from flickering across his face even if he wanted to. “How delightfully….repressed of you,” he continues, dropping into a deep bow as the four Jedi dismount from their speeders and come forward.

“Good evening, Companion Skywalker,” one of the other Jedi greets him calmly, hand extended. Anakin doesn’t recognize her, as he had only met the Jedi Council once when he was a child. An impactful event, to be sure, but the only people he can really remember from that day are Windu, Yoda. Qui-Gon Jinn. His padawan--Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Good thing Windu and Yoda are here then. “Good evening, my lady,” he responds, slipping into his Companion facade easily. Be polite, be charming, his instructor's voice murmurs in hiis head.  They already want you--make them want you more . He kisses the back of her hand when she gamely lets him hold it. Windu scowls.

“Inside we should go, for this conversation,” Yoda announces. “For you, a proposition we have.”

“Of course,” Anakin says quite graciously. “I am something of an expert on being propositioned.”

Not waiting for a verbal response--Windu’s pinched expression being more than enough--Anakin turns to lead them into his apartment. He recognizes a business deal when he sees one, which is a shame because he had put on his best, silkiest, and most suggestive robes when C3PO had received a transmission request from the Jedi Council. But considering Yoda had shown up--well. Anakin turned very few paying patrons away from his quarters as a general rule, but he wouldn’t have even let that little green troll get off his ship before sending him away.

Anakin can’t help but shiver in faint disgust at even the thought of sex and Yoda . He truly hates his mind sometimes.

He sinks gracefully into a plush high-backed chair, crossing his legs as he observes the jedi in his living room. This is his actual living room, not the opulent parlor he used for guests, but the Jedi still look vaguely uncomfortable. Amidst the red silk decor and golden accents, the Jedis’ beige and white robes stand out like a sore thumb. “I’m listening,” he says, tracing his hands over the embroidering of his garment in a distracted manner. It’s all calculated, though. You have my attention , he is saying with just the drag of the tips of his fingers. For now . 

“Companion Skywalker,” the Nautolan Jedi Anakin doesn't know begins “You must know that we are currently at war.”

Anakin reins in his initial reaction, which is frank disbelief. " You must know we’re at war" ? Yeah, that's a bit hard to miss. Clearly these people think he doesn’t think about or do anything but fuck. He could correct the downright offensive misconception, of course, or he could--

“Yes, it’s been all my senators can talk about,” he says with a demure smile. “While they can talk, that is.”

He wonders if he can make that little vein in Windu’s head burst before they leave. It’s a challenge he’s happy to set for himself.

“Yes, well,” the Jedi stutters and then recovers with admirable speed. “The strength of the Separatist movement grows daily. Planets we felt were safely ours have been swayed to their cause.”

“Perhaps it’s a good cause,” Anakin shrugs languidly, settling further back into his chair.

“You don’t understand what you say,” Windu bites out. Anakin feels his hackles rise at the tone, but he can’t--shouldn’t--break character before he figures out what they want from him.

“I hardly ever do,” is what he decides to say, waving an artfully careless hand. “I also don’t understand what the war has to do with me. Is this a recruitment drive?” He levels a smile that’s only slightly bitter at Windu. “Now, all these years later, you want me to become a jedi?”

Perhaps sensing in the Force that Windu and Anakin both are close to coming to blows, the last jedi intercedes. “An analysis of the numbers and timeline shows beyond reproof that the majority of the planets that changed allegiance did so after meeting with one man. The Separatists are calling him the Negotiator. He’s their most popular general.”

Anakin wracks his mind to see if that moniker rings any bells. It doesn’t, but he has a bad feeling about this.

“He’s earned it,” Windu says, looking pained to be giving praise to the enemy. “He’s good at his job. Too good. And we have…come to the conclusion that the Republic war effort would benefit greatly if the Negotiator were to become….indisposed.”

“So dispose him?” Anakin suggests helpfully, unsure why they’re talking about this with him of all people.

“That is not the Jedi’s way,” Windu responds, and Anakin fights the urge to roll his eyes. I wouldn’t know the Jedi way, would I? He almost says but finds the power to hold his tongue.

“Dangerous, he is,” Yoda speaks up for the first time. “Fallen, he has.”

Anakin furrows his eyebrows and turns to the Nautolan Jedi for translation.

“He is a Sith lord,” they explain. “A Fallen Jedi who draws on the dark side for power. It would be, quite frankly, almost impossible to kill him.”

Yoda’s ears droop. “One of our best, he was,” he says sadly.

Anakin opens his mouth to ask what this all has to do with him, but Windu speaks first, looking directly at him with a grimace. “If he were to be...distracted...professionally….” He trails off, raising his eyebrows.

It clicks.

Oh. 

Oh.

Anakin has to laugh, relaxing into his chair and dropping his Companion persona completely. “I’m sorry,” he says between snorts. “You’ve come here….the leading minds behind our war effort….to ask  me  to  kriff  a Separatist for...for what? The betterment of the galaxy? You want me to lie back and think of the Republic?” He calms down slowly, a giggle escaping him. He wipes carefully at his eyes, delicately trying to preserve the kohl he had lined them with. “You have to know this is ridiculous.”

The four Jedi sit straight-backed, expressions grim. “Skywalker--” Windu begins to say.

“A Sith Lord dangerous enough that your Knights and clones can’t take him out? But I, an unarmed, untrained Companion , can?”

“We don’t want you to take him out ,” Windu says, longsufferingly. As if Anakin is the one being unreasonable.

“No, just kriff him well enough he forgets about the war,” Anakin laughs, standing. “I’m sorry to say, I don’t think you could afford me. Have a nice evening, Master Jedi.”

“Unsure of your own abilities are you?” Yoda asks, clearly believing the conversation isn’t over.

“No,” Anakin grits his teeth and then forces himself to relax. He has to sit down. Standing in front of a seated Jedi Council--even if it’s only four members--brings back an uncomfortable sense of deja vu. “I could seduce anyone.”

“Skywalker, we are quickly running out of options,” Windu says, leaning forward. “Do you think we would be here if we were winning this war?”

Those words hang in the air. Anakin--doesn’t want to think about it. Them. What they’re proposing. Why couldn’t he just have told Threepio he didn’t want to entertain tonight? Why had his curiosity gotten the best of him once again? Why, after all these years, was he still so fascinated with all things Jedi that he hadn’t turned them away at the door?

“How do you know he’ll even be interested in me?” Anakin argues back, crossing his arms. Surely if he just pointed out enough holes in their plan, they’ll go away and leave him alone and Anakin can go back to pretending he didn’t choose this penthouse apartment because he could stand on the landing pad and see the Temple in the distance. 

“He has well-known preferences,” Windu bites out looking like the words hurt him. Anakin wonders if he’s picturing Anakin and the Negotiator having sex in his mind. He doesn’t know how to feel about it. 

Anakin raises an eyebrow.

“Blondes,” Windu continues reluctantly. “And….”

Anakin raises his other eyebrow too.

“Your presence in the Force would do much to....entice him. Darkside users thrive on unrestrained power, and you’re very...bright.”

“Yes,” Anakin murmurs, a twist to his mouth. “I’ve been told I have a midi-chlorian count of over 20,000.” You know that. I know you know that.

“Quite,” Windu says with a pinched expression.

“We are very certain that he would not turn you away, given your--skills, and--appearance,” the Nautolan quickly hurries the conversation along.

“How would I even find him?” Anakin points out one of the largest problems. “It doesn’t sound as if he’s welcome to just waltz onto Coruscant.”

“We’ve fully prepared a false identity for you,” the other Jedi says. “Complete with official papers and an airtight backstory. You would be escorted to the edge of Separatist space by one of our own Destroyers, before leaving from there. Our intelligence reports that there will be a ball in five days time to celebrate the Separatist win on the planet Christophsis. Kenobi will be in attendance.”

“Kenobi?” Anakin asks, his ready protests blown completely out of his mind at this new information. Surely--

“Obi-Wan Kenobi, his name is,” Yoda says, ears as low as they’ve gotten all evening. “Met, you have.”

“ Obi-Wan Kenobi is the Negotiator?” Anakin really must not have heard right. 

He’d only met the man in person once when he was a child. Not many words had been exchanged between the two then, what with the Sith on Tatooine, then the Council meeting, then the Battle of Naboo and Qui-Gon Jinn’s death. He remembers standing in front of the funeral pyre, a newly knighted Obi-Wan promising that he would be a Jedi. 

It’s almost funny to think that now neither of them is.

At the time, it had only felt like a betrayal. Obi-Wan hadn’t been able to convince the Council to let him take on a padawan of his age at his age, and Anakin had been gently dismissed from the Temple. Padme had helped him, because she was very lovely and beautiful and a good friend. And technically, he had helped win the battle for her planet, so she could negotiate money from the royal coffers to give to Anakin in payment for his pilotship. And so Anakin had built a life for himself on Naboo, freeing his mother and bringing her to the planet on his own dime. He worked first as a mechanic for the palace, and then later for Padme when she became a senator on Coruscant. 

Later, much later, of course, he had been propositioned at a bar. He had declined. Then he was propositioned again, this time with credits involved. He….hadn’t declined. As a mechanic, he had made a fair amount of money tinkering with droids. Enough for himself and for his mother. As an escort, a certified Companion, he made...a lot more. Enough to afford the upper levels of the city-planet. Enough to support himself and his mother and his children, should he ever have any. It was a good life. He’d built it for himself.

But the memory of Obi-Wan Kenobi has never been too far from his mind. The Jedi Temple, almost by necessity, has always been very tight-lipped about its knights and their missions. So in some way, the eruption of the Clone War had helped Anakin out greatly when it came to hearing information about Kenobi. Quite suddenly, he was everywhere. A face of the fight.

And what a face it is. 

Anakin had no trouble believing that the Council picked Kenobi as their public image, not for his intellect or fighting skills, but because of how handsome he’d become. He’s only a little ashamed to admit, even in the privacy of his own mind, that the senators who had been able to tell him something about Kenobi he didn’t already know left his apartment happier than the others. Not that the others didn’t leave happily--Anakin’s amazing at his job. But the ones where Kenobi features in the conversation? It just means Anakin’s spending the rest of the night thinking about Kenobi, which bleeds into the way he fucks.

It’s not an obsession. It’s not even a problem. Plenty of Companions think of other things while in the midst of a good, hard kriff. It’s natural. It would only be a problem if Anakin called out the wrong name as he came, and he’s never done that. So there.

“You want to pay me to kriff Obi-Wan Kenobi?” Anakin checks.

Windu will probably leave this room with wrinkles permanently etched into his brows. “Yes,” he grits out.

Anakin’s first thought is, of course, I would do that for free . But that’s not a good business model, and Anakin is a consummate professional here. “For the good of the Republic?”

Okay, starting now he’ll be a consummate professional.

“Yes,” the Nautolan jedi says, taking pity on Windu, which in itself is a pity.

Anakin leans back into his chair, steeples his fingers as if he’s considering it. As if he hasn’t already made up his mind. As if his entire body isn’t screaming yes at the top of its lungs. Every midi-chlorian he has is lit up at the idea that in as short of a time as five days, Obi-Wan Kenobi could be touching him. It feels inevitable. It feels like he’s waited his whole life for this. It feels right .

“Is there anything we can say to convince you?” The last jedi, the one whose hand he had kissed on the platform asks, half pleadingly, half despairingly.

Anakin feels a smile spread slowly across his face. He makes eye contact with Windu. “A please wouldn’t hurt,” he says. 

Windu’s eye twitches with the strength of a thousand suns.

Chapter Text

Anakin always forgets how cold it is in space. When he’d first left Tatooine, he’d been caught off guard at the temperature on the cruiser, had needed to sleep with two blankets and a stolen brown cloak just to fight off the chill. He’d worn that cloak over his clothes for the entire flight, to the consternation of Kenobi, who must have been its unwilling donor now that Anakin thinks about it.

He’s twenty-two now, not nine, and a certified Companion. As much as he might want to, he can’t waddle around the star destroyer wrapped up in heavy blankets or other people’s clothes. It’s not dignified, for one. For another, he’s spent the last hour and a half delicately arranging and pinning his outfit into place and he’ll scream if he messes it up so soon.

But he has to admit he feels a little ridiculous walking onto the bridge in full formal dress, when everyone else is wearing mostly white, scuffed up armor.

“Wow,” Commander Tano says, turning to look him up and down. Anakin spreads his arms to make it easier for her as he turns around slowly for the full effect. He’s rather proud of this outfit. It’s a deep golden hue with blue accents so dark they look black. The body of the tunic is mostly sheer, the sleeves a few pieces of fabric that fasten at his wrists, highlighting the muscles of his arms. To that point, it’s also backless, although Anakin has added a short cape pinned to one of his shoulders. No point showing off too much skin right from the start. A tease is one of the best things you can be, Skywalker. His headpiece is an elaborate collection of golden rods, positioned to look like rays of a sun. He’s chosen to put on a minimal amount of makeup, and he doesn’t want to think about why.

Okay, fine. He knows he’s meeting Obi-Wan Kenobi under the falsest of pretences, is going to give him a fake name should he ask for one, is going to lie from beginning to end of this entire engagement, but--but he wants Obi-Wan to see his face. His real face. It’s stupid. Anakin is stupid.

“Aren’t you cold?” Commander Tano asks, before her eyes catch on his headpiece. “And how heavy is that?”

“Very and very,” Anakin replies, leaning against the railing next to her. “But the price of beauty, you know. High and all that.”

“Guess that explains why your own prices are so high,” Tano says. “If you’re paying your beauty price as well.”

Anakin snorts rather unattractively. “Gotta turn a profit, Snips.”

She laughs too, and Anakin preens at the sound. He loves getting genuine reactions out of other people, loves making people laugh. Making them happy. Apart from the money, his intrinsic desire to please others had been a good reason to become a Companion. It’s also what makes him so good at his job. Tano glances at him and then looks ahead, mouth pursed around a question she’s too polite to voice. 

“You can ask,” Anakin allows. He’s found that everyone has ideas about the life of a Companion, ranging from almost true to wildly uninformed. It’s best to just get that sort of thing out of the way in the beginning. Plus, usually the people who are too afraid to ask are at least polite in their curiosity.

“How big’s your closet?” Tano blurts out. 

Anakin blinks. “Is that what the younglings are calling it these days?”

Her cheeks darken, but to her credit she doesn’t retract her question. “Ew, no, I wasn’t implying anything like that , gross. I don’t want to know the size of--of--”

“The tools of my trade,” Anakin says helpfully, just to watch her get more flustered.

“You just have so many clothes!” She rushes onward, as if afraid he’ll keep talking. “You’ll be in Separatist space for maybe three cycles, but Rex was carrying two whole suitcases to that yacht--I’m just trying to picture what your apartment must look like.”

“I need options,” Anakin defends himself, knowing she has a good point. “A Companion’s success comes from many things, one of them being the size of his closet.”

Okay, so he had, perhaps, panicked in the days leading up to his departure. He’d bought more clothing than he could possibly, feasibly wear, trying to figure out which version of him Obi-Wan Kenobi would want to fuck the most.

For the sake of the mission, of course.

“I thought the point is to not be wearing clothes,” Ahsoka mutters and then looks aghast at herself, an expression that sends Anakin into hysterics. Ahsoka can’t resist giggling as well.

That’s how Rex finds them later, trading snips and harmless barbs between snorts of genuine laughter. “Commander, Companion,” he nods to both of them, hands clasped behind his back in military rest. Anakin spares an appreciative look to the way his stance showcases the strength in his legs. He wishes he had more Clones as patrons, but his prices were, as Ahsoka had pointed out, astronomical. Still. He’d offer a discount for the brave men keeping the Republic safe.

Ahsoka replies to something Rex had said, and Anakin snaps out of his own thoughts to try and pay attention.

“Two more hours,” Rex says. “Companion Skywalker, I would advise you to review the briefing a final time, as well as ask us any questions you might have about--the target.”

Anakin almost tells him he has the briefing memorized completely, but his attention is snagged by the last half of his sentence. “Did you know him?” He asks quickly, then wonders if he sounded too eager when both of them give him strange looks.

“He was my master,” Ahsoka says quietly. Anakin blinks. He’d known, of course, that Obi-Wan had had a padawan, but he hadn’t known anything about them. He’d tried very hard, in fact, to not know anything about the mysterious youngling who had taken his place, taken his Master. Years of quiet, bitter resentment thrash in his stomach as he looks at Ahsoka and tries to force this new knowledge into his world view. It would be a very silly thing to hate the Togruta he was just having a great time with. Especially because of a thirteen year old wound she had no hand in dealing him.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “This must be very hard for you.” There’s a very small part of him that thinks quite loudly that if Anakin had been Obi-Wan’s padawan, he wouldn’t have let him Fall. But that’s silly too. Anakin doesn’t know anything about what Falling, or Not Falling, involves.

“Thank you,” she says brusquely, crossing her arms over her chest. “But I’m fine.”

Anakin highly doubts that. He thinks maybe the only thing worse than never having Obi-Wan at all is having him and then losing him. Then he remembers that’s exactly what this mission will involve, and his chest feels tight.

“How did he….” he trails off, wanting to know what had happened to cause the man’s Fall, knowing full-well it isn’t his place to ask.

Rex excuses himself abruptly. Anakin turns to watch him go with a furrowed brow, then looks back to Ahsoka for an explanation

Her face is pained as she watches him leave. “It’s been hard for him,” she says to Anakin, still looking at Rex’s retreating figure. “There was--a siege. Master wanted to go immediately, to break the blockade. He kept saying he--he had a bad feeling about waiting, but the Council was reluctant to send us. We were on another mission, halfway across the galaxy. When they did give us the order to go, we--we were too late. It was just…devastation on the streets. I’ve never seen anything like it. But Master--Obi-Wan…he didn’t--he didn’t take it well. And then Cody--” she cuts herself off, turning to stare over the guardrail. "Didn't make it."

Anakin stays quiet. His first thought is that battles go poorly all the time, that something has to be missing from Ahsoka’s recollections. But he doesn’t even need his training to know he shouldn’t press.

“He just left. After.” Ahsoka’s hands tighten on the durasteel. “At the temple. He cut our bond and left.”

Anakin only has a vague understanding of how bonds work, but he can see how clearly affected Ahsoka is by the loss of hers. “Maybe he was trying to protect you,” he decides to say. “From himself.”

“Maybe,” she responds quietly, mind a thousand parsecs away. Anakin knows he should go do something somewhere else, read the briefing again like Rex had said, run the pre-flight check on the yacht he’s going to be taking, finish packing….But he doesn’t want to leave her. He doesn’t know what to say either, of course, can only offer his silent presence, but he doesn’t want to leave her.

He thinks maybe, if he had been a Jedi, if they had wanted him, he would have been friends with Ahsoka. Actual friends, the way he is with Padmé now.

Or, maybe something closer. Maybe something more like family.

--

Eldrin Laine is the son of a very important mining director in the Outer Rim. The Laines are very rich, very influential, and intensely private. There hasn’t been a holo or recording of Eldrin since he was a child. 

In short, it’s the perfect identity for Anakin to assume. He doesn’t even have to memorize a lot of information, because there just isn’t much available in the public sphere. The quick but in-depth primer on mining and economics had hurt his head a bit, but he’s feeling very hopeful that Obi-Wan won’t want to quiz him on the minutiae of mining law.

If the Sith ever bothers to show up that is.

The barkeep slides Anakin another drink, and he accepts it with a nod, leaning against the wooden bartop to take the first sip. He’s getting a sort of sick thrill about drinking on the Jedi Council’s credits. 

Maybe he would have been a terrible Jedi.

The party is spinning around him, spirits high as the drinks keep coming and the night ticks away into dawn. Getting in had been easier than he expected. Whoever had forged his documents had done an amazing job.

“Excuse me,” a voice to his left breaks him out of his reverie. He lolls his head to one side to look at who’s speaking to him. Okay, maybe the third drink hadn’t been his best idea. But Eldrin Laine was born rich and important. Surely that leads to hedonism and overindulgence. If anything, Anakin’s just staying in character.

“Hello,” Anakin tells the green twi’lek that had asked for his attention. “What can I do for you?”

“Would you care for a dance?” she says confidently, extending a hand. Anakin lets his eyes run over her. She is quite beautiful, for a Separatist. And she certainly knows how to dress for occasions, if her glittering red-stoned ballgown is any indication. Anakin can appreciate that in a dance partner. And it would be blending in, to accept. All he’s been doing so far is standing in the corner, creeping closer and closer to the bar the longer it takes for Kenobi to show up. A dance would, frankly, get him off the radar. Everyone seems to be dancing.

“Yes, of course,” he says, taking her hand. The most recent song grinds to a halt and the band picks up a much jauntier tune. Anakin is, thankfully, familiar with this one as well. He remembers how much he had hated learning these dances, but his mentor had never let him shirk those lessons. If you want to attend these parties with your pretty Senator, you must know where to put your feet.

By rote, his hands settle on her waist as he manipulates his body into the starting position. It’s a simple dance, which he’s also grateful for. Nothing too passionate or distracting. He can scour the room looking for Kenobi while staying in rhythm.

“I’ve never seen you before,” the Twi’lek murmurs as they begin to move forward in a box step. Anakin smiles roguishly. It’s very charming on his face. He’s practiced. In the mirror.

“I’m glad to see you now,” he responds, raising his arms to twist her out and then reel her in, catching her against his body. He wonders dispassionately if they’ll serve more food later. Maybe he can flag down a server?

The Twi’lek blushes, gently separates their hands so she can run a finger down his chest. That’s not part of the dance.

“How long are you--” she begins to say, but he’ll never know what she wants to ask, because at that moment, a hand comes down onto his shoulder in a grip that isn’t tight per se, but certainly halts them in their tracks.

“Excuse me,” someone says for the second time tonight. “Would you mind terribly if I were to cut in?”

Anakin turns to face the stranger, intent on telling him yes, he would mind. Not because he feels any particular way about the Twi’lek he’s been dancing with--he never even got her name--but because it’s unforgivably rude to cut in in the middle of a song. Surely everyone knows that. Surely this stranger knows that.

Surely Obi-Wan Kriffing Kenobi, the man whose hand is currently on Anakin’s shoulder, who’s looking past him to the Twi’lek Anakin still has cradled in his arms, whose eyes are dark and narrowed and brilliantly, fiery yellow--surely he knows that.

For very obvious reasons, Anakin’s words get stuck in his throat. Luckily, Kenobi doesn’t seem to be speaking to him. He has a second to despair that the Council has been wrong, that Kenobi prefers Twi’lek women to anything Anakin can offer, before he realizes Kenobi hasn’t actually released the hold he has on his shoulder. If anything, it’s tightened.

Kenobi cocks an eyebrow at the Twi’lek, who drops her own hold on Anakin’s arms and backs away quickly. “Thank you, my dear,” Kenobi outright purrs at her retreating form. Anakin shoots a glance at her--she looks slightly put-out but must sense something in her competition that Anakin can’t, because she doesn’t even give a token protest.

It’s like everyone else in the ballroom fades out of reality, as Anakin turns fully into Kenobi’s arms.

“I am quite interested to see if you can follow as well as you lead,” Kenobi says, placing one hand on Anakin’s waist as his other interlaces their fingers.

“It depends on who’s leading,” Anakin says, looking up from under his eyelashes. Kenobi’s hands are rough and calloused. Anakin doesn’t know why his mind is so focused on that, but it’s an observation repeating itself in his head at a horrifically loud volume. Kenobi’s eyes flash in something Anakin thinks might be amusement, and he has the terrible thought that what if Kenobi can hear him?

But he can’t think like that. He won’t get anything done if he’s obsessing over what is, quite literally, the worst case scenario.

They begin to make a lazy turn around the room, their bodies much closer together than is typical for this dance. Anakin thinks that has to be a good sign. Anakin is having a hard time thinking at all.

“And who do I have the pleasure of dancing with?” He asks, even though he knows perfectly well who’s holding his hand, whose hand is creeping quite steadily down his exposed back. Why had he thought this outfit was a good idea? His entire nervous system feels alight at the slightest press of Obi-Wan’s fingers to the bare skin of his naked back. He’s fully fucked people and felt less sensation.

Obi-Wan bends forward so that he’s speaking directly into Anakin’s ear. His beard rubs against the skin of his neck, and he has to fight a powerful shiver, willing his mind to actually pay attention to what’s being said. “I’m much more interested in who you are.”

Anakin leans backward, the music crescendoing into what he knows from hours of practice means he’ll be dipped. Obi-Wan obliges him, a good dancer through and through. Anakin wonders if they give dancing lessons at the Jedi Temple. He hasn’t ever really thought about it.

Swinging back up, he takes advantage of the distance to just look at Kenobi. The other man is dressed in white armor, reminiscent of the armor he wore as a Jedi. It makes Anakin blink in surprise. Armor has no place at a celebration, unless Kenobi is trying to make a statement. Anakin isn’t sure what that would be though, and he promises himself to come back to that later. The man’s auburn hair is artfully disheveled, falling gently against his forehead in small tufts. It looks soft. Anakin wants to run his fingers through it. Tug it a bit.

Hands pull him against a strong chest again, and Anakin doesn’t even offer up a ghost of resistance. Kenobi certainly doesn’t look like someone who’s been consumed by pure evil. He looks like--well, he looks like someone Anakin would quite happily welcome into his bed. 

Lips find the juncture between his neck and shoulder, and Anakin can’t help but let out a whimper at the feeling. Kenobi feels quite powerful in the Force, his presence strong enough that Anakin thinks he’s drowning in it. There’s something dark about it though, something dangerous that’s skulking at the corners of his mind, looking for entrance. He feels safe, but he knows logically that he’s in danger. Or, rather, that he could be in danger at any moment

As much as he knows about Obi-Wan Kenobi, figured out over the years through various means of information retrieval, this is a different man completely. He remembers a holo-vid from two years ago of Obi-Wan attending a Senate hearing for a Separatist he had managed to capture. He had been restrained and dignified in the image Anakin had watched, hands held neatly behind his back as he climbed the steps to the foyer. He had been patient, impeccably groomed, controlled in every way.

This man, who Anakin is currently dancing with, is none of those things. He can feel his desire pressing itself against the walls of his mind. The touch of his hands is--proprietary, as if he’s letting everyone in the hall know who Anakin belongs to. It would be very uncomfortable if it were anyone else, Anakin can admit to himself. But it’s Obi-Wan.

No, he reminds himself harshly. It’s his mission's target.“My name is Eldrin,” Anakin says, bending his neck back to allow further access to his skin. What else can he do? What else would he want to do? “Eldrin Laine.”

Obi-Wan hums, dragging his nose along the muscles of Anakin’s neck, nipping at his jaw as if he can’t help himself. Can’t control the urge to mark. “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he breathes into Anakin’s ear. And then, “A pleasure to meet you, my pretty little liar,” he says, taking his teeth to the soft skin of Anakin’s earlobe.

It’s lucky that they’re hardly dancing anymore at this point, instead just gently swaying on the sidelines of the dancefloor now. Because as those last words trickle into Anakin’s mind, he freezes completely. “I’m sorry?” He stutters, hands coming up to scrabble at the durasteel of Obi-Wan’s chest piece. “I don’t--”

Obi-Wan pulls back so he can look him in the eyes. He arches an eyebrow, unimpressed, hand coming up to run along Anakin’s jawline. “Oh, Anakin,” he says in such a disappointed tone of voice that Anakin has to fight the urge to shrink into himself. “Did you really believe that I would fall for whatever ploy you are here to feed me?” 

Anakin opens and closes his mouth rapidly, unsure what to say. He can’t really make it worse, but he also doesn’t know how to make it better. The briefing had not covered what to do if his cover was blown within the first ten minutes of meeting the man. At least Obi-Wan isn’t calling for the guards?

“You must have me confused with someone el--” Anakin begins to say, knowing full-well that it’s a very far-fetched line.

Obi-Wan seems to agree, because he cuts him off with a shake of his head. “I would be careful to not insult me in such a way,” he says. “Surely you didn’t think I wouldn’t recognize you?”

That’s exactly what Anakin had thought. He fights the urge to hide his face in Obi-Wan’s neck, just to escape his disappointed expression. He would very much like to be told what to do, but no one seems to be swinging in to save the day. All he can do is listen to Obi-Wan’s gentle voice, eyes caught and held by two twin golden suns. “Surely you didn’t think I haven’t been watching your life since the moment you left the temple, all those years ago?”

Something of what he’s feeling must show on his face because Obi-Wan gifts him a light laugh and an even lighter chuck under the chin. “My silly darling,” he says, and Anakin likes that much more than he thinks he should. He feels as if he’s putty in Obi-Wan’s hands, as if the other man has complete control over who he is and could remake him at any given moment. He looks down into Obi-Wan’s eyes and he thinks for a split second that he never realized how short he is compared to him, but the thought evaporates into thin air as quickly as it comes.

He leans down, eyes fixed to Obi-Wan’s mouth in a way that’s quite embarrassing if he could stop and think about it. He doesn’t want to though. What he wants, quite desperately, is a kiss.

Obi-Wan doesn’t move to meet him, but he does open his mouth to allow Anakin’s tongue to slip inside. There’s a few seconds of a battle of wills before Anakin subsides, allowing Obi-Wan to take control of the kiss. A hand snakes its way into his hair, fisting tightly around a few of his curls, while the other hand clenches on his back, shoving their torsos tightly together. Anakin has the vague thought that this is inappropriate to do in front of such a large crowd, but then Obi-Wan does something with his tongue that has Anakin forgetting his own name.

Obi-Wan pulls back before Anakin’s finished, and Anakin chases after his mouth with a whine so genuine he would be ashamed of it if he were thinking clearly. Obi-Wan, post-kiss, is even more beautiful and striking than Obi-Wan pre-kiss. His lips are red and swollen, and his yellow eyes are almost completely swallowed up by black. “Good boy,” he murmurs, stroking Anakin’s cheek. Anakin preens before he can stop himself, a sharp jolt of arousal going straight to his cock.

“Can we--” he asks, remembering his mission. He just needs to get Obi-Wan to a private room, really. He’s wrong-footed now, but give him a bed and he’ll be back on top of his game in an instant. Or on bottom. He’s not picky. 

“Yes,” Obi-Wan breathes, mostly into Anakin’s mouth. The continued closeness is really, really messing up his ability to think rationally. “Let’s go to my quarters. And you can tell me exactly what you’re doing here. Who sent you and why you’re lying so poorly about your identity. And afterwards, if I still want to, I’ll fuck you. Yes?”

Anakin nods his head. Yes. Yes. Yes please. 

For the rest of his life, he’ll blame the drinks he had before meeting Obi-Wan Kenobi as the reason for what comes out of his mouth next. “Yes, please, Master.”

Obi-Wan smirks in a way that’s pure triumph as he grabs his hand and leads him out of the hall and further into the building’s endless maze of rooms and corridors. Anakin has the distinct feeling that he’s gotten in very, very far over his head.

Chapter Text

Kenobi slams Anakin up against the wall just outside of the ballroom. He gasps, completely involuntarily, and pulls the Sith Lord closer--also completely involuntarily. A small part of him wonders if this is what the Jedi Council wanted, and then realizes that he would absolutely love to not think about the Jedi Council for the rest of the night.

Kenobi freezes for just a second, locking eyes with Anakin. There's something there Anakin doesn't know how to identify, darker than lust or even anger. He drags his fingers down Anakin’s chest so slowly that Anakin swears that this is a new and kriffing effective type of Separatist torture. “Please,” he gasps out, arching further into Kenobi’s touch. A thumb rubs leisurely against his nipple, and Anakin tosses his head back so hard he bangs it against the wall. There’s no dignity here, no persona to put on. In this moment, he’s not Eldrin Laine. He’s not a Companion. He’s not even Anakin Skywalker. He’s just a mess of nerve endings and sensitive skin, falling apart at another’s touch.

Obi-Wan’s hand rucks up his tunic and caresses the bulge in his pants. “Please what, Anakin?” He asks, and Anakin has to re-evaluate his previous idea that Obi-Wan isn’t the purest representation of evil the Jedi had made him out to be. He’s acting plenty evil now.

“Touch me,” Anakin gasps, his own hands latching onto Obi-Wan’s hair and armor.

“I am touching you,” comes the infuriating answer. Anakin wants to growl out a rejection--a correction--a--a--

His thoughts dissolve as Obi-Wan strokes across his dick with the back of his hand. Anakin can feel warm breath in his ear, knows from the press of beard against his cheek that Obi-Wan is leaning almost all of his weight against him. His knees feel weak, like he’s about to collapse--which wouldn’t be so bad, now that he’s thinking about it. The hallway just outside the main ballroom is not a premier location for cock-sucking, a bit more public than what Anakin usually prefers as a general rule. But what’s the point of having rules if not to break them when Obi-Wan Kriffing Kenobi is shoving his tongue into your mouth as if he’s trying to devour you?

Before they can go further--and Anakin knows immediately that they would have gone further--a voice calls his name. Or--not his name.

“Eldrin!” someone says. “I heard you were here! What a surprise!”

Obi-Wan and Anakin separate with great reluctance. They hold eye contact until whoever it is is almost upon them, and Anakin has to rip his gaze away.  

A nondescript human walks quickly towards them, shooting an incredulous look at Obi-Wan, who bares his teeth at him in what might count as a smile in some circles. 

“Hello there,” Anakin says, for lack of being able to think of anything else to say. He’s very aware of the way that his lips are tingling, the way he looks well on the way to well-fucked.

The other human must sense that Anakin has no idea who he is, because he taps his chest twice and spreads his arms wide. “Helam Ricurdium? From Agamar?”

Anakin flounders for a response, smoothing down his clothes as he steps forward to meet the other man. “Of course,” he says. “Good evening.”

He thinks he hears Obi-Wan snort from behind him. He’s trying desperately not to think about what Obi-Wan is doing, although the man hasn’t seemed to get the message, as he places his hands on Anakin’s hips and draws him back to his chest. He can feel Obi-Wan resting his head on his shoulder as his thumb starts to stroke the tight, soft skin of his hip. Anakin shivers and leans back into the other’s hold. Completely involuntarily. It’s starting to become a problem.

“I haven’t seen you in forever,” Helam says, coming closer for a reason Anakin very honestly can’t puzzle out. Obviously this is an inopportune time for a casual conversation. Obviously Anakin has his hands full--or, he reflects as one of Obi-Wan’s hands comes up to trace the lines of his abdomen, Obi-Wan does. Helam’s eyes follow the touch, darts a look at Kenobi’s face behind him. “How is your wife?” he asks, in the pointed way people do when they think they have the upper hand in a conversation.

It rankles that he actually does. Anakin opens his mouth and closes it, panicking. Wife? Wife? Eldrin Laine is married? This is bad, this is so bad. Anakin is not good at lying. People think he must be amazing at it, because of his chosen career, but it’s just another common misconception. Anakin very literally cannot lie in a believable way. Stars. Okay.

“She died,” he blurts out and then wonders if he can surgically close his mouth forever. Sure, some clients would be disappointed, but in general it would improve his quality of life by lightyears. Obi-Wan makes a choking sound that would be concerning in any other scenario. Here and now, Anakin just barely resists the urge to stomp on his foot.

Helam’s eyes widen in an expression of overdone shock. “Oh?” he asks. “How absolutely tragic. You were...so in love.”

“Yes,” Anakin confirms with the blankest face he can reasonably be expected to put on, when Obi-Wan’s thumb is brushing the taut skin of his stomach. Anakin spares a thought that at least he isn’t ticklish, or this conversation would be going so much worse. And it’s very hard to picture it worse than it already is. “Very in love.” He pauses. “Uh. Light of my life. Truly.”

This must be the limit of what Kenobi can take, because he sighs as if he’s being given a very great burden. His hands drop away from Anakin’s body--Anakin has to spend several moments convincing himself this is a good thing--and he steps back completely. The smallest corner of Anakin’s mind notes that this is the first time they’ve stopped touching since they met.

“You want to go back to the celebration,” Obi-Wan says in a very bored voice, a hand waving through the air. Anakin blinks, thinking that while his lies were admittedly terrible, at least he tried. Did Obi-Wan really think that he could just command Helam’s obedience?

But Helam freezes, face going slack. “I want to go back to the celebration,” he says in a monotone. Anakin blinks in surprise. The air around them has grown so much colder, so quickly. 

“You never heard that Eldrin Laine was in attendance tonight.”

“I never heard that Eldrin Laine was in attendance tonight.”

“Go now,” he prompts with an impatient swipe of his hand. Helam turns without another word and marches down the corridor. Anakin watches him leave, before he has to turn around to look at Obi-Wan. The man had just...just manipulated his mind. Taken his entire control of self, bent it to his will, and sent him on his way. Anakin’s stomach rolls in protest. He can’t imagine having someone take his control away like that, even for a few seconds. At least when he was a slave, he still had his own thoughts. Watto had never been able to touch those.

Obi-Wan reaches out to touch him again, clearly intent on entwining their bodies as they had been before the interruption, but Anakin feels himself flinch away automatically.

For the first time tonight, Anakin realizes that Obi-Wan is, in fact, very dangerous. Obi-Wan has the capacity to hurt him. He is a Sith Lord. There’s a darkness that sticks around his Force presence, that reaches greedily for Anakin, intent on consuming him. 

Kenobi drops his hand. Anakin holds himself still, like he’s prey and worried that he’s been spotted. The other man’s facial expression is completely blank, utterly unreadable. “Yes,” he says, as if to himself. “Perhaps for the better.”

He turns on his heel, cutting a sharp line down the corridor. Anakin follows because he isn’t sure what else he should do. He knows what he wants to do, of course. Even after whatever Obi-Wan--Kenobi--had done--how wrong it sits in Anakin’s stomach--even now, he wants to follow him. There had been a promise in Obi-Wan’s kisses that Anakin desperately wants to feel come to fruition.

And, of course, his mission. Mission. It’s such a heavy word to cover the truth. Mission. 

Anakin has to shake his head in a pathetic attempt to organize his thoughts. Kenobi’s touch--and, and... eye contact has him barely thinking at all, which is not optimal. 

As a Companion, Anakin is almost always the one in charge, with control, even if he’s the one on his back. Somehow though, just Kenobi’s presence steals that sense of power away from him, and he’s left stumbling behind the other man in a way that’s anathema to literally all of Anakin’s training. It’s terrifying. It's addictive. 

