For the prompt list, nanny/single parent obikin would be amazing!!
(from this prompt list)
(the first time I answered this prompt two years ago, the nanny anakin au was born)
so to do something different, here's some gffa widowed anakin, nanny (sort of) obi-wan!
(2.5k)
It is hard to find time to grieve. There are too many things to do. Too many appointments to make, too many decisions Anakin isn’t sure he’s qualified for. Some decisions are easier than others. For example, the funeral will be on Naboo. There will be two services: a public one to honor Padmé’s public service, and a private one to honor who she was as a person. The casket will be closed, because his wife died when her cruiser exploded. There isn’t much left to bury anyway.
But some decisions are harder. Which flowers should go on her casket. What songs would she want sung and who should sing them? Would she prefer her grave closer to her ancestral home or the home she created in her adulthood?
If she told anyone the answers to these questions, it wasn’t Anakin. But then, the people who knew her best, who loved her most, died with her. Sabé, Rabé, Saché, Yané, all of her handmaidens—an assassination such broad strokes that it was impossible for it to fail.
So Anakin chooses Yali lilies, because Leia’s eyes linger on them the longest. He chooses a small Nabooian folk band to play after her service because their music is the first thing to make Luke lift his head from his coloring books in days. He formally requests that her body be buried among her ancestors, and the Nabierres agree immediately.
And he keeps telling himself that he will grieve, but there is so much to do.
And then—then there’s after the funeral. Then there’s the rest of his life, sprawling out before him in a long, hazy road.
There are more decisions to be made.
There are people who have opinions on them now, people who sat back and let Anakin muddle through flower arrangements and kriffing seating charts, who now step in to peer over his shoulder, monitor his every breath.
Should he really move the children back to Coruscant? Does he truly plan to continue to work as a mechanic in the Mid-Levels? Should he not think of the children, their needs? How can he support them on the thin amount of credits he makes? Would it not be better for the children to live on Naboo in the care of their grandparents and their extended family?
It would be what Padmé would have wanted.
Anakin cannot care about what Padmé would have wanted, because she isn’t here. Not to argue with him, not to make her wants known. She is dead. She doesn’t get to haunt him in the waking world too.
“What do you want?” he asks plainly, sitting down across the table from his two children. The twins blink back at him. Leia has finished her cereal. Luke has barely touched his.
“Bacon,” Luke says.
Anakin hadn’t meant for breakfast, but he figures it’s as good of a start as any. “Alright,” he agrees.
He stands once more and goes to the kitchen. It’s not exactly his domain. It was never Padmé’s either. The way Padmé grew up, food was made once you requested it—by droid, by cooking staff. Not by the hand of a Nabierre.
The way Anakin grew up, food was cobbled together carefully, sparingly no matter how much you requested it. And no matter how you cooked it, it always tasted a little like dust, which took the joy out of experimentation.
But the serving staff have been dismissed for the past two weeks to give the family time and space to grieve in private.
(Padmé’s parents have been given a schedule for visiting hours for that exact reason.)
Anakin locates the pan; then, he locates the package of bacon strips.
When he glances up, both twins are watching him over the edge of their barstools, tiny faces showing both skepticism and incredulity.
“I want to know what you want to do,” Anakin says, raising his voice as he places the pot over the heating plate, the meat in a moment later. “Do you want to stay here with your grandmother and grandfather? Do you want to go back to Coruscant?”
The twins are quiet. Anakin twists his neck to look at them again, and they’re looking at each other, silently communicating the way only twins can.
“Where will you be?” Leia finally asks, looking at him with narrowed, suspicious eyes, bottom lip already jutting out.
Anakin blinks. “Wherever you are,” he answers.
“You won’t leave too?” Luke asks rather tremulously.
Anakin takes the pan off the heated plate and turns it off with a decisive flick of his wrist. “Of course not,” he says. “Come here.” He crouches down and barely has enough time to open his arms before the twins are there, pressing in as close as they can get to him. He holds them back just as tightly in return.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promises into Leia’s hair. “Not without you two.”
—-----------------
It becomes apparent fairly quickly that this is, by necessity, a lie.
The twins don’t want to stay on Naboo, which Anakin is secretly incredibly grateful for. He doesn’t want to either, but he knows he’d just be called selfish should he express the opinion.
But the twins don’t want to go back to Coruscant either. This makes sense as well. It would be incredibly jarring for them to go back to living in the quarters they shared with their mother, her Upper Coruscanti apartments in the nicest district of the planet, without her there.
Anakin wishes it were as simple as sticking a pin on a planet and deciding to uproot the entirety of his family to live there.
But it’s not.
Perhaps if he were still young, nineteen, newly free and in love with the taste of that freedom, it would be.
But he’s a widower now. He has his children to think about, their futures. Any planet he chooses must have what they need as well.
And they are four year olds who have just lost their mother. Their needs are numerous.
What makes the decision for him in the end is that his boss knows a man from Stewjon, who is willing to hire him. Who is willing to pay a premium for his expertise with mechanics.
Anakin doesn’t know the first thing about Stewjon, other than that it’s an ocean planet in the Inner Core and his dead wife always said the Senators from Stewjon were so frigid and tight-lipped because they spent the first few days of each visit trying not to be seasick on the Senate floor.
Anakin isn’t sure why this is the very first thing he tells the man—his potential boss—he meets behind the counter in the mech-shop on Stewjon.
He’s left the children with their grandparents for the week—long enough to fly from Naboo to Stewjon, meet with his potential employer, interview, apply his work practically, and fly back out.
He’d explained to both twins why they had to stay on Naboo. He’d explained many times. That hadn’t changed the betrayed look Leia had worn as she saw him off. It hadn’t wiped the tears from Luke’s eyes.