Kenobi doesn’t seem surprised that he’s being followed, which Anakin takes to mean that he’s being allowed to do this. That this is what Kenobi wants. He doesn’t know what to make of that, but when Kenobi holds the door to his quarters open, he slips inside after him.

He realizes, quite suddenly, that he doesn’t want Kenobi to continue to have the upper hand. Sure, Anakin’s spent the last several years--longer, if you want to be mean about it--following Kenobi’s career; sure, the confident way Kenobi touches him makes him want to burst into flames, makes him want to say things he’s never said to anyone else before, but Anakin is a Companion. He’s been trained for years in the art of making other people lose their minds. 

And even if Kenobi’s touch to his bare skin is the sweetest torture he’s ever survived, even if there’s something about him that puts him on edge and on the defensive, even if the memory of Helam’s blank face has yet to leave his mind--Anakin is a Companion. And a damn good one at that.

Obi-Wan turns to close the door. 

Anakin sinks to his knees right there in the apartment entryway.

The Sith blinks in surprise when he turns back to see him, and Anakin pushes his chest out, knowing full-well the picture he makes. His eyes are lidded, mouth hanging slightly open--it’s an expression of arousal he knows to be his most effective. He’s practiced this in the mirror too. His legs are carefully splayed, pulling the linen of his pants tight around his muscular thighs, and his arms are looped together against his lower back. He is a Companion, kark it all. He has a mission.

“Ah,” Kenobi says.

“May I taste you?” Anakin asks, licking his lips for the added effect. He can feel his headpiece tilt dangerously forward as he leans in towards Kenobi’s crotch. The other man makes no effort to stop him, and Anakin feels particularly triumphant about that fact. If he can only keep the other man distracted enough--maybe he’ll forget about the interrogation he had promised Anakin on the dancefloor. And he has it on good authority that his mouth is quite distracting.

Kenobi sighs as Anakin’s lips make contact with his armor. Neither of them can actually feel anything from the action, of course--it’s armor--  but it’s the image Anakin makes. On his knees and desperate for it. 

Anakin whines and noses harder against the plating. Kenobi’s hand comes up to stroke his hair, and he leans into that soft, reassuring touch. “Still a liar, I see,” the Sith murmurs, gripping his curls tightly and forcing his head back and up. Kenobi’s yellow eyes burn through him to Anakin’s core. A jolt of arousal so intense it’s almost painful shoots through him, making him genuinely gasp. One auburn eyebrow raises.

“Tell me, Companion,” the tug on his hair loosens, as Kenobi grips Anakin’s headpiece instead, pulling it off neatly. “If I were to divest you of your extravagant clothes, would you find it easier to be truthful?” He steps past Anakin, still on the floor, and tosses the jewelry to the side with a flick of disdainful fingers. Anakin bristles at the action. That’s ridiculously expensive.

At the same moment, Kenobi begins to unfasten his armor. Anakin thinks he should definitely go help, interested as he is in seeing the outfit in pieces. Perhaps on the floor. Maybe he could throw a vambrace across the room, see how Kenobi likes it.

He doesn’t move in the end, mind flying through possibilities of what Kenobi could possibly mean. What he could want. Maybe if Anakin tells a slanted truth, just enough truth to satisfy the Sith, they can move on to what still can be a very pleasant evening. 

When he looks around to find Kenobi, he’s sat in an armchair, watching him silently, legs spread obscenely wide. The armor is stowed away, leaving Kenobi clad only in pieces of flimsy, skin tight fabric. It’s probably worn to protect against chafing, there’s probably a very good, not at all indecent reason someone told Kenobi to put it on, but no one consulted Anakin. No one even warned him.

“Come here, Companion,” is all he says. Anakin doesn’t like the way that word rolls off Kenobi’s tongue, imbued with a hundred emotions and nuances no one else has ever said it with. It’s usually lust, oftentimes respect, sometimes disbelief (that’s mostly from Padmé, who remembers how awful he was at flirting as a teenager). 

No one’s ever sounded quite so angry. Quite so menacing.

Anakin thinks about crawling over to sit in between the other’s spread legs. Surely that’s what the Sith wants. Surely no one’s just casually spreading their legs like that if they don’t intend to have someone else in between them in the very near future.

But he is wearing some karking expensive fabric. It would be a great idea to take that off, actually. He stands and shimmies out of his tunic, leaving him only in his pants and shoes, which he kicks off as he makes his way to Kenobi. As soon as he’s in touching distance, he’s grabbed around the waist and settled on his lap, straddling a Sith.

How does Anakin manage to get himself into these situations, genuinely?

“Now the truth, Companion,” Kenobi prompts him, fingers pressing hard enough to bruise.

“I have a name,” Anakin complains, wiggling to get comfortable as he brings his arms up to loop around Kenobi’s neck. “You know my name.”

Kenobi hums but doesn’t say anything. Anakin pushes his bottom lip out in the approximation of a very unprofessional pout. Not an actual pout though. Anakin doesn’t pout, he’s a twenty-two year old man. Obi-Wan’s eyes crinkle when he sees it though, and he reaches a hand up to tug at his lip. It all seems very counterproductive to talking, if you ask Anakin, but he’s not going to scorn an unexpected gift. Before Obi-Wan can pull away, he sucks his thumb into his mouth. 

Obi-Wan stares at Anakin’s mouth wrapped around his finger, letting out a broken-off groan. Anakin preens and laves at the digit with all his focus, eyes slipping closed in bliss and thoughts tearing through his mind as fast as a Tatooine sandstorm. 

See, see, he can be so good for Obi-Wan. He wants Obi-Wan so much, he’s desperate for it, sitting practically naked in the other man’s lap. He’d been so worried that the Jedi Council had been wrong, that Obi-Wan didn’t actually want him, that he’d fail his mission, that he’d be bad , that Obi-Wan doesn’t want him the same desperate, toe-curlingly good way Anakin wants him. You want to pay me to kriff Obi-Wan Kenobi? I’d do that for free, his own words echo back to him. He’s not here, squirming like a schutta on this man’s lap and sucking on his thumb as if it were his cock, because of whatever bantha shit distraction technique the Council asked him to do. He wants it, wants Obi-Wan, has wanted Obi-Wan for years.

Everytime Threepio had informed him that he had an appointment with a Jedi, his heart had leapt into his throat, wondering--hoping--that this would be the time Obi-Wan Kenobi showed up at his doorstep. He would have made it so good then, taken Obi-Wan to his real bedroom, not the entertainment room. He’d have...gone past the time limits he sets for his other guests, let Obi-Wan take him again and again, until he would be sure he’d be able to feel it for weeks after. He’d had thought quite a lot about how he could get Obi-Wan to visit--frankly impossible in reality, as he couldn’t have offered all Jedis a discount, nor could he have asked the few Jedi who did visit to please kindly let Obi-Wan Kenobi know that there’s a Companion in Upper Coruscant who would pay him for a fuck. Not even Quinlan Vos could have been trusted to carry that message from the red silks of Anakin’s chambers to the sterile white walls of Obi-Wan’s quarters. 

Anakin is torn out of his thoughts by a low growling sound accompanied by movement beneath him. Suddenly, he’s being picked up in Obi-Wan’s arms and thrown onto the bed. He rolls onto his back immediately, some long-forgotten instinct to keep the predator in his line of sight at all times. 

And that’s exactly what Obi-Wan is right now as he prowls along the end of the bed. The Force churns around him like he’s the center of a black hole. His eyes, when Anakin catches sight of them, are spitting fiery suns. “Vos had you?” Obi-Wan asks in such a deadly quiet voice that Anakin thinks he’d prefer to be shouted at. 

He props himself up on his elbows wearily. He knows he didn’t say anything about Quinlan Vos out loud. His mouth had been busy. He doesn't have a second to ask though, because as soon as Obi-Wan’s question calls to mind the memory of how exactly Vos had had him, Obi-Wan’s weight is fully on top of him, pressing him hard against the mattress with one arm one his chest and the other resting just to the left of his head. Anakin looks up with wide eyes. There’s nothing in his training that tells him what to do now. 

“You think unbearably loudly, sweet one,” Obi-Wan purrs at him. “And for the life of me, I cannot fathom why you continue to push me so.”

Anakin whimpers, trying desperately to figure out what that means, what he’s revealed so far by thinking about it, which is not even fair because no one warned him that Jedi and Sith can pick out thoughts from people’s minds.

“Just yours,” Obi-Wan says, rubbing his face down Anakin’s jawline and nipping at the soft skin there. Anakin’s body is very confused and stupidly aroused. “You’re projecting. No shields. It’s deafening.”

“Obi--” Anakin starts to say, but Obi-Wan cuts him off with a burning kiss, grabbing his chin to move him where he wants. Anakin lets himself be positioned, lets Obi-Wan’s tongue into his mouth and enjoys what can only be described as a very thorough claiming.

“Good boy,” Obi-Wan says when he pulls back. He’s good? Anakin looks up hopefully at Obi-Wan. But he had lied...and Obi-Wan had seemed so mad earlier...so distant before that. Good?

“Never at you, darling, never mad at you, Anakin, my Anakin,” Obi-Wan murmurs, pushing back Anakin’s hair with a gentle hand and letting out a few deep breaths. When he opens his eyes, they're somehow less intense. “I’m sorry I made you think that. I didn’t want you if you were going to be a Companion in my bed, but then finding out how much you, Anakin, want me came with the knowledge that Vos--” he spits the name out of his mouth as if it’s insulting to him. “Had you while you wanted me, when I was in reach, at the temple, still thinking that I’d be the worst thing for you.” His eyes darken considerably, eyebrows furrowing in a scowl so full of hatred that that Anakin has to shiver.

“You have me now,” Anakin says, unsure what to make of half of Obi-Wan’s words, figuring that was a matter to address with more clothes between them, somewhere not on a bed. He doesn’t know what to do about Obi-Wan’s possessiveness or his apparent disdain for Companions , had had clients react the same way in the past. Those who had not understood the complicated nuances of his profession had been barred from seeing him again.

But it’s Obi-Wan.

“It’s me, I’m here,” he says.

“Thirteen years after the Council took you away from me, they give you back,” Obi-Wan agrees, sitting back so he can take off his shirt. Anakin’s breath catches in his throat at the pale, muscled torso revealed to him for just a second before Obi-Wan’s back on top of him, so close. So warm. “In such a pretty package, too,” he finishes between biting kisses placed on Anakin’s collarbones.

“Oh!” Anakin slurs, skin alight with the pleasure of someone marking him. He’d never expressly forbid his clients from bruising him in such a manner, seeing as how bacta could heal him up within a day, but he didn’t particularly enjoy it either. But Obi-Wan--once again--is an exception. 

Anakin feels his cock jerk violently as the man moves down his chest, latching onto his nipple. “Ma--master!” He cries, tossing his head to the side, hand tangled through Obi-Wan’s hair, holding him there. He’s so sensitive. It feels so good to know the man in his bed is finally Obi-Wan. "Master," he repeats again, wondrously. Deliriously. The title earns him an especially long suck and a short nip before Obi-Wan continues on his descent, fingers catching the band of Anakin’s underwear.

Obi-Wan pauses and looks up through his fringe at him. “May I take these off?” 

“You could have taken them off hours ago!” Anakin whines, thinking as loudly as he can about an imagined Obi-Wan bending Anakin over the bar in the ballroom, having him right there next to that twi’lek he’d danced with, in front of all those separatists.

Obi-Wan groans and yanks his underwear down and off. There might have been some ripping. Anakin can’t worry about it though because suddenly Obi-Wan’s mouth is on his cock. Anakin can’t stop his hips from bucking up into that tight, wet heat. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” he gasps, when Obi-Wan pulls back. “Please, Master--” he begs, weakly nudging his hips forward. He wants back into Obi-Wan’s mouth more desperately than he wants anything else.

Obi-Wan’s hands clench around his hips forcing him to stay still. “Be good,” he warns.

Anakin nods earnestly. Of course he’ll be good. He can be so good. Maybe he can suck Obi-Wan’s cock next, prove how good he is. He’d let Obi-Wan fuck his face. His mouth waters at the very thought. 

Obi-Wan smirks up at him, and Anakin wonders if he’s heard those thoughts too, before his cock disappears into Obi-Wan’s mouth again and Anakin stops thinking anything.

His orgasm begins building in an embarrassingly short amount of time, but in his defense, this is a sexual act a lot of his clients aren’t especially interested in. Him on his knees, oh yeah. Vice versa? Not so much. And Obi-Wan is really good at it too, long pulls of his mouth alternating with strokes of his tongue on the underside of his cock. Anakin feels a directionless pang of envy at whoever Obi-Wan had practiced this with to become so good now.

“I’m gonna come, Master--master, I’m--I’m--” Obi-Wan pulls off, rises to be eye-level with him. He looks so beautiful with puffy lips and red-stained cheeks. He presses a comparatively sweet kiss to Anakin’s mouth as a large, calloused hand grips him hard and runs lightly over the shaft. It’s the matter of a single flick of a fingernail to his slit before he’s throwing his head back, mouth open, and eyes squeezed shut as he comes all over Obi-Wan’s hand.

When he comes back to himself, Obi-Wan’s kissing his chest. It takes Anakin a second to realize that he’s only paying attention to the area of skin above Anakin’s heart. It takes Anakin a second longer to realize that he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he has to go back to living a life devoid of Obi-Wan’s kisses. It takes a second after that to realize Obi-Wan’s spreading his cooling cum all over his inner thighs.

“‘Wan?” he slurs in question, making grabby hands for Obi-Wan’s attention.

Obi-Wan chuckles and nods, petting at Anakin’s flank. “Flip over for me, dearheart. I want to take my pleasure now.”

Anakin doesn’t think he’s ever moved so fast in his life, post-orgasm. In a moment, he’s up on his hands and knees, back arched, presenting. He can hear Obi-Wan behind him, shucking off the rest of his clothes. The anticipation makes Anakin shiver. He wants to be good. He wants to feel good. He wants to feel Obi-Wan fuck him, wants to see him slide in and out of his hole.

“I’m not going to fuck you,” Obi-Wan says from behind him, the head of his dripping cock brushing against Anakin’s dry hole. He’d call him out on what feels like, in the moment, a blatant lie, but he doesn’t know how well his vocal cords are working.

He gives a loud moan as Obi-Wan moves his hips, in a pantomime of kriffing. So his vocal cords are working. It’s nice information to know.

“Obi-Wan--” he begs, his voice breaking, trying desperately to find a handhold in the sheets beneath him. He wants to turn around, look at Obi-Wan. He wants him inside him. He wants to be bruised and marked and turned inside out on Obi-Wan’s cock. He wants too much. It’s almost scary, how much he wants. 

The other man doesn’t seem particularly moved by his plea. “Do you think--” he grunts, slamming his hips against Anakin’s slick thighs. “You deserve to have me fuck you?”

“Please,” he cries, tilting his own hips up to meet the onslaught. The feeling of the other man’s cock dragging between his thighs is incandescent. Is, quite painfully, not enough. “Please, I’m good, you said--” he hiccups as tears blur the edges of his vision. The thought of not being good enough for Obi-Wan pierces him viscerally through his chest, and it’s the most unprofessional, most embarrassing thing he’s ever done, but a sob gets caught in his throat.

Gentle hands grip his shoulders and flip him around until he’s lying on his back, looking up into Obi-Wan’s face. “Hush, darling,” the Sith croons, brushing his hair back. Anakin pushes up into the touch, even as he squeezes his eyes shut, a few tears leaking out. Obi-Wan must not like that, as he tugs slightly on the end of his hair. “None of that now, look at me.” 

Anakin doesn’t want to, but he also wants to be good. He wants Obi-Wan to think he’s good. It’s awful. He peeks an eye open to find the other man’s face close to his, enough to make out some freckles spanning his cheeks.

“You’re so good for me,” Obi-Wan murmurs, pressing a light kiss on the tip of his nose, then another on his cheekbone, pausing to lick up a tear. “Take me so well in between your thighs, give me exactly what I want.”

“Fuck me, master,” Anakin whines, “I’m good, I promise. I'll make it so good.”

“I’m sure,” his master says, a strange new note in his voice that Anakin doesn’t have the mind to puzzle out right now, especially not when Obi-Wan takes hold of his cock again, coaxing it gently into full-hardness.

“Please, please, please, now, now, now,” he whimpers almost soundlessly, and Obi-Wan huffs out a laugh, muttering something that sounds like brat before flipping Anakin over again.

“You’re being amazing for me,” Obi-Wan says, tightening his hold on Anakin’s legs, pushing them together again. Anakin wants to sob in defeat, but the praise he’s being given helps him hold onto that little string of sanity he has left. “But I won’t fuck you for three reasons. Would you like to hear them?” Obi-Wan starts thrusting again, and it feels intimate to have him between his legs like this. Anakin squeezes them together slightly, trying to make a better space for Obi-Wan to move. Vaguely, Anakin remembers that he’s been asked a question.

“Yes, Master,” he pants, the words falling so naturally off of his tongue. Anakin isn’t trained in the Force, but he doesn’t think he has to be to be able to feel the tidal wave of victory that flows off of Obi-Wan every time Anakin calls him master.

“Very good,” Obi-Wan grunts. “Very good for me. But you see, I don’t have any lube in this room. And quite frankly, I also don’t have the presence of mind to stretch you as you deserve before putting you on my cock.”

Anakin whines at the image, knows how big Obi-Wan is from having felt him between his thighs. He’d need four fingers to fit him comfortably inside, and it’d still be a tight fiit.

Obi-Wan leans down until his entire front is pressed against Anakin’s back. He gasps at the feeling, the connection. Obi-Wan bites at his neck as he grinds forward, mouth somehow seeking out the most sensitive parts of his skin, as if he has signs dotting his body pointing out his weakest places. A hand comes up to his chest, rolls a nipple between calloused fingers. There’s so much sensation tearing across Anakin’s nerves that he doesn’t know where he’s supposed to go. Forward into his hand, backward into his cock? Obi-Wan’s thrusts are getting shorter and more brutal, and Anakin can feel his own arousal reaching its peak. He doesn’t want to come yet--doesn’t want this to be over--

“And the third reason,” Obi-Wan says into the back of Anakin’s neck, “that I won’t fuck you tonight is that when I fuck you for the first time, you’ll be mine completely. Body, mind, soul-- mine, Padawan.”

Anakin comes. Padawan , the word reverberates around his empty head. Obi-Wan flips him again so they’re facing each other, raises up on his knees, hand a blur on his cock. Anakin lies obediently still beneath him, watching with wide eyes. “Mine,” Obi-Wan snarls, yellow eyes narrowed as he takes in Anakin’s wrecked body, covered with semen, bite marks, and scratches. “My Anakin.”

Anakin feels himself nodding before he even realizes what he’s doing. Why wouldn’t he agree? Hasn’t he always been Obi-Wan’s? “Yours,” he tells him. “Yours, Master.” He closes his eyes as Obi-Wan comes with a groan, feels the wet spend splatter over his chest.

The room is quiet except for their heavy breathing. Slowly, Obi-Wan gets up, goes to the fresher, and comes back with a wet cloth. He wipes Anakin’s unmoving body clean with infinite tenderness, murmuring to him in a voice so low it’s almost impossible to catch. “Good, so good,” he’s saying nonsensically, as he tosses the cloth on the floor and climbs into the bed behind Anakin, scooping him up against his chest.

Anakin thinks about protesting for half a second--it’s the principle of the thing--but he likes being held. He likes being able to hear Obi-Wan’s heartbeat, right against his ear. Two orgasms so close together have wiped him out, and he thinks now is as good a time to sleep as any. Obi-Wan won’t let anything bad happen to him, not with how delicately he’s holding him now. Anakin thinks that for all the twists this night has taken, he never was really in any danger. Not from Obi-Wan. “Don’t leave me?” he mumbles sleepily, needing to be sure, needing to have this last intolerable possibility taken away.

Obi-Wan’s hands tighten for a second on Anakin’s back, before he runs a soothing hand down his spine. “Never again, darling,” he responds. Anakin feels himself smile contentedly at that. His last insecurity dealt with, he lets himself slowly drift off.

Right at the gateway between consciousness, he hears Obi-Wan murmur something else, sounds only morphing into actual words he can understand right before sleep hits him. 

“They gave you to me,” Obi-Wan says. “Why would I give you back?” and that definitely sounds like a problem for tomorrow, so Anakin only hums in response and presses a fleeting kiss over Obi-Wan’s heart, before allowing sleep to pull him under completely.

Chapter Text

By the time Anakin wakes, Obi-Wan is already up and sitting silently at a small table. Anakin pouts because he had maybe been hoping for some morning cuddles.

“Don’t pout,” Obi-Wan says, not even bothering to look up from the datapad in front of him.

Anakin pouts harder. “I don’t pout,” he says, stretching his arms above his head and cracking his neck. He feels so sore, even if Obi-Wan didn’t fuck him. How is that fair?

When Obi-Wan only hums in response, Anakin slides out of bed and walks up behind him, resting his chin on the top of his head. The other man turns the datapad off with a flick of his fingers, but not before Anakin catches sight of what he thinks has to be lists of Separatist troop movements and battle deployments.

Well, he thinks despondently to himself, at least he managed to distract Obi-Wan for eight or so hours, assuming Sith Lords still need sleep like regular human beings. And eight hours over three days is one standard day, so the Council can do with that time what it chooses, and Anakin can…go back to his apartment, his schedule, his patrons. It’ll be fine. 

Maybe he should look at this immediate failure as incentive to try harder over the next two days. If he does really well, maybe the Council will hire him again. Maybe he can see Obi-Wan again, for longer amounts of time each visit. Maybe by the time the war ends, they can be practically living together, and Anakin would only ever need to leave Obi-Wan’s arms to do stuff like go to the store and visit his friends and do his job. 

The thought of that future makes him sigh happily into Obi-Wan’s hair. He pulls back and drops his hands onto Obi-Wan’s naked shoulders, only now realizing how rigid the other man has become. Maybe Anakin can give him a massage, help ease the tension. Or Obi-Wan could take that tension out on Anakin anytime. He’s a great stress reliever.

“I need to shower,” Anakin murmurs into Obi-Wan’s ear, kissing down his neck to place a single bite against the tendons of his throat. It’s not fair that Obi-Wan got to mark up Anakin so much last night, but Obi-Wan still looks immaculately put-together. He’ll rectify this, as soon as he thinks how to do so in a way that distracts both of them.

Anakin has a sudden mental image of Obi-Wan pouring over war briefings, while Anakin chews on his neck like a teething youngling.

“Yes, you do,” Obi-Wan responds, tilting his head away from his touch. Anakin frowns. Whatever tone the Sith is using is completely unfamiliar to him. He doesn’t like it. 

“Alone?” he asks,pressing his--fine-- pout into Obi-Wan's skin. It’s as if he’s being….shut out again, but he doesn’t know why or what he’s done. 

“Yes,” is the response, Obi-Wan already looking down at the datapad. “I’m already dressed, you see.”

Anakin wants to point out that wearing the same pants from the night before and no shirt doesn’t really count as dressed, but he also doesn’t think Obi-Wan would be presently up for a debate. He doesn’t even seem to be up for talking to Anakin right now.

“Okay,” he says. “Um. I should--I’ll just...go back to my quarters then. All my clothes are there.” I’ll get out of your hair, is what he means. Obviously whatever we were saying last night doesn’t mean much actually. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Obi-Wan snaps immediately, frowning down at the datapad and then up at Anakin. “I’ve already sent for them.”

“Okay,” Anakin says, much more slowly. He feels wrong-footed. He can’t figure out what Obi-Wan wants, which is concerning because he’s made a career out of figuring out what people want and then delivering. But Obi-Wan’s throwing him for a loop, and Anakin only becomes more confused with each passing second. He needs to retreat. He feels naked. Yes, technically he is naked right now, but he feels naked emotionally. 

Vulnerable. That’s the word.

He pauses at the door to the fresher and peeks back over his shoulder. Obi-Wan’s thrown a leg over his knee and is staring intently at the datapad in his lap, but even from this far away, Anakin can tell his eyes aren’t moving.

Kriff it all, then. Anakin turns on the water for the shower, a strange mix of angry and disappointed. Will Obi-Wan just not let himself have nice things, is that it? Doesn’t he want him? Didn’t he say he wanted him? Didn’t he call him his?

Anakin steps under the spray, wetting his hair. Every time he thinks he understands where he’s standing--or sitting--or lying down--with Obi-Wan, the Sith lord just...changes the rules.

Stars, he’s so off his game. But this isn’t actually a game, which is even more concerning. No, that’s not to imply that he sees his work as a game--he sees it as his work. It’s serious to him, but it’s separate as well. Obi-Wan had been onto something when he had told Anakin last night that he saw a line between Anakin and the Companion. 

That also scares Anakin, the fact that Obi-Wan knew after a few minutes what almost every one of his clients genuinely still doesn't.

Especially considering that everything last night--after a certain point-- had been Anakin. And this morning he had woken up the feeling the same. But Obi-Wan doesn’t seem to care much for him now. Maybe Anakin wasn’t satisfying enough. Maybe Anakin is a disappointment.

He lathers soap into his hair as he listens to a murmur of voices in the main room followed almost immediately by a few loud thuds and the sound of a door opening and closing. So his clothes have arrived. To think, if the servants had been a minute quicker, they’d have seen him draped over Obi-Wan like a common wh--

No. He can’t--he can’t let himself think that, let himself second guess everything like that. There must be another reason for Obi-Wan’s dismissal, or else why would the man have sent for his things? Maybe he has pressing matters to attend to right now. Maybe he still has some remnants of prudish Jedi morals, holding him back from fun things, like shower sex. Like Anakin’s mouth wrapped around his cock as water cascades around them, like Anakin inserting a finger into himself while he sucks on Obi-Wan, so empty and desperate for the other he’ll take anything. Like...like Obi-Wan holding him up against the wall as he fucks into him, legs wrapped tightly around water-slick skin--

But no. Anakin’s had shower sex with actual Jedi before, and they’d seemed enthusiastic enough for it. He’d gently washed a Jedi woman’s body before they fucked, trying to put her at ease with his touch. And, let’s face it, he hadn’t had to coax Vos into the shower--or bed--with him, so--

There’s the sound of a bang from the other room, something hitting something else at an alarming speed, before suddenly the fresher is being ripped open. Although the steam is fogging up the transparisteel, Anakin can make out Obi-Wan. He reaches to turn off the water, thinking something must have happened, but then the Sith is upon him. He hadn’t even seen him move. 

Anakin finds himself with his back against the wall and legs wrapped around Obi-Wan’s waist, like he had been in his own imagination. Which is either a big coincidence or--

Oh yeah. He had forgotten about the whole mind-reading thing. In his defense, he would have remembered in a few hours. He’d just had other stuff on his...mind to deal with. But oh, so Obi-Wan must have heard his thoughts. And now Obi-Wan’s here, biting against his neck like an animal possessed. Anakin will have to soak in a bacta tub to wash away these bruises in time for--

“No,” Obi-Wan snarls, “No bacta,” he places Anakin back down on the ground but shoves a knee in between his legs. He’s grateful for some friction on his cock, which is rapidly hardening, but the fabric of Obi-Wan’s pants is grating against his delicate skin. He thinks dazedly that Obi-Wan hadn’t even paused to rid himself of his clothes before getting in the shower with him. The thought makes him feel floaty. Special.

He bares his neck to the assault and lets out a long moan. If Obi-Wan is listening to his thoughts, by accident or not by accident, and this is his reaction to a spare thought on a couple of past clients, then what would he do if Anakin thought--surely, Anakin would get more attention, more touches if he thought about--

He’s just eighteen when the first human asks to pay for his company. He accepts, looking for some spare money, but honestly he wouldn’t have made the man pay. He’s just off his first and only relationship, needs comfort in the form of someone else’s hands. He’s needy and alone, no one there to guide him away from a cheap thrill. Or from becoming a cheap thrill. But really, the money is a secondary bonus; the most important part is the way the other man touches him like, just for an instant, he belongs with him. Perhaps to him.

Six months later and he’s on the official Companion track. His mentor, a stern-faced Togruta with the longest lekkus he’s ever seen, despairs at his sense of etiquette. “You’re handsome,” she admits. “But keep your mouth shut. Talk with your hands.” He learns to. They go wild.

He’s twenty and he’s graduated from the program, moved to the Upper levels on a stipend. It’ll run out soon, but he follows Padmé to the Senate building one day. Something about the way he stands or sits or dresses tips off her peers that his time can be bought. The contacts roll in slowly but steadily, and Anakin doesn’t turn away any of them. He eats women out on his lounge chair; he sucks dick at the entrance to his landing pad. He’s fucked by all manner of sentient beings. He has Jedi, he has senators, he has dignitaries, he has anyone with the money to pay. He likes it. He likes it. He--

Obi-Wan kisses him, not chaste for even a second. His lips descend and his tongue snakes into his mouth, devouring him. Mapping out the edges, licking at his teeth. Stop it, shut up, mine runs through his head. But they’re not Anakin’s thoughts. They’re steeped in a rage Anakin has never experienced. Just feeling it on the peripherals of his mind makes him dizzy. It’s a whirlwind of pure darkness, sentient and oppressive. Anakin clutches at Obi-Wan’s shoulders and pulls back from their kiss with a gasp.

They pant into each other’s faces for a second, the Sith’s knee still pressed against Anakin’s hard cock. Obi-Wan’s pupils are dilated so much that Anakin has no doubt that he’s in a similar state. The rest of his eyes are the color of a sulphuric yellow.

“On one hand,” Obi-Wan mutters, lifting a hand to drag across his face and through his sopping wet hair. “Teaching you how to shield your thoughts would, undeniably, do wonders to my somewhat tenuous grip on sanity.” 

It’s not the most comforting thing to hear from a man you’re pressed naked against in a shower, to be honest. “And on the other?” Anakin breathily asks, trying to keep his hips still. This isn’t the time, he tells himself.

Obi-Wan bares his teeth. “It is...pleasant to hear them. At times. Not to mention, it has proven quite...useful.”

Anakin blinks. He can fill in those blanks. But he’s not sure how much he likes the idea of a Sith lord having continued access to his thoughts, though. Not even if it’s Obi-Wan.

Slowly, he sinks down to his knees. When in doubt, and all that.

His hands come up to pull down the loose waistband of Obi-Wan’s pants. They stick wetly to his thighs, but Anakin only needs to get them so far down before the other’s cock jumps up to meet him. Anakin tries not to feel smug, but the Force must shiver so apparent in the air around him that Obi-Wan’s hands come up to lace through his hair. “Enough,” the Sith lord says, but his command is unclear, especially since he doesn’t pull Anakin’s head closer or further away.

Oh, Anakin’s poor, repressed Sith lord. He takes just the tip of the head into his mouth, savoring the feeling and taste. Above him Obi-Wan groans, and his hands finally tug at his hair. This isn’t about you, Anakin thinks very loudly, which makes the other man pause for a second. In that moment, Anakin swallows him to the root before pulling back again just as fast. 

He moans around his mouthful of cock as Obi-Wan grabs at wet curls and grips so tightly he can feel it in his scalp. 

He can’t look up without getting water in his eyes from the shower, so he focuses on his task with a single-minded devotion. He sets a quick and relentless rhythm for several minutes, then lets the cock slip out of his mouth, resting on his lips. Fuck my throat like you’d fuck me, he thinks deliberately. And then, Master.

Obi-Wan’s cock twitches so hard it falls off his lips, and Anakin might laugh if he didn’t find his mouth full not a second later. Obi-Wan’s thrusts are relentless, and Anakin tries desperately to breathe through his nose, humming when he remembers to, but look--it’s hard to remember under this onslaught. Oh kark, speaking of--

Anakin lifts up his hands to hold lightly to Obi-Wan’s hips again, pushing him back against the wall. The man responds to his gentle touches slowly and then he leans totally back, letting Anakin take control again. Perfect. Perfect, Master. Perfect Master.

He pulls completely off and then noses down to the base of his cock, pausing to mouth loosely at Obi-Wan’s testicles before moving completely away. The other man groans at the loss. Anakin moves up to kitten-lick the slit, before leaning back to look up. He’s pushed them to the outer wall, so Anakin’s getting the least amount of water in his eyes possible. He’s a tactical genius.

“Master,” he says slowly, leaning forward to lick the cock in front of him again. Obi-Wan’s fingers tangle in his hair, but he pulls off before they can push him down. “Teach me how to shield my thoughts.”

Obi-wan meets his eyes incredulously. Maybe Anakin hadn’t been clear?

“Please, Master,” Anakin tries, sucking the head into his mouth again, slowly sinking down as he keeps his tongue running along the vein on its underside. After a few short seconds, he pulls back up. “Please teach me how to shield my thoughts?”

The other man doesn’t do much more than gape. It’d be quite unbecoming if it were anyone else’s face. Or, Anakin thinks darkly, if it were Obi-Wan’s face but someone else put that expression of dazed disbelief on there. No, this is the perfect scenario for everyone involved. This is his Sith lord.

“If you promise to teach me,” he says, nuzzling against his cock before moving out from beneath Obi-Wan’s touch completely, “I’ll let you fuck my throat until you come from it.”

If Obi-Wan’s pants weren’t in the way, he’d suck on his thighs, Anakin thinks wistfully. Leave a bruise right in the meatiest part. “If you don’t teach me, I’ll put four of my fingers up my hole and make you watch me come while I’m thinking about my favorite past clients.”

Obi-Wan huffs out what sounds vaguely like a laugh but just as likely might be a growl, but Anakin knows capitulation when he hears it. His own cock twitches in anticipation. “There’ll be conditions,” Obi-Wan warns, already dragging Anakin’s head back to his dick. “Non-negotiable ones.”

Yes, yes, okay, I don’t care, Anakin thinks, mouth finding home again between Obi-Wan’s legs.

Good, Apprentice, that voice resounds in his mind like a sigh. Good.

--

Anakin should have probably, maybe, definitely asked for clarification on those conditions, he thinks several hours and two orgasms later. His mental shields are newly built, strong in a way that had surprised and pleased Obi-Wan, which in turn had made Anakin flush with pride and satisfaction.

But, see, the problem with his brilliant plan to blind Obi-Wan with lust to get what he wanted is that he forgot to factor in his own propensity to arousal around Obi-Wan, especially around a flushed, hard, naked, and wet Obi-Wan. So in his own state, he had agreed to, well.

“You want me to come with you?” Anakin checks again, voice dripping with belief.

Obi-Wan looks up blandly from where he’s fastening his armor together. “If I recall correctly, you were downright begging to come with me only a short time ago.”

Anakin wonders where his spiky golden headpiece from last night had gone. He desperately wants to throw it at Obi-Wan’s face. “Not into a war zone!” Anakin shrieks.

Obi-Wan shrugs flippantly. “Those were my conditions. Pity you weren’t interested in details at the time.”

At the time, Anakin had been hard, leaking precome, and practically enthralled at the feeling of Obi-Wan’s cock in his mouth. He thinks he deserves an award for manipulating the other man into agreeing to teach him the shields. He doesn’t think he deserves to be out-manipulated so karking quickly afterwards. He’ll just have to try again, it seems.

“I’m scared,” he says in a small voice, kneeling up on the bed in only a silken soft robe. He raises his hands toward Kenobi, seeking a hug, attention, reassurance--sure, he’s playing it up a bit, trying to make Obi-Wan see that Anakin isn’t the type of person to take into a war zone, but any comfort offered would be nice.

Surprisingly, Obi-Wan indulges. Anakin has a split second to wonder how many of those self-deprecating thoughts he’d heard before he’d stormed into the fresher in a jealous rage, before he’s being cradled in warm arms. “I seem to remember a nine-year-old boy flying straight into a war zone,” Obi-Wan murmurs into his ear, lethal in his accuracy and his soothing cadence.

“That was different,” Anakin argues back. It was different. For several reasons. First of all, it was just him flying. He’s always trusted himself flying, but has a hard time believing he should trust a Separatist warship the same way. Second of all, he’s much more understanding of danger now than he was then. He’d been such a bright, unrestrained boy. He’d thought he had the future he’d always wanted right in his grasp. He’d been so wrong then. He’d been lucky to make it out alive. And third of all, “I don’t have anything to wear.”

It’s, very honestly, not his strongest attempt at dissuasion. Obi-Wan pulls back to give him a skeptical look, head tilting to his three suitcases scattered around them. “Didn’t bring any armor?” Obi-Wan asks sardonically.

“Only of a different sort,” Anakin replies, letting go of him completely to fall back onto the bed. He raises his head just high enough to give Obi-Wan a smirk. “Are you planning to let me fight next to you?”

“No,” Obi-Wan snarls instantly, as if the very idea is causing him visceral pain.

“What, are you planning to keep me locked up in your cabin?” Anakin jokes, but the other man is silent in a sort of worrying way. Either he’s considering it now or has considered it before and come to a conclusion Anakin isn’t yet privy to. 

Although his previous actions had landed him where he is now, Anakin decides to try what helped last time Obi-Wan was reluctant to give Anakin what he wanted. He shuffles upward on the bed until he can recline on the pillows. “Is that definitely a no to another round?”

Obi-Wan crosses his arms. He looks quite imposing in that armor. Anakin, for one, would surrender to him. Anakin has very obviously been trying to surrender to him for the past fifteen hours at least.

Obi-Wan begins pacing, hand coming up to stroke his beard as he makes tight circles at the foot of the bed, carefully not looking at him. Anakin props himself up on his elbows to watch. Is it weird that he finds this very attractive?

“Your very presence here proves that the Republic fleet--or at least a section of it--is planning an operation they want to keep me away from. While flattering, I do have a vested interest in their failing to succeed. Both my intelligence agents and my own previous knowledge of their strategies suggest two possible target planets. First, Geonosis. Second, Cato Neimoidia. Geonosis has loose Separatist control at this moment, perfect for an attack. The second is the base of operations for the Trade Federation. I don’t need to tell you why that’s important. Now, obviously I cannot leave you here, nor can I stay here with you while the Jedi make such a desperate move. So, the only logical solution is to bring you with me.”

“Can we go to Cato Neiomoida?” Anakin interrupts. “I hate sand. That’s all Geonosis is.”

“That’s not how one should make military decisions, Pada--what are you doing.” Obi-Wan shifts out of his lecturing tone and into a dangerous one so fast Anakin’s worried he’ll give himself whiplash. 

Of course, his worry doesn’t stop his own hands from playing with his cock, legs spread almost painfully wide open. His robe, which had, let’s be honest, never been tied in the first place, falls to both sides of his torso, leaving him completely spread out for Obi-Wan’s viewing pleasure.

“Listening,” Anakin promises innocently, a lone finger reaching down, down, down to prod gently at his hole. He sighs at the feeling as he rubs it, only slightly exaggerated. Not that he thinks Obi-Wan’s paying attention. He seems, in fact, to have short-circuited the man.

Carefully, so carefully, he lowers some of his shields to allow one vague sentence to slip past into the Force between them. I won’t get very far with just my spit, it sighs into the air. But there’s lube in every one of my suitca--

Obi-Wan’s on him before he can finish the thought.

Chapter Text

Very little is different about this Separatist spacecraft than the Republic one he’d been on just a few days ago.

Space is still cold, but at least this time Anakin can wrap himself up in Obi-Wan’s cloak again. Not outside of the Sith’s cabin, of course, but he also doesn’t plan to leave very many times during the course of his stay, a plan of action that seems to please Obi-Wan a disturbing amount. 

The Sith had refused to tell him where they were going, even as they boarded the ship: a short procession of Obi-Wan in his white armor, Anakin in his golden sun crown and a soft pink gown that bared his shoulders and cut up to the thighs, and the six droids assigned to carry Anakin’s things. Anakin can only assume Obi-Wan’s reluctance to share means that he’s decided on Geonosis, a belief compounded by the fact that Obi-Wan had told him, “Does it even matter where we’re going? It’s not like you’ll be planetside either way.”

Currently, Obi-Wan is at a briefing, and he’s been gone for hours. Anakin would be bored out of his mind and ready to riot if Obi-Wan had not set him up with practice exercises to do. Force-training practice.

As much as Anakin doesn't want to disappoint Obi-Wan, his...lover?, he equally doesn’t want to disappoint Obi-Wan, his teacher. His master.

So for the last two-ish hours, Anakin has been practicing reaching into the Force, spreading out his consciousness into the room.

But it just feels like he’s thinking, not about the energies connecting everything together, or whatever bantha-shit his master had said in that bland voice he used that made everything seem logical, but instead about his own problems. Of which there are many, not least the compromised cover of his mission, not to mention the clients he'd scheduled to see within the next five days without realizing there'd be even the slightest chance of him stuck in Separatist space for a week if not more.

The second Obi-Wan had left him alone, he'd managed to connect with Threepio on the comm-link he'd hidden in his second suitcase to tell him to reschedule his upcoming appointments, as well as to let his mother and Padmé know he was fine. Just fine. Absolutely no more details than fine, Threepio. As an afterthought, he'd told the droid to contact Ahsoka through the comm-sequence she'd given him, to tell her just one word. Geonosis. He has to hope she understands, because he's too far out to send a proper message. His guilt and sense of betrayal--to the Republic or to Obi-Wan?--has burned in his gut ever since.

After that admittedly disastrous call, he had committed to meditating until Obi-Wan came back.

But the longer he continues, the worse it feels. To be truthful, it feels as if the noises inside his head are getting louder the longer he sits quietly.

He can’t do it. He needs to, because Obi-Wan had told him to. But he can’t. What if he can never control the Force? If he was too old to be a Jedi at nine , he must be way too old now. He tries to release that pain--old now and so well-remembered it’s as smooth as a pebble--into the Force, but it feels so strongly like releasing a part of himself that he has to stop. What had Obi-Wan said to do? He can’t remember.

Leave his body--spread his consciousness out, yes, that's it. He quiets his thoughts and takes several deep breaths. He feels himself expanding with each inhale, shrinking back incrementally with every exhale. Suddenly, he’s stretching further than he’s shrinking. He can feel the presence of a handful of lifeforms down the corridors of the ship. That makes sense. The crew is mostly droids, and droids don’t have a Force presence. But Obi-Wan does. Where is he? Where is his master? He tears through the halls of the ship, trying to find the man, growing more frantic when he can’t.

There. There he is, Anakin would recognize that suffocatingly Dark force signature anywhere. He barrels into it before he knows what he’s doing. It’s something familiar. He wants to burrow there and hide. Forever. Master, master, master.

The Darkness surrounds him, so achingly similar to Obi-Wan’s warm arms that Anakin wants to cry. He never wants to leave

What will he do without this? Doesn’t he belong here? Hasn’t he been searching his whole life for somewhere to belong?

But he doesn’t know how to stop expanding now that he's already started, can feel himself slipping out of Obi-Wan’s presence much too soon. He doesn’t know how to stop. Master, help! He cries out in his mind. It hurts!

It does. He’s alone again. It hurts so much.

A moment later, ten moments later, an entire year later maybe, Anakin feels hands grabbing at his shoulders, a body pressing tightly against his, a voice murmuring into his ear, “Come back, dear one,” through the Force. Anakin knows he has to obey.

He snaps back into his own mind with a painful yell, hands coming up to grab at his face. He doesn’t even realize he’s sobbing until Obi-Wan brushes the tears off his cheeks, hushing him gently and pulling him into his lap, one hand coming up to thread through his hair and push his face into the crook of his neck. Anakin welcomes the new position, sniffling into Obi-Wan’s skin. His head hurts. “What--” Anakin starts to ask but can’t find the words he wants. He trails off, lets Obi-Wan prod through his newly-wrecked shields and into the chaos of his mind.

“I know, I know, dearheart, I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan says, rubbing up and down Anakin’s back through the thin fabric of his clothes. “I underestimated how powerful you would be. That was a meditation exercise used to help younglings in the Temple learn how to center themselves in the force. I didn’t realize you would go quite so far away from yourself quite so fast,” he shifts to pull back, and Anakin clings.

No, he thinks desperately, remembering that big expanse of nothing he’d felt without Obi-Wan there. Don’t leave me.

“I’m not, darling,” Obi-Wan murmurs. “I just want to look at you.”

Later, Anakin mumbles--thinks--defiantly into the safety of Obi-Wan’s neck. This now.

He can feel his master’s chest lifting in a silent laugh, but he doesn’t try to move again. Good master, Anakin says--thinks--nonsensically. Best master.

Obi-Wan shivers imperceptibly.

Anakin takes this as an invitation to start mouthing at Obi-Wan’s skin. Not with any intent behind it, but more to ground himself with the taste of his sweat, the feel of the soft skin against his lips, the sound of his pulse ringing through his ears.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan warns in a low voice.

Yes, Master? Anakin thinks back, as easy as breathing. Need more. Connection. Give me more.

Obi-Wan pauses in a considering way. Anakin smiles, snuggling deeper into the man’s chest. Obi-Wan has never considered giving Anakin anything he doesn’t eventually end up giving him.

“I’ve managed to spoil you completely rotten in just two days,” Obi-Wan marvels, hand dipping down to the base of Anakin’s spine. Anakin presses back into the possessive touch. “Perhaps the Jedi Council was right to deny me all the times I stood before them, begging to train you.”

That might just be the only thing that Obi-Wan could have said to make Anakin’s blurry thoughts solidify into a much more level-headed mindset. He pulls back to look at Obi-Wan’s face. “What?” he whispers.

Obi-Wan stares back with a cool expression, eyebrows cocking as he takes in whatever Anakin’s face must be doing. “Surely you knew?” He asks. “I promised to train you.”

The reminder hits Anakin in his chest, as it always does if he thinks about that moment of his life for too long. “But you didn’t,” he whispers back. “I knew you asked...after Naboo, but—“ but he had always thought the Council had told the new Knight no once, and Obi-Wan had accepted it. He’s never thought about Obi-Wan fighting to keep him, defying the Council’s orders to train him anyway, even if it meant sneaking out of the Temple late at night to fly to Naboo to visit him, even if it meant leaving the Order to have him as his Padawan.

Okay, so he has thought of it once or twice over the years, but always in a fantastical way, a what if that had happened instead? sort of way. Never in a this is the factual truth of what happened way.

Obi-Wan reaches up to cup Anakin’s face. He’s quick to nuzzle into the familiar palm. “No,” Obi-Wan breathes, eyes narrowing and Force presence thrashing about the room, oily Darkness slipping into every corner as his rage seems to grow. “No, Anakin, I begged. I pleaded. I would have given anything to train you: my dignity, my pride, my lightsaber, my Knighthood.”

“Then why--” Anakin begins to ask, but he thinks giving voice to the desperate words clawing at the back of his throat might be the very end of him. Why didn’t you? He wants to ask. Why was I left so alone?

Either Obi-Wan is still taking advantage of Anakin’s decimated mental shields, or his face must give away everything he doesn’t say, because suddenly he’s crushed against Obi-Wan’s chest, his arms coming up to wrap him in an embrace so tight it hurts. And yet, he pushes into it.

“They told me the one thing that could have made me let you go.” Obi-Wan rumbles, his Force presence rippling in the air, so strong Anakin feels it like a second pair of hands, caressing his body. “That you would be better off without me.”

“And you believed them?”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan says after a long pause. “I was not in the best place then. I had touched the Darkside to defeat Maul in Theed, and it was easy to agree with the Council when they pointed out the way the Dark still clung to me. It was easy to see that you deserved better.”

Anakin feels, quite intimately, the way Obi-Wan’s current darkness is clinging to him now, which makes the context behind his words much harder to completely understand.

“Oh,” Anakin says dazedly, closing his eyes against the thoughts raging in his head. It’s hard to process this information. It goes completely against everything he’s believed for years. Obi-Wan had cared for him. Had always cared for him. Everything he’d said in the past few days had pointed to that conclusion, of course, but it hadn’t hit as it does now. “But if you thought you were too...Dark...for me--for a Padawan, I mean, then...why did you have one later?” He pushes all of his bitterness, anger, and jealousy into the Force towards Obi-Wan. It had hurt like a fresh wound when he had heard about Kenobi and his Padawan, saving the day, winning the battles, becoming heroes. He wants, selfishly, for him to feel his pain. To understand.

Obi-Wan hushes him by blanketing him in his Force presence. Almost immediately, Anakin feels so good that he might die from it. This is surely the best feeling in the entire world, his master resting heavily around his mind. He feels like he’s curled up in the claws of a great dragon, safe and protected and warm. Treasured.

That’s it. He feels treasured.

“The Council assigned Ahsoka to me,” Obi-Wan murmurs. “I loved her dearly, I won't lie,  but I never wanted a Padawan after I lost you. But they could see me slipping, I suppose. The scars of Naboo never completely left me, and I had no reason to force them to. I became disillusioned with the Order, with the idea of the Jedi. And then the war broke out, and it was so much worse. The Jedi had forgotten how to be Jedi, just as I had. We weren’t built for it. For war. We couldn’t possibly survive it.

“So they sent me a Padawan to raise, to remind me of the good and the innocent that existed in our ranks, as if the very thought of me raising a Padawan weren’t several years too late. But I did grow attached to her and our troops anyway. I am prone to creating attachments, you see, although it’s forbidden by the Code. But they come so naturally to me. And for a while, for years, fighting became natural as well. The jedi were no longer my family, but I had...things to protect, that I thought worth the war.” Obi-Wan pauses long enough to bite into Anakin’s neck pointedly. Anakin stays quiet, wanting to protest at being called a thing but wanting desperately to hear more. He feels as if he’s on the edge of an abyss he’s always wanted to map out. He feels as if he’s about to get the truth. He feels that if that truth meant he'd fall deeply into the overwhelming darkness teasing at his toes, he'd oblige.

“Then there was a battle," Obi-Wan continues, as if he can't hear Anakin's thoughts. "And it was terrible. Cody died protecting Ahsoka, and I realized then that if I ever wanted to keep my loved ones safe, truly safe, there had to be no more war. And the Jedi had too many morals they refused to compromise in order to win. They couldn’t even see the greater mechanizations at play. So blind. So afraid. But I could see. I knew. So I left.”

“But you’re just on a different side now,” Anakin says, unsure, leaning back so he can peer into Obi-Wan’s face. “You’re still fighting a war.”

“No, sweet one,” Obi-Wan bares his teeth. “I’m ending it.”

Anakin opens his mouth to respond, but Obi-Wan kisses him before he can. He’s getting quite used to the intense feeling of Obi-Wan’s kisses, the way his tongue thrusts completely into his mouth immediately, the way the first few minutes is a remapping of sensation, as if to assure himself that nothing’s changed since the last time they kissed.

Quite used to, yeah right, Anakin laughs scornfully at himself. More like quite ridiculously turned on impossibly quickly, even if they had been in the middle of a serious conversation.

The truth is, Anakin kisses back because of course he does. How could he not, with all this new information swirling around his head? He knows he should think about Obi-Wan’s Fall, what he had meant when he said greater mechanizations at play, why Cody had meant enough to him to be his trigger to Fall, how many years he’d been dangling on the edge.…

But all he can actually think is you fought to keep me, you knew I was supposed to be yours, I can’t believe you wanted me, I can’t believe you want me. I was right. I was right to think it felt wrong to be without you. I was right to think you needed me too. I could have helped you. The Council should never have taken me away. I wasn’t theirs to take, I was yours. I’ve always been--

Obi-Wan growls and lifts Anakin into his arms, turning to throw him bodily into the small bed. It’s so reminiscent of the first time they had touched each other, just last night, that Anakin shivers. More, more, more, he wants more.

He should have always had more of Obi-Wan. The Council took him away, put the awful idea into his master's head that Obi-Wan would be bad for him, so deeply that even years later, when Anakin was on the other side of Coruscant dreaming desperately of Obi-Wan’s touch, the man had not dared to visit even for a chat.

Rage like he’s never known fills him to the brim. His hands make long scratches on Obi-Wan’s back as the other man rips off his own clothes--he hears tearing of the man’s armor and knows intrinsically one of them has used the Force to destroy it. He can’t think too long about that because Obi-Wan’s on him again, naked this time, kissing him as if he’ll die without him. As if he’ll die when he leaves.

Won’t let you leave, the ghost of a thought that isn’t Anakin’s sends shivers down his spine. Does Obi-Wan know he’s projecting? Or is he so caught up in Anakin that he’s forgotten decades of Jedi training? Won’t ever let you leave, the thought flashes again through his mind. Anakin knows there’s something wrong with that idea, but he can’t think past his rage and possessiveness and greed and lust. 

Mine, he thinks, or Obi-Wan thinks, or they both think at the same time, reaching out across the Force to grasp at each other. The Council had no right. Mine. Yours.

Anakin tilts his hips up as Obi-Wan ruts against him. He’s still wet from their foray into fingering earlier before they’d left but not anywhere close enough to take Obi-Wan.There’s a blunt finger pushing into him, and Anakin moans at the feeling. More, he demands anyway. More, more.

Obi-Wan sits up and pulls his finger out, which is so completely not what Anakin wants that he thinks he might cry. Again. But the other man doesn’t go any further, sticks out a hand in the direction of one of Anakin’s bags. A moment later, a jar of lube jumps into his palm.

Anakin has a second to wonder how often in the past the Force has been used for such a thing. It feels like they are inventing this all, that no one else in the entire galaxy has ever felt so full and complete from just two fingers, from just feeling this much naked skin joined together.

Why is he still clothed? He likes this dress, likes the way the pale pink compliments his blond hair and blue eyes, hangs down from his broad shoulders and yet hugs his hips, but he likes Obi-Wan’s touch more.

As if sensing his thoughts--okay, probably definitely sensing his thoughts--Obi-Wan grabs the vee of those thigh slits in the dress and rips it upwards. The fabric parts as easy as gossamer at his touch and, what Anakin is guessing, is a healthy application of the force.

He sighs half in regret as the fabric flutters to the ground next to the bed, and half in relief as he feels his master’s skin touch his again. Obi-Wan adds another finger, carefully stretching him as he kisses him with abandon before leaning back to watch his fingers disappear into Anakin’s hole. As if mesmerized, Obi-Wan shuffles backward until he can press his mouth there too, tongue slipping inside. Anakin wails.

His legs come up to hook around Obi-Wan’s shoulders as the man presses deeper into his core. Fingers brush relentlessly against his prostate, while his tongue fucks in and out of him.

Obi-Wan’s thoughts ricochet through his mind. Feels so good, make him sore with it, fuck him so full he never goes back, mine, always been--should have--always been--

Yes, he wants to scream as Obi-Wan rises up from between his legs to look at him. The other man looks like sin, the best sort of disheveled, with lube and precum shining in his beard, pupils blown and face flushed. Could Anakin have had this in the life he’ll never get to lead? If Obi-Wan had trained him from a boy, would either of them have wanted this?

Yes, the Force whispers into his ear, and Anakin has to agree. Wanting Obi-Wan Kenobi is a fundamental part of his being. His past, present, and future. He can’t imagine any version of him that doesn’t burn to feel his touch.

It’s the height of unfairness, the simple fact that they had been separated here, now, earlier. They could have had so much more of each other. Moments of camaraderie, friendship, trust. The Council had been so wrong.

He can’t stand for it. He must correct it. Obi-Wan sinks in another finger to his already well-stretched hole.  Anakin casts his mind out into the Force, finding Obi-Wan’s almost immediately and slamming into it. Mine, mine, he thinks. Then, yours, yours.  

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s never trained for this, only knows how he feels, what he wants to do. He wraps himself around Obi-Wan’s mind, knowing it’s his as much as his own is Obi-Wan’s. The idea that they should ever be separate again fills him with rage. No. No one else should get to have Obi-Wan’s mind. He attaches himself to it possessively.

This is his.

He feels, secondarily, the removal of Obi-Wan’s fingers, then the head of his cock pressing against his hole. He pulls back from the other’s mind because if he’s about to be fucked by Obi-Wan kriffing Kenobi, he wants to experience this all in his own body. Obi-Wan’s consciousness follows him across a brand new bridge that links their minds--no, their souls.

Oh, Obi-Wan’s voice sounds through their new bond. You’re mine. You asked to be mine, the words echo through his mind wondrously.

Anakin nods, mouth open, eyes wide as he stares up into Obi-Wan’s.

Good, Obi-Wan purrs. Body, mind, soul. Mine. With a single thrust forward, he sheathes himself fully to the hilt. It’s so. It’s. 

It’s.

It--

“I know,” Obi-Wan murmurs into Anakin’s ear, the feeling of his breath causing goosebumps to break out across his flesh. He’s just a mess of sensation, a body of pure nerve endings. Obi-Wan draws out slowly, hands creating dark bruises on Anakin’s hips. “You were made for me.” He slams in again, angling his hips to hit a different, no less sensitive, part of him.

Yes, yes, yes, Anakin wails in his mind. Maybe out loud too. He’s overwhelmed with sensation, with feeling. This is the best fuck he’s had in his life. He can feel the triumph the thought inspires in Obi-Wan, as the man adjusts his legs on his shoulders, folding Anakin in half and setting a furious pace.

Anakin had been wrong, every other time before. This is belonging. This is everything: Obi-Wan’s cock stuffed into his hole as his mind ravages him too. Every part of Anakin belongs to Obi-Wan, but every part of Obi-Wan belongs to Anakin as well. He can feel that intrinsically, the undercurrent of satisfied possessiveness Obi-Wan is broadcasting through their new bond. Anakin feels intoxicated by it as his mind is swathed in Obi-Wan’s Force presence.

Anakin thinks he’s going to come soon. How could he not? Who could possibly hold out when Obi-Wan is nailing his prostate, his hand thumbing at the head of his cock, his tongue stroking along the backsides of his teeth, and his mind so headily entwining with his own that Anakin can’t remember a time--or a reason for them to ever have been separated? 

Less than five pumps of Obi-Wan’s hips later, and Anakin is spilling between them with a cry. He clenches tightly around the other’s cock as he comes, muscles contracting hard enough that Obi-Wan sucks in a breath. He fucks into his pliant body once, twice, three times more, each stroke harder, shorter, more desperate than the last. Then he presses into him as far as he can go. Anakin can feel his cock twitching inside of him as it releases.

Obi-Wan collapses on top of him, as tired and spent as Anakin. Slowly, their minds separate, although the bond Anakin had built between them remains.

He’s so tired. He wants to fall asleep so badly. Instead he rebuilds the shields around his mind, knowing somehow that this is important. He feels Obi-Wan do the same, even as the other man slips out of him and settles down next to his body.

He needs to clean up now. Obi-Wan, uncharacteristically, seems satisfied to remain where he is at the moment, but already Anakin can feel his cum dribbling out between his thighs. He stumbles to the fresher to grab a cloth, wiping at his own spend on his stomach and thighs.

Almost by accident, he catches sight of himself in the mirror. It’s...a strange iteration of his usual self. His eyes look bigger, pupils still blown. His hair is a messy tangle of sweat-dried curls, and his body is positively black and blue with the harsh kisses Obi-Wan has marked him with.

I won’t let you leave, Obi-Wan had sent through the Force. Now, looking at the picture he makes in the fresher’s quiet stillness, Anakin recalls that thought, turns it over in his head to study it at all angles. It shouldn’t be up to Obi-Wan rather Anakin leaves or not. It should be up to Anakin. Surely Obi-Wan knows that. People say all sorts of crazy things they don’t mean in sex, and yet--

Yet Obi-Wan had continuously shown an unnerving amount of possessiveness for Anakin’s body--no, for his mind. His very self.

Everytime it had happened, Anakin had welcomed the touches, he can’t deny it. There’s something in him, borne from the Jedi Council denying him a spot in their Order and nursed every day since, that longs to belong, to be accepted. Being Obi-Wan’s is...is definitely not the worst future Anakin can think of. But can he give up what he knows Obi-Wan would demand of him?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Obi-Wan doesn’t like his job. Anakin’s tried dating in the past, and his partners’ feelings about his career have usually been the stumbling block that ends the relationship for good, usually badly enough that he doesn’t see them anymore at all.

But the idea of never seeing Obi-Wan again fills him with an irrational sense of fear. Does this mean he must give up life as he knows it--as he worked to get it--for Obi-Wan? In exchange to have Obi-Wan? Would he even want to, if Obi-Wan asks that of him? 

How can he know, truly, how Obi-Wan feels if they don’t talk about it? Padmé’s always going on about honest dialogues being the heart of negotiations. Who’s to say that principle doesn’t also apply to matters of the heart?

Surely they can have a rational conversation about this. If they truly cared for each other, they’d be able to vocalize their fears, their hesitancies. Their prices.

It’s simple bargaining, isn’t it? To draw lines around what parts of oneself no one can ever have, and what parts one can survive giving up. To reach an accord, a middle. A compromise.

Anakin thinks he might give up being a Companion to have Obi-Wan, but the other man would have to tell him about what he envisions them doing after the war. He’d have to ask. He’d have to give something up too. Anakin’s not going to be the fool who gives himself away for nothing. That’s practically the first lesson taught to all perspective Companions. You're worth more than the dirt prices people have been offering you for years.

How can Anakin swallow the idea of giving up his own worth, just for someone else? Even if it's Obi-Wan?

He locks eyes with himself in the mirror, rubs a hand over his kiss-swollen lips. He’s got beard burn running down his neck and his chest, interspersed with dark hickies that would match Obi-Wan’s teeth precisely.

It's just a simple conversation.

---

Anakin comes out of the fresher with a bang, stands naked at the foot of the bed with his hands on his hips. After all those thoughts in the other room, he hasn’t actually thought about what he’s going to say, how he’s going to bring such a delicate conversation up with a Sith lord who’s made it clear he views him as his.

“I fuck people for a living.”

Strong start, he applauds himself. Almost immediately regrettable, but incredibly bold. 

“Fucked,” Obi-Wan corrects, shifting into a seated position. He throws one hand over the head rail of the small bed, the other resting against his crossed knee. He looks regal, like a king holding court, even while completely naked. Somehow, between the minutes Anakin left to now, Obi-Wan has obtained a datapad. It's all very infuriating.

"No,” Anakin snarls, hands on his hips. This sort of fight is exactly what he’s been afraid of. Apparently, he really doesn't react to ultimatums well, even if they’re coming from Obi-Wan Kenobi. “Fuck.”

There’s a gentle, confused prodding of Anakin’s mental shields, as Obi-Wan furrows his eyebrows from the bed. “And I forgive you,” the other man says slowly. Anakin wants to throw something very, very heavy at him, wants to scream and cry that there’s nothing to forgive, that there’s nothing shameful about what he’s done. “Because you’re mine now. It doesn’t matter.”

Anakin draws himself up. “Of course it matters,” he yells, arms rising into the air.

Obi-Wan blinks yellow eyes at him, mental prodding becoming more insistent. “Okay then,” he says just as cautiously as Anakin had begun this conversation. Spoken as if the recipient is insane, and the speaker is the only rational actor in the room. “Then it matters. We can talk about it later, if it’ll make you feel better.” He opens his arm out to Anakin. “But come here for cuddles first.”

Anakin stomps his foot, then feels so incredibly like a child that he wants to hide in the fresher again. How dare Obi-Wan use Anakin’s weakness for cuddles against him at right now? Can’t he see he’s trying to have an adult conversation? A conversation that absolutely will not happen if he’s pressed up against Obi-Wan’s chest? 

“I need to know what you’re going to do at the end,” he decides to say, crossing his arms together, trying to look firm and foreboding. “I called Threepio and pushed back all of my appointments a week because I didn’t anticipate flying into an active warzone when I left Coruscant. I’m missing out on thousands of credits, and my reputation can’t take another hit like this. I figure it’ll take us maybe a couple of days in and then a couple of days out--I don’t know how I’m going to pick up my ship from where we left it, but….” he trails off as he catches the livid expression that’s taken up the entirety of Obi-Wan’s face. Without consciously telling his feet to move, he backs up a few paces.

“At the end?” The Sith lord repeats, quite calmly, but with an undercurrent of danger that makes Anakin shiver. He’s never had that tone directed at him before. The Force presses unforgivingly against him, slick and heavy with darkness.

He clears his throat. This isn’t a conversation that should happen naked, but Obi-Wan had quite literally ripped his clothes off of him only a handful of minutes ago. It's only been a bit since they've fucked. No one should blame his body for being confused. “Stop,” he says, holding out a hand. He doesn't know if he's talking to Kenobi or himself. “We should get dressed.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t say anything in dissent, lets Anakin grab some clothes from his third suitcase and rush back into the fresher. His skin is alight with nerves. He dresses quickly, very thankful he had packed by outfit instead of haphazardly throwing pieces of his wardrobe into various places.

He lets the door slide back again, dressed in a black and dark brown Jedi-inspired outfit that his tailor had assured him was, despite the coloring, quite authentic, leather tabards and all.

Obi-Wan stands next to the bed, donning his own armor. He looks up at Anakin's entrance, and raises a skeptical eyebrow.  “Now that’s not fair at all,” he says, shaking his head.

Anakin has a multitude of responses at the ready, but none of them answer the note of absolute despair that enters Obi-Wan’s voice.

He tries to find the thread of his argument. “I...I’m a Companion,” he says slowly. “Can you...can you respect that?”

Out of the corner of his eyes, he can see the unattached fixtures of the room start to levitate. Is this Anakin or Obi-Wan? He can’t possibly know. In a day and a half, Kenobi has introduced him to a whole new world, one where he doesn't quite recognize himself.

Obi-Wan looks intently down at his vambrace, fastening it slowly. There’s a thousand words he doesn’t say. A thousand words Anakin hears. None of them is an actual response or an actual question about what Anakin wants. No, Obi-Wan has already decided what will be best for him. Obi-Wan doesn’t need his opinion.

Anakin shakes his head with disgust. “Oh. If I’m yours, I’m only yours on your terms,” he says, backing away. He feels...betrayed. Tears sting at the corner of his eyes. He feels betrayed, but at the same time he doesn't want to admit, even to himself, why.

Obi-Wan steps forward, hand outstretched. His eyes are conflicted, Force presence both ramming against Anakin’s own shields and simultaneously running away from them. He can’t seem to find the correct words. “You can’t go--” he starts to say and then corrects himself. “If you go back, I can’t protect--”

He runs his hands through his hair, and Anakin extends enough of himself across the bond that he can feel the barest hint of the extreme storm raging in Kenobi’s mind. The other man looks completely taken apart, broken down to his bare essence. A large part of Anakin wants to stop this here, curl up between the other’s arms and promise to never leave. Never leave Obi-Wan. Never even want to.

It’s just that he can’t stay if Obi-Wan can’t respect him as his own person. If he can’t see him as an equal.

The bond between them hurts to touch, even delicately. There’s so many emotions of betrayal and sadness and anger and hurt.

Before either of them can open their mouths again--to say the right thing or to end it all--the ship they're on shudders with an incredibly strong hit. The Republic. Anakin wants to cheer in victory that maybe Ahsoka has gotten his message, to celebrate the fact that he’d been right that the Council would choose to attack Geonosis. It just proves that his hunch was correct. That in another life, he could have been the person making these types of decis--

At the same moment, Obi-Wan’s comm-link chimes with a message. “We’ve arrived in the planet atmosphere,” a blue, holographic droid pops up. “We’re sensing Republic warships." A mild way to say that they've been struck by Republic warships, but Anakin would expect no less from a droid.

Obi-Wan raises his eyebrow before looking at Anakin. His triumph quickly settles into guilt in his stomach. There’s a second where the Sith lord looks at him with an expression of completely unrestrained fury, before Obi-Wan looks away. “Give me a moment,” he tells his comm-link, already getting up. “I’ll be in the hanger.”

“Obi-Wan--” Anakin reaches out. Suddenly their previous discussion feels drastically less important. If the other is going to leave the safety of the warship in order to fight, then...then Anakin is suddenly realizing exactly how much he stands to lose.

Kenobi raises a hand to stop him. It works. The bond thrums between them, but they just stand still on opposite sides of the room. Obi-Wan looks like he’s going to say something, but at the last moment, he turns to leave instead.

Okay. Fine. Fine.

Anakin stays alone in the quarters for perhaps five minutes before he bursts into action. He will not let the Jedi--the Sith--the--the--his Obi-Wan die before--before...just, before, okay?

He finds his shoes in the mess of his things. By the time he straps them to his feet, there are two droids posted outside his door.

“The General says not to let you out,” one droid says.

“These are extraordinary circumstances,” Anakin argues, standing between them.

“What kind of extraordinary circumstances?” the other droid responds, hefting his gun.

Anakin lets out a breath, wonders what Obi-Wan would say in his position. “The General is in danger,” he decides. “I must go help him.”

“He’s flown down to the surface of Geonosis already,” the second droid says matter-of-factly. “He can’t need that much help.”

As if it’s the Force’s will, the comm-link on the first droid’s wrist chimes. He presses a button, and an identical droid pops up.

“General Kenobi has been shot down,” the holo says.

“Roger, roger,” the droid responds.

The second droid turns to Anakin, dropping his gun. “Roger, roger.”

Anakin nods in a haze of hopefully passing gratitude, already moving past them. His heart is somewhere in his stomach, if not lower. Obi-Wan--shot down? Is he alive?

Wait. Yes. Wait. He knows he’s alive. The bond is still there, linking them together. He’s definitely alive, but Anakin needs to hurry. He knows he needs to hurry, he doesn’t need the oppressive weight of the Force pressing down on him to know he’s running out of time.

He finds his way to the hanger almost completely by instinct. There’s a ship sitting there ready that he knows he’ll know how to fly. It’s an easy few seconds to power it up, run the pre-checks, and shoot out of the Separatist ship.

Flying is something Anakin knows so well it feels like more than second nature to him. It feels like this is an intrinsic part of him. How could he have forgotten the way the world tilts at the slightest twitch of his fingers? How the stars rush to greet him? How he outmaneuvers every single enemy blast?

Who is the enemy? A part of his mind asks, the part hired by the Jedi Council, the part that calls Padmé his best friend.

Whoever stands between him and Obi-Wan, the much larger part of him declares.

He speeds down towards Geonosis’ surface, the bond between him and his master humming so powerfully that he knows immediately what area of the planet he’ll find him on.

---

It’s sand and wreckage on the ground, as far as the eye can see. Anakin lands the ship expertly, perhaps only a few unexpected fires but nothing worth really mentioning, and crawls out of the metal frame. He knows Kenobi is directly in front of him.

He lets the Force guide his steps over several sandy dunes, until he doesn’t actually have to. Just a few hundred meters in the distance, he can see the flashes of lightsabers--one red, one green.

If he were a weaker person, he’d be struck down by the déjà vu the image evokes. But he’s not. He’s Anakin Skywalker, and he runs until he’s only a couple of meters away from Obi-Wan and the Jedi he’s fighting against.

The shortening of their bond must alert Obi-Wan to his presence, because he does a double take that almost costs him his head. “Anakin?” he yells in absolute disbelief.

Anakin wants to shrug, because obviously it’s him--because how could Obi-Wan convince himself that Anakin wouldn’t find his way to his side, no matter the planet he chose to fight on? No matter the sand slipping between his toes as they speak?

The young Jedi takes advantage of Obi-Wan’s temporary distraction and sets into a flurry of aggressive attacks. Kenobi deflects them easily.

“You can’t be here,” Obi-Wan shouts to Anakin wildly, eyes flashing between red and yellow interchangeably. He sounds completely unhinged. Anakin hesitates.

“But I am,” he responds as Obi-Wan parries an over-headed blow by his opponent. He almost looks like he’s dancing, like he’s toying with his opponent.

It might be the desert heat getting to him. It might be his own recklessness, fed by the way his new connection to the Force fizzes through his veins, not to mention the way his bond with his master sings in his very soul. Either way, he steps forward. Closing the distance between him and the battling duo.

His sudden proximity makes Obi-Wan falter.

It’s.

It’s Anakin’s duty. Distract Obi-Wan Kenobi. The other man takes a step toward him, magnetized, as the Jedi’s lightsaber swings downwards toward his neck. He must not notice. His own connection with the Force must be drowned out by his attachment to Anakin.

Distract Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi Council had said in their original briefing. They hadn’t mentioned the price that Anakin himself would be expected to pay for the successful completion of the mission. The loss he might suffer.

They hadn’t mentioned that the price would not be worth the cost.

Anakin lunges forward, the moment the lightsaber swings to the side at a deadly angle. His right hand makes contact with Obi-Wan’s shoulder, pushes him as far as he possibly can away from the danger it represents. But he can’t pull himself away too, afterwards.

It’s a sacrifice he makes in the moment. He’d have given his life then, to protect Obi-Wan, regardless of their argument, regardless of the man’s upsetting ideas about who he belongs to. Regardless of who his time belongs to.

Obi-Wan falls to his side, uninjured. The Jedi’s lightsaber makes immediate and unforgiving contact with Anakin’s outstretched arm. He has half a second to think that perhaps he should have stayed on the ship, perhaps he should have never taken the Council up on their proposal, perhaps he should have at least made them sign a workers’ compensation form, before the pain of the severance drowns out all his thoughts.

It's a pain that he’s never known before. He feels like he’s dying. Or, like he’d rather be dead. One second, there he is, standing against a Jedi so that the love of his life may escape unscathed, and then suddenly, he’s on the ground, his brain so soaked in absolute agony that his grasp on reality is loose at best.

There’s a pained scream of NO that echoes through his mind, before he loses consciousness completely, overtaken by waves of anguish that might come from himself, but also might just as easily have not.

Chapter Text

Anakin comes to in a bed. He opens his eyes and groans automatically at the bright lights overhead. A figure moves into his line of vision and Anakin blinks blearily at it until it resolves into a shape that makes more sense. Still not a lot of sense, but more than before.

After all, what’s Commander Tano doing here? Where’s Obi-Wan?

A vibroblade to the gut couldn’t have jolted him more than that thought and the cascade of memories that accompanies it. Obi-Wan--their fight--the battle--Anakin had never been more afraid than he’d been when he saw that lightsaber swinging towards Obi-Wan, so of course he’d pushed him out of the way, would have given anything to save the other man’s life, even if it meant losing his own. Even if it meant losing his--

He looks down at his body, where his right arm should be resting against the mattress. Instead there’s nothing there at all, only bandages wrapped neatly around the--the stub. He has to stare for a couple of seconds, trying to process everything.

Kark. His mom is going to be so mad is the first hysterical thought to run across his mind.

He has to close his eyes. It would be embarrassing to cry in front of a war commander over the loss of a limb, when she’s seen so many people lose their lives in absolute senseless violence. And he’s okay now. He has everything important. He has--

“Obi-Wan!” He practically yells, eyes shooting open to frantically look around the room for his Sith lord. Why isn’t he here, next to Anakin, holding one of his hands--uh, his only hand--telling him that he’s being so very brave and so very good and he’ll be okay? Had he been hurt after Anakin passed out? Is he--is he--

Anakin can’t even bring himself to think about that option. He reaches into the Force with his mind to find the bond connecting them together. It’s there, still intact, but there’s something off about it. He tries to follow the line to wherever Obi-Wan is, but he runs into something that feels like a durasteel wall, blocking him completely from his master.

He comes back to himself with a gasp, turning pleading eyes towards Ahsoka. “Where is he? Do you have him?” he demands in a wild, intense voice. 

Maybe he can stage a...a breakout. He doesn’t really know much about breaking highly dangerous sith lords out of what is a probably heavily secured cell, but he’ll figure it out as he goes. Maybe he can find a spare clone trooper armor, put it on, pretend to be one of them until he can get on--on guard rotation, then...then just walk in and get him and leave? It feels like a plan where a lot of things go wrong, but the idea of leaving Obi-Wan behind wherever they are now is just unacceptable.

He catches sight of a strangely heartbroken expression that flashes across Ahsoka’s face. It makes Anakin pause to reevaluate. What if Obi-Wan had died? What does Anakin know about bonds anyway? Maybe the disconnect he’s feeling across their bond is actually because Obi-Wan isn’t around anymore at all. Anakin feels his throat closing up at the possibility, and suddenly he has to know. For better or for worse, he has to know. He reaches over to grip Ahsoka’s forearm with his left hand.

“Is he... gone?” he asks, voice a near whisper. He can’t bring himself to say dead out loud, but the word haunts every corner of his mind.

Ironically, his body has never felt more alive, his heart pumping double-time and his breath coming in uneven gasps. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if she says yes. He’s never had to live in a galaxy without Obi-Wan Kenobi before. The idea of such a future is unbearable. 

Ahsoka nods once, lekku twitching in distress. She can’t even look him in the eyes, instead staring down at her hands twisting the hem of her shirt.

But to be fair, Anakin’s not sure he wants to be looked at right now. Maybe never again.

It’s like a void has opened up inside of him, and this pain is worse than losing his arm. This pain--is it even survivable? Has anyone felt this much grief ever in their life? There’s a crash of something on his left side falling to the ground violently, and a crack snakes its way across in the transparisteel of a bacta tank straight ahead.

Gone. Gone. And Anakin will never get to tell him anything ever again. Their fight--the last time they’d ever really said anything to each other -- feels so inconsequential now. Anakin would give up anything--everything--to have Obi-Wan here again, to have him stroke his hair, hold him tightly. He never--he never told Obi-Wan how much the man meant to him, had thought it too far too fast, hadn’t wanted to scare him away, had never wanted to see him leave.

How could he have forgotten, even for a few, precious days, that Anakin Skywalker never gets what he wants?

The transparisteel of the bacta-tank explodes outward. Ahsoka yelps and covers her face with her arms but Anakin doesn’t move, doesn’t even register the sting of jagged ‘steel cutting his face.

He hunches forward, hand wrapped around his stomach, and sobs. A hesitant hand comes up to touch his shoulder, but he flinches away. He doesn’t want anyone to touch him. Maybe never again. 

“Leave,” Anakin groans out. When he doesn’t hear any movement, he begs. “Please. I need...I need to be alone right now.”

Alone. That’s all he’ll be forever now.

Ahsoka does get up then, reluctantly. He listens to her soft footsteps back away to the door of the medbay. She pauses there and says, “It was my fault.”

Anakin’s head snaps up to look at her. A deep, cloying rage starts to creep out from that void inside of him. He’s only ever felt this by proxy, through the bond he shares--shared--with Obi-Wan. “What?” he whispers.

She backs away at his glare, looking almost afraid of him. Good. She should be if she’s the reason why Obi-Wan is dead. A part of him wonders at the picture he makes now, a Companion’s analytical thought that feels out of place in the storm of his emotions.

Tano looks close to crying herself, as she wraps her arms around her stomach and looks down at the ground. Her voice wavers when she speaks again. “I’m sorry , Anakin, I--I didn’t mean to, I know people are thinking I did it on purpose because he was my master, but I promise I didn’t--I promise I don’t have any soft spots for him, not after I saw what he did to you at least--he’s truly gone, Master Yoda was right--consumed by his own Darkness--”

She looks up, makes eye contact with him, tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes. It’s almost funny. Obi-Wan Kenobi’s two apprentices, in one room, both crying over his death, both having a hand to play in it. “I didn’t mean to let him get away!” she wails. 

Anakin’s brain stops working. He thinks maybe his heart stops beating too, just for a moment. She couldn’t mean--she couldn’t possibly mean--

He has to try three times to get the words out, and even then they’re faint. Barely words at all. “Tell me.”

She crosses back over to the bed and retakes her seat next to him, eyeing him like he’s a beast that could turn on her any second. That’s close to how Anakin feels too.

She takes a deep breath to calm herself. Anakin doesn’t care if she’s calm or not, wants to crawl inside her head and root through her memories until he finds the truth.

“We got your comm and were able to fortify the lines,” she begins, and Anakin remembers with a pang that he had called her. Why had he done that? Why had he risked losing his master in such a way? For what? The approval of the Jedi Council? A sense of loyalty to the Republic, heavily instilled in him mostly through Padmé? Why can’t he go back in time and shake his other self, tell him that none of that matters as much as Obi-Wan?

“So you were ready for the attack,” Anakin mumbles, hit with such a strong wave of guilt he’d have to sit down if he were vertical. “Then?”

“Well, we won,” Ahsoka says after a long pause. “But we still lost so much.” She looks down, obviously in a great deal of pain but trying to hold herself together. 

The part of Anakin that’s still reeling from thinking Obi-Wan died wants to shake her by the shoulders, tell her that he’s lost so much too. His arm. His master.

But the rest of him just sees a child in need of comfort and support. A child who’s seen her friends die, her master leave, her family ripped apart by the horrors of war. Obi-Wan had been right. The Jedi were not made for this fighting. He reaches out and touches her arm gently. He should offer more. Normally, he wouldn’t hesitate.

Who does she go to when she’s in pain now that Obi-Wan isn’t hers anymore? Anakin internally blinks in surprise at the thought, its possessive edges. It’s tinged with the same oily darkness as his rage had been. He puts that aside to examine later, and focuses on Ahsoka completely as she continues to talk.

“Obi-Wan’s ship was shot down as soon as it entered the atmosphere. Master Unduli went to confront him, just to capture him if she--if she could.”

Anakin’s mind flashes back to the curve of the green ‘saber swinging towards Obi-Wan’s vulnerable neck. Hadn’t looked much like capturing from where he had been standing. He feels his lips twitch up into a sneer and is grateful that Ahsoka still isn’t looking at him.

“I was supposed to follow immediately, but we were surrounded by droids and cut off from that direction too fast. When I got there...you were on the ground, bleeding so much, and Obi-Wan was…” she trails off. Anakin can’t look away from her face, heart taking up permanent residency in his throat.

She looks at him, seems to be weighing something, before she says. “May I show you?”

Anakin tries not to be too eager when he nods, lowering his shields slightly so that Ahsola’s memory can get through.

Obi-Wan, looking nothing at all like the level-headed, respectable, neatly-groomed Master she’d grown up with--standing over Companion Skywalker’s still form with his red lightsaber drawn and pointing directly at Master Unduli, who’s taking several quick steps away. It’s the opening stance of Ataru, which is weird because her master’s chosen form is almost infallibly Soresu, one that revolves around patience and defense. But there’s nothing even remotely defensive about the way Obi-Wan moves now. He attacks first, launches himself over the body on the ground and brings his saber down onto Master Unduli’s. 

Ahsoka is too far away to see the details of Obi-Wan’s face, but the unhinged rage in his expression turns her stomach. There’s nothing held back in his movements. He’s aiming to kill and using every ounce of his powers to do so. 

She’s just close enough to hear some of the words they’re exchanging. “I will kill you for this,” Obi-Wan snarls, but his tone is almost familiar. It’s the way he sounded at negotiation tables when he promised a specific outcome to an invested party. “I will kill you for touching him.”

Master Unduli says something back, but Ahsoka can’t hear it over the sounds of their fighting. She hadn’t attuned her senses to pick up on Master Unduli’s voice in any environment the way she’d done for her master.

She can’t think like that--of that--now. She has to help her fellow Jedi. She has to think of Obi-Wan as a Sith, not her former master. She takes a couple of quick breaths and rushes forward to help, but she gets sidetracked as she gets closer to Anakin. She needs to join the fight. She needs to make sure he’s okay. Alive. What if he had died? 

What if the Jedi had killed him?

She stands for a second, torn between the two Jedi ideals: help those who are suffering, and fight against Darkness. 

She drops down next to Anakin. It’s what her master would have done.

He has a pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there. She sends a message to Rex for immediate extraction. He sends an affirmative. Relieved, she turns back to the duel, intent on jumping in, just in time to see Obi-Wan slide his ‘saber out of Master Unduli’s chest. The Jedi Master collapses unmoving onto the sand, and Obi-Wan turns his entire attention to Ahsoka.

It feels like standing in the glare of a million suns, to have him look at her with so much intense hatred in his eyes. “Get away from him,” he says, stalking forward, lightsaber still lit. “Don’t touch him.”

Ahsoka can feel her eyes widening. This is her master, and he’s looking at her as if one wrong move will leave her gutted and dead next to Master Unduli. “Obi-Wan--” she says. He twirls his blade expertly as he prowls forward.

“He’s injured,” she settles on saying, hand coming back to Anakin’s pulse. His eyes track her movements obsessively, and she can feel the way his Force presence stands on edge as she touches his skin.

“I’m aware,” he growls. “I do not want to hurt you, Ahsoka. But if you stand between me and mine, I will not hesitate.”

“I’ve called Rex, Obi-Wan!” Ahsoka cries, trying to reason with him. “We can take him, put him on our ship, where he can get proper medical attention!”

“Take him? Take him? Never. He stays with me, he belongs with me, he’s mine!”

There’s the far off hum of a ship moving steadily toward them. Rex. Ahsoka stands slowly, buoyed by the reinforcements. “Think!” she yells at him, hand dropping to the hilt of her blade on her waist. “Do you even have a bacta tank on your ship? The separatists fight with droids, what sort of supplies could they use?! You can’t give him what he needs!” Obi-Wan takes a menacing step forward. Ahsoka tries once more to reason with the monster her master has become. “Going with you would be the worst thing for him!”

She braces herself for an attack, but her words seem to have frozen him in place. 

He’s not even looking at her anymore, nor is he looking at the now visible and fast-moving ship in the sky. He’s staring at Anakin’s still form, a look of such devastation on his face that Ahsoka feels like she should look away. Half of her wants to attack him while he’s distracted. He has Jedi blood on his hands. He’s the enemy. Why is she hesitating? 

She lights her ‘saber and falls into her opening stance, darting forward to land a blow quickly. Obi-Wan deflects but loses ground in a way that makes Ahsoka feel a weird mix of horror and pride. They dance in their fight further and further away from Anakin’s body, but she can feel the craft landing, hear the men descend to the sand to load him up into the belly of the ship.

Obi-Wan’s blade catches hers and holds it steady. Their faces are so close. It feels almost like a sparring session, like any moment Obi-Wan will power down his sword and tell her to fix her stance. Instead what he says is, “If he should die, there will not be a single Jedi left to mourn your fallen. I will come for you all.”

He uses the Force to send her flying back into the sand. By the time she makes it to her feet again, Obi-Wan’s in a ship--the one Anakin must have used?--and lifting off. Oh. He never gave ground at all. Just led them here so he could make an easy escape.

She stays still for much longer than she’d like to admit, watching him fly off until he’s only a tiny smudge in the sky. Then she does what she’s done after every gut-wrenching moment of pain she’s experienced this entire war. She soldiers on.

Anakin comes out of the memory with a jolt, head spinning as he tries to sort through all of this new information. He clings to the borrowed image of Obi-Wan, safe and alive and alive and alive.

He should say something kind to Ahsoka. It must have been so hard to fight Obi-Wan; Anakin’s not sure he’d be able to do it in her shoes. Clearly, she’s stronger than him. She’ll be a great Jedi.

Now that he knows Obi-Wan is alive, he tugs at the bond between them. The man must have blocked it off, but surely if he just pulls hard enough, Obi-Wan will feel it and come back to him. But that doesn't change the fact that the man must have...left him and then blocked the bond so Anakin couldn’t...find him. Feel him.

“I’m so sorry,” Ahsoka says again. Oh yeah. He should--

“It’s not your fault he got away, Snips,” Anakin offers weakly. “I’m not mad at you, I swear. This--this isn’t even the worst scenario,” he says more to himself than her. She raises her brow as she looks around the destruction of the room, but then when she looks back at Anakin, her expression seems to crumble.

“Not about that,” she mumbles. “I just feel so bad about my part in this--if I had known what Obi-Wan would do to you, I never would have agreed to take you to Separatist space.”

Anakin blinks at her, confused. “I had a contract.” That he desperately wanted to fulfil, he doesn’t add. 

“You never should have!” She cries, looking impassioned. “If the Jedi start to put others in a position of suffering just for a leg up in the war, then we’ve already lost!”

“Suffering?” Anakin asks incredulously. “What are you talking about?”

Ahsoka looks away guiltily. Anakin thinks over the past few minutes with a clearer head. Oh no, did she have the wrong idea about--he sets about correcting her.

“Ahsoka, Obi-Wan didn’t force me,” Anakin says slowly.

The Togruta doesn’t look like she believes him. “I saw them stripping you for the bacta tank. You were covered with bruises and...scratches and teeth marks.”

“Consensual teeth marks!” Anakin yelps, feeling a strange pang of loss that they must have been healed in the tank. No, no bacta, he can remember Obi-Wan growling into his ear. Guess they both broke some promises.

Ahsoka looks skeptical still, and Anakin is torn between the desire to defend Obi-Wan’s honor and hide his face away in his pillow and never come out. If he has to give Obi-Wan’s ex-padawan The Talk, he thinks he’d rather be back in the desert, getting his arm chopped off

“I promise, Ahsoka. Obi-Wan would never. He--I seduced him, he--”

“Okay, okay,” Ahsoka interrupts quickly, looking vaguely disgusted. “Please don’t say anything else. Please.”

Anakin grins at her overly distraught features. She feels less heavy in the Force though, and Anakin’s happy to have relieved that burden.

“Wait, but if you’re not, like, heavily traumatized by....being with a Sith Lord for a few days, then why did you react like th--”

The sound of the door swishing open cuts her off in the middle of her sentence. Anakin’s never been more happy to see members of the Jedi Council. Mace Windu’s face pinches up as he catches sight of Anakin, but Anakin thinks it’s probably just an automatic reaction at this point and decides not to take it personally.

Ahsoka stands hurriedly, and with a backwards glance at Anakin, takes a reluctant leave.

“Companion Skywalker,” Fisto says, coming to stand at the foot of his bed. Anakin’s thankful for the use of his title, if only because it makes it easier for him to compartmentalize all of his thoughts. Put everything else to the side for now: he’s Companion Skywalker again.

“Masters Jedi,” he responds cooly, sitting as straight up in his bed as he can. “Pardon me for not bowing at this time.”

“How are you feeling?” a Cerean male asks.

“Mostly all here,” Anakin says wryly.

“Regret we do, that this has happened to you,” Yoda says. “Our intention this was not. Thought we did that young Kenobi would ensure your safety through any means--”

Anakin cocks his head. Something’s been bugging him for a long time, ever since he heard Obi-Wan’s recollection of those years following their first meeting. Before that, when he first met with the Council. But he had been too blinded by the idea of seeing Obi-Wan Kenobi again that he hadn’t questioned them about his misgivings. 

He decides if he’s going to get any answers from the Council, he’ll need to be clever about it.

“Are you saying you thought that an evil Sith Lord would do anything to protect some random Companion they fucked once or twice? Why, because I’m blond? I fit his preferences, so you were confident he wasn’t going to hurt me?”

He thinks he knows the answer, but he also thinks he deserves to be told the truth.

If it were possible for highly trained, battle-worn, wise and legendary Jedi to fidget, then that’s probably what Anakin would say they’re doing now.

“Did he?” Windu asks intently. “Did he hurt you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters--”

“Because then I’d be hurt? Or because then you’d be able to gauge how far gone he is if Obi-Wan Kenobi intentionally hurt Anakin Skywalker?”

So much for clever. But it feels so good to say these words to these people that Anakin doesn’t even mind all that much that he’s shown his entire hand so fast. 

Windu snaps his mouth shut and Yoda’s ears droop. The Cerean coughs into his fist and Fisto’s lekku twitch.

A thought occurs then, too terrible to even wrap his mind around at first. But it slots into place so easily.

“If Obi-Wan...lived here for decades, lived with you, strategized with you, then you must have known how he thought. You must have known he would see through the ruse, or get the information out of me some way. And you must have known that he wouldn’t want to leave me behind if he went off to fight, not with the way he begged you to let him train me and the way he grew colder after you didn’t. 

“And...you must have known he would make an easier target, if I was on that ship, even in a little bit of danger. You said distract him, and I thought you meant fuck him so well he ignores his comm-link, but you really meant distract him in the middle of a battle. It was a trap, all along.”

“That’s ridiculous, Skywalker,” Windu says. “You’re talking hypotheticals. Listen to yourself, There’s no way we could have known all of that.”

“But you considered it,” Anakin says, crossing his...arm over his chest. “As the best case scenario, you considered it. You just added in a factor you didn’t know anything about: me.”

Windu opens his mouth, but Anakin’s on a roll. “You thought I was just convenient. Anakin Skywalker, Kenobi’s obsession, a Companion? It must have made baiting that trap easy. But you couldn’t have known...that I wouldn’t have let Obi-Wan run into danger without me there. That I would do anything for him as well, anything to ensure his safety.”

“You should be careful, Companion Skywalker. You are currently in the Jedi Temple Halls of Healing, and you are professing a dangerous level of attachment to an enemy of the Republic,” Fisto warns, looking serious.

“I am quite confident that you can’t touch me,” Anakin replies.

“Kenobi is probably half a galaxy away. He can’t do anything to protect you,” Windu bites out.

“Obi-Wan?” Anakin blinks exaggeratedly. “Why would I need Obi-Wan to protect me? I have records with my droid of our meeting in my apartment. Half of the credits you deposited into my account before I left can easily be traced back to you. Of course, Companion work is completely above the bar, but imagine if the public found out the markedly prudish Jedi Council had gone to see a Companion? All at the same time? Surely that scandal isn’t what the war effort needs?”

The Cerean steps forward to intercede, but Anakin raises his hand. “And then worst of all, imagine if the public found out that the Jedi Council sent an unarmed Companion into Separatist space to fuck a Sith lord? And he comes back a few days later with no arm and covered in bite marks and bruises? I’ve just spent two days in the company of an evil, evil Sith lord. It sounds traumatizing. Of course I have skewered opinions about him. He’s manipulated my mind. I need a mind healer. I’m just a weak-willed Companion, meant for silks and gentle fuckings. Not war zones.

“It’s politics, Masters Jedi. Public relations. Just a few wrong words in the right senators’ ears--and I can assure you, I have plenty of the right senators’ ears--shed a few tears, jump at loud noises, and you can guarantee a vote in the Senate to launch an investigation into the matter. At the very least.”

He sits back placidly, turning big, watery eyes to stare at Windu, who glares back.

“A bond, we can sense,” Yoda speaks up. “Bonded, you are to young Kenobi?”

Anakin inhales sharply. How did he think, even for a second, that some of the strongest Jedi masters wouldn’t be able to feel the bond? “I’m unsure how that is relevant.”

The Cerean’s eyes light up as he strokes his beard in a considering way. “There have been cases in the past of Force Sensitives being coerced into forming bonds with their abuser. We have always been able to break them immediately. So for your...version of events to be accurate, we should, of course, break this bond now.”

Anakin’s chest feels tight and painful, fear and anger welling up between his ribs. No. No. The Council has no right.

Fisto hums in agreement. “A critical step towards healing from trauma,” he steps forward intently. Anakin flinches back, as if the Nautolan had lit his lightsaber.

“No!” he yells in a panic. Windu raises a triumphant eyebrow. Okay. Anakin has to think past his emotions. What would Companion Skywalker say? What’s his bargaining position?

He takes several, several breaths to regain his composure.

“If you break that bond without letting Obi-Wan know I’m alive, he’s going to…” Lose his shit? Destroy the galaxy? 

“He’s not going to like it,” Anakin settles on saying. “Violently dislike it, one could say. Who could predict how he’d even react?” 

He can see Obi-Wan’s sneering expression from Ahsoka’s memories. “If he should die, there will not be a single Jedi left to mourn your fallen. I will come for you all.”

The room falls silent. Everyone seems to be weighing their options, figuring out their next move or twenty. “What do you want?” Windu says.

“To keep the bond,” is the very first thing his mind thinks of. “And a new arm. On your credits.”

Windu’s eyes twitch.

“And in return, I won’t say anything. To anyone.”

“And?”

How to sweeten the deal? What can he give Windu in exchange? What is the thing Windu wants most from Anakin? Oh! “And I promise to never step into the Temple ever again. Oh, and I suppose I can stop seeing my Jedi clients too, if it’d make you feel better.”

Windu looks like he’d rather have Anakin move to a small moon in the Outer Rim, but he’ll settle for never seeing his face again.

“And will you swear to never attempt to contact Obi-Wan Kenobi through your illicit and highly inappropriate force bond?” The Cerean asks. 

Anakin hesitates for a split second, but. He’d say anything to get out of here with the bond intact. What authority does the Jedi Council have over him? How dare they try to dictate his life? They lost any right to do that years ago. Anyway, how could they tell if he broke his word?

“Yes,” Anakin says, looking appropriately reluctant but ultimately agreeable. He’s practiced this expression in the mirror, too. Some clients had a thing for it.

The Council exchanges a look between themselves. “We find these terms…satisfactory,” The Cerean says. Anakin looks to Windu, who gives a jerky nod.

Anakin lets himself smile. “Then it was a pleasure doing business with you.”

Windu is the first to leave the room, followed quickly by Fisto and the Cerean.

“Master Yoda,” Anakin calls, before the green little troll can leave. He waits until the Jedi is looking at him. “Do you regret it? Not letting him train me? Turning me away?”

Yoda’s ears droop. “All-knowing, the Jedi are not. Led by our own fears, even the strongest and wisest among us can be. Great capacity for power, you showed, but great capacity for Darkness as well. Give you to young Obi-Wan as he was we could not. Give you to another Jedi as Obi-Wan was we could not. Let you go we had to.”

“I could have helped him!” The words burst out of Anakin before he knows he wants to say them. “I would have been good for him. He needed someone--he could have had me. You were wrong!”

“Infallible, the Jedi are not,” Yoda responds. “But lingering in regret is not the Jedi way. Let go, you should.”

“I’ve been trying,” Anakin admits bitterly. “For thirteen years.”

Yoda shakes his head. “Do or do not, Companion Skywalker. There is no try.”

Anakin thinks that sounds a lot like a Companion’s motto, and he thinks he should tell Yoda that, but Yoda is gone between one second and the next.

Suddenly, he’s alone in the private room, just him and his three limbs and the quiet, achingly silent bond in the back of his head.

Chapter Text

“Oh kark,” Anakin curses as the teacup in his hand shatters. At least it’s not full of tea yet, or the mess he’s made would be exponentially harder to pick up. “I’m sorry, Chancellor.”

“No worries at all, my boy,” the old man says with a genial smile. “No worries at all. It’s just a teacup, leave it to the cleaning droids."

Anakin ducks his head at the kind words and sheepishly places the broken cup’s handle on the desk in front of him. He flexes his new hand, looking down at the metal fingers. They still seem alien to him.

It’s been two standard months since Geonosis, and a month and a half since the Jedi Council--reluctantly--fitted him with a new cybernetic arm. Of course he’s done his own adjustments to the mech-piece, but no matter how much he tinkers with it, he can’t fully see it as his.

“I guess I still don’t know how much force I should use,” Anakin confesses, hiding his durasteel hand in the pocket of his tunic.

“Ah,” the Chancellor replies pensively over his fresh cup of tea. “And I suppose a Companion who cannot rely on his own body to meet his demands, let alone his patrons’, isn’t much of a companion at all.”

Anakin bristles instinctively. It’s true that he’s had to deny and postpone appointments over the last two months as he figures out the new limits of his hand, which has set him back more than he’d care to admit. 

It’s true, but he’s not sure he can really stomach the idea of discussing all of this with the kriffing Chancellor of the kriffing Republic. What is he even supposed to say? Yes, Chancellor, times have been hard lately because I can’t know for sure I won’t accidentally break my partner’s dick with this new hand if I squeeze too hard. Thank the Force I know you’ll at least pay for my time, or I'd really be stuck in a downed shuttle with no life support.

“It’s a necessary...suspension but a temporary one,” Anakin says defensively. 

“Of course,” the Chancellor says. “You’ve gone through a trauma. I’m sure everyone understands.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, everyone has not understood. Which is why he’s here, taking tea with the Chancellor, despite his reservations about the man.

Hastily formed reservations based on nothing more than a few passing comments the first and only time he’s allowed the politician to buy his time, but Anakin can hold a grudge like no one else in the galaxy. 

He had been asked to attend the opera with the old man, which is why he had accepted--nice and public and very clearly not intended to end in sex--but the entire time, even through the performance, the Chancellor would not shut up about how Anakin’s talents were wasted on Companionship. Sensitive to any criticism of his chosen career, Anakin had gone home after the event and told Threepio to ban any and all transmissions from the man. 

There had been...many through the years.

But with the difficulties he’s been having adjusting to his hand, he’s had to reconsider...certain past refusals. And two weeks ago, the Chancellor had called again, and Anakin practically had to accept. It was deeply humiliating at first, but Palpatine must have learned something from Anakin’s previous intense rejection, seeing as so far he’s not said one even slightly disparaging thing about Companions. 

He’s been actually quite nice to talk to, although Anakin thinks he’d never seek out the man’s company. It’s just a feeling he gets from him, something he can’t put into words. The closest he’s come is that he doesn’t think his mother would like him very much.

“And the Jedi Council, I’m sure they’ve helped you financially with this difficult transition?”

Anakin stays quiet. No, he hasn’t heard from the Jedi since they gave him his new arm. But that was part of the deal he’d cut. He tries not to think about the other parts of that deal he’s managed to break. 

It’s not like he has anything to show for it anyway. 

“I’m still uncertain as to how you know about that,” Anakin says, trying to drive himself out of his own thoughts.

“My boy,” the Chancellor says, sounding shocked, “Of course I know. As the leader of the Republic, it is my job to know what the Jedi are planning.”

Anakin can’t miss that phrasing. “Do you mean that you think they’re planning something now?” he asks, straightening up. His grudge against the Jedi has only grown the last few months, and he’s found himself hyper-alert whenever they’re mentioned in conversation. Maybe if pressed enough, someone will say something about the Sith Lord Kenobi. Maybe--

“Who could say?” The Chancellor asks, waving the question away. “I must sound like such a paranoid old fool. But you don’t get where I am now without second-guessing your friends. And your enemies.”

Anakin furrows his eyebrows, staring down at his hands. Can the Chancellor really not trust the Jedi? They’re the generals of the war the Chancellor has declared. There’s a disconnect there that Anakin thinks he should focus on, but he finds that he can’t.There’s a strange feeling brushing against his mind, but whenever he tries to pin it down, it slithers away. 

He feels cold. And strangely...Dark. Not like the fiery Dark he’d felt from Ob--Kenobi, but an icy feeling that leaks into Anakin’s mind and stokes his anger, his bitterness. Of course the Jedi couldn’t be trusted. Look at how well they’d managed to kriff up Anakin’s life?

“I understand,” he says, both as a Companion looking to please their patron, and as Anakin Skywalker, who has to blink his anger out of his eyes before he can look at the Chancellor again.

“Although I do not want to bore you with talk of the war, I find myself absolutely fascinated with the details of your mission,” Palpatine says, placing his cup sharply down on a dish so he can lean forward unencumbered.

I was fucked in every way you can imagine before forming a dangerous mental bond with a Sith Lord, Anakin doesn’t say. I saved his life after being the reason it was in danger, and I haven’t heard from him since. I miss him like the other half of my soul. I would do anything to see him again, even now. Even after I’ve seen what he’s done, what he’s been doing.

Because Kenobi hasn’t been hunkering down on some desert planet, hiding from the law. He’s been cutting a bloody swath across the galaxy, an impossibly dangerous one-man army. In the past month alone, the Republic has lost three planets to the Negotiator in a demonstration of what Anakin can only assume were aggressive negotiations. Anakin’s watched the holonews from his refined, pompous, suffocating apartment, and ached. Why can you go there, and there, and not to me?

“I’m not sure I understand your meaning, your excellency,” he says instead. He raises a suggestive eyebrow--it kills him-- “If you want to understand the more intimate details, I might as well just show you.”

The Chancellor leans back, looking for a moment as if he’s absolutely disgusted by the idea. Although Anakin can’t disagree, he’s also a little bit offended.

“That won’t be necessary,” the Chancellor says, sounding pained. Anakin shrugs internally. Even if he’s not entertaining the Chancellor, he’s still getting paid. This is Palpatine’s time after all. Anakin doesn’t really care what he does with it.

“But have you heard from Kenobi since you last saw him?” his client with a strange intentness.

He barely conceals a wince. “No.” He responds. The worst part is, it's the truth.

The bond has stayed completely silent, no matter how often he pulls on it. Kenobi’s shields are so much better than his own. He’s well and truly alone. The icy feeling in the back of his mind has returned, but this time it’s unbearable because all Anakin can think of is Obi-Wan’s fiery heat.

He stands up from his chair. “I apologize tremendously, but I fear I must cut this meeting short. I have an appointment with my medical advisors that I just remembered.”

He doesn’t, of course. It’s frankly very obvious that he doesn’t. The Chancellor recovers with remarkable grace. “Of course, my boy,” he says. “We need you at peak performance, after all.”

Anakin doesn’t understand if he means we as in the Republic or we as in all the rest of the pervy old men that like to buy his time. Either way, he bows graciously and forces himself to kiss the back of Palpatine’s old wrinkly hand. 

Ew. Ew, ew, ew. 

He’d rather kiss Mace Windu full on the lips, but he can’t afford to offend Palpatine so much that the man decides not to request his company again. He just--he can’t do this right now.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he says again for good measure. “Please put in a notice with my droid, and I will personally see a partial refund deposited into your accounts.”

“...Quite,” the Chancellor says, standing to see Anakin to the door of his rooms.

--

Anakin leaves the Senate building with a sense of extreme relief. Mostly to be out of Palpatine’s presence, but also because he’s managed, quite impressively, to avoid running into Padme at all. He loves her, considers her his best friend, owes her his life, owes her his mother’s life, but the idea of meeting her now is more than he can bear. He’s been ducking her calls since he’s returned. 

He feels like if she sees him, even for a second, she’ll be able to ascertain every truth that he’s trying to hide from.

Betrayer of the Republic.

In love with a Sith.

Traitor.

Somehow though, he makes it out without running into anyone he knows--and he cannot stress how many people he knows, quite intimately, that work in the Senate. It probably helps that he's wearing a cloak over his standard hired-by-an-elderly-man ensemble (a light blue sleeveless tunic of silky fabric that reaches down only to mid-thigh with a simple crown of flowers adorning his curls), so he’s almost unrecognizable. But he likes to think he’s just naturally skilled and incredibly lucky.

Anakin really should stop saying these things, even in his own head. The Force seems to enjoy proving him wrong.

As soon as he starts his speeder, a holo of Threepio pops on on his comm-link. “Master Ani,” the droid begins in his normal frantic tone. “I’m afraid we have a guest of your…persuasion.”

Anakin snorts to himself, banking hard left to cut off an unwarrantedly aggressive driver. It’s always been funny to him that even after all these years, Threepio can’t bring himself to say those more vulgar words, although Anakin knows he knows what he’s doing with his guests.

“I’m indisposed,” he replies, the standard response he’s used for all inquiries of that kind over the past two months.

“This Ben character is quite insistent,” Threepio says in his standard tremulous voice. “And here.”

“Oh?” Anakin asks, ducking up into the upper lane of traffic, just to hear the furious beeps from behind him. Nothing puts him in a better mood than ruthlessly ruining someone else’s peaceful flight.

“Quite!” Threepio exclaims, mechanically throwing his arms up.

Huh.

Anakin runs a very quick calculation. It’s been a long time--two months--since he’s had a guest in his apartment, and it could mean he wouldn’t have to visit the Chancellor for a long time if he got a good amount of credits from this Ben. Maybe Ben would be content with just conversation and tea. A surprising amount of people who seek out his services just want a companion--not a Companion.

On the other end of the spectrum, Ben could have a burning desire to see Anakin tied up. While it isn’t Anakin’s thing, it would neatly solve the problem at...hand.

He grins to himself. He’s gotten really good at hand puns in the past few months, which has been the only boon of the whole situation.

“Master Ani!” Threepio says. “What do I say? He is being quite rude. I’ve told him you’re out with a client, and he did not appreciate that at all!” Anakin sighs. The subtleties of Companionship are, unfortunately, lost on Threepio. A basic rule is, of course, not to mention clients to each other. Even the ones who respect his career probably wouldn’t like him telling them about all the other people he’s fucked before them. The only exception had been--had been Kenobi, but that was because Anakin was trying to get a rise out of him.

“Tell him I’m almost back and have him wait in the entertainment room,” Anakin decides. He’ll need to change. It would be nice to know about what the other man prefers out of a partner, how he should look, what he should expect, but he’ll make do. His standard outfit should do, the red silky robe and loose linen pants. Everyone likes that.

“Oh! Consider it done, Master Ani!” Threepio says, before disconnecting the line.

It’s five minutes longer of a flight, but Anakin speeds. He doesn’t want to be alone with his own thoughts right now, because even though he should be preparing himself mentally to become a Companion--Ben’s Companion for the night--he just keeps circling back to Obi-Wan.

If Ben wants to pay for a kriff, then this will be the first time he’s fucked anyone since Obi-Wan. He doesn’t know how he feels about that, but he’s mad he feels anything about it at all. That should have just been a neutral statement, but it isn’t.

Because Obi-Wan had called Anakin his, had staked a claim on his body, his mind, and his soul, and although Anakin had protested then with very, very reasonable arguments, he’s been finding that the longer time stretches on without hearing from the Sith Lord, the more he finds himself desperate to give in.

Every night, he tugs on the bond connecting them together. It’s almost a part of his bedroom routine now: wash your face, brush your teeth, pull so wantonly on the link connecting you to a mass murderer that eventually he’ll have to come back if only to you to stop--

It hasn’t worked yet.

Anakin has been mad, he has been sad, he has been pleading, he has been quiet, he has been reasonable. But even though he spends every night begging outside that durasteel wall that blocks off their souls, Obi-Wan remains distant.

The reminder of this new iteration of the same old abandonment makes Anakin furious. He pulls his speeder into a stop next to his landing pad with jerky movements. He has to close his eyes and breathe for a second. He can’t go in to his apartment this mad. He can’t touch Ben and be shaking with rage. He can’t touch Ben and be thinking about Obi-Wan.

He’s afraid he’ll be thinking about Obi-Wan Kenobi everytime he touches someone for the rest of his life. 

He blows into his apartment and straight past Threepio, heading for his own quarters. “Master Ani!” the droid squeaks in a panic.

“Not now,” Anakin snaps. He’ll regret that later. He hates being short with his droids. “Just give me a few minutes to change. It's a comfortable room. He can stay in it alone just a bit longer.”

“But Master Ani, he’s not--” Anakin’s not listening

Anakin tears at the clasp of his cloak and lets it pool around his feet, stepping to his bedroom and holding up a hand to stop Threepio, looking back at him as he slides the door open. “Surely he can last a few minutes longer without my company!” 

“I don’t know, darling,” Obi-Wan Kriffing Kenobi says from his position by one of Anakin’s floor-length windows. The older man turns and drinks him in, his face bathed in the Coruscanti sunset which highlights the yellow of his eyes. “It’s been absolute agony so far.”

Chapter Text

Anakin’s feet bring him forward into the room as if magnetized. He’d feel embarrassed by how he’s probably gaping, how he’s probably blinking dumbly at the man, how everything he’s feeling is probably written across his face, how quickly he’s closing the distance between them--if not for the way Obi-Wan hasn’t stopped staring at his face as if he couldn’t bear to look anywhere else, if not for the fact that Obi-Wan is moving towards him just as quickly. 

“Oh dear!” Threepio says in the background. “I told him not to go in there, Master Ani, but he said he had your permission! And I said I didn’t believe so, and he threatened to pull out my circuits! He is not a pleasant guest. I shall have security remove him at once! I should have done so sooner!”

“You threatened to kill my droid?” Anakin asks. Obi-Wan’s close enough to touch. It’s been months. He can see the rise and fall of his chest beneath the black robes he’s wearing. No armor this time.

Maybe this is Obi-Wan’s idea of vulnerability. 

“But I didn’t,” Obi-Wan points out, as if that should win him credits. Anakin wants to hit him, but he thinks he knows enough about the pair of them to confidently say that as soon as they touch, it’s going to be over. There’s a hunger in Obi-Wan’s eyes that makes him think the other man is hanging onto propriety by a very thin thread. “Surely you think about it once a day as well.”

“Sometimes twice,” Anakin responds, only vaguely referring to his droid. Threepio’s offended shriek is worth it for the way Obi-Wan grins at him. It makes him look so much younger and brighter. Did he smile a lot when he was a Jedi? Would Anakin have gotten to see his smiles? If Anakin had stayed at the Temple, how often would he have been gifted that same smile?

If Obi-Wan had stayed with him after he lost his hand, how many smiles would Anakin have seen cross his face by now?

It’s been two months. Obi-Wan’s back, Obi-Wan came back , Obi-Wan’s in the middle of the Republic, risking his life and freedom to see Anakin, but he left him for two months. He blocked their bond. The only proof Anakin had that he was alive was when he popped up out of the blue to murder people. For two months.

Obi-Wan must read the change in his mood on his face, because he stops smiling and takes a small step away. As if that’ll save him. 

Anakin closes his eyes and centers himself in the sandstorm of his thoughts. They need to talk. Obviously. They very obviously need to talk immediately. Talking would be the best, most logical, most productive use of their time.

But the part of him who had thought Obi-Wan had died, even if only for a few moments, doesn’t want to talk. It wants to run his hands over every part of Obi-Wan’s body to make sure that he’s okay. It wants to bite and bruise and be bitten and bruised in return. It wants to possess Obi-Wan, prove that the other man is alive and real and here.

And Obi-Wan looks like he wants the same.

So talking will have to wait. And even though Anakin has missed Obi-Wan something awful, even though he half believes this is really just a dream and he’ll wake up alone in his bed any second, even though he’ll probably cry if he does….

The truth is, Anakin’s a prideful little thing. And Obi-Wan doesn’t just get to leave him after claiming him so thoroughly, and then waltz into his home, threaten his droid, and just...get to kriff Anakin dumb, as if two months haven’t passed by without even a word.

He presses a featherlight kiss to Obi-Wan’s mouth but pulls back before the man can deepen it. He spares a second to wish pointlessly that Obi-Wan was taller, so that Anakin could look up at him beneath his lashes. Some of his clients really love that. He pushes forward to kiss him again, lightly, sweetly. As if he's shy.

“Oh dear!” Threepio says, shuffling very quickly out of the room.

“I really am going to deprogram that droid,” Obi-Wan tells him seriously, reaching out as if to grab him and pull him close. Anakin almost forgets, almost lets it happen. He remembers how tightly Obi-Wan holds him. How safe and protected and treasured he feels. 

But no. Not--not yet.

Anakin steps away, licking his lips.

“Darling,” Obi-Wan says as if greatly pained. “Come here.”

Anakin moves forward, just close enough to kiss Obi-Wan’s cheek and slide his lips to his ear. “No,” he murmurs. He moves back and giggles. 

It had taken him actual training to figure out how to make that noise with his vocal cords, but it’s always been worth it for the reaction it has on his clients. Especially now. Especially this client.

He steps fully back, facing Obi-Wan but moving closer to the door. Obi-Wan follows as if helpless to do anything else.

“No?” he asks, not in anger at being refused, but certainly in confusion. 

Anakin tosses him a wink and walks into the living room, turning to face away, knowing he’ll be followed. He’s fairly confident that Obi-Wan won’t actually jump him now that he’s said no, which is good because they have to go through the living room and the parlor to get to their final destination. Also, of course, Threepio is in the living room, and he doesn’t want to scar the poor droid.

“Dear one, I am a little confused,” the Sith lord says, following him faithfully nonetheless.

Anakin laughs. “You’re not confused, you’re tense,” he spins around to go chest-to-chest with his partner. He puts one hand on the man’s shoulder and lets the other trace down the lines of his throat. He marvels that he’s allowed to touch him like this, in such a vulnerable place. “Coming in here unannounced, not staying where you’re put, threatening my droid....how long has it been since you’ve had someone?” he brings his hand down to brush a soft touch over Obi-Wan’s bulge, so the other man knows exactly what he’s talking about. 

So much for not scarring Threepio.

 “Two months,” Obi-Wan grits out, muscle jumping in his jaw as he very obviously struggles to not put hands on Anakin. Then his eyes narrow dangerously as if a thought has just occurred to him. “And you?”

Anakin turns back around without answering. Yeah, Obi-Wan is going to lose his patience sooner rather than later, and at the moment they’re only just inside the parlor. “A Companion doesn’t kiss and tell,” he says over his shoulder. The growl he receives in reply makes him speed up until he’s at the other door. He keys in his code, and it slides open quietly.

Hands fall on his waist and Anakin applauds himself for the perfect timing as he turns around again to tug Obi-Wan inside. 

It’s his Companion Room, though Anakin always calls it his Entertainment Room. It’s draped in fine silks and kept quite neat. The lighting is soft and golden, but not quite dim. Against one wall, there’s a bed big enough to fit five humans (Anakin knows this for a fact). There’s a small table and chairs, and place-sets already delicately laid out. There’s a couch as well, pushed into the middle of the room, facing a Holonet projector that Anakin doesn’t think has ever been turned on. But most importantly--

“I’ve had a few Jedi tell me that they can sense residual emotions in some environments--that sometimes what we feel can be strong enough to soak into the places we feel it. One Jedi told me this room....was absolutely soaked in pleasure. He said it really….heightened his own experience as my...guest.”

The hands on Anakin’s waist have turned to claws. He takes a second to close his eyes and enjoy the feeling. “Anakin--” Obi-Wan growls.

“No,” Anakin says again, slipping away from him to go sit on the edge of the bed. He slowly takes off his shoes, peering up from beneath his eyelashes--yes, finally--to look up at Obi-Wan, who’s standing in the center of the room, breathing very hard. “No, you don’t get to have me like that. You don’t get to have Anakin.”

That causes Obi-Wan to blink, taken aback.

Anakin’s not going to leave that there though. He has many things he has wanted to say. “No, see, you got Anakin. And then you left. For two months! You...you closed the bond, you didn’t even try to get into contact, didn’t throw a single bone for...two...months! You left m--him! Again! Did you--did you feel...him tugging at the bond, every night you were gone? Did you care?”

Obi-Wan opens his mouth, but Anakin slashes down with his hand to tell him to be quiet. Surprisingly, he listens. Anakin keeps going. “You don’t get to come back and demand Anakin again as if you never left in the first place. Don’t you think it’s a privilege to have Anakin?” His voice breaks and his eyes water. “Don’t you?”

Obi-Wan looks heartbroken. Anakin sniffles as he wipes at his eyes. “Sweetheart,” Obi-Wan murmurs. “Of course I do, I’m sorry, I’m so terribly sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you, I never meant to hurt you.” He steps forward hesitantly, and when Anakin doesn’t protest, rushes to his side. He kneels at his feet, grabbing his hands tightly. Anakin can barely feel his touch on his durasteel one. The thought makes him sad. “Tell me, darling, dearest, how can I fix this?”

Anakin straightens immediately, not even trying to pretend he hadn't been faking his reactions just then. Sure, every word he said he'd meant, but like he'd let Obi-Wan see him cry so soon after his...absence.

“You want to fuck me, but I don’t want you to fuck me until I feel like you won’t hurt me again. So if you want to fuck me--if you want to make me yours again, after you know I’ve come home wearing clothes I put on with another man’s pleasure in mind…” he waits expectantly for Obi-Wan to work through whatever emotion has his face looking so pinched--okay, Anakin knows that emotion and revels in it to an absurd degree--before he continues, “then you’ll fuck me, the Companion. And I’ll let Ben touch me, but Obi-Wan isn’t allowed to yet, not until I think he’s suffered as much as I did.”

Obi-Wan blinks. Anakin figures he’s probably given the other man severe whiplash and waits patiently for him to work through his thoughts. He’s a very smart Sith lord. He can do this, Anakin believes in him.

“You want me…” Obi-Wan says slowly, “to fuck you...but you don’t want us to be...ourselves?”

“I wanted us to be ourselves from the moment we met,” Anakin corrects. “Well, apart from the whole lying about who I was thing. But since then. For two months. And this entire time I’ve been wanting you to take me again, ready to be yours, but….now that you’re here, how can I be sure you won’t leave again?”

“I won’t,” Obi-Wan promises, his hands clenching to the point of pain around Anakin’s own. 

Anakin hums softly in disbelief. “You always promise me such sweet things,” he says, lifting both of their hands so he can stroke the back of Obi-Wan’s face.

Obi-Wan shivers at his touch.

“The Companion or not at all,” Anakin murmurs, hoping Obi-Wan capitulates, partly because he wants to fuck him, but mostly because he’s feeling sort of weird about talking in the third person, and he wants to get on with it. Play his hand--hah--right, and he’ll have Obi-Wan where he wants him by the end of the night.

Obi-Wan sighs like it’s a huge burden. Perhaps it is. He had said that first night that he didn’t want to fuck the Companion. 

Well, call this exposure therapy.

Obi-Wan turns their hands around until he can bring the back of Anakin’s hand to his lips. He skates his mouth down the durasteel and presses them to where the pulse would be if he still had an arm, making eye contact from below his eyelashes, which isn’t fair--who said Kenobi could use Anakin’s moves on Anakin?

For a long moment, they’re trapped as they are, staring, afraid to break the stillness of the air around them.

“Do you want me still?” Anakin breathes out, not making any move to reclaim his cybernetic arm. “Even if I’m a little broken?”

"Not broken,” Obi-Wan says fiercely, twining their fingers together even as he stands just tall enough to push Anakin further onto the bed. “Beautiful. Brave.”

Anakin shivers and has to break character. “So you’re not mad--about it?” he checks.

“Oh, I’m absolutely furious,” Obi-Wan reassures him, placing gentle kisses on each durasteel finger in a heavy contrast to his words. “Incandescently so.”

“That’s good then,” Anakin whispers faintly.

Somehow, in the intervening months, he’s forgotten how overwhelmed Obi-Wan can make him feel so quickly. How is he supposed to be seducing anyone if all he wants to do is lie back and take his master’s cock in him like a good boy?

No. No, no--Anakin did not spend the better part of a year training to be a Companion just to have a Sith Lord steamroll over all his efforts.

He waits until Obi-Wan climbs onto the bed as well before flipping them over. Anakin settles on top of Obi-Wan’s hips and places his hands on his chest. He can feel the crown of flowers he still hasn’t taken off slip crookedly onto his forehead, but adjusting his outfit now will only lose him the high ground.

“Let me take care of you,” he says, trailing his fingers down into the opening of Obi-Wan’s shirt. “Big war hero and all that.”

“War hero?” Obi-Wan snorts, placing his hands lightly on Anakin’s thighs, right where the tunic bunches up.

“General Kenobi,” Anakin says distractedly, working to unfasten the man’s shirt. Skin now, he needs to see more skin now, to feel it against his own.

“Depends on your point of view, I suppose,” Obi-Wan responds, watching him closely. 

There. As soon as the fabric parts, Anakin’s mouth descends onto the other man’s chest, intent on mapping it completely. He sucks a line of bruises from his chest to his navel, and then leans back with a disappointed look.

“What?” Obi-Wan moans, hands adjusting to grasp his hips instead.

Anakin traces the red marks he’s made with the tip of his finger. “It’s not a very Companion thing to do,” he explains, pursing his lips. “Leaving marks.”

He can feel the twitch Obi-Wan’s cock gives at that, and he has to suppress a grin. 

“I’d let you leave marks on me too,” Anakin adds innocently. “I don’t normally, but--”

He’s on the mattress before he even realizes what’s happening. Obi-Wan is biting into his neck with a ferocity Anakin’s only ever seen in starving animals. He leans to the side, giving the man more room to work. His legs splay onto either side of his hips, and their clothed erections rock against each other. Anakin has to close his eyes against the spark of sensation the movement causes.

“Off, off, please,” he says, grabbing at Obi-Wan’s pants with both hands and tugging. Gently tugging, which turns out to not be gentle at all, as there’s a loud rip through the room. “Oops,” he says sheepishly, holding up his cybernetic hand guiltily, fingers still wrapped around the fabric of the other man's pants.

“You could tie me up,” he suggests. “Just in case.”

“Would you like that?” Obi-Wan asks.

Anakin shrugs, thinks it’d be too revealing to say that he thinks he’d like anything Obi-Wan does to him, and then says it anyway. “If it’s you.”

Obi-Wan settles his face into Anakin’s shoulder for a second, hands twisting in the fabric of his tunic. “You’re making this so very hard,” he mutters into his skin.

Goosebumps rise immediately, but Anakin thinks he holds his composure fairly well. “Well, that is my job,” he responds, bucking his hips up pointedly. Obi-Wan lets out a choked off laugh, urging him to sit up and pull off his outfit, leaving him completely naked and at the other’s mercy.

Not completely at the other’s mercy, of course. He is still a Companion.

He grasps Obi-Wan’s hair in his (left) hand and pulls his mouth towards his. They kiss, really kiss, for the first time tonight. Both of them are taking no prisoners here, breaking out all their tricks as if they’re trying to one-up each other. Obi-Wan withdraws to breathe, and Anakin bites at his lower lip. He pushes forward to lick at the spot in apology not even a second later.

“Fuck me?” he whispers as if the walls can hear him. “Please, it’s been so long, I’ve--I've been so good.”

Obi-Wan groans, sitting back to shuck off his undergarments. Anakin almost complains at the loss of contact, but when the other man comes back, it’s absolutely wonderful. He thinks he could probably come like this, even if that’s not the point or productive at all.

Obi-Wan bares his teeth when Anakin produces a half-empty jar of slick, but thankfully decides to kiss him instead of saying anything. There’s a brief moment where they fumble against each other, each wanting to be on top of the other, before Anakin wins out. He sits triumphantly back on Obi-Wan’s thighs. “You can fuck me into the mattress next time,” he promises, wetting his fingers with the lube and reaching behind himself. “But right now, I want to ride you. Been thinking about since I saw you.”

He makes quick work at stretching himself, although he plays up his noises to an almost ridiculous degree. He sighs at the feeling, grinding his hips backward into his own hand, while throwing his head back so his throat is fully extended. There for the taking. He whines as he adds a fourth--it’s not a good angle, but he’s gotten quite good over the years at stretching himself clinically while pretending it feels like the best thing in the world. Clients often want him either already prepared for them, or ready to do it himself, but either way they all want a show.

“Still such a pretty little liar, darling,” Obi-Wan says, stroking along his thigh with one hand, as his other comes up to tease his cockhead.

“And what does that make you?” Anakin pants, pulling his hand away from his hole and sliding further up Obi-Wan’s body.

“A fool,” the Sith murmurs with a strange twist in his voice. 

Before Anakin can think too much about that, Obi-Wan has adjusted his grip on his body and positioned his cock at his entrance. It’s the work of a moment of  pressure to push him down, and Anakin sinks gratefully into the feeling of absolutely fullness.

“O--” Anakin gasps, even as Obi-Wan groans at the tightness and heat enveloping him.

Anakin shifts up slightly then drops back down, testing himself. Obi-Wan slides his hands back behind his thighs to grope at his ass, then around again to clench at his hips.

“Darling,” Obi-Wan grunts out as Anakin sets up a torturously slow rhythm. He knows the Sith can’t be completely happy with their position, knows that in Obi-Wan’s eyes they’re not nearly touching enough, that Obi-Wan is probably aching to pull him beneath him, blanket his body with his own.

It’s almost surprising to Anakin that the other man’s let him do this much already. He must really feel quite badly about the whole situation. Maybe the tears were a little unfair, but Obi-Wan did fall for it. Fool is right; pretty liar is even moreso. 

“So good,” Anakin says out loud, mindless, not even performing anymore. He hates that Obi-Wan’s made him lose the plot so quickly though, so he tacks on a long drawn out moan of, “Ben .”

Hands tightening on his skin is his only warning before he’s being yanked off his lap and thrown face-first onto the bed. Obi-Wan’s weight presses over him, the head of his cock ghosting against his hole. 

“That’s enough, Anakin,” he says very dangerously. “You were very clever, that was a very creative punishment, and you were perfect at it.”

He bites down on his neck as he thrusts into him again, setting a hard and quick rhythm. Anakin moans and has to hide a smile as Obi-Wan’s arms come up to bracket his head. Completely surrounded by the other man. He knew it. He relishes in it.

“But if I hear another’s name come out of your pretty mouth while I’m fucking you, I don’t think either of us will like what I do about it.”

Anakin wants to point out that it’s his fake name, and if he doesn’t like the way it sounds leaving Anakin’s mouth, then he should have picked a different one. But right as he opens mouth to say that, Obi-Wan slams against his prostate and all he can manage is a drawn-out whine. He scrabbles at the sheets beneath him, trying to find purchase, trying to find his compartmentalization, but Obi-Wan’s decimated all sense of that.

“Does anyone else fuck you this well?” Obi-Wan asks, trailing a hand into Anakin’s hair and yanking his head back so his spine’s bending at an almost uncomfortable angle. Anakin tries to shake his head, but the other’s hold is too tight. “None of your patrons make you as sweet and pliant as I do? Are you as good for them as you are for me?”

“No, no, only you” Anakin pants, even as Obi-Wan drops his head back down and shifts them both to their knees, his strokes going deeper and hitting harder at this new angle. Anakin’s not going to last much longer, and Obi-Wan seems to sense it.

“Say my name,” he demands, fingers tightening on Anakin’s hips as he uses his grip as leverage to slam into his body harder. Anakin bites his lips, refusing to break like this. Not before--.

“Sweetheart,” Obi-Wan murmurs, changing tactics and slowing down. A hand wraps around his cock, and Anakin whimpers. “Don’t you know you mean the world to me? Anything, my love, I’d give you anything.” He nuzzles into the planes of Anakin’s back, dragging his beard against skin Anakin never knew was this sensitive. “Forgive you for anything, always come back to you, never leave again."

Obi-Wan’s so good at teasing, so good at touching him, at saying the right things, but Anakin can’t let go yet. He has one more thing he wants.

Closing his eyes, he reaches into his mind to find their bond. In a move that’s almost second-nature to him now after two months of the same thing, he tugs at it.

He can feel Obi-Wan shiver at the mental touch, as the Sith lets out a moan like it feels painfully good.

The wall doesn’t come down though, and Anakin frowns--pouts--whatever--, and tugs harder. “Master,” he says reproachfully, insistently, demandingly.

Obi-Wan fucks into him hard at the word, so Anakin says it again and again, each time with a harder pull on their mental link. It earns him a growl that’s barely human, a cut off “Brat,” and then--

Then it comes down. The bond thrums alive with their joint pleasure as they press against each other, body and mind and soul. The very Force sings around them. Anakin feels himself coming, shooting out onto the bedspread, feels Obi-Wan jerk in him as well, but it’s all a secondary sensation to the chaotic satisfaction radiating from the bond. 

He wraps his mind greedily around Obi-Wan’s, feels the other man do the same. He doesn’t even register Obi-Wan pulling out of his body gently, though he does have to notice when he pulls him into his arms and lifts him from the bed, carrying him out of the room, through the parlor, the living room, and to the door of his own room. It opens without protest to Obi-Wan’s handprint which must mean that Obi-Wan hadn’t just chosen to wait there for Anakin, but had gone as far as to key in his own identifier. His sith lord really is very presumptuous.

“I’m hardly ever wrong though,” Obi-Wan responds as if Anakin has said that out loud. Oh, with the bond open and them so tangled up in it, Obi-Wan must be able to hear every one of Anakin’s thoughts very well.

It takes him a few moments to remember why that isn’t a good thing. Slowly, achingly reluctantly, Anakin sets about building his own shields back up, not enough to cut off the bond, but enough to regain some sort of sense of self. Obi-Wan sets him down on his bed and kneels between his spread legs. There’s a washing cloth in his hand suddenly, and it’s damp, which means that Obi-Wan must have put it there before Anakin got to the apartment. “Very presumptuous,” Anakin whispers as Obi-Wan gets to work cleaning them up with gentle hands.

“You’re welcome,” Obi-Wan murmurs back, standing and giving himself a cursory wipedown before joining Anakin on the bed. He smiles to himself, and Anakin’s about to ask what’s so funny, before he feels fingers in his hair, delicately removing the crown of flowers.

Obi-Wan tosses it to the floor, and Anakin sends him a reproachful look. If he could get the older man to start treating his stuff with respect, then he’ll be finally able to say he fully domesticated a Sith lord. 

They crawl under the covers together, and Obi-Wan’s arm comes up to pull him closer into his embrace. Anakin almost goes.

He flips over to face him instead, hand coming up to press against the other’s chest. “Obi-Wan,” he says out loud for the first time in two months. “Obi-Wan.”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan replies easily, eyes going half-lidded at just the sound of his name coming out of his mouth. “ My Anakin.”

“No,” Anakin says, then backtracks at the scowl he sees on Obi-Wan’s face. “Well, yes, but--no, you're not going to distract me now. Stop saying my name like that. We need to talk.”

He gets a full-bodied sigh in return, but Obi-Wan at least stops trying to pull him in for cuddles. Anakin hates himself a lot at that moment for saying no to cuddles again. Last time he said no to cuddles he lost an arm. But it’s a risk he’s going to have to take.

“Why didn’t you come back?” he asks, voice wavering. This time for real. He wonders if the other man can spot the difference. He thinks he probably can, which just makes him feel more on edge. “Why did you block the bond?”

He watches Obi-Wan’s face, trying to discern the different emotions flashing across his eyes. He wishes the bedroom lights were on completely, but they’re operating on lowlight now. Anakin can only rely on what he can make out through the darkness. 

He feels a wave of regret--bitterness--sadness--guilt--anger flow from Obi-Wan’s side of the bond.

“You didn’t even know I was okay,” Anakin trails off, looking down.

A hand reaches out to clasp at his mech one, pulls them both into the space between their bodies. “Of course I did,” Obi-Wan says. “You let me know every day.”

Anakin flushes at the reminder. It seems so embarrassing now. “But--”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan shakes his head. “I didn’t want to leave you in the first place, but it was...pointed out to me that I did not have access to the amount of medical care you would need after your injury.”

“I know,” Anakin murmurs. “Ahsoka showed me her memories.”

There’s a pang of heavy regret that leaks across the bond for a second, before it’s hidden just as quickly. “Ah,” Obi-Wan says in mild embarrassment. “Then you understand.”

“I don’t,” Anakin argues, sitting up and wrenching his hand away. “Okay, maybe I can understand you letting people dictate our relationship when I was nine and you were traumatized, but I’m old enough now to know what I want! To know what’s good for me! Who’s good for me!”

Obi-Wan sits up suddenly too, the Force growing darker around him, Anakin's sheets pooling at his waist. “Are you?” he asks, tone acidic. “Because you did not act as if you knew what you wanted.”

Anakin blinks in shock. “What are you talking about?” He thinks he maybe knows where this is going, but he really hpes he's wrong--

“You don’t think I haven’t realized by now why the Jedi presence on Geonosis was so much stronger than we thought it would be?” Obi-Wan sneers. “You don’t think I don’t know you signaled them? Those are the actions of an agent held hostage, not a man who knows what he wants.”

Anakin stutters. He hadn't been sure how much Obi-Wan would know about that comm message if they ever saw each other again. In his worst nightmares, the Sith knew everything. In his most pleasant dreams, Anakin had never made it.

"How was I supposed to know where you stood after that particular revelation?" Obi-Wan presses. "How could I know who you belonged to more, when I saw you on Geonosis? Were you the Jedi? Were you mine? Were you your clients?"

Anakin has to ignore that last part, thinks if he addresses it no, they'll be derailed so completely he might never get an actual answer. "Is that why you blocked the bond?" he asks, feeling very stick to his stomach. He had thought something similar over the last two months--that somehow his own actions had caused Obi-Wan to turn his back on him completely. He scrambles for Obi-Wan’s hand this time, desperate to feel any sort of connection again. “Because Obi-Wan, please, I’m sorry, I didn’t--I don’t know why I did that, it just felt right, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wouldn’t do it again, if I could take it back, I would, I'm sorry--I--”

Miss you. Ache for you.

Love you.

Surprisingly, miraculously, Obi-Wan soothes him, opening his arms for Anakin to clamber into if he chooses. And he does choose, sliding into the safety of the other man’s embrace like it’s home. Had he been so close to losing him? The thought makes him cling tightly to his chest. 

“Hush, darling,” Obi-Wan whispers into his hair, such a sharp contrast to his earlier tone. “Hush, apprentice. I’ve had two months to forgive you for that betrayal. which I did very soon. You didn’t know, of course you didn't know. I had neglected to explain the whole situation to you. I was too...distracted, and it made me a bad Master. Of course you were doing what you thought was right. No one had told you any differently. And you’ve already suffered for your mistake more than I ever want to witness again. I admit, I was...angry at first--” Anakin thinks about the HoloNet news stories he’d seen in the first few weeks of his recovery. Angry doesn’t seem like an adequate word to describe carnage. “But I wasn’t lying before. I’d forgive anything of you. You’re my Anakin. You didn’t know better. But you do now, don’t you, darling?” 

He’s hugged tightly into his chest, and although some part of Anakin bristles at the implication that he was just too stupid to understand all the parts of the game that had been in play those few days, a huge part of Anakin wants to just melt into the embrace. He does know better now. The Jedi Council had proved to him, beyond any doubt, that the one person who has ever told him the truth is the man who’s holding him now. He’d never make that same choice again, kriff everyone else in the entire galaxy.

But. “But then why?” he asks plaintively. "Why after you...got over it?" It being his betrayal of his master. It being something so unendurable that he can't even bring himself to really think about it.

Obi-Wan sighs into his hair. “Dearest, you had met me again and then gotten grievously injured not two days later. And I know--” he speaks louder, stalling Anakin’s protests, “that you are old enough to make your own decisions. And clever enough to make good ones as well. But the evidence seemed so insurmountable to me then, that perhaps I brought bad fortune on you. That I was...wrong for you. And so I knew that if I were to ever be able to hold you again, I needed….to eliminate all potential threats.”

Anakin isn’t sure how much he likes the sound of that, of what that implies Obi-Wan’s spent his time doing, but the other man keeps talking. “I needed to keep you safe. Make sure you were safe. And I knew...if the bond were open completely, if I could hear you in my mind--actual thoughts, words, images--begging me to come back, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on my mission. Even then, I wanted to end the war before I saw you again. But you’re...quite an effective negotiator, apparently. Or at least, I am quite….unable to deny you for long.”

"Oh," Anakin says. There are...holes in Obi-Wan's explanation, but the idea that Anakin had nothing to do, really in the end, with Obi-Wan's distance makes him feel loose-limbed and content. "Okay," he inhales greedily against the skin of Obi-Wan’s neck. He knows he should say something more complex now, knows that there are many more conversations to be had between them still, but he’s getting so very tired, and Obi-Wan’s arms are so very warm and tight around him, and the bond, open between them, is conveying an endless stream of missed you--love you--want you--have you--mine from the Sith’s side, which is almost everything Anakin has dreamed of.

“Now, darling, can we go to sleep?” Obi-Wan asks, moving Anakin just enough so that he can make eye contact with him. “Tomorrow I do have a proposal for you.”

Anakin hums. Obi-Wan had apologized, had told him some reasons he’d acted as he had, had forgiven him for his own actions, had practically admitted out loud that he loved him. That feels like a lot for a Sith lord in one night, he decides happily. Everything else--the Companion dilemma still unaddressed, Obi-Wan’s possessiveness, his unwillingness to compromise, his propensity for murder--that could wait until morning.

“If you kiss me first,” Anakin decides, pursing his lips and closing his eyes. Obi-Wan chuckles softly and presses a gentle kiss on his mouth, slowly guiding their bodies down to the mattress, kissing him across his face all the while.

“Every night you’ll let me,” the other man vows.

Chapter Text

Everything else doesn’t wait until morning, because of course it doesn’t.

Anakin bolts up in a panic, mid-nightmare. He gasps for breath and presses a hand against his chest. Obi-Wan stirs next to him, halfway out of sleep solely because he’s felt Anakin’s distress through their bond and it meant something to him. It meant something to him.

He clumsily tries to soothe him back down by wrapping his Force presence around him and stroking his arm.

Somehow it works.

As quietly as he can, Anakin slips out of bed, grabbing a robe and a pair of pants from the floor. He can’t--he can’t stay here right now. Not with--not while--he needs--he needs to--

He stumbles out of the room and makes his way slowly to his landing pad, the only open-aired area of his apartment. It must be only an hour or so before dawn because the city is as still as Coruscant ever gets, and the sky tinges the slightest bit pink.

He collapses onto the durasteel ground, head ringing with an aching pain. Memories of his nightmare flash before his eyes.

He’s holding a red lightsaber in one hand, approaching a young Mirialan girl. She raises her lightsaber but looks frightened, which he forgives her for, because she’s just seen him kill her entire battalion of troopers. He’s killed her Master, too. She must know what happens next. That’s why he’s here now, to extinguish this lineage. To make sure no one is left to even think about using his apprentice for their revenge.

“Master Kenobi,” the girl says, “Please, please. Ahsoka wouldn’t--”

He swings his sword down definitively--he doesn’t want to hear what this girl thinks Ahsoka would or wouldn’t do. He’s let her go, knows she’ll be a strong Jedi with a different master. He’s here for the sake of a different apprentice. The Mirialan doesn’t even have time to deflect. She had really thought she’d be able to reason with him. 

A hand grasps his shoulder, pulling him out of his mind. He knows instinctively that it’s Obi-Wan, that Obi-Wan won’t hurt him, that he’s safe--but he still flinches away.

“Dear one, come back to bed,” Obi-Wan tells him gently, his other hand stroking his hair.

“I--I can’t.”

“Bad dream?” the Sith asks sympathetically, coming around to face Anakin and sitting down in front of him. “Would you like to try meditation? I’ve found it clears the head of all sorts of bad dreams."

Bad dreams or bad memories? Anakin can’t help but wonder, staring wide-eyed at Obi-Wan. He looks so harmless now, staring at Anakin expectantly. But he’s a Sith. He’s...he’s a murderer. Why else would he have had this dream, if it’s not the Force warning him about who he’s let into his bed?

Obviously, Anakin has always known who Obi-Wan is and his capacity for harm. Danger. Death.

Logically, Obi-Wan’s been a murderer since the first time he saw him at that dance, wearing spotless armor in the midst of a celebration. Actually, he supposes, Obi-Wan’s been a killer since before he promised Anakin he would train him. It’s almost stupid to be so disturbed by a truth he’s been implicitly accepting for at least two months, if not longer.

And yet--seeing it--and--feeling it--knowing it--so intimately...that puts it all into a perspective Anakin isn’t sure he ever wanted to have. Will this be expected of Anakin, too? If he is to be with Obi-Wan, train under Obi-Wan, will he also be expected to look children in the eye as they die on the end of his ‘saber?

Would he do it, if it would make Obi-Wan proud of him? The thought makes his chest feel tight. He should know by now not to ask questions, even to himself, that he doesn’t want the answer to. What is he capable of doing for the people he loves? What isn't he? 

No. It has to be a dream, doesn’t it? A bad dream for sure, but a fiction. One that, in the end, will dissipate in the early morning sunlight like all other dreams do.

Obi-Wan’s mind reaches out to him through the Force, and Anakin lets him feel around his shields. He’s building up the courage to let them fall, let Obi-Wan see the thoughts racing through his head, but before he can, the man pulls back with a frown. 

The older man’s brow furrows. “You’re drenched in Darkness,” he says, sounding confused.

Yours, Anakin replies across the bond. 

“No,” Obi-Wan says. “It’s not. It’s familiar though,” he reaches out again with the Force to prod now at Anakin’s mind. “I’ve felt it before, but that’s not--no. Where would you--” his eyes flash open, a yellowish-orange hue, and he grabs hold of Anakin’s wrist tightly before he can move back. “Who did you see?”

Anakin blinks, startled, pulling back automatically. “What?”

“Who did you see? Before me, last night? Who was your client?” Obi-Wan insists, quite uncharacteristically of him Anakin thinks.

“Are you sure you want to know? You’ve never really wanted the specifics of that information before. Maybe the exact opposite, actually, of the specifics. I think if you could make me forget the specifics of my clients, you would--” 

Obi-Wan levels him with a look. Anakin stays stubbornly silent. Look, it’s a Companion/client privilege, not to go brandishing around the names of his patrons. Especially to a jealous Sith lord that might actually kill them.

“Tell me,” Obi-Wan’s voice resounds, heavy in his head. It’s a weight he can’t ignore, the Force pressing in on all sides.

Sheev Palpatine, his mind replies without his permission. He gasps as the pressure recedes. Obi-Wan looks triumphant for a second and then deeply troubled. Probably because he can’t go kill the leader of the Republic without making a big to-do about it. The Sith stands up and paces away from him, looking out over the city deep in thought. Anakin should ask what he’s thinking, but. But more importantly,

“Did you just mind trick me?” Anakin asks, offended beyond belief.

Obi-Wan casts him a glance over his shoulder. “No,” he says, very unconvincingly.

Fine. If Obi-Wan doesn’t feel like having a conversation over a very serious breach of Anakin’s bodily autonomy right now, he has another topic he thinks he wants to talk about. Because obviously the nightmare had been a dream, because obviously Obi-Wan wouldn’t strike down a scared child.

But then obviously he wouldn’t mind trick Anakin either.

He needs to know. He doesn’t want to have to know. But he’s not a coward. And the worst part is, he’s not even an idiot. He thinks he already, probably, knows.

“When you said,” Anakin says slowly, trying to figure out the right words to say, a way to frame the question that Obi-Wan can’t avoid, “when you said you had to...ensure my safety before you came back, what did you mean? What, logistically, does that mean?”

Obi-Wan turns around to frown at him. He still seems half a galaxy away, which is deeply frustrating. “It means how it sounds.”

“No,” Anakin shakes his head. “I was safe already. I was with the Jedi. They weren’t going to harm me, not in any outright way, not really. So what did you do?”

A thunderous expression flashes across Obi-Wan’s face. “I should not have to remind you that it was a Jedi who hurt you in the first place.”

“N--”

“And I will make them pay for it,” the Sith finishes. He looks...wild in the dawning light. Inhuman. Unrecognizable. Anakin can feel an oppressive Darkness pressing against his mind, enveloping it in a warm cocoon that feels, for the first time, suffocating instead of comforting. “I’ve known that the end of the war necessitates the end of the Jedi for a long time. Hurting you just hastened their downfall.”

“Who did you kill?” Anakin asks. “In my dream. She was a child, Obi-Wan. She was an innocent.”

Obi-Wan scoffs, seeming to know instantly who he’s talking about, which is perhaps comforting. Maybe that means Obi-Wan is going around killing so many children he can't keep the straight at least. It's a cold comfort. “She was the Jedi Padawan of the Master I killed on Geonosis.”

“Was she even on the same planet that day?” Anakin demands furiously. “Or did you kill an innocent child in my name? For a threat only you can see?”

He can’t bear to have this conversation seated when Obi-Wan’s standing. He gets up and strides to the other end of the platform. Obi-Wan follows him, but he at least doesn’t try to touch him as he paces to the edge of the platform. “Anakin, I killed the monster who killed my master,” the Sith tells him. “If he had had an apprentice, I think I would have wanted to kill them too. I couldn’t risk Barriss Offee’s grief at the death of her master turning into vengeance if it would have even a chance at being directed toward you.”

Anakin covers his face with his hands, trying and failing to take deep breaths.

“For you, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says from much too close behind him.

“I didn’t want that,” he replies, hiding his face in his hands. “I didn’t ask for that.”

Obi-Wan has the nerve to sound confident in his proclamation. “You didn’t have to.”

Anakin whirls around to face him, feeling tears spring up in his eyes. Actual tears, which Obi-Wan seems shocked to see. Anakin supposes that’s his fault, really. 

“I love you,” he declares. It’s the first time he’s said it out loud, and it’s under the absolute worst circumstances. “I love you more than I have even dreamed of loving someone else, more than I thought I was capable of. I would compromise....so many parts of myself, if that meant that I would get to be with you. And the worst part is that I would...forgive everything--anything you’ve done. Will do. Could do.

“Even now, when I’ve just had this...horrifying nightmare or memory or vision where you murdered a Padawan that knew you enough that she didn’t fight back immediately --I’m here. I’m still--I didn’t leave. Maybe I should leave, but. I don’t want to.”

Obi-Wan looks relieved, reaches out to catch Anakin’s elbow in his hand, as if that’s the correct response. Anakin backs away from the Sith. “But I don’t know what you want from me,” Anakin says, crossing his arms over his chest, wishing he had on Obi-Wan’s armor, or, failing that, his own. Instead he’s in his sleep-clothes, pillow creases probably on his face, hair uncombed. Facing this situation completely as Anakin. He’s not sure he’s ready. 

“I want what you want,” Obi-Wan says slowly. Anakin has to resist throwing a punch with his mech hand at the other’s face. Mostly because he knows, in the long-run, it won’t make him feel any better.

“Be more specific,” he commands, narrowing his eyes. “Or I’ll do it for you, and I’m not sure either of us will like what I have to say .”

Obi-Wan stays stubbornly silent, like a challenge.

“Fine,” Anakin crosses his arms, mostly to hide how his hands are shaking. He makes his voice as cutting as possible. “I think you want to fuck me. I think you want to own me. I think you want me by your side because it’ll give you a leg up against the Jedi, the fact that I’m yours all these years later. I think if you want me, it’s...not really about me at all. I think....” He has to pause and take a breath, turning his head to look off the landing pad. “You want different things than I do.” 

Obi-Wan shakes his head like Anakin’s the one being impossible here. “Dearheart, where is this coming from? You know that’s not true. Anakin, you know.”

“I don’t though,” he says. “Or, at least, I need you to tell me I’m wrong. And then tell me the truth.”

For the first time tonight--this morning?--Obi-Wan looks frustrated. “I want you to be...mine. My apprentice; my Padawan. My partner. I want you to leave with me tomorrow, come away with me. Help me end the war. Don’t you feel it, in the Force? Doesn’t it feel right when we’re together? I want us together, always. I want to hold you, fuck you, in a galaxy without Jedi, to know nothing will happen to you ever again. I want that certainty, that power, and you--all mine.”

Anakin has to close his eyes against the tidal wave of grief that pours over him at that second. Because-- “That’s not what I want.”

“Pardon?” The Force around them darkens with Obi-Wan’s sudden and vicious displeasure. He takes a menacing step forward, and Anakin knows he should move back, knows he probably cannot really trust this man, but his feet refuse to move. He’s spent so long thinking of Obi-Wan as a port in the storm that even now, when that storm is turned on him, his body betrays him.

“I love you,” Anakin says. “I do. But. I--I don’t want to be a Sith.”

“You called me master,” Obi-Wan points out dangerously, slowly backing Anakin towards his living room entranceway, until he feels a column against his back.

“You are,” Anakin agrees. “The only one I’ll ever have again. But Obi-Wan--I can’t become a Sith.”

Obi-Wan noses against the pulsepoint of Anakin’s neck, nibbling at the skin there. Anakin can’t say he blames him for this distraction technique, seeing as how it’s worked every other time before.

“Why not?” the man rumbles, moving up to trace Anakin’s jawline with his tongue.

But Anakin will not be distracted. “What would my mother think?” he asks. It’s such a wildly unexpected question that Obi-Wan stills in the middle of his task. Anakin continues. “I mean, I already had to tell her I was going to be a Companion, I think telling her I’m going to become a Lord of Darkness and Evil is really pushing that motherly acceptance.”

“You’re not being serious,” Obi-Wan decides after a careful few seconds of thought. He goes back to Anakin’s neck, attacking it with renewed diligence.

“I’m not entirely,” Anakin admits. “But either way, Obi-Wan--I don’t want that.”

Obi-Wan pushes back and cocks his head. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t want to be a Sith lord because I don’t…like Sith lords.”

“You like me,” Obi-Wan points out.

“I love you,” Anakin corrects. “But I don’t think I’m that fond of murder. And sometimes...I’m scared of you. What you're capable of.”

“I’d never hurt you,” the other man says fiercely.

“But what if you saw me at another ball in another sheer outfit, and I was dancing with someone else?”

“I’d steal you away from them to dance with me.” 

“What if they’d bought my time?”

“I’d offer a better price.”

“It’s a first come-first serve basis.”

“I’d kill them. And then I’d offer a better price.”

“Exactly!” Anakin says, throwing his hands up in the air, dislodging Obi-Wan completely from his neck. “That’s a terrible way to run a business. It would hurt me to see what I’ve worked towards for so many years fall apart! I’m a Companion, Obi-Wan. Not a Sith. And I like it. I like me. I feel good doing it.”

“But you said you loved me,” Obi-Wan argues. “That you’d compromise parts of yourself, just to be with me. And I’m afraid that your...fidelity is...non-negotiable.”

Anakin thinks he wants to cry. Not the tears he’s already shed, but full on sob. Obi-Wan doesn’t understand. Should Anakin cut his losses and leave? No. The truth is, Anakin doesn’t want to do that, can’t leave Obi-Wan until he has no more hope left to spend on the man. “I would,” he agrees. “But you shouldn’t expect that from someone. You should want me to be happy, more than you want me to be with you. And….” he trails off, searching for the right words.

He reaches out to stroke the Sith Lord’s face delicately and wonders how many more times he’ll be able to do that in his lifetime.

“You said...you said you’d give me anything. In the galaxy.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes shine darkly as he nods, clearly remembering the context of that confession.

“But would you give up anything for me?”

Obi-Wan narrows his eyes in thought, surely not about what Anakin’s just said, but instead trying to think about where Anakin’s going with this, what he means and wants and wants Obi-Wan to say in response. “You want me to give up being a Sith?” He finally asks contemplatively. “Darling, I’m not sure you understand how much being a Sith is part of who I am.”

“And I’m not sure you understand how much being a Companion is a part of me!” Anakin says angrily, pushing Obi-Wan back with his mech hand to his chest.

Obi-Wan argues back, because of course he does. “It’s different,” he snaps. “I have a duty, I have a Master, there are things I must do. I am fulfilling a purpose. You’re--”

“What? What am I?” Anakin asks just as harshly, stepping forward to close the distance between them again. He can’t keep track of who’s giving ground in this argument, who’s winning. If they’re fighting against each other, or fighting against something much more inevitable. “While you’re out in the galaxy, slaughtering innocents and calling it a necessary evil so you can feel better about yourself, what am I doing?” 

Obi-Wan’s nostrils flare, his lips pressed tightly together. Anakin’s never seen him look this furious at him. To Obi-Wan’s everlasting credit, he doesn’t actually finish that sentence. He has after all, Jedi or Sith, always been a smart man.

“I’m not going to be owned by you, Obi-Wan,” Anakin tells him quietly, the fight seeping out of him when Obi-Wan doesn’t engage him further. “The decisions I make about my life are my own. If you want to have a say in them--if you love me as much as I love you--the solution isn’t to take me away from my life and sequester me into yours.

“I would give up my job for you, I would. I’ve known that for a while. Being without you, not having you in my mind...you were right, it was absolute agony.” He feels his mouth twist up in a wry half-smile. Obi-Wan doesn’t react, face unreadable.

“But I’m not going to...you can’t just....expect that from me. You never even asked. About what I want.”

Obi-Wan touches Anakin’s wrist lighty with his hand. His eyes are shadowed in the pale morning sunrise. “What do you want?”

Anakin ducks his head with a huff of a choked laugh. “I want you to love me.”

“I do,” Obi-Wan says instantly, easily. Anakin offers him a bittersweet smile, placing his free hand against Obi-Wan’s heart.

“And I want to go away with you, somewhere quiet, where no one’s dying. And I want you to train me in the ways of the Force, but I don’t want to Fall because I want to still be someone my mother could love. I want you to be my Master and learn how to--to get along with Threepio--and I could work as a mechanic in some small town and maybe you could...I don’t know...garden--”

Obi-Wan mouths the word ‘garden’ with a look of disbelief. Anakin realizes quite suddenly he doesn’t know what Obi-Wan likes to do for fun, besides commanding armies, reading datapads, and fucking Anakin, none of those you could reasonably be paid for in Anakin’s picturesque fantasy.

“Is that all you want, dear one?” Obi-Wan asks, raising an eyebrow and grasping both of his hands with both of his.

Anakin swallows. He has to say this. He knows he has to, or every time he closes his eyes he’s going to see the memory of the dead Jedi girl haunting his mind. “You told me the night we met again...that you didn’t want a Companion in your bed. But I don’t think I want a Sith in mine.”

The words hang in the dawn air quietly. Neither of them move. The Force is tense around them, the bond completely silent.

Anakin leans down to kiss Obi-Wan’s cheek gently, stopping to breathe in his smell, trying to commit it to memory. What if Obi-Wan doesn’t choose him? What if he goes off to fight his war and a Jedi or a clone or a malfunctioning clanker kills him? What if he chooses him and he dies anyway? Wouldn’t it be better to run off with him now? Leave Coruscant and everything else behind? His mother, Padme, Threepio would be safe. They’d be fine.

But Obi-Wan needs him. 

No. He can’t think like that. He has set out two paths for Obi-Wan to choose. And if the Sith chooses to go down the wrong one, then Anakin will not--cannot follow. It will be the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, but he will do it.

“I love you, Obi-Wan, and I know you love me too,” Anakin whispers fiercely, placing the slightest amount of emphasis on his name. Please, he tugs gently at the bond and lowers his shields just enough to send the thought across the distance. Let that be enough for you.

He raises his guard again and reinforces it so that Obi-Wan’s presence at the end of the link is hardly discernible. Anakin backs away slowly, dropping his hand from his chest and slipping out of Obi-Wan’s weak grasp. Surprisingly, almost, the other man lets go without a protest. 

Anakin doesn’t want to read too much into that.

He can hear Threepio moving around somewhere in the apartment, so he does a quick calculation. There’s only one place in his home that no one other than him has access to, not even Obi-Wan. With a heavy heart, he keys in his code to his Companion Room and slips inside.

For the longest of moments, he stares at the rumpled silken sheets, the torn clothing lying on the floor, and inhales the smell of sex that lingers in the air. He shuffles to the couch, too cowardly for the bed, and curls up against one of the arms.

Everything will probably be better after he sleeps for a little bit.

Because that had worked out so well last time.

-----

He wakes sometime later to a frantic knocking on the door. By the shrill voice, Anakin knows already it’s Threepio. “Master Ani,” The droid is saying. “Pardon me for disturbing you, but the Coruscant law enforcement have requested your presence.” He pauses, as if unwilling to explain this story to a closed door, but equally unwilling to keep it to himself. “They say they have multiple accounts of the Separatist Leader General Obi-Wan Kenobi leaving from this address!”

Anakin, who has been about to stand, sits down heavily. 

One would think that after being abandoned so many times, it would begin to hurt less.

But no, somehow Obi-Wan Kenobi has the unique ability to rip straight through Anakin’s heart each and every time.

He rests his elbows on his knees and puts his head in his hands for just a second--just a minute. He just needs a minute.

He won’t cry. He won’t cry. What he’ll do is get up and get dressed, fix his hair, go down to the Coruscanti police office and tell them Obi-Wan Kenobi never visited Anakin Skywalker. Not for the Sith lord’s sake, but for his own. Then he’ll tell Threepio to start accepting appointments again. Not because he feels ready, but because he’s not sure he’ll ever feel ready again, so it’d be best to just dive right into it. Call it...exposure therapy.

Just a minute first. One minute. 

To mourn.

He wipes at his eyes and blinks up at the ceiling. Then he sees it--straight ahead of him, sitting on the table in front of the couch, is a single piece of folded flimsi that hadn’t been there before.

He tugs at the bond in the back of his mind instinctively, but there’s no reply or even acknowledgement. With shaking hands, Anakin reaches out and picks it up, opening it to read what he knows immediately is the loopy handwriting of his-- the Sith lord.

It reads only: I will do what I must.

Chapter Text

“--And then, you see, this morning, I could only find one of my lace-up thigh-high black boots and only one of my white ones. And then it dawned on me, that if you really think General Kenobi came into my apartment, maybe he stole them? You should definitely be looking for a man matching that description, I guarantee when you arrest him, that’s what he’ll be wearing on his feet.”

“And should we be looking for a pair of your missing hand gloves on General Grievous next, Companion?” a very irritable detective asks.

Anakin twirls a piece of his hair around his finger and laughs. “Of course not, silly, General Grievous would need at least two pairs of my gloves to make any outfit work? Stop joking around, I thought this was serious. It’s like you have no respect for my profession.”

“Companion Skywalker, if we didn’t have respect for your profession, we wouldn’t have subtly requested your presence here.” We would have dragged you kicking and screaming from your apartment is unspoken but clearly audible. Anakin wants to point out that that doesn’t mean much, other than that the chief of police is a smart enough man to realize that such a public display of questioning Anakin would certainly bar him from the Companion’s entertainment room for the rest of his life. It pays to have paying customers in high places, he supposes.

“You haven’t answered a single question we’ve put forward to you. That is not the action of an innocent man,” the other detective says as if he’s onto something. Internally, Anakin rolls his eyes. They’ve been at this for hours. Playing the vapid fool is fun for a bit, for maybe the first two hours depending on how actually idiotic the target audience is, but then it just gets annoying.

His first thought is that Obi-Wan is so gonna owe him for this. His second thought is less of a thought and more of a painful stab through his heart. 

Oh yeah.

“Why are you pouting?” The second detective demands, leaning forward like he thinks he’s about to break the case

“First of all, I don’t pout,” Anakin bristles. “And second of all--”

There’s a sound of the door sliding open, and Anakin interrupts his own performance to see which detective is going to relieve either #1 or #2. He hopes it’s #2.

But instead, Jedi Master Windu walks into the interrogation room already rubbing at his forehead. “Skywalker.”

Just when Anakin was starting to get bored. “Mace!”

“That’s Jedi Master Windu to you,” the first detective says disapprovingly.

“Then that’s Companion Skywalker to him,” Anakin points out. 

“Skywalker.”

“Mace .”

Windu turns reluctantly to the two detectives, with the air of one who has come to deliver bad news that they absolutely do not want to have ever been burdened with saying. “Thank you for your work in bringing him here,” he tells them. “But as this is an internal Jedi matter, we will be claiming full jurisdiction to investigate the validity of the claims made in this case.” 

The first detective splutters unflatteringly, in Anakin’s opinion. “I’m sorry, Master Windu, but--this is clearly a matter of Coruscanti safety, which is very much under the purview of the Coruscanti police.”

Windu bows his head in acknowledgement. “And we understand fully what is at risk here,” he says dully, as if he’s reciting something someone else has had him memorize. “However, because Obi-Wan Kenobi is an ex-Jedi and Anakin Skywalker is a notably powerful Force sensitive, we regrettably must look into these matters ourselves. I have with me a signed statement from the Chancellor himself that the Jedi must be allowed the authority here.”

Anakin has to stop himself from snorting. It turns out it really helps to have friends in high places. Thank the Force he had accepted the Chancellor’s last request to meet after all.

“As stated in the AgriCorps ruling of 59 BBY,” Windu continues in his most boring voice--Anakin’s opinion--Anakin can’t help but to zone out, trying to think of why the Jedi have decided to intercede into his life now of all times. Now. 

The only thing he can think of is that maybe the Council has decided they can use him to attract Kenobi. It had, after all, worked before, fraught though as it was with other...difficulties. He finds himself almost...excited at the thought. 

“If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to take them up with Grandmaster Yoda,” Windu drones in the background. 

Because I am not getting paid enough for this shit, Anakin finishes for him in his head.

The detectives protest--they’ve just spent a significant amount of their time trying to work Anakin over, so to have him this close to breaking and then be swept away? It stings.

Or, that’s what Anakin imagines the second detective will say to probably everyone he meets for weeks to come.

In reality, they let Anakin go--reluctantly--and Windu takes custody.

At least the Jedi master promises to be slightly more fun than the Coruscanti police.

That’s something he can work with.

Anakin stretches exaggeratedly as they leave the building. “So, my time is yours,” he says suggestively.

Windu rubs at his eyebrows. “You are free to go, Companion.”

Anakin misses a step and stumbles inelegantly. “Wait, what?” He squeaks.

He thinks he sees Windu’s mouth turn up at the corner, but it’s gone before he can really decide if the man is actually smiling in his vicinity. Probably not. “Skywalker, would you actually be of any help to the investigation? Or would you waste our time for four hours, allowing Kenobi to get further and further away from Coruscant, as we listen to whatever inane drivel you can think of on the spot?” He actually sounds a bit amused.

“But I was consorting with the enemy!” Anakin argues, having absolutely no idea why he’s arguing for his own arrest. “Shouldn’t you be grilling me to find out what we talked about?” At Windu’s raised eyebrow, he tacks on, “Allegedly?”

“I wasn’t aware you talked,” Windu says calmly, eyes traveling down to the black and blue skin of Anakin’s exposed neck. Anakin trips again, flushing in embarrassment. It’s one thing for him to talk about fucking people in front of Windu to get a rise out of the Jedi, but it’s totally not funny or fair for Windu to turn the tables on him like this. He wants the old Windu back.

“But--” he starts to say.

“Skywalker, I have to admit I’m a little confused,” Mace Windu stops walking and crosses his arms over his chest. “You sound like you want to be put in Jedi custody.”

“I don’t, I...” Anakin trails off. It’s not that he wants to be detained by either the Coruscanti police or the Jedi. But. But. That strange excitement he had felt pooling in his chest at the thought of the Jedi using him as bait for Obi-Wan wilts pathetically in his chest, and now he can see it for what it actually is. 

If he goes back to his apartment, then it’s over. What will he have left of Obi-Wan Kenobi? Threepio has probably already changed the sheets in the Entertainment Room. And soon, eventually, the bruises on his neck and hips will fade, and in a few weeks, no one will know at all what Obi-Wan had done to Anakin. What he’d meant to Anakin. He’s not--he’s not ready to be done with this yet, with them. But Obi-Wan isn’t coming back. And Anakin had sent him away. And now the Jedi are telling him he’s free to go back to his life as it was before.

It’s never going to be as it was before, Anakin knows this for sure. 

So he’s standing here, arguing to be arrested because…because this may be the last conversation he ever has with someone who...maybe not understands, but at least knows what happened.

He drops his head, unable to maintain eye contact.

A few seconds later, he feels the weight of a hand on his shoulder. “Skywalker... Anakin,” Windu says slowly. “If--if you need protection, we can assign you a Jedi guard. If you are--afraid for your life or your safety--”

“No!” Anakin says too quickly, backing far enough away that Windu’s hand falls off. “No, he--he didn’t--he didn’t.” He didn’t threaten me. He didn’t coerce me. He just didn’t want me. Didn’t choose me. Didn't love me the way I loved him.

Windu very obviously doesn’t believe him. “If he hurt you, we can help. We can give you... whatever aid you need. If you come to the Temple, our healers--”

But Anakin has heard enough, said enough, thought enough. If he’s free to leave, he will. He has an empty apartment to get back to, after all. The rest of his life to start. “I believe that would be an appalling breach of our previous agreement, Master,” he bows formally. How fast can he walk down these stairs before he starts running? His speeder is just around the corner.

He can make it. “Skywalker!” Windu says, and that’s his usual tone, that’s good. What’s less good is the way that he’s following him down the steps. "Forget the agreement. If you have been hurt in any way--I--we--the Jedi Council will and should and would be to blame. Of course we will help you.”

Anakin lets out a laugh so bitter it might as well have been a scream for how much joy it conveys. “Then I relieve you of that obligation, Master Jedi.” He doesn’t even bother unbolting the speeder’s door, deciding instead to just hop in. “I find, truly, that I only have myself to blame.”

----

Anakin waits three weeks before he starts accepting clients again. 

It’s partly because he wants to let the bruises that Obi-Wan left on his skin to fade naturally--“No, no bacta ”--but mostly it’s because he still feels unsure about the control he has over his hand.

With nothing to distract him paired with his own fervent desire to be distracted, he throws himself into practicing. He rehearses how to gently undo clothes, pour tea, touch someone else’s skin, touch someone else’s cock--his own, mostly--shake hands, pull hair, tease nipples, finger himself open--

Okay, so he spends about three weeks jerking off in various ways. 

Threepio has started saying very pointed things about how Anakin is using his free time and asking him if he thinks this level of lechery will be the new normal of their household. It’s almost funny, because Anakin has never felt less interested in sex.

Instead of thinking about it, about why, about--he buys a whole new wardrobe with the credits from his appointments’ security deposits. Black, gold, and red feature heavily. If he can’t hide the arm, he might as well show it off. Accentuate it. He has to admit it’s a pretty prosthetic, a sleek black body with golden detailing. It’s obviously not...optimal to have lost the arm in the first place, but at least the replacement isn’t the worst.

By the time Threepio is guiding his first patron into the Entertainment room, Anakin is once again a consummate Companion, worthy of the title. He is going to get through this night, give this middle-aged, greying man the orgasm of his life, send him out the door, take the longest shower of his life, and not think even once of Obi-Wan or their quiet, shielded bond or what the Sith is doing, how he’s feeling, if he regrets what he chose, if-

Kriff. Okay, starting now. “Hello there,” Anakin purrs, standing up fluidly to slink his way across the floor and corner the man against the door. “It’s nice to meet you.”

---

Three days later, he’s getting railed into the mattress by a woman who knows her way around a strap-on. His fingers are curling tightly into the sheets and he’s let his mind go completely. It’s so nice to be touched by someone else, to let someone else have the reins, to just be expected to take it and enjoy it. It reminds him so much of Obi-Wan that he has to bury his face in the pillow for fear of saying the man’s name out loud.

He’s feeling so good that for a second, just a second, the shields he’s kept up around the bond in his mind falter and fail. For just a second, just a second, the bond between him and Obi-Wan is open and his pleasure--lust--hunger races across to the other man’s side.

And then, a moment later, Obi-Wan’s own shields fall and the bond is pulled hard, awash with jealousy--rage--fury.

Anakin tips his head back and comes quite suddenly.

“Did you just--” the woman behind him asks, slowly pulling out.

Oh kark it all. Anakin hastily raises his shields, but he can still feel Obi-Wan’s emotions pooling around their edges. The man is seething.

But Anakin is in the middle of something here.

“I’m sorry,” Anakin flips around and guides her until she’s straddling his chest. “Let me make it up to you.”

----

The experience lingers in his mind, which by that he means he thinks about it almost incessantly. He hasn’t tried to use the bond since Obi-Wan left him, feeling as though the man had made his opinion on any connection between them quite clear. He had figured that over time, it would fade naturally with enough distance. But.

But Anakin is petty. And, as Obi-Wan had pointed out several different times, a bit of a brat. A brat who’s had his heart broken by the man not once, or twice, but  three times in the past thirteen years. 

Of course he’s going to start dropping his shields everytime he has sex. Look at me, he’s screaming down the line to Obi-Wan, wherever the other man currently is. Look at how good I’m being for other people.

And it works. Every time. Like poking a sleeping Krayt dragon, Anakin will extend his mind through their connection, thinking only of his passion--his hunger--his lust for someone else's flesh. And the Sith lord will respond gratifyingly quickly, snapping at the bait like he really is part Krayt. Anakin's mind will be overcome with Obi-Wan's possessive dark touch, and usually within a few minutes of the opening bond, he'll be finishing with a shout. It's, quite frankly, addicting.

Anakin has never had this many clients so frequently, a fact decidedly related to how easy it is to provoke Obi-Wan into a jealous rage. I will do what I must? Fine. Fine. But while he’s out doing whatever he thinks he must do, he’s going to have to suffer through exactly what--and who--Anakin is doing.

Threepio definitely thinks there’s something wrong with his maker, especially after Anakin comes out of the ‘fresher whistling happily to himself as he asks the droid to place an order for more bacta for delivery as soon as possible.

“Bacta, he says,” Threepio cries to himself as he makes his way to the kitchen. “Bacta! When will he ask for a mind healer, the Maker only knows!” 

One night, eventually, Anakin’s with a more...dominant client. They’re biting at his neck in a way Anakin doesn’t particularly enjoy, but his shields are completely down and have been since the moment the patron had touched him.

Obi-Wan has yet to react in the bond, and quite frankly, it’s making Anakin mad. He tries to broadcast more of his pleasure, but he’s picked a bad night--or Obi-Wan has picked a great one--to do this.

It’s unacceptable. He needs Obi-Wan in his mind, needs to prod the other man into reaction, into acknowledgement. Needs to know he’s being thought about. 

That he hasn’t been forgotten about.

The patron pulls back to look down at Anakin, who quickly adopts his most blissful expression. Awed, they reach out to stroke his face, and Anakin turns his head just in time to suck their fingers into his mouth. His eyes fall partially closed.

There’s something comforting about the motion, even the taste. And this is what he’d done to get Obi-Wan to fuck him that first night. If things had worked out differently, maybe these would have been Obi-Wan’s fingers he’s moaning around. Maybe he wouldn’t be having to fake his enthusiasm now.

That thought escapes down the bond, as well as a snapshot memory of the client leaning over him, fingers disappearing into his mouth, whispering into the room about how much of a slut Anakin’s being, how desperate he is for it, how good he is.

There’s a slight pause, and then a tidal wave of absolute darkness rushes over his mind. It’s wrathful--powerful--hungry--overwhelming--possessive--

It feels so good that Anakin moans like a schutta around the client’s fingers. They remove them as they’re fumbling with their clothes, overeager to have him now. “More,” Anakin moans as soon as he’s able. “More, please.” The thought echoes down the bond.

The patron is saying something, spreading his legs with thick, heavy hands as he examines Anakin’s well-prepped hole. A finger pushes in abruptly and Anakin lets out a hiss of pain at the sudden, rough stretch. It goes unnoticed by the client.

Not by Obi-Wan. His mind is still being lapped by that darkness. It feels like fire, like burning, but Anakin welcomes it, welcomes Obi-Wan’s full attention. The Sith isn’t sending thoughts through the bond, more like brief mental images of Anakin’s current client being murdered in increasingly brutal ways.

Anakin thinks he should probably put a stop to that, probably shouldn’t have shown Obi-Wan the patron’s face, seeing as how his ex-lover is a possessive maniacal Sith lord, but...he feels intoxicated. Floaty. He wants more of that feeling, more of the man’s attention.

“Maybe I shouldn’t let them fuck me,” he sends the thought to Obi-Wan, trying to make it sound contemplative. “They’re not being gentle at all.”

The bond feels like a live wire in his mind, like a thousand gundarks are clawing into his soul. 

“Maybe they’ll be satisfied with fucking my thighs,” Anakin sends a mental image of the client pushing their cock in between Anakin’s slicked thighs, the way he’d sigh and simper at the feeling, the way he’d squeeze tight around the intrusion, moan and come. “After all, you were.”

The image changes to Obi-Wan instead, from that first night, using Anakin’s body for his pleasure, ignoring the way Anakin begged to be fucked, called him Master, called him his.

The bond lights up with a white-hot rage, then a pain that's just as furious, and then, finally, a strengthening resolve. Suddenly, Obi-Wan is blocked off again, and Anakin is alone in his mind, which has never felt colder. 

The client is still between his legs, eager and ready to fuck him, but Anakin’s heart is no longer even a little bit into it. He turns over onto his front, managing to send a sultry wink at the client as he raises his hips in preparation. As soon as he can, he buries his face in the pillow and does his best not to cry. He doesn’t even think to send this new heartache to Obi-Wan. No, this is for him alone.

---

Anakin stares at himself in Padmé’s mirror. The jacket he’s wearing is high-collared and burnished gold in color with lighter gold embroidery and clasps. His shirt underneath is a flowing midnight blue, unbuttoned almost to his navel and dotted with the barest hints of silver. His pants are tight and black, tailored to show off the muscles of his thighs and calves. His hair is carefully styled and curled, and on top of his head rests a replica of the golden sun hairpiece he’d left aboard Obi-Wan’s ship.

It’s all very intentional, the way he looks, but he would be hard pressed to say who the intended audience is. Maybe Anakin just likes prodding still-open wounds, reveling in the fact that the pain means they happened at all.

“Don’t you look dashing?” Padmé asks, coming into the room wearing her own elaborate outfit of silver and pink.

“The night to your dawn,” he smiles immediately, leaning over to kiss her hand. She swats at him for his efforts.

“Oh, you’re so smooth now,” she laughs. “But you’ll never make me forget what you were like when you were fifteen, little Ani.”

“Allow me to continue to try,” he adopts a roguish smirk. “For the sake of my reputation.”

“And sixteen,” Padmé continues ruthlessly, as if she hasn't heard him. “And seventeen--and--”

“Okay, okay,” Anakin says, dropping his shoulders in favor of his normal stance. “Please, Stars, stop, you merciless woman.”

Padmé taps her chin playfully. “And here I thought I was an angel.”

Anakin mock-growls and reaches out as though to tackle her. He never would, now that he spends just as long getting ready as she does. He thinks he’d try to murder anyone who messed with his hair right now, only a few minutes before they’d have to leave to be on time to the ball the Chancellor has insisted on throwing in honor of the Jedi and the GAR’s recent military victories. It seems that General Kenobi has been away from the frontlines for the last several weeks, and the Jedi have definitely taken advantage of that fact.

District Obi-Wan Kenobi indeed. Whatever's holding his attention now must be the most fascinating thing in the entire galaxy, Anakin thinks sourly, to have distracted Obi-Wan from his precious war.

“Milady, may I uninvite myself as your companion to this dance?” He teases out loud, internally hoping she’ll cave and say yes. The idea of going to a festivity that’s honoring the love of his life’s lost battles, when he doesn’t know where the man is or if he’s okay, sits heavily on his chest if he thinks about it too long. But Padmé’s an important senator, and Anakin would never truly leave her to suffer alone, even if he sometimes feels that it’s getting harder and harder to talk with her as all of his lies pile up in his throat.

“Not on your life,” Padmé laughs again, before a chiming in her entry hall distracts her. Anakin follows her out, leaning against the doorway as she checks the comm unit and then opens the door. She bends down to pick something up, turning back around with a furrowed brow.

“What’s that?” he asks, nodding at the cylindrical package in her hands.

“I’m not sure,” she replies. “It’s addressed to you though.”

“To me?” He asks, stepping forward. Padmé gives him a shrewd look and points the package at him suspiciously.

“Anakin Skywalker, if you are getting your sex toys delivered to my apartment again, I will not hesitate to throw it and then you off the balcony.”

Anakin raises his hands defensively. “That was once, by accident, and you promised you wouldn’t bring it up!”

Padmé shoots him a dirty look, handing over the package and crossing her arms, clearly not planning to move until it’s unwrapped and provably not a sex toy. Anakin takes it gently, and carefully tears the flimsi away.

He blinks at what’s in his hands and then looks up in confusion at Padme’s loud intake of breath. 

He’s seen enough of them to know immediately what he’s holding. The Force buzzes around him and the lightsaber in his hand responds to the call. He shakes the rest of the packaging away and grips it tightly. It feels right, like it’s belonged to him all his life. He flicks it on, knowing intrinsically how to, and a blade of cerulean light hisses into the air. 

“Anakin--” Padmé says shakily, but just then he notices a small piece of white flimsi tucked into the brown wrapping. He reaches down to pick it up, turning it over until he can read what it says.

Darling,

If you are trying to kill me, allow me to introduce an alternate means, one that hopefully proves less strenuous.

Yours faithfully,

Ben

Anakin blinks at the note. Rereads it, then rereads it again. He can imagine Obi-Wan sitting down to write it at his desk, carefully choosing his words so that he can say something without kriffing saying anything at all. What is Anakin supposed to make of this? The lightsaber itself, the acknowledgement of Anakin’s recent use of the bond, the snide faithfully at the end there, the darling at the beginning, the fact that Obi-Wan somehow knew to leave this at Padmé’s apartment, the fact that Obi-Wan must be here on Coruscant, that this is his old lightsaber before he switched blades to the red one Anakin saw on Geonosis--

Anakin wants to scream and sob and laugh and commit a terrible murder.

He has a bad, bad--

“Anakin...why do you have Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber?”

Bad feeling about this.

Chapter Text

“Um,” Anakin says. He blinks at Padmé, mind blank. “What? I think I’m confused by your question. When you say lightsaber, you mean….”

Padmé crosses her arms over her chest, looking very unimpressed and also mildly amused, which is a dangerous combination. “I mean the Jedi weapon you’re currently holding in my living room.”

“Ah,” Anakin nods slowly. “Yeah, that would be a lightsaber I guess, if you want to use that sort of terminology. And um. When you say Obi-Wan Kenobi, you mean….”

“I mean the Separatist general, traitor to the Republic, murdering, psychopathic ex-Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi.” 

“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” Anakin asks before he really thinks it through. He winces as soon as it’s out of his mouth. One of these days, his mouth is going to get him in real trouble. He hopes it’s not right now, but from the way Padmé raises both of her eyebrows, his luck is probably about to run out.

“Anakin,” Padmé chides incredulously. “We are at war.”

Why are so many people trying to tell him this? Obviously he knows.

Before she can continue with something more cutting than basic facts, Anakin’s attention is snared by something she’s already said. He looks down at the lightsaber in his hand, turns it around to stare at it from all angles. “How did you know this used to be Obi-Wan Kenobi’s?”

Padmé throws up her hands. “Because every time I was assigned a Jedi guard, it was almost always him. We became close.”

“Close?” Anakin asks sharply, bringing the lightsaber possessively to his chest. He doesn’t like the idea that... what? That Obi-Wan and Padmé had been close? It’s absolutely ridiculous of him to care so much, not to mention at least a bit hypocritical. Completely silly. He narrows his eyes at her slightly anyway. “Friends?” 

“Yes, Anakin, friends! Like you and me. Now can we get back to the discussion at ha—“

“Friends exactly like you and me?” Anakin cuts her off.

“Well, if you’re talking about the fact that both of you helped save my planet and then kept in contact with me afterwards, then yes, I suppose exactly like you and me. If you’re suggesting that I slept with him, then I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”

She doesn’t say no. The lack of an immediate denial lights a fire inside of him. He doesn’t—he doesn’t like not knowing. 

He doesn’t like the idea of it either, how easy it is to picture. Padmé is beautiful, and Obi-Wan is magnetic. He can only imagine a Jedi version of Obi-Wan being even more perfect, more attractive. And they were on diplomatic missions together? How bored do you have to get on a diplomatic mission before you sleep with the first available person just to have something interesting to do? And this was all while Anakin was doing what? Fixing droids in Naboo? 

None of this feels right. If Anakin had been there, he’d know how close they were. Padmé had no right to Obi-Wan, no claim, and she had had unfettered access—encountered no competition for the man’s attention. Perhaps even for his affections. 

The thought makes him livid, in a way he’s become intimately familiar with over the past several weeks. Except until now it’s always been Obi-Wan sending these emotions to Anakin; he’s never felt them quite so viscerally before. He tries half heartedly to banish them into the Force, something Obi-Wan had told him about vaguely before, but instead all he does is send them out of his mind, down the bond to Obi-Wan.

They run straight into the man’s fortified shields. It’s infuriating.

“Anakin, you’re scaring me,” Padmé says quietly. He blinks away from the fog of his mind to see his friend standing defensively under the force of his glare. His hand had adjusted itself on the hilt of the blade. He hadn’t even realized. Stars. 

Stars.

He sits abruptly down on the couch and throws the lightsaber to the floor. “Pads--I--”

Carefully, she sits down next to him and places her hand delicately on his left arm. “Tell me.”

The words pour out automatically after spending half of his life obeying that tone from this woman. “I’m in love with him.” He hesitates, doesn’t actually know how to say the other thing that’s weighing on his chest. “But I think...I'm afraid that I might be a worse person for it.”

“And by him, you mean….”

“The, uh, Separatist general, traitor to the Republic, murdering, psychopathic ex-Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, yeah.”

“Oh, Anakin,” she says, the way she’s always said ‘oh, Anakin,’ whenever he’s done something questionable, as if to convey both ‘Nobody would ever do that in the entire galaxy’ and ‘of course you would do that’ in four short syllables.

“I was...sent to meet with him,” Anakin starts roughly, his left hand coming up to trace the lines of his cybernetic palm. “By the Jedi Council.” He pauses to let Padmé process and react.

Surely enough: “ Meet with him? What would a Companion have to discuss with a--oh. Oh.”

Anakin gives her a little half-smile. It’s kind of all he can manage at this point. “Okay, sleep with him. Fine. And we met and we talked and then we didn’t talk, and um. I guess he figured it out pretty easily,” because he read my mind, “so he didn’t fall for the ruse.” 

“So the mission failed from the onset, but you were able to fall in love with him over the course of a night? ” Padmé interrupts, holding up a hand to halt any further words. “Anakin, are you sure you weren’t--I know Force users can do mind-tricks, I’ve seen Kenobi use them before and he’s quite good at them. Have you been examined by a mind healer since you’ve gotten back?”

Anakin shakes his head with a rueful twist of his mouth. “I know I wasn’t mind-tricked, Padmé. I can pinpoint the exact moment I realized, even if it took a bit longer to, uh. Realize my realization. But, uh. When he figured out the whole plan, he figured out the planet that the Jedi were most likely going to be aiming to attack. So he left, yeah, but he. He took me with him.”

Obviously I cannot leave you here, Obi-Wan had said, like the very thought itself was untenable. And at the moment, Anakin had had so many other concerns pressing against his mind: obligations to the Jedi who had bought his time and loyalty, obligations to the Republic, a seed of bitter resentment from seemingly being forgotten by Obi-Wan as a child….He hadn’t realized then, but that statement had been the beginning of his undoing. Or maybe actually, the moment when his fate had been sealed.

When Obi-Wan had left the warship for Geonosis, Anakin had tried to follow immediately even knowing he could die. Of course he did, even if they’d just fought. Even if Obi-Wan was possessive and aggressive and resentful at turns. Anakin couldn’t leave him, because Obi-Wan had refused to leave him, and Anakin’s been defining love by degrees of abandonment for his entire life.

Because Anakin Skywalker had been rejected by everyone. His mother had given him up to the Jedi, which logically he knows had been a decision rooted in love not brought around by the absence of it. But then the Jedi had not wanted him either. 

Then he’d fallen in love with Padmé who quietly turned him down. Later, she’d changed her mind, but even then Anakin had not been enough to stop her from leaving Naboo. Or even enough to make her want to take him with her.

Obviously, Obi-Wan had said. Obviously. No one else had ever told Anakin that.

“We, uh, also argued too much for it to be a mind trick,” he says out loud. “I didn’t want to go to Geonosis, but I also didn’t want to stay on the ship while he fought below. I wanted us to figure out what being together would look like going forward. And he already had his ideas about it.”

He chances a glance over at Padmé’s face. She looks wildly unimpressed, probably at the idea that Anakin had fallen in love with a Sith lord and then started trying to figure out their future together, all over the course of two days. He doesn't know if she really has any right to be surprised though, seeing as how she'd know better than most how quickly and completely Anakin falls in love.

“So he took you into an active war zone, and what? You killed sentients together? That’s what it takes to romance you these days? And here I only tried flowers.” 

“No!” Anakin protests. “No, I--I didn’t kill anyone. He left to fight and I followed and. Uh. Got my arm cut off by a Jedi. She didn’t mean to!” He hurries to add. “She was aiming for Obi-Wan.”

“And you couldn’t let that happen,” Padmé guesses, before sighing in frustration. “Anakin, you told us you lost your arm in a flying accident.” 

“Technically, there was a flying accident involved!”

Padmé pinches the bridge of her nose. “I hope she at least apologized.”

—A red blade straight through the chest, almost carelessly quick and brutal, eager to finish the duel, to get back to the fallen man—

“She...didn’t get the chance. But I’m sure she would have!”

“Anakin…” she says, and he understands that he’s losing her ear, that any second she’ll make her mind up about Obi-Wan and him, about their relationship, maybe even about whether or not to drag him to a mind healer and skip the dance all together. 

A mind healer would break the bond. 

The thought is absolutely intolerable.

Even if Obi-Wan’s made his choice, even if it wasn’t Anakin, the idea of losing this last connection with the man makes Anakin feel sick. It’s too soon. He’s still too addicted to the man’s attention, his thoughts, his soul. And Obi-Wan had sent him his lightsaber. That had to mean something, didn’t it? For some reason, Obi-Wan had wanted to give him this part of his old life. But Anakin can’t think of that right now. He doesn’t have time.

He has to make Padmé see, make her understand.

“He knew me,” he blurts out. “The night we met at the dance, from the very first second. He just saw me and saw...right through the disguise. And I don’t. I don’t mean, um, I was using a fake name to get into the ball, but I don’t mean that. He just. He saw past the outfit. And the lines. The, uh. Moves. All the tricks I learned as a Companion, he didn’t want them. He just wanted me. It felt--I’ve never felt that open or exposed to anyone else in my entire life. Or safe. Protected. Not even with you. 

“When we were together, I wasn’t trying to be the Companion, but I wasn’t trying to be me either. I wanted to impress you, be the perfect man for you, memorize Nabooian poetry I didn’t understand for you…anything I could, to make you look at me twice. And the entire time I was with him, I kept trying to guess how to be what he wanted, but he only ever wanted me when I was being--” bratty, stubborn, argumentative, mouthy, desperate, imperfect “--me. But...it wasn’t as scary as I always thought it would be, to be...just me with someone. He made me feel like I could. Like there was nothing I could do that would, um. That would make him leave me behind.”

Because Anakin Skywalker had become a Companion, not because he really, truly, desperately wanted to spend the rest of his life fucking strangers for credits--although the credits were nice, and sometimes so were the strangers--but because he wanted to be the one chosen, to be desired above all other options. And he figured out eventually that the only way he’d ever be chosen was if he found a way to not be himself. 

“But he did,” Padmé points out. “Unless he’s hiding out in your apartment right now.”

“No, yeah, he...did,” Anakin says, carefully not adding that if Obi-Wan was in his apartment right now, there’s no way Anakin would be anywhere else. “I wanted him to meet me in the middle. To give up what he was asking me to give up too, because I would have if...if that's what it took to have his love. And I wanted to know that he would too, for mine. So. So I asked him to make...an impossible choice." His voice wavers and his vision blurs with tears. He’s thought something similar for weeks now, of course, but saying it out loud hits differently."And I don’t think he’s coming back this time.”

And sweet, beautiful Padmé who can never stand to see a friend in pain, even when it’s a deserved pain, leans forward to touch his arm gently.

“Ani, that might be for the best, don’t you think?” she asks quietly. “I won’t lie and tell you I understand, but I do believe you. You...love him. But...you said it at the beginning, didn’t you? That it makes you worse to love him? So do you really think that this... I mean. Is it a good love?"

Anakin shakes his head. “I don’t think it matters. He’s--we’re--there’s no separation now, no forgetting about each other again. It’s not like when I was nine and I could lose him and just be angry about it. Losing him this time, it’s not an option, we’re too...entwined.”

Don’t mention the bond, don’t mention the bond, don’t--

Padmé raises an eyebrow. “Anakin,” she admonishes, “you’re talking to probably the one person in the whole galaxy who knew both of you when you were growing up and he was a Jedi. I can tell you for certain that neither of you ever forgot about the other.”

Anakin blinks at her. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“I mean that I have spent about thirteen years hearing about Obi-Wan Kenobi from you, and about eleven diplomatic missions answering questions about you from him.”

“He asked about me?” Anakin asks, his heart aflutter. 

“Right up until he realized we were together, yes,” Padmé admits almost reluctantly. “Which makes much more sense now than it did then. The man can pull off a cold shoulder better than anyone I’ve ever met.”

Anakin shivers in some strange mix of elation and hunger. “I know.”

“I wouldn’t have told him anything if I knew he was going to become an obsessive, evil Separatist,” she reminds him. “Murderous, treacherous, enemy of the Republic.”

Anakin pouts. “I know.” He hesitates, wants to ask her so many questions about Obi-Wan as a Jedi, about what she thought of him then, about what she thinks of Anakin now. But what comes out is, “Do you really think there’s no good left in him?”

“Oh, Anakin,” she says, and it’s her ‘Oh, Anakin’ she uses when she really means,‘you’ve asked me a question and I will answer it but it might break your heart’. She’d used the same tone when she’d turned him down the first time. And the second, when he’d proposed right before she left for Coruscant. It’s a tone that has never really meant good things for him. “I...couldn’t say. I think you’d know better than I would. If there is good in him still, you’d be the person he’d allow to see it.”

Anakin looks down at the note still in his palm. He unfolds it again and traces the ‘Darling’ at the top and then the 'yours’ at the bottom. An unknown emotion wells up in his chest; Anakin thinks he might choke on the bitterness of it, the aching it leaves behind. Almost second nature now, he reaches out to the bond. Is there good in you, Obi-Wan? Would I care if you told me no, as long as it meant you came back for me? He asks, but there’s only a silence so absolute, the link between them might as well not even be there at all. If the other man knows the answer to the question, he’s decided it’s none of Anakin’s business.

He stands abruptly, shaking out of Padmé’s loose hold. “We’re horrifically late as it is, Senator. But please, give me a handful more minutes to straighten up.” He looks down at his outfit overdramatically. “I have wrinkles now. If I go out in public looking like this, I’ll have to lower my prices more than I did at the start of the war.”

“Anakin--” Padmé starts to protest, standing as well, but Anakin ducks away from her outstretched hand and leans down to pick up the discarded lightsaber. “I just want to see you happy, Ani. That’s all. That’s it.”

Anakin can’t bear to look at her when she looks so pained for him, over him. “I know, Pads,” he responds softly as he closes the door to the other room. “Thank you.”

With a calm he doesn’t feel, he begins to fix his face in the mirror, lightsaber thrown onto the dresser table. He fantasizes about throwing it out the balcony, down to the lowest levels of Coruscant and then going to a mind healer himself to have the bond broken. Maybe to the Jedi Temple. Windu would love that, he’s sure.

He entertains the possibility because he has to. He knows he would never. For now, potentially forever, Anakin’s heart belongs to Kenobi, so he might as well have his mind too. And if he showed up at his apartment again, Anakin can’t say for sure whether or not he’d let the man have his body.

His eyes catch on the ‘saber in front of him, and almost without his permission he reaches down to pick it up and inspect it. It’s lighter than he thought it’d be, but still a sturdy weight. It thrums in the Force with Obi-Wan’s signature, but. Different. Lighter too than Anakin had thought he’d ever feel it.

He wonders for a second about what would have happened if they had met when Obi-Wan was still a Jedi, before Anakin became a Companion, when he was still all hard angles and messy limbs, cocky and terrible at handling his emotions, even worse at handling the people he loved. Still bitter, still angry, still jealous. Obi-Wan as a Jedi would have been the better of the two. It’s a strange thought.

Anakin’s bad qualities had always been overlooked for the sake of his good ones. When he was with Obi-Wan, it had felt like they’d been forgiven, if not relished by the Sith, which in turn had made Anakin feel as if Obi-Wan brought out the worst in him. He was more wild, more possessive around Obi-Wan than he’d been for years, ever since he became a Companion.

But Companion training hadn’t taken away those qualities so much as given him ways to hide them, think through them, make them smaller aspects of his personality. He had been wrong to tell Padmé that loving Obi-Wan made him a worse person. He’d been so caught up in his own persona of his career that he hadn’t realized what Obi-Wan must have as soon as he saw him again: the Anakin of now shared more in common with the nine year old he used to be than the Companion he pretends to be.

Maybe loving Obi-Wan Kenobi has just made him more self-aware of all the darker parts that have always existed inside of him.

He flicks the lightsaber on just to feel the hairs rise on his arm as the cerulean blade hisses to life. This had been Obi-Wan’s once, had stood between him and his almost-certain death more times than Obi-Wan could probably ever tell him. Now the Sith had given it to Anakin. Why?

To protect you until he comes back, a voice whispers in his head. It’s a pretty thought, one with very little merit that will only grow to be more heartbreaking as time proves it false. Anakin lets himself indulge in it anyway. The ‘saber hums, as if in agreement, and Anakin turns it off.

He almost puts it down on the dresser. Why would he take it with him? It’s not like he’s really going to need a weapon during a ball, especially not one that’s technically illegal for him to have and especially not one this big. He already has his favorite vibro-blade tucked into his boot in case anyone sees him, thinks he’s vulnerable, and gets ideas.

But. But the lightsaber feels so much like Obi-Wan. And Anakin is so raw after his conversation with Padmé. And he can’t have the one thing--person--he knows would comfort him, but he could make do with this physical reminder of their connection, their history. And--

“Anakin?” Padmé calls apologetically through the door, “We really must go.”

And, above all else, Anakin Skywalker has always been a bit stupid when it comes to Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He tucks the lightsaber against the small of his back, thankful that his shirt and jacket are loose enough that the bulge it makes can hardly be seen, can really only be seen if one is looking for it.

----

By the time Senator Amidala and Companion Skywalker enter the massive ballroom of the Chancellor's personal home, the dance is in full-swing. They separate almost immediately, because they’ve learned by now that rumors--detrimental to both of their careers--will sprout almost instantly if they don’t.

For Anakin, these things are networking events, as well as one of the only times he can see a majority of his clients in one place, everyone clothed. Already, he can see familiar faces lining the halls. There’s Riyo Chuchi, in the corner, sipping slowly at what Anakin thinks is going to be her first and only drink of the night. She’d been sweet and gratifyingly reactive, although she’d never booked another appointment with him. He’s heard she’s exclusively dating women now though, so he doesn’t take it personally.

Padmé has already sought out Bail and his wife, which Anakin thinks isn’t fair, seeing as Padmé knows he’s been trying to seduce the pair of them into his apartment for at least two years now. He just knows beneath their calm and charming facades, they have some pretty heavy kinks that he’s dying to find out about.

Someone approaches him from the corner of his eye. He doesn’t recognize their face, but they have the look of someone that wants something from him.

“A dance perhaps, Companion?” The man asks.

Anakin tilts his head down in acknowledgement and acceptance. “For now at least, sir.”

He takes the other’s hand and settles it firmly on his waist. So it begins.

Maybe it’s just his imagination, but the lightsaber feels warm against his bare back. Suddenly, it’s easier to do this, to think that he’ll survive this night and the ones that come after, as long as that weight is there, that ghost of a presence coiling around his own Force Signature. If the love he carries inside himself for Obi-Wan Kenobi sustains him in such a way, does it matter, really, if it's a good love or a bad love?

---

After that first partner, they just don’t stop coming. This is why Anakin hates balls. They exhaust him, and he can’t even charge anyone for his time. In a way, he’s a teasing little sampler for potential new clients, to tempt them to purchase the full meal. His work tonight will pay off in the coming days, but Anakin is more of the 'instant gratification' persuasion, so this is practically torture.

By the eleventh dance partner, he just wants to suggest to the next person who asks him to dance that they didn’t have to beat around the bush. They could just have him, if they wanted. Seriously, he wouldn’t even charge them, as long as he gets to lie down for a bit. They could do it by the drink fountain, if that suited them. In the garden maybe. Anakin isn’t picky at this point.

He’d even take disappointingly bland sex with Bail and Breha Organa before he willingly took another turn around this dancefloor.

A throat clears from behind him as he’s saying his goodbyes to his most recent partner. Anakin thinks he might cry. Tears are imminent.

And then a hand attaches itself to his lower back, just shy of the lightsaber, and every nerve in Anakin’s body tenses.

“My boy,” the Chancellor says. “I’m so glad to see you have been able to make it to my humble celebration tonight. I was worried you would be too...indisposed.”

Anakin gamely smiles and turns to face the man, subtly slipping away from the old creep’s hand. He’s doubly thankful he had decided not to go with a backless top tonight, seeing as how even his Companion-trained decorum isn’t strong enough to withstand that wrinkly hand on his bare skin. “Padmé insisted,” he says politely but shortly.

The Chancellor chuckles lightly in a way that Anakin knows is faked, mostly because he knows how to do the same sound. “Yes, our Nabooian senator has quite the strong head on her shoulders. The person she ends up marrying will most definitely have his work cut out for him.”

“If you say so, Your Excellency,” Anakin says, bristling slightly. If he had never accepted that damn tea appointment with the man, he probably wouldn’t be stuck here now. He looks around the room desperately for Padmé or any sort of even slightly recognizable face he can use to escape. It feels like his skin is crawling over his body, like the air has become tiny particles of ice slowly stealing his breath away. “Oh,” he says, finally catching sight of a friendly client on the far side of the room. “I apologize, sir, but--”

“There is something I would like to discuss with you,” the Chancellor cuts him off before he can make his escape. “It is not the sort of conversation one has in open areas like this.”

Anakin relishes saying what he’s about to say. With his most infuriatingly handsome smirk, he says, “Then you may go through my droid to book an appointment with me at your earliest convenience. It is my understanding that you already have his information.”

He bows and turns away just slow enough to catch a look of sheer fury pass over the old man’s face. He almost--almost-- lets himself smile triumphantly, but before he can, Palpatine’s hand is back to resting on his back, this time directly over the lightsaber.

“My dear boy,” the Chancellor croons. Anakin shivers. “What I want to discuss cannot wait the night. It involves the man we talked about the last time we met.”

Anakin stops breathing for a second. Obi-Wan.

He suddenly has to know. But he’s self-aware enough to know that turning around too fast would be playing completely into the Chancellor’s hand. He calms his suddenly racing heart, and slowly turns to face the man who looks sickeningly victorious. “If you have any information regarding Separatist General Kenobi, I have it on good authority that the Coruscanti police are currently in need of any leads. I’m sure they’d be much appreciative for your esteemed help, your Excellency.”

Cool. Calm. It is never a good idea to give anything away until you know for certain that you can afford to lose the advantage and still stay in the game. He clasps his arms around his back, mostly to stop his hands from shaking, but also so he can feel the lightsaber that’s resting there. 

He’s safe. Every single nerve-ending in his body is screaming that he’s in danger right now, but the reality is that he’s safe. This is the Chancellor of the Republic, for Force’s sake. They’re at a ball. Anakin’s instincts are good, but this has to be one of the times that they’re wrong. Nothing else makes sense.

“The information I have cannot go to the Coruscanti police,” Palpatine makes a show of frowning and checking their surroundings. “I have received a very...unusual message from General Kenobi, and I believe he is in grave danger because of what he knows. It is my understanding that you are the only person in all of Coruscant who will believe what I am about to tell you.”

Anakin sways forward. His mind is fogged; it’s hard to think straight. It’s hard to think at all. He’s halfway aware that there’s something foreign creeping along his mental shields, and he knows he needs to fortify them, but he can’t find the concentration to do so. All he can do is clutch desperately at the lightsaber on his back. Obi-Wan? In danger? While Anakin is here, doing what? Dancing around Coruscant with people he doesn’t care about?

“We do not have much time,” Palpatine says through a smile, setting a hand on Anakin’s arm and starting to pull him toward the doors leading not out of the building but deeper inside it. But no, Anakin decides, that makes sense. Of course they don’t have much time if Obi-Wan--

He squeezes his eyes closed and then narrows them at the Chancellor. This doesn’t make sense. “Obi-Wan hates you,” he murmurs, brain-to-mouth filter temporarily shot. “Why would he contact you when he could--”

When he could call me.

“I could not possibly say,” the Chancellor shakes his head sadly, still practically dragging him along. No one is giving them a second glance. Why? “Perhaps he is trying to protect you, perhaps...he simply does not trust you enough.”

Anakin tries to flinch back in pain or anger or both, but the hand on his arm tightens considerably. There is a guard at the doorway who lets them pass with a single dip of his head. There’s a staircase leading further up, so tall Anakin can’t see where it ends. Or maybe he just can’t think around the babble in his head.

“But I do, my boy,” the Chancellor says slowly. Deliberately. Anakin’s head hurts, his mind’s shields slowly creaking under the pressure of the unknown assailant. Any second now and they'll shatter apart. He tries to think around the pain. If he could think, if he could stop for a second and apply what he knows about conversations, about conversations with politicians, about Obi-Wan Kenobi in particular, maybe he would be able to make sense of it all. 

“I--”

“He plans to forswear the ways of the Sith.”

Anakin’s feet stop moving so suddenly that he trips. He might even have fallen down the stairs he's being guided up if not for Palpatine’s grip on him. Mind reeling from this information, Anakin instinctively reaches out to the bond, hoping it’s open, hoping the Chancellor is telling the truth, hoping against all hope that the bond will be open again, that Obi-Wan will be coming back to him, that maybe he left in the first place so he could buy them a little cabin on a backwater planet, so he could start the garden, so he could--

He’s met with an empty void. No shields, no presence. Just absence in its purest, most unavoidable form.

Now Anakin really does fall against the stair railing. How had he not noticed immediately? Where is Obi-Wan? Where is --

“He’s gone,” Anakin gasps. “I can’t feel him, he’s--” He’s adrift, in his own mind, staring at the end of the bond he had shared with Obi-Wan, knowing it is not connected to anything anymore, knowing he has lost--

There is no words for what he has lost. “He’s gone.”

“That is truly disturbing news,” the Chancellor says. Anakin would pay more attention to the way the older man’s tone has not changed in the slightest if he could think past the absent bond and the panic he’s experiencing because of it. “I fear we are to be too late then, my boy. You may have lost him forever. If only you could have--”

“No,” Anakin snarls at the very thought. The void that had been threatening to swallow his whole mind is suddenly filled with a burning, wrenching, aching thirst for violence. Revenge. Retribution. Someone has taken something away from him and it was his and they will not live to make the same mistake twice. If they cannot give it back to him, then he will take everything from them in payment, and the debt will not even come close to being paid off. 

He has the stray thought that if Obi-Wan had felt daily even a fraction of what Anakin is feeling now, he can’t believe the man had the strength or wherewithal to be continuously multisyllabic. He owes him an apology. This is all consuming. This feels like his end. Anakin thinks he’s going to burn up from the inside out. He welcomes it, welcomes the heat of the fire. His only other option is to go back to his friends who will look at him later with pity and say things like this might be for the best, don’t you think? Say things they mean, say things that would kill him much more slowly to have to hear like, he was a traitor, he was a murderer, he was bad for you.

The one person who could possibly understand what the traitor meant to him is gone. Was in grave danger. Now is gone. Anakin is--

alone.

The Force surrounding him is a thrashing mess, tearing at the air and his clothes and the decor lining the hallway. They’re at the top of the stairs. When had that happened? Before or after Anakin’s entire world fell to pieces?

“Yes,” Palpatine murmurs, but he sounds. Wrong. Excited. Anakin turns his head--barely--to look up at him, just now realizing that he’s collapsed onto all fours in the middle of the hallway, head pressed against his own sweaty palms. His senses come rushing back to him then. He can feel a dampness of his cheeks. He can hear ragged breathing that could be his or could be the Chancellor’s. He can see a long hallway that leads only to one door, just behind Palpatine.

The fire burns within him still, but it banks itself, as if knowing he will need all of his wits about him for the next several minutes. He reviews the facts as he knows them.  Obi-Wan is gone. Before he... before, he had sent Chancellor Palpatine a comm to tell the man that he planned to become a turn-coat--again--and he had valuable information that put him in grave danger. That put his life at risk. That--killed him.

He’s gone. Obi-Wan is gone. 

Anakin needs to hear the message, see the holo, see Obi-Wan’s face again, if only a cheap imitation of the real thing, hear his voice if only as a recording. He needs to know where to start. He needs to know who to start with.

Shakily, he gets to his knees and then his feet, his resolve strengthening with every movement his body makes. Palpatine is watching avidly as Anakin collects the broken pieces of himself and rearranges them so all the sharp edges are pointing outward.

“Show me,” he tells the man. “Show me it now.”

The Chancellor smiles as if he’s been waiting to hear these words for a long time. “My boy,” he says, grasping his arm again, gently this time, and leading him down the hallway to that door at the very end. “I will show you everything in time.”

The old man opens the door with his palmprint and Anakin has to first blink at the change in lighting. The room is ornate and pretentious and lit very well compared to the dark hallway and staircase. There’s windows overlooking the city on one side, and a desk at the other, and right to the left of the desk--

Anakin stumbles, the relief so unbearably heavy for a moment that he falls to his knees. Obi-Wan is there, right there, kneeling too, gagged, with something white locked around his throat. His eyes, half-lidded, fly open when he sees Anakin. 

Anakin wants to cry. Anakin might be crying already. Or again. Obi-Wan is here. He’s here. It’s Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan who is alive and who is here. Everything will be okay, because Obi-Wan is here. The Force is swirling ecstatic around him, and he reaches out in his mind and in the real world too because Obi-Wan is here, but he can’t feel him--

So caught up in the tidal wave of emotion, Anakin barely even registers at first the feeling of something clasping around his own neck from behind. But in the silence of the room, he does hear the click of a collar locking into place.

Chapter Text

“My sincerest apologies, Anakin, my boy,” the Chancellor says as the door slides closed, striding past him to sit behind his desk. 

Anakin finds it hard to tear his eyes away from the bruises on Obi-Wan’s face, the way his lips pull and crack around the cloth gag, the fact that he’s here, that he’s alive. He almost can’t believe it, needs to get his fingers on the proof, feel Obi-Wan’s heartbeat, make sure he’s not hurt aside from what’s visible. But he feels struck where he is, unable to move, unsure if his limbs will hold his weight if he tries.

For a second, his mind is aflame with the whiplash of it all, burning itself with the strength of his relief and his rage, but then he takes a breath, then another one, and he realizes something else quite entirely. 

It’s quiet in his head. If the Force still surrounds him at all, it’s doing its best to remain undetected

His immediate reaction is panic, as he brings his hands up to scrabble uselessly at the collar around his neck. He’s never been cut off from the Force before. He didn’t know it was even actually possible to live without feeling its weight around his shoulders, in his mind, in the air.

Palpatine must pick up on his fear, because the old man continues in a patronizing voice, “You must understand the necessity of the Force collar, of course. You have a history of being quite...volatile.” 

From the corner, Obi-Wan snorts around his gag. Anakin is glad he’s finding something humorous about this entire affair, because Anakin for one is drawing a blank.

Anakin does know one thing though: this isn’t a conversation he wants to have on his knees. 

He stands slowly, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the Chancellor. “I don’t quite understand, sir,” he says.

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?” the old man replies scornfully. “Come sit. I’ll explain everything.”

Anakin moves until he’s standing just behind one of the chairs. “I’m fine, thank you.”

Palpatine sighs and turns his head to look at Obi-Wan. “Is he always this impossibly willful, General?”

Obi-Wan shrugs and then nods. Anakin can’t believe he’d been even a little upset at the news he’d died. The way he’s going now, Anakin’s gonna kill him himself. 

If they get out of this alive.

“Oh, Anakin,” the Chancellor turns his slimy attention back to him, which is very unfortunate on the whole. “You know as well as I do that you were supposed to be a Jedi.”

“I like to think that I’ve made the best of my situation,” he says cooly.

Palpatine shakes his head in a pantomime of grandfatherly distress. “Your talents are wasted on your whoring, my boy. The power you possess--it is remarkable. What you lack is vision, ambition. Drive.”

“We can’t all be politicians, sir.”

“Rightly so, Anakin. I truly believe some people are born to be leaders, others followers. We all have our purposes. We all have our...uses.”

Anakin tenses even further. “And your vision, sir? You already lead the galaxy and command an army, I admit that I can’t see much more you can do beyond being the Chancellor of the Republic.”

The Chancellor shakes his head. “A narrow-minded statement if I have ever heard one. No. I have spent my life in service to this galaxy, my boy. No one understands more than I how far the Republic has fallen. We have grown complacent, static. Stagnation is the worst thing that can happen to a galaxy, and the fault always lies at the center, in the government. 

The Senate is corrupt, the Jedi power-hungry. I saw this before anyone else and it gave me the willpower to rise through the ranks, to become Chancellor, to become a vehicle for real change. But still I found myself constrained, powerless.”

Anakin crosses his arms. “It was my understanding that the Senate has granted you every emergency power you have asked for.”

“Stop gaps, Anakin, merely stop gaps. No, the only thing that will save the galaxy now is a complete dismantling of the system and its outdated conventions. Don’t you see that sometimes there has to be destruction before there can be greatness? The Republic has served its purpose. It is stuck in its ways, just as the Jedi are. Remember, my boy, they rejected you for being too old when you would have been the best of them all, the most powerful! If they could have let go of their Code--if they could have seen--

“The Jedi were afraid of it, of you. But I understand, I understand its— your potential. You could be the strongest force in the galaxy if you had the right....teacher. One who could guide you to reach the heights you are capable of. You could change the fate of the galaxy, my boy, with the proper master.”

He doesn’t like the way the word sounds rolling off of Palpatine’s tongue. The collar around his neck feels heavier than it did before, and he knows at this moment that this is a man who he’ll never call master. 

“Or failing that, the proper motivation,” Palpatine adds silkily with an air of disappointment when Anakin doesn’t give him any sort of verbal response. His head tilts towards Obi-Wan’s bound form, and Anakin feels his eyes narrow in rage without his permission.

He knows he needs to rein in his emotions, that Palpatine is benefiting from how unbalanced Anakin’s feeling right now, but it’s hard. He is too vulnerable, standing here with his heart so close and in such a precarious situation. Palpatine has a reading on him, and it’s more accurate than Anakin would like. “Is he my motivation?” Anakin gets out between gritted teeth, fingers digging into the back of the chair. “I get him if... you get me?”

“In a way, I suppose,” the old man says consideringly. “Perhaps given enough time, he could be yours. But now? No, my foolish boy. Obi-Wan Kenobi is a traitor of the worst kind, and a traitor must always be one of two things: dead or imprisoned. He has killed his master in cold-blood, and he had planned to do the same to me. I cannot allow him to remain unpunished, but I understand you hold a level of...affection for the man. 

No, you have my word that I will not kill him. Join me and he will be allowed to live, although I believe it will not take long for him to resent you for that choice. There are, after all, worse things than a quick death.”

Anakin blinks. He can’t think of a single thing worse than Obi-Wan Kenobi, dead.

“Ah, would you like a demonstration?” There’s a sort of gleeful malice in the Chancellor’s voice that raises the hairs on Anakin’s neck.

“No—“ 

But between one second and the next, Palpatine’s hand is filled with something that looks a lot like lightning and then Obi-Wan is screaming around his gag, convulsing against his bindings.

It has to only be five seconds at most, but watching it happen feels as though Anakin’s living through an eternity. It feels almost as if Anakin is the one suffering, just watching this torture. How many times could Obi-Wan endure this and live? How many times before Obi-Wan’s love for Anakin turned into resentment? This is his fault after all. They’re here now because Anakin had demanded something from Obi-Wan and the man had tried to deliver it and had gotten caught. They’re here because Anakin hadn’t been satisfied with Obi-Wan’s love, had needed to have it on his terms.

Palpatine turns back to him, satisfied, but Anakin cannot rip his eyes away from the shaking form on the floor. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, he thinks, wishing more than ever he could feel their Force bond in his mind. I’m sorry. How did I not see you loved me the same way I loved you? We were so stupid and now you’re paying for it and it’s--

“Was that painful to see, my boy? Would you rather me kill him now? I could so easily. The Republic would applaud me, I believe, for bringing an end to the Separatist General’s life. But I will not, if you choose to stand by my side.”

Anakin swallows down his rage. There’s a large part of him that wants to take the lightsaber on his back and skewer the other man with it. But he knows he’ll only have one chance for this. He knows, quite certainly, that Palpatine is too good of a strategist to allow Anakin to leave this room alive without joining him, willingly or unwillingly. He knows too much now. Even with no proof, he’s a threat that must be neutralized. And Obi-Wan’s presence is a first attempt at controlling him. If unsuccessful, he’s sure there are others lined up, each as dispensable as the last.

Palpatine must be counting on Anakin’s emotions getting the best of him. He’d seen it happen already, twice in the past thirty minutes. He knows the kind of man Anakin is, knows how deeply he cares for Obi-Wan. He's relying on Anakin’s lack of control because he knows how imbalanced and unhinged Anakin can behave, how victimized he can be by his own stormy mind.

But there’s something very different between the Anakin in the hallway and him now: the force collar.

Now, he’s alone in his head. The Force is absent. And it’s actually easier to think clearly without it. 

Obi-Wan had taught him just enough about the Force that it had become impossible to ignore. It was another way to view the universe, to interact with it, but it was so loud all the time. His feelings magnified, his mind bombarded with foreign impressions, outside elements. And before Obi-Wan, when Anakin was growing up, the Force had still had a presence around him, a burden pressing into his shoulders and head at all times. But not in this moment.

Without it, Anakin is just Anakin. He feels weightless wearing the collar. And Palpatine clearly thinks he’s been crippled, that he’s powerless, a defanged threat. But Anakin hasn’t ever been powerless, and the Force has very little to do with that.

Now, the Anakin who wanted to be a Jedi takes a backseat. 

The Anakin who trained for years to be a Companion steps up. This is a client, this is a negotiation. To get out of this room with both himself and Obi-Wan alive, he’ll have to rely on something other than brute strength. There is no chance he could win against Palpatine in an outright duel no matter how satisfying it would be to attack him, not if he’s right about who the man is--and he thinks he is. But he might still be able to win in a game of trickery, especially given how much his opponent seems to underestimate him.

He takes a deep, calming breath, hands splaying out on the back of the chair. He can only do this once. He has to do this right. He has to lie, to misdirect, better than he ever has in his entire life.

“You’re a Sith, aren’t you? The Master.”

“Yes,” Palpatine says. “I am Darth Sidious.”

He says this with such relish that Anakin almost feels bad for not actually knowing who that is. It sounds very impressive and evil, of course. Does everyone get fake names when they join the Dark Side? Obi-Wan’s never mentioned any sort of fake name. Maybe he doesn’t like his that much.

“And you want me as your Apprentice,” Anakin continues slowly.

“You will be my Apprentice,” Palpatine—Sidious—whoever corrects. “But ours does not have to be an unwilling partnership, my boy. Think of a galaxy remade in our vision. Think of whatever you desire most fervently. Together we can bring it about.”

Anakin thinks about the things he’s wanted most in his entire life. Freedom. His mother’s acceptance. To be a Jedi. Padmé’s hand in marriage. Obi-Wan, looking at him with eyes that aren’t Sith-yellow.

Sidious could never have given him any of that. Other than his freedom, everything he has ever wanted are things that could not be bought or manipulated out of someone, only ever willingly given or not given.

But he has to make Sidious think he’s listening, think he’s considering. He tries to project an air of longing into the Force around him, which is much harder to do when he can’t actually feel the Force at all. He’s hoping that Sidious won’t look too closely, that the man will automatically assume that Anakin is as power-hungry as himself. Certainly there is nothing that Sidious wants that he thinks cannot be bribed or forced into his possession.

Anakin’s loyalty, for example.

He’s very careful to keep his eyes away from Obi-Wan. Sidious already knows that one weak spot, and it would do no good to highlight it now. He doesn’t know how he’ll react if he has to see Obi-Wan in pain in front of him again, but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to keep a level head, no matter how much Companion training he’s had.

“The Jedi,” Anakin says slowly. “They would have seen me a slave again.”

He doesn’t think that’s quite true, as the Jedi had removed his slave chip immediately upon arriving at the Temple, and no one had ever said anything about putting it back. But they hadn’t really helped much in the aftermath, a fact that Anakin uses to build an air of bitter resentment around him. 

The Chancellor smiles, looking sickeningly excited. “My boy, what happened to you was a great injustice that they will pay for. It cannot be rewritten or undone, but I will give you knowledge and power that the Jedi have never even known to dream about. We will tear their Temple down around their heads. By dawn, they will lay still in their beds, traitors punished and the War over.”

“Dawn?” Anakin asks, attention snagged on the phrase. “Tomorrow?”

Sidious leans back in his chair and spreads his hands over his desk. “Think of tonight’s celebration for the Jedi as a...farewell party. They cannot exist in the new world, they have proven it time and time again.”

“How?” he exhales, barely more than a whisper of a question as his voice fails him.

“The clones,” Sidious responds, leaning forward. “Their own men will kill them, and I will announce their treachery to the Senate.”

“And me?” Anakin asks. “And Obi-Wan?”

Palpatine sighs, as if disappointed by Anakin’s reaction. Anakin’s a little disappointed by his own reaction too, but he’s never had to look a client in the face and act starry-eyed while they talk about literal genocide. Obviously, he needs to adjust his plan, allow for that which is too horrifying to even contemplate.

“Kenobi has forced my hand earlier than I had planned,” Sidious sighs, as if admitting an embarrassing moment of weakness. “I had wanted to take you first--” ew, “--and then have you lead the attack on the Temple as a...gift to you. 

“But as I cannot know what plans, if any, your Obi-Wan has managed to send to the enemy, we must move quickly. No. Tonight, you will stay here in my office, and I will send Kenobi to Mustafar. He will kill the Separatist leaders if he wants to spare you from the pain his disobedience will certainly cause.”

“You would hurt your own apprentice?”

“I do not need an apprentice with all of his organic limbs, my boy. Are you listening, Kenobi? Do you understand what will happen should you fail your master again? Would you enjoy seeing your lover maimed while you are too weak to stop it?”

At this, Anakin allows himself to glance over at Obi-Wan. In the time since his torture, he’s managed to drag himself back to his knees, although he can see the way his body is shaking from here. Sweat-soaked strands of hair fall in front of his eyes as he looks up to Sidious without raising his head all the way. Anakin isn’t sure he can,  with the way the tendons stand out on his neck as it is.

Anakin shivers at the look of unbridled, feral hatred in those yellow eyes. Obi-Wan gives a slow nod of his head, refusing to break eye contact until Sidious has turned away. Anakin finds it much harder to stop looking at Obi-Wan now that he’s started. He wants to hold him. He wants to be held in return. 

He should have gone back to bed when Obi-Wan had suggested it, that morning on the balcony. He never should have argued--he never should have told Obi-Wan the name of his client, never should have given the man the missing puzzle piece and then just as unknowingly given him a deadline to meet. It must have made him rush something that should not have been rushed. And Force, all the times Anakin had sent him feelings down the bond? He must have thought Anakin was...was moving on at the very least. He must have pressed further than he should have, quicker than was wise. He must have made a stupid mistake and was captured because of it. 

It’s Anakin’s fault.

“Make no mistake, he will be punished severely for his crimes against myself and my empire,” Sidious says, almost bored, as he stands and walks around the other Sith, grabbing his hair to wrench his head back for no other reason, Anakin thinks, than because he can.

The lightsaber against Anakin’s back feels like it’s burning his skin, seemingly just as unhappy as Anakin that Palpatine has his slimy hands on his Obi-Wan.

It’s almost time. It has to be. It has to be almost time because Anakin doesn’t know how much longer he can take this.

“And after tonight?” Anakin asks, “after the dawn of your empire, what comes next?”

“I begin to train you of course, my boy. You will be the Emperor’s enforcer, sent to extinguish the slightest hint of rebellion anywhere in the galaxy. Kenobi can help, I suppose. Separately. One of you will always be... safe here on Coruscant.” 

Imprisoned to be used as leverage against the other, Sidious doesn’t need to say.

“Training? What does training mean?” He’s getting desperate because he knows that expression on Sidious’ face, recognizes it from countless clients. It’s the face his patrons wear when they’re getting bored of the conversation and they have more fun plans for the night that they want to get on with already.

Usually those plans involve Anakin tied up or Anakin wearing something exciting. Usually they don’t involve genocide and torture and a life of enslavement.

“Well,” Sidious taps his finger against his chin as if he hasn’t thought about it. The hairs on Anakin’s skin stand on edge. He has a bad feeling about this. “That is a hard thing to quantify. You have much to learn, after all. You are a whore, and you have a whore’s education. I don’t hold it against you, my boy, it just means we will have to start with the basics. 

“I believe...that bleeding the crystal of the lightsaber you currently have strapped to your back would be as good a place as any to start.”

The game’s up; it’s been played through. 

Now it’s either give the weapon over without a fight or fight and lose it involuntarily. Only one of those options would be believable. After all, Palpatine thinks Anakin is controlled by his emotions, and he has made it very clear in the last few minutes what will happen to Anakin--what will happen to Obi-Wan if Sidious’ empire is fully realized.

Anakin--almost any version of Anakin--would stand and fight, even knowing he’d lose. He wouldn’t go back into chains so easily, would choose death before that fate.

Obi-Wan makes a frantic, muffled noise in the corner. He must know the same thing that Sidious thinks he does.

What neither of them know is that Anakin the Companion would never in his life, never on his life, enter into a fair fight, not if he doesn’t think he has a good chance of winning.

He doesn’t need to lose. He just needs to make Palpatine think he’s been beaten. And the Companion knows how to do that, has been trained to beg and whine and plead with strangers for relief, for mercy, for release, while remaining virtually unaffected.

You must always give them what they want, his teacher had told him once. You must never let them know what you want. If there’s ever a difference between those two things, you must make them think you’re giving in for them and them alone.  

It’s the Companion that squares his feet and pulls the lightsaber from underneath his shirt, not Anakin the Almost-Jedi, not Obi-Wan’s Anakin, not even truly Anakin’s Anakin.

He holds it with both hands, straight out in front of him. He needs to look strong but weak. He needs to be an easy target, but a believable one. “I won’t,” he says.

Sidious sighs and shakes his head, moving away from Obi-Wan and pulling out his own saber from his robes, igniting the red blade. “You were destined to be a Jedi, my boy. But you were always destined to fail. Too prone to passion, to attachment. A weakness, nothing more. But one that can be corrected in due time.”

He attacks.

Anakin brings the saber up to parry. It’s instinctual, but not very effective.

His opponent is faster than he had thought he’d be, or maybe Anakin is just too slow. A trail of heat kisses past his arm as he jerks away, spinning and blocking the next attack.

He gives ground automatically, widening the distance between them by moving around Palpatine’s desk.

“Think , Anakin,” Sidious says imploringly, his tone at odds with the way he twirls his saber in his hand. “You are cut off from the Force, you have no power, no training.”

“I will do what I must,” he says, the first sentence to pop into his head, one he’s repeated over and over again in the past weeks. He understands now more than ever what Obi-Wan had meant by it. By all of it.

“You will try,” Sidious responds with a disappointed shake of his head, flipping over the desk to land in front of Anakin, who ducks his blade just as it slashes through the wood. 

How kriffing acrobatic are these people?

He leaks desperation into the Force as he backs away again, two hands gripped tightly to his blade--to Obi-Wan’s old saber.

Sidious’ hits are powerful and hard to deflect. Each strike leaves Anakin’s arms shaking slightly from the force of them and he thinks he’s going to lose. He knows he is. He’d planned for it, but his body is reacting violently to the stimulus of the fight. His heart is racing, his movements sloppier than they should be. 

His instinct tells him to turn and run, to put distance between himself and the skilled swordsman, who is so obviously toying with him. But he can’t, he must stay close to Obi-Wan. He must--

Sidious’ blade cuts clean through the metal of his cybernetic wrist and Anakin cries out in pain. He hadn’t really considered how much that would hurt but he’s reeling from the agony of losing his hand-- again, blast it.

It’s easy work to fall to the ground then, a move that isn’t even faked, just his body’s natural reaction to the pain. He trembles as he curls towards Obi-Wan, who is pulling harshly against his own bonds. They’re only a few feet away from each other, but it’s too far.

Anakin shakily edges closer on his stomach. He needs to be closer, he needs--he thinks--it’s hard to think, but--

“Do you understand now, boy?” Palpatine looms over him, lightsaber still lit and hovering menacingly right by his ear. Anakin hides his head in his arm, awaiting the killing blow, curling his knees up to his chest. He must look pathetic. He feels pathetic. “Do you understand that you are nothing compared to me? You have power, yes, but you can never hope to beat me. Let this be your lesson.”

Obi-Wan’s old lightsaber flies from Anakin’s loose, one handed grip into Palpatine’s other palm. Anakin holds his breath.

Surely, he has not misjudged the man’s propensity for cruelty. Surely he will not leave Anakin like this and this alone.

“I admit that I am disappointed,” Sidious says, turning the blue lightsaber’s hilt slowly around as he looks at the blade. “But plans must change to allow for other people’s failures. I will go to Mustafar tonight.”

He steps over Anakin’s prone form, so that his back is to him. “No!” Anakin gasps, as the meaning of the words sinks in, even as his one available hand makes the most of the Chancellor’s inattention.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Sidious declares, bringing both light-sabers up to somewhere Anakin can’t see from the ground. “Let your death serve as a punishment and a reminder to my foolish Apprentice.”

“No, please!” Anakin stumbles to his knees, and then to his feet, careful to keep a safe distance from Sidious. He slips his last chance into the sleeve of his right arm and presses it to his chest, as if still in pain. That’s easy, he is still in pain. “You said--no, please, you can’t have me without him!”

Sidious turns halfway around to face Anakin in profile. He’s wearing a victorious smirk, even as he looks at Anakin’s figure. Disarmed, without the Force, he’s just a desperate little boy who can’t stand a chance against the greatest Sith Lord in the galaxy. “Fortunately or unfortunately, I suppose, you have other loved ones, my Apprentice. ”

“M-master,” Anakin forces the word out from the tightness of his throat. His voice breaks. He doesn’t even have to fake this plea. If Obi-Wan dies now, because Anakin had miscalculated, he doesn’t know what he’ll do. “Master, please no. I’m yours. Don’t--”

“You will always be more his than mine if I allow him to live,” Sidious has turned back to Obi-Wan now. This is Anakin’s chance. This is the one thing he can still do, the only thing he has left to try. Sidious is saying something to Obi-Wan. The blades are rising in the air. Anakin is steps away.

He slips the vibro-blade out of his right sleeve, into his left hand. It’s a bad angle. It’s his non-dominant hand.

But he had done so much practicing with his left hand when he was out of commission that it shouldn’t make a difference in the end. Desperation should make up for any strength he's lacking.

It’s a matter of seconds, in the end.

His feet move lightly on the floor. He is steps away. He is a step away. Sidious is turning. He must feel his breath on the back of his neck. Maybe he feels a warning in the Force.

Anakin slides his left hand under Sidious’ raised arm and his right hand up against the man’s chin. It tilts back. There’s a glint in the light of the red ‘saber.

The Companion drags the blade across the exposed throat, as deep as he can get it. Blood hits his face. Sidious lets out a gargle of a surprised shriek, even as he tries to twist around, stumbling back, one lightsaber clattering to the floor so the man can hold his neck, while the other lightsaber descends towards Anakin.

Anakin braces for it. He had thought he wouldn’t be able to move, that he’d be hurt or--or worse. But it would be worth it, to know that he’d dealt the monster a killing blow. It would be worth it to know that one way or another at least Obi-Wan would leave this room alive.

But instead, Sidious loses his footing with another choked off screech. For a second, Anakin can’t understand what’s happened, why dodging the ‘saber is a simple matter of throwing himself backward out of its reach. Surely Sidious hasn’t lost that much blood yet? But then he sees the way Obi-Wan has shifted from behind Sidious, from his knees to his side. 

He must have kicked the man’s feet from out beneath him with the only thing he could move.

Anakin scrambles to his feet and toward where Sidious has fallen. He kicks the red lightsaber out of reach and descends on the man with fury and a vibroblade.

The Companion’s job is done, and the persona cedes control gracefully. 

It’s Anakin’s turn now to make sure the man stays down. “I said no,” he hisses as he slams the knife down once-twice-three times. He’s not thinking, he’s really not even feeling much besides a poisonous hatred that seems to take up the entirety of his mind.

His hands are stained lightsaber red. The man beneath him is most definitely dead. But it’s not enough, he has to pay for what he tried to do to Anakin, tried to do to his loved ones, to the galaxy as a whole. To Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan. A noise from behind him draws him up short, brings him back into his body long enough to remember the other person in the room. He moves off of the body without any thought other than that he has to get to Obi-Wan now, has to make sure he’s okay, has to touch him, hold him, kiss him--

Obi-Wan’s sat up again by the time Anakin gets to him, and he reaches out immediately to take the gag out of his mouth. 

The sight of his hand brings him to a halt. It’s shining with blood.

He has a killer's hand now. It’s shaking. It’s bloody.

It isn’t his blood. It could have been.

He starts shivering as he kneels, staring at his hand which is still hovering. He can’t bring himself to look away from it. If he looks up, then he’ll have to eventually look back, to face what he’s done. He killed a man. He.

He enjoyed it.

Obi-Wan leans forward just enough to press his cheek against Anakin’s palm. He almost flinches back, but something in him breaks at the contact, at the way Obi-Wan’s eyes soften as they look at him, filling with devotion and adoration. And love.

Of course a killer would love a killer. 

The term applies to both of them now.

Shakily, Anakin reaches behind Obi-Wan’s head to cut through the gag. If the blood gets in his hair, at least the red won’t show against the russet.

“Anakin,” is the first thing he says in a voice rough from screaming. “Darling, Anakin, dearheart, Anakin, sweet one--Ahn-- ”

Anakin kisses him just to shut him up. It’s not soft or loving at all, more like another form of fighting. He’s trying to bruise Obi-Wan’s mouth with his own; he tastes blood and keeps going. There’s nothing sweet about him anymore, is what he’s trying to tell the other man. 

He grips his hand in the collar of Obi-Wan’s robes and tries to pull him closer, but he doesn’t move much. Unwilling to lose this of all battles, he climbs onto Obi-Wan’s thighs, perching on top of them and changing the angle of the kiss as he opens his mouth to let Obi-Wan’s tongue inside. Obi-Wan’s trying to say something but the last thing Anakin wants to do is talk. Or think. It's enough for now to simply feel.

He whines against Obi-Wan’s mouth when the man pulls away, giving chase to the other’s lips. Obi-Wan has the nerve to evade him. Anakin thinks he’s going to vibrate out of his skin, that he’s going to fly apart if he isn’t given this right now.

“--akin, Anakin , untie me, damn you,” Obi-Wan’s words pierce through the fog in his mind. “Let me hold you, Anakin.”

Oh. Anakin can do that. He picks the knife up from where he must have dropped it in the haze of panicked kisses, and makes short work of the rest of Obi-Wan’s bindings. It’s almost funny how easily they fall apart now, considering how tightly they had held the Sith back just a few minutes ago.

As soon as he’s completely free, he’s pushing Anakin down onto the floor. His hands are shaking, his whole body is shaking. 

Anakin wonders how many times Obi-Wan had been hit with Sidious’ force lightning while Anakin had been busy dancing only a few floors below. Or maybe, like him, Obi-Wan’s body is experiencing both an adrenaline crash and a bone-deep sense of numbing relief.

He angles his face up for a kiss, because clearly that’s what they should be doing right now, but Obi-Wan bypasses his head to bury his face into his neck.

It takes a second or two for Anakin to realize that Obi-Wan is...is crying near silently, his only tell being that Anakin can feel the moisture on his skin. Hesitantly he raises his hand to Obi-Wan’s hair and presses him closer. He feels like crying too, but they can’t both lose it on the floor of the dead Chancellor’s private study.

This abrupt break between them snaps Anakin back firmly into his head. He knows they should leave soon, quickly. The fact that they haven’t been interrupted yet is amazing, a gift from the Force, but it can’t last. Won’t last.

But he needs this first. Just this. Just for a few seconds more.

Obi-Wan finds his composure much faster than Anakin would have. He pulls back far enough that he can see his entire face. Anakin wonders what he’s looking at, what he’s looking for, what he finds there instead.

The Sith trails one hand over Anakin’s cheekbone gently, mouth quirked in a small smile. “Darling, you just killed the Chancellor of the kriffing Republic.”

Anakin sits up so they’re on equal level. Obi-Wan’s hand refuses to detach from his face. “Can you stop sounding so happy about it?”

“How could you expect me to not be happy?” Obi-Wan leans forward enough to brush his lips against Anakin’s cheek. He lets his eyelashes flutter close to soak up the feeling. “You are here,” he moves to the tip of his nose. “And you are alright,” his other cheek, “and I am here,” his forehead, “and I am alive,” his lips. “And the war will end soon and we will be safe. There will be no more Sith.”

“There’ll be you,” Anakin whispers, opening his eyes to gaze into Obi-Wan’s yellow ones. “Was he lying? He told me--that you renounced it--the, the Sith. That you killed your Master. For...for me? Will you come back now? To...to me?”

Obi-Wan blinks at him, before pulling away completely. No. No, this is the opposite of what Anakin wants.

The man stands on shaking feet and stumbles towards the desk. He has to go past Sidious’ body to get there, and he pauses for a second to look over Anakin’s work.

Anakin himself can’t look for too long at it. He might be sick.

He stands as well, watching as Obi-Wan shuffles through the desk drawers with a single-minded frenzy. A few minutes in, he emerges victorious, holding a datapad in his hands. He beckons Anakin forward.

“This is why I was gone for so long,” Obi-Wan announces quietly, holding it out to Anakin who takes it cautiously. “On there is everything I could compile about Darth Sidious, his apprentice, my master, and the Separatist war effort. Every money trail I could dig up, or pay someone else to dig up, all there, all implicating Chancellor Palpatine as a traitor to the Republic.

“And probably of the most interest to the Jedi,” Obi-Wan takes the pad back and swipes it open with a flick of his fingers, scrolling down the pages upon pages of information until he gets to the newest entry. “The Clones,” his voice drips with a muted, and more dangerous for it, fury as he stares at the writing on the tablet. “Were created with chips in their brains that, when activated, would override their independent mental functions until they can only obey their orders.”

“Kill the Jedi,” Anakin breathes. Obi-Wan nods and shuts the datapad off harshly, closing his eyes for a moment before looking at Anakin again.

“I couldn’t just leave the war, Anakin,” he says quietly.

“I understand,” Anakin replies, just as quietly. “You had to finish what you started. You had. A duty.”

Obi-Wan looks frustrated, and he grabs at Anakin’s wrist tightly before letting go as if suddenly remembering himself. “I--suppose I did, to the people who have--died in front of me, because of me, for me. Yes. But more that that, I had to make sure that you’d be safe. For all the people I've lost to this senseless war, I had to make sure you would not be one of them. That no matter what happened, how it ended, what you thought of me by the time it all ended...that you would not be put at risk. Sith or no, I will always do what I can to protect you, even if it’s from me.”

Anakin holds his breath. It feels like his future is hanging in the balance.

“I am uncertain if I will ever be the man I was,” Obi-Wan says haltingly. “But I know I am the closest I may ever get to him when I’m with you."

If there is good in him still, you’d be the person he’d allow to see it, Padme’s words echo around Anakin’s suddenly very empty mind.

“I would give you everything in the galaxy,” Obi-Wan continues. “Everything that I could. I...would give up everything I am, everything I have, to be a man worthy of your love. Of. Of you. I thought I knew agony before, but in these last months you have made me rethink its definition time and time again--” he raises a pointed eyebrow at Anakin, who flushes at the reminder of his petty misuse of their Force bond. “And I know now it must simply be the state of living on the peripherals of your life, feeling your presence only occasionally and having to make do, as a dying man in the desert must make do with whatever shade he can find in between long, cold nights.”

Gently now, Obi-Wan raises a hand to caress Anakin's cheek. Anakin wonders hazily how long the human body can go without breathing. His chest feels tight, his lungs frozen.

“And yet I find I would choose that pain over your total absence every time. I never once thought of breaking the bond, even on the nights you tested my resolve in the cruellest ways. I understand now that the only parts of myself that I would not give up under pain of death are the parts of me that remind me most of you. I apologize that it took me so long, dearheart, to realize what you already knew.”

Anakin wants to throw his arms around Obi-Wan, his Obi-Wan, who is saying all of these wonderful things, but he isn’t sure the other man can handle his weight at the moment. He’s leaning half against the desk as it is, desperately trying to appear as if he is not still feeling the after-effects of a night full of torture.

“What now?” Anakin asks, and he means Where will we go? Do you have credits saved up? Do we have time to stop by my apartment before we leave? Where can we leave this datapad? What planet are you thinking of living on? I think I want a forest planet, but I would settle for a place like Naboo.

Obi-Wan doesn’t seem to understand his question though, because he smiles like Anakin is holding a vibroblade to his neck now. “That’s up to you, my dearest. If you want to leave with me, we can go wherever you want in the galaxy. If you want to stay, you can, I’ll understand. I’ll...I’ll respect it.”

Anakin has to swallow a scoff at that. Not because he doesn’t think Obi-Wan will genuinely try his hardest to respect his decision, but because:

“Obi-Wan, you said it yourself, I just killed the kriffing Chancellor of the Republic. I can’t stay here. I have to run, even if there’s enough evidence on that datapad to convict him, I still killed him. There’s no proof my life was in danger. They’d arrest first and ask questions after, but who knows how long after will be? Look at me, do you think I would do well in prison?”

Obi-Wan furrows his eyebrows as if he hasn’t actually considered this at all. He walks over to Palpatine’s corpse and stares down at it in contemplation, cocking his head. “The throat and chest,” he murmurs, mostly to himself. “And because of the collars, neither of our Force signatures are present on the body either.”

He drops to his knees and sticks a hand into one of the pockets, coming up with an old-fashioned key that he rolls his eyes at but uses to unlock his own collar.

He gestures for Anakin to lean down, but Anakin shakes his head. “Not yet,” he denies. “I need to think clearly right now, and it’s...quiet in my mind without the Force.”

Obi-Wan looks unhappy at this--he's probably experiencing the same aching void of a blocked bond that Anakin had felt earlier--but doesn’t argue. “I respect your decision,” he says slowly, like he’s been practicing.

Anakin feels the sudden urge to laugh hysterically, although doing so as his lover--ex-lover?--leans over the body of his murder victim in said victim’s private office isn’t necessarily the best timing for such a reaction.

Obi-Wan stands up again though, calling his old lightsaber to his hand with a simple motion. He looks at it with something like pained wonder, before looking up at Anakin. “You’re right. They won’t let the man who murdered the Chancellor go.”

“Exactly!” Anakin says. “Thank you! So, where are w--”

“If I cut here, along yours, and down a few times through the chest--well, it wouldn’t be enough to fool the Jedi, but it should be enough for a Force Null person, one who is inexperienced in identifying lightsaber wounds.”

“Wha--?”

“You can leave, back the way you came. Ah. Perhaps stop at a fresher before rejoining what’s left of the party. You have a little--” Obi-Wan makes a gesture that encompasses his whole face. “You look quite beautiful with blood on you, dear one, but I don’t suppose the high society of Coruscant would share my opinion.”

“You’d be surprised,” Anakin mutters automatically. Obi-Wan’s nostrils flare, but he manages to keep the rest of his face still. Either he really has been practicing, or the weeks of forced exposure therapy to Anakin’s sex life has desensitized him to Anakin’s more tame comments.

Either way. That’s not important right now. “You’re not going to--to take the fall for my murder,” Anakin splutters. 

Obi-Wan arches an eyebrow. “Why ever not? I would venture to say that at this point Falling is almost expected of me.”

Anakin wants to groan and also hit him upside the head and maybe in the face. Just once. Just because he seems so set on making this the hardest thing to ever happen. He takes a calming breath and then another one when the first doesn’t work. The second doesn’t either, and Anakin has the inane thought that Obi-Wan manages to throw off his control more than Palpatine had. This stupid man. So set on giving Anakin a choice in the matter that he’d give up his own freedom for a set of chains if it meant Anakin could leave.

“I don’t,” Anakin tries and then stops abruptly, running his hand down his face. Obi-Wan is watching him expectantly. They’re running out of time, but Anakin needs to say this right. “I don’t need a choice, Obi-Wan. I made mine already. I love you. And I know that you love me. And I’m sorry I didn’t realize it sooner, that I had to make you try and prove it when I--I’ve felt how you must feel sometimes. I was so angry when I thought you’d died, I wanted revenge, and then when he was hurting you in front of me I wanted to kill him for it, and I did and--and I enjoyed it.”

Anakin takes a shaky breath, his vision starting to blur as the night crashes down around him. Obi-Wan steps forward immediately at the first signs of his distress, but Anakin waves him off. He needs to get this out. “I don’t want to go without you, I don’t want to go anywhere without you, please, Master.”

Obi-Wan has his arms wrapped around him from one blink to the next. Anakin distantly thinks that if Sidious had responded as well to Anakin’s tearful master they would have had a very different scenario on their hands, but the way Obi-Wan’s placing soft little kisses onto his face makes him lose the ability to think irrelevant thoughts very quickly.

“Anakin, dear one, please, I need to feel you, please, let me.”

It takes a second to process the words. Sure, Anakin’s fucked people in some pretty weird places, but never next to a corpse. But on the other hand, he hasn’t felt Obi-Wan’s hands on him in much too long of a time. And maybe if they put the desk between them and the body, it wouldn’t kill the mood?

Hah. Kill the mood.

But then Anakin’s brain clues into the fact that Obi-Wan is scrabbling almost desperately at the Force collar Anakin’s still wearing and everything actually clicks together. That makes more sense.

“Okay,” he whispers, because he wants this too after denying himself for so long. Faster than should be possible, the collar falls to the ground between their feet and Anakin’s mind is swept up in Obi-Wan’s presence.

He’s everywhere immediately, surrounding him on all sides, projecting a current of love and adoration so strong Anakin’s almost afraid he’ll be caught in the riptide and dragged out to drown.

“Yes, yes,” he says mindlessly into the side of Obi-Wan’s neck as they trade breaths back and forth, momentarily overwhelmed as their bond sings between them and the Force vibrates around them.

Mine, mine.

Yours. Mine.

Master.

Anakin.

So afraid--so scared--thought I wouldn’t be able to--thought I’d have to watch you die--

I’m alright--you’re alright--I was afraid--helpless---thought I’d have to watch you die--

Mine--yours--mine--love .

They surface back in their own minds at the same time, although their signatures stay tightly interwoven.

Obi-Wan turns back to the desk and grabs the datapad they had left there.

“If we do this, there will be no going back,” he warns him as if Anakin isn’t perfectly aware of what he’s giving up, as if Obi-Wan thinks he’s under some kind of misconception about what he’ll be getting in return

As if Anakin isn’t aware of the cost of these kinds of things, of everything.

“I know,” he murmurs, lacing their fingers together firmly and smiling in response to the boyish grin that Obi-Wan tosses to him. They still have to find a way out of this place, find someone to give the datapad to, find parts to fix Anakin’s arm, find a place to live with whatever funds they can pool together. 

But here, in this moment, with Obi-Wan’s Force presence as tightly intertwined with his as their hands are, no price has ever been easier to pay. No return has ever had so much potential value. 

Chapter Text

One could say that Mace Windu is having a bad day, if bad were an adjective that came anywhere close to describing the absolutely horrific day he’s experiencing right now. 

It’s not even afternoon yet, and the Chancellor has been found murdered in his study, the guards in the place knocked (violently) unconscious, and the security system for the office suspended. Upon waking up, one of the guards had told a detective that the last thing he had seen was Chancellor Palpatine escorting a young, blond, attractive man into his room and locking the door behind him.

“‘Course I didn’t listen,” the guard had said, aghast at the question. “I made sure they got in safe, didn't I? And then the first thing the twink does is drop to his knees? I don’t get paid to listen to old men have sex, mister.”

Now. There are many young, attractive, sexually promiscuous blond men on Coruscant, Mace knows this. But this is when his headache begins, and in the past half year he’s come to know exactly what this kind of headache is.

“Has anyone seen Anakin Skywalker?” he asks, temporarily quieting the din of the precinct. When no one immediately speaks up, but everyone falls quiet, he sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I mean in a professional sense, I don’t care what you get up to with your own credits.”

More silence.

Merciful Force. “Your profession, not his.”

Someone pipes up. “We could check the guest registries to be sure, but my sister said she saw him at the party at the Chancellor’s place last night.”

“I haven’t seen him since Master Windu released him from our custody,” a detective Mace vaguely recognizes says very loudly.

Oh Force. If Mace released the Companion from the Coruscanti police only for Skywalker to turn around and murder the karking Chancellor of the Republic, Mace is never going to hear the end of it.

“I would suggest you check his apartment,” he says, standing. “And the guest registries at the party. At the very least, bring him in for questioning.”

The din of noise resumes, this time moving with a purpose. Find Anakin Skywalker. Question him on his whereabouts the night the Chancellor was killed. Something in the Force tells Mace that there isn’t going to be a straight answer to whatever happened last night, but as a Jedi in service to the Republic, it’s Mace’s duty to find the truth. Even if he knows already it’s going to make his headache worse.

The comm on his wrist beeps with an incoming notification. He’s needed back at the Temple.

----

Ahsoka shifts her weight from foot to foot as she stands outside the doors to the Jedi Council Room. She’s not scared. But. She’s a little intimidated.

This is, of course, not her first time in front of the Council. As Obi-Wan Kenobi’s padawan, she’d been dragged in front of them many times, always with her master in front of her. He’d defend his battle decisions, then defend hers just as brutally. War, he’d told her privately, is too heavy a burden for a child to carry alone. Your mistakes are mine as well.

She’d hated that at the time, the fact that no matter what she did, her master saw her as a child. She wasn’t. She didn’t need her master’s protection.

Hadn’t Obi-Wan realized how heavy the war weighed on her shoulders anyway? He could shield her from the Council’s judgement, but every man who died under her command was a name she’d never forget. And he couldn’t protect her from that. That was the truth of every mistake she’s made since the start of the war.

Obi-Wan had been trying his best, she knows now. He hadn’t known what to do with a padawan before the war, and certainly not what to do with one during the war. How was he supposed to show her how to compartmentalize her hurts, when he himself staggered back from every fight bleeding with the pain of his lost soldiers? And he had never learned to rely on her in turn either. 

She’d wanted to tell him that every Jedi felt similarly, but his shields were too high, his foundations too strong by the time she came into his teaching. He had been dealt a hurt and fought through it alone once, before she was ever even at the Temple, and he had become convinced that that was the way of things. A good master, where it counted. But never one who she could see as anything other than her teacher.

She’d known of Kenobi before Yoda had assigned her as his apprentice. She’d heard of him, the Sith-Killer. The renegade of the Jedi Order, its very own loose cannon. Oh, he did his missions and did them well, but everyone talked regardless. He brought his targets to justice too quickly, too ruthlessly. He was hanging onto the Code by a thread. The Council’s respect for his old master was the only thing that kept them sending him on missions. That and his success rate.

Of course, Ahsoka hadn’t believed all the rumors about her master before he became her master. And she’d certainly seen the ways others were wrong after she became Obi-Wan’s padawan, but. But, over the years as his apprentice, she’d seen how right they’d been too. Some of them.

Obi-Wan was ruthless at the negotiation table. He’d take no prisoners immediately. There was no middle ground for him, no oscillating between sides to keep the Jedi as a neutral force. Obi-Wan had his opinion and his orders, and he would see them come to fruition, bar nothing.

Ahsoka had been impressed at first with the way her master commanded a room. She’d seen the intensive work he’d put in before a mission and thought that one day, she’d be able to wield the same power he did. The first time she’d pointed out a fallacy in the opposing party’s logic, Obi-Wan had looked at her with such unbridled pride that she’d frozen that memory and tucked it in the back of her mind to be revisited every time she wondered if Obi-Wan even liked her.

After her master had--left her, she’d felt disgusted with all the memories of camaraderie they’d shared, the moments where she had looked at him and wondered if they were really quite so different after all. They had to be.

They had to be, because Obi-Wan Kenobi had joined the Separatists, abandoned the Order and his men to fight for the other side of the war. He had fallen, gone over to the Dark Side, left Ahsoka to pick up the pieces of everything. It hadn’t been fair . She’d felt the loss of Cody, too, the same way she’s felt the loss of every soldier in their command. She hadn’t embraced evil because of it though. She’d been there for Rex and her men, the same way they’d been there for her, the same way they would have been there for Obi-Wan too, if he had ever tried to lean on them for support.

Turning the datapad over in her hands, she wonders how many tragedies and losses a good man can suffer before he’d do anything to stem the flow of pain. She wonders how much she ever really, actually knew about her old Master.

The datapad had been left at the apartment of Padme Amidala, with a note for Ahsoka tucked into its casing. Padme had called her, frantic and flushed, to demand her presence.

Anakin Skywalker was gone. Padme suspected Obi-Wan Kenobi to have a hand in his disappearance. And as the respective reigning experts on Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, outside of each other, Padme and Ahsoka both were needed to solve the mystery.

The first stumbling block Padme had found was when she tried to unlock the datapad. She couldn’t figure out the code to it. Ahsoka had tried Obi-Wan’s birthday, the day of the Siege of Naboo, in both Galactic and Nabooian time, the date of Anakin’s mission to Separatist space and then--finally, desperately--

“The day I was assigned his padawan,” she’d said in a sort of shocked wonder as the datapad came to life around her.

The wonder had been quickly replaced by horror at what she’d seen on the files the datapad contained.

“The Jedi Council needs to see this,” she’d said, with all the authority of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s former Padawan. Padme had argued that actually the Senate deserved to see that information first, but Ahsoka had locked the datapad again, knowing full well that Padme didn’t know the code.

Perhaps she was more like her former master than she had thought, ruthless negotiations and all.

Either way, she’s here now in front of the Jedi Council’s doors, holding the datapad that might end the war. And all she can think is that maybe Obi-Wan doesn’t see her as a child anymore. Surely he wouldn’t entrust this with her if he thought of her as a youngling still. Which makes her wonder when his opinions had changed. Maybe after he switched sides and started killing Jedi, knowing she might become a casualty of his own fall? Maybe that’s all it took for him to see her as something other than a youngling to be protected: a situation where his goals were more important than her life.

She hasn’t read the note. It had come separate from the datapad, addressed to her and folded into a flimsi envelope. She’d recognized the handwriting and tucked it into her belt to read later, cursing herself and her own sentimentality. She should have read it as soon as she’d seen it. It might contain important information about the whereabouts of Anakin, of Obi-Wan himself, something the Council would want to know.

But she hasn’t heard from him in so long, and problems with each other or not, Obi-Wan Kenobi is always going to be her master. She’d been lying when she told Anakin in the Halls of Healing that she didn’t have a soft spot for the Sith. She’s afraid she always will.

Her heart clenches in her chest as the doors open. 

The  Council is ready to see her. She’s suddenly very nervous, an automatic response to walking through these doors alone. Last time she’d done this, she’d been chosen to escort a Companion to Separatist space. The time before that, she’d been told her Master had left the Temple. 

Not a lot of good memories stem from this room, is all. Logically, she knows the Council members won’t hurt her, but her heart is thumping like she’s walking into battle against the Seppies. 

This is stupid. She’d told them she had something important, they’re here because she asked them to be. 

“Information, you said you possess, Padawan Tano?” Master Yoda asks.

“Yes, Masters,” Ahsoka says, bowing to them as a whole before lifting up the datapad. “Obi-Wan Kenobi left this for me with Padmé Amidala this morning. We finally figured out how to open it and—and it contains...detailed records of a plot against the Jedi.”

“Are we to trust information given to us by a Sith?” Master Mundi asks skeptically. 

Master Tii shakes her head. “At this point in the war, any lead we get is something—“ 

“It could be a trap!” Master Fisto says. 

“No one is suggesting we take it at face value—“ 

“Masters...I didn’t read through everything but There’s...information about the Chancellor on it,” Ahsoka hesitates, unsure how to put what she read into words.

“Oh?” Master Billaba leans forward. “Plans for the Chancellor’s death?”

“Kenobi killed the Chancellor?” Someone asks, sounding shocked. 

“No,” Master Windu sighs, rubbing at his temple as he looks away from his comm-link. “Kenobi did not kill Sheev Palpatine. The forensics droids have finished analyzing the crime scene and weapon.”

“And?” Depa presses.

“It was Skywalker.” 

There’s a second of quiet in the Council chambers before everyone starts talking at once. 

“The Companion?”

“—couldn’t have possibly been acting alone—“

“Oh, we should have made sure the poor man saw a mind-healer—“

“—manipulated him—“

“—his fingerprints all over the scene—“

“—location unknown—“

For her part, Ahsoka can hardly believe the news that Anakin Skywalker has killed the Chancellor of the Republic. Both times she’d met him, he’d seemed so soft. Friendly and bright. To imagine him as a murderer feels wrong. 

Or, at least, it feels like not the full story.

“Masters, Obi-Wan named the Sith,” she says, but the uproar won’t be quieted so easily. “Listen—“

“—a foolhardy plan from the beginning—“

“—should have done something to discourage Kenobi’s obsession with the boy—“

“—who was going tell him that, Master?—“

“Retrieval should of course be our top priority—“

“Top priority? There is a war going on—“

“It’s the Chancellor!” Ahsoka says as loudly as she can, a fraction of a second away from screaming. 

That, at least, makes everyone look at her. Which is a good thing, she reminds herself. “O—Kenobi names the Sith Sidious. As Sheev Palpatine.”

Someone scoffs, but she’s already unlocking the data pad and projecting its information around the room. “There’s money trails here, as well as recordings of meetings between Sidious and Dooku. And—and proof that Dooku is dead, along with. With instructions on how to retrieve his body. But look, these files. They were added this morning, really early.”

“Order 66?” Windu reads, leaning forward as he does so. 

Ahsoka had been curious about it as well. It had been the first thing she’d explored on the ‘pad. And the only thing she’d really been able to stomach before she was calling for the Jedi Council. 

She opens the file and then lets them read for themselves what, exactly, Order 66 entails. 

The Force grows heavy with their horror as the plot unfolds. It’s a deafening sort of silence that fills the Council room now. Ahsoka wonders what they’re thinking about. Her mind had jumped to Rex, to Cody. To her men and their brothers. The whole clone army, created with an illusion of self-determination that could have been ripped away in an instant. At any instant, and the results would have been devastating. 

All the Jedi, gone. All the clones, enemies of their own minds.

Ahsoka shivers. The datapad suddenly feels too heavy to keep holding. She wants someone to take it from her. Obi-Wan had entrusted her with it but this is too much.

“Surely not,” Master Tii says, looking away from the datapad. “I cannot believe—the clones? All of them?  It is unfathomable.“

“We can check this information,” Master Fisto points out. “Send a team to the location of Dooku’s body, another team to the Kaminoans—“

“And tell the Separatist leaders what?” Master Mundi argues back. “With the death of the Chancellor, we’re already weakened, we cannot afford to divert—“

“We can’t afford to ignore this!” Ahsoka says before she can stop herself. Oh stars, she’s just interrupted a Jedi master and a Council member. Her first thought is that Obi-Wan would be proud of her. Her second thought is that she should really say something else now. “We need to scan the Clones for chips. If they’re where Obi-Wan has said they’ll be then—then we can assume he might be telling the truth about everything else.”

“The war--”

“If this is good information, then the war has never meant anything!” Ahsoka cries. “If Sidious was the man who declared the war, and he’s out of the picture, as well as Dooku, we could--we could...sit down for peace talks! Maybe, I don’t know! But these men were...they were...are...the Jedi’s men, and they’ve died for the Republic. The least we can do is make sure their minds are their own. Otherwise...we’re slavers, aren’t we?”

Once more, the Council chamber falls silent. Ahsoka resists the urge to fidget. She’s not wrong, and she won’t do her words the disservice of acting like what she’s said is shameful. She knows there’s a war going on, that these are the leading minds behind the Jedi war effort, but. But nothing can be more important than the very idea of this.

It’s Master Yoda who breaks the stillness of the moment with a sharp cackle. “Remind me you do, of a much younger Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he says, chortling. “Have the same sense of justice, you both did. Right you are that these are our men--just as we are theirs. Duty we have to them, hm. Perhaps...if the truth these files contain, a great apology is owed to those we allowed to be harmed. A great debt as well to the one who uncovered the plot.”

Several council members make a face at the idea of owing Obi-Wan Kenobi anything.

“Padawan Tano, please give me the ‘pad,” Windu requests, holding out his hand. Gratefully, Ahsoka walks forward and drops it into his grasp. There’s a moment before she lets go, where he looks at her and his eyes look sad. Tired. She wonders how she must look.

The letter from her old master burns in her pocket.

“Thank you, Ahsoka. The galaxy may owe you a great debt as well,” he tells her quietly. She wants to protest because she hasn’t done anything, but her throat feels tight at this display of kindness. 

“Dismissed, you are,” Yoda tells her. “Thank you, we do.”

Ahsoka can’t quite decide if she’s relieved or upset at having been kicked out of the meeting, but she doesn’t choose to linger. Instead, she makes her way quickly to the Room of a Thousand Fountains, hoping to meditate away some of the fear and anger that’s ricocheting in her head.

She sits on a bench in the shade of her favorite tree. Her master had loved this spot too, which isn’t actually special in any way. Probably a ton of Jedi over hundreds of generations have sat here and liked it. But Ahsoka thinks she’ll probably always think of Obi-Wan when she sits here.

With hands that aren’t shaking even a little bit, she pulls out the letter and opens the envelope. It’s short is the first thing she notices. And the handwriting is more tilted than normal. He must have been rushed. 

He must have hated that.

Dearest Ahsoka,

By now you must know the Chancellor is dead, along with Count Dooku. Long live the Republic.

Killing is not the Jedi way, and although I am no longer a Jedi and will not abide by their Code, I find myself wondering what you must think of it. Of me. I have lost all chances of your good opinion. Perhaps I never deserved it. But you were my Padawan. You will always be my Padawan, Ahsoka. There are things I would have liked to teach you better. And I suppose I would have liked to be better for you. You deserve to have your master--a master you can be proud of--stand behind you at your knighting ceremony. I have known for a long time now that that could not have ever been me. 

So I am glad at least that there are still some burdens that I find myself able to carry to ensure that you will never have to bear the brunt of them yourself. Ahsoka, I know you will make a fine Jedi. One of the best in your generation, although as your former master I must admit I am not free of bias. Your future is with the Jedi, young one, and though our paths diverged some time ago now, know that wherever we go, I will be thinking of you often and fondly. 

Yours sincerely,

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Ahsoka finishes the letter and sets it on the bench beside her, bringing her knees so she can wrap her arms around them.

She doesn’t quite know what to think, except that the man who wrote that letter sounds more like her master than the man she’d seen on the Separatist side of the war for months now. She had thought her master mostly gone, consumed totally by the Dark. But...he sounds. He sounds familiar. 

She'd also noticed the we in Obi-Wan’s last sentence, and she wonders how much that we has improved his current mental state. She thinks the answer is probably a lot.

She hopes. Well. 

She hopes that wherever Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi go, they’re together and they’re happy. Honestly, she doesn’t think the galaxy could survive anything else.

---

Shmi Skywalker stands with her hands on her hips as the droid disembarks from the ship.

“Good evening, Ms Skywalker! What a pleasure it is to see you, it’s been so long! So much has happened and I shall tell you all about it! Most importantly, now that the Maker is a galactic fugitive, his possessions are being divided up in terms of his last will and testament! I am to go with Padme Amidala or Shmi Skywalker, and Ms. Padme thinks you two would both have need of my many talents and programs! Oh, this will be so fun, as I have never been a part of a custody agreement before! Though, I have to say, I do think I’ll like my time with you much better, Ms. Skywalker. Ms. Padme has the worst droid I have ever had the bad luck to become acquainted with!”

Shmi sighs and shakes her head with a small smile. She’d contact her son through one of the back channels in a few days. Give him time to sort out his mess and get his story straight before she interrogates him. Until then, she’ll try her best to squeeze as many embarrassing details about her son’s life out of the protocol droid that likes to talk too much. 

If she’s learned anything in her life, and especially anything from raising Anakin Skywalker, it’s that there are almost always upsides for every situation. 

----

Two years later:

Anakin wakes up to the feeling of wet kisses being placed along the naked line of his spine. When the whiskers of a familiar beard brush against his lower back, he shivers as all of his nerve endings light up. 

“Mm,” he murmurs into his pillow, carefully keeping his smirk hidden. “Mmm, right there, Vos, yes --”

The mouth on his skin freezes and then pulls back. It lets out a sigh that ghosts over his damp skin, raising goosebumps on Anakin’s arms.

“You’re very difficult, and everytime I leave you, I want you to know it’s a miracle I return,” Obi-Wan says, lifting his weight off of him so that Anakin can turn around to look up at his husband.

“It’s because you love me,” Anakin grins, letting his eyes slide shut as he tilts his head up for a kiss.

Obi-Wan never denies him kisses, and this time isn’t different. He thinks maybe his lover meant to start out slow and sweet, but they’ve been separated for two standard weeks now. Anakin doesn’t want slow or sweet, he wants his master’s claim back on his skin.

He fists his hand into Obi-Wan’s shirt--why the other man is still wearing clothing at all, Anakin doesn’t understand--and pulls him until his weight is firmly pressing Anakin’s body into the mattress. He sighs into the kiss and lets go.

Obi-Wan’s arms bracket his head as he changes the angle of the kiss and tangles their tongues together. Anakin hooks his calves behind Obi-Wan’s knees, trying to slot their lengths together. He’s already aroused, but the sleepy kind of arousal that he feels right after waking up. If Obi-Wan stopped touching him, rolled him over onto his side and cuddled up behind him, he could probably go right back to sleep.

But his husband doesn’t seem to have any intention of stopping his kisses.

When they need to pull back to breathe, Obi-Wan descends onto his neck instead, licking up the tendons and biting tenderly at his jawline. Anakin whimpers at the feeling, at the way his lover knows every chord to play on Anakin’s body. No one in the galaxy knows Anakin as well as Obi-Wan does. No one’s put in the hours of studying to even come close.

He moans outright when Obi-Wan rolls a nipple between his fingers as he takes the other one into his mouth and sucks. “Down, down, please, Master,” Anakin begs, fingers tangling in soft auburn hairs. “Please--”

“Hm,” Obi-Wan whispers cruelly, sadistically, evilly as he pulls back far enough to look at Anakn’s flushed face. His eyes are yellower than usual--they always look like this after he spends a week or more away from Anakin, always comes back a little more haunted, a little less smooth around the edges. “And do you remember who your master is, darling?”

Slowly he pulls off his shirt until he’s bare from the waist up, sitting perched in between Anakin’s legs like he’s sitting on a throne. 

“You--” Anakin whines, pushing his hips uselessy into the air. “You are.”

Obi-Wan nods consideringly, trailing a hand down Anakin’s chest to his cock and then further down to where he knows his entrance is still a bit wet and loose from the way he’d play with himself last night.

Obi-Wan’s eyes get a particularly feral gleam to them as he prods at his hole, but Anakin wants to get fucked, not teased, and as much as calling Obi-Wan master or referring to other people while in bed with him had made Obi-Wan lose his karking shit in the earliest days of their relationship, there’s one thing now that will never fail to get Anakin a dicking down faster than a ship can jump to hyperspace.

“I missed you,” Anakin says, widening his eyes and pushing back against the tip of one of Obi-Wan’s fingers. “Fuck me now. Fuck your husband, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan groans and descends upon him as Anakin opens his arms and welcomes him home.

---

A few hours later, Anakin is pleasantly sore and curled up against Obi-Wan’s side. He’s stroking his fingers absent-mindedly through the man’s dark chest hair as the ex-Sith scratches gently at his scalp.

“Kids came by yesterday,” he murmurs.

“Hm?” Obi-Wan asks, sounding very worn out. Anakin hides his satisfied smile against Obi-Wan's chest.

“Missed you too, I think. ‘S the fourth time since you’ve been gone.” 

“Hm. Are you sure we cannot move houses then? I’m not fond of the idea of people knowing where we live.”

“They’re your students, Obi-Wan,” Anakin snorts, pressing a kiss right over the man’s heart.

“And I agreed to teach them writing and maths, not to see their little snotty faces during seasonal breaks--”

“Resmeldra brought some flowers by because she wanted to apologize for pushing Kalven into your herb garden.”

Obi-Wan pauses, obviously at least a tiny bit touched, before he sniffs delicately. “Well I don’t blame her, Kalven is the most insufferable nine-year-old I’ve ever met in my life.”

Anakin tugs lightly at the hair trapped between his fingers. “Admit it, you have a soft spot for all of them.”

“I don’t have any soft spots,” Obi-Wan denies immediately, leaning back to let Anakin rise high enough so their eyes can meet. Anakin raises an eyebrow in a perfect imitation of Obi-Wan’s signature look of disbelief.

“I may have one soft spot,” his husband corrects himself, leaning forward to press a soft kiss to Anakin’s mouth. "Just one."

Anakin smiles into the press of lips, keeping his eyes open until the last possible moment so that he can watch Obi-Wan’s blue-gray eyes fully slip closed.