“Ah, well, I can’t say I’ve heard that one before,” the mechanic says. He sounds amused, and Anakin is incredibly shocked to hear a Coruscanti accent. Everyone he’s spoken to since arriving planetside has had such a heavy brogue that he’d honestly struggled to understand their directions to the shop—Kenobi & Sons.
Anakin lets himself look again at the man behind the counter. He’s rather clean for a mechanic, he decides. His beard is red, a common factor around these parts apparently, but his beard is short and neat, trimmed to accentuate the strong lines of his jaw. His eyes are a stormy blue, the kind of blue that matches the Stewjoni ocean.
“Between you and me though,” the man smirks and leans onto the counter with his elbow. His tunic is dark gray, white starchy fabric peeking out beneath the v-necked collar. “I’ve never been a fan of Stewjoni politicians anyway.”
“Oh?” Anakin asks, sidling a step closer to the counter. The man has the beginnings of gray at his temples, and his eyes are lined with wrinkles. They don’t make him look old though, Anakin decides. They make him look…well-lived.
“I’ve not a head for politics much at all,” his future employer shakes his head slightly with a small smile. His eyes flick up and down Anakin’s face, lingering on his lips and then lingering longer on the scar over his brow. Anakin feels rather flushed under the inspection, and he shifts his weight forward until he’s leaning up against the counter too.
There’s something about this man that’s rather…magnetic. It pulls him in. It makes him want to linger.
Good characteristic for a shopkeeper to have, though Anakin privately decides that the man before him has a face that’s wasted on mechanics, buried under some ship’s underbelly in a backroom.
“Me neither,” he admits, a moment too late to sound anything but highly distracted. It makes the man smile again though, a flash of straight white teeth.
“Is there anything you do have a head for then?” he asks. His tone is light, airy, rather teasing.
This is the strangest interview Anakin has ever had.
“Um,” he says. “Well. There’s mechanics.”
“Oh?” The man’s eyebrow lifts at an elegant angle. He props his chin on the palm of his hand and looks up at Anakin through his eyelashes. “Then why come here to us then?”
“Um,” Anakin says, and not because the man looks rather unfairly flattering like this, amber eyelashes in sharp relief against the blue of his eyes.
They’re interrupted by the sounds of clattering in the backroom, stomping and cursing. The man before him straightens with a slight sigh and picks up the closest flimsipad. “And what brings you in here today, sir?” he asks rather loudly, pitching his voice back to the other room of the shop pointedly. “Problem with your speeder? Serving droid? Cruiser? If it’s your astromech droid, I regret to inform you that I’ll have to refuse you service on account of the fact that I don’t particularly care for them.”
Anakin thinks he splutters, but whatever noise he makes is definitely drowned out by the rather irritated shout of Obi-Wan! that comes from the back.
A moment later, a man storms through the door, looking annoyed. "We will service an astomech if that's what's broken, Obi-Wan."
Now this is a man that Anakin can believe is a mechanic. His nails are blackened with oil, and his bare, burly arms carry smudges of the stuff. He’s much broader than the man—Obi-Wan—that Anakin had been talking to. He’s bald with a reddened scalp and a rather large red beard that’s the antithesis of the other man’s in every way. His clothes are dirty, loose, and the color of ash. He looks older too—whereas Obi-Wan could easily be in his thirties, this man must be pushing fifty.
He snaps at Obi-Wan in a language that Anakin doesn’t understand. Obi-Wan shrugs and hands over the flimsi pad without argument.
“Um, actually,” Anakin says, feeling incredibly wrong-footed. “Which one of you is Kenobi?”
“I am,” both of them say. Obi-Wan’s smirking slightly. The other man’s voice is louder, carrying that Stewjoni accent so obviously lacking in Obi-Wan’s speech.
The older man closes his eyes as if he’s praying for patience. “We both are,” he says. “Though if your ship’s malfunctioned, sir, I’m the Kenobi you want to see. This one’s good for naught but magic tricks.”
“I have been told I’m rather good at other things,” Obi-Wan turns his smirk full-force at Anakin, dropping his eyes to Anakin’s lips once more.
“My name is Anakin Skywalker,” he says very quickly in a very normal tone of voice that is most definitely not a squeak. “I’m here to interview for a position. As another mechanic.”
“Oh,” the older Kenobi says.
“Oh,” the younger Kenobi says in a much different tone.
The older Kenobi pinches at his nose for a moment before turning around the counter and offering his hand. “Ben,” he says. “Ben Kenobi.”
Anakin takes his hand and shakes it, eyes traveling back to Obi-Wan. Is he supposed to shake his hand too?
“I’m the Son in the sign,” Ben says gruffly as if that answers his question.
“I’m the reason it’s plural,” Obi-Wan adds, busying himself with the contents of the counter. From what Anakin can tell, the man is just messing up the carefully organized piles of receipts.
He decides that he would rather not get the job than point this out to Ben.
Ben huffs out something in Stewjoni that sounds downright insulting, but that doesn’t stop Obi-Wan from smiling sunnily up at Anakin. “My brother enjoys bitching and moaning that I came back home when I was seventeen, but he’s awfully quick to foist his children off on me when he’s called to shift at the rig offshore and Marci’s off-planet too.”
Anakin blinks. He feels like that’s the safest answer.
“Only thing good that blasted Jedi Order ever taught you was how to handle younglings,” Ben says, and then spits on the ground as if the words themselves have left a bad taste in his mouth.
Anakin blinks and wonders if he should say something to remind the brothers that he’s here. For an interview.
“And my magic tricks,” Obi-Wan rolls his eyes slightly before catching Anakin’s eye and winking. With a wave of his hand, a flimsi-sheet flies over the counter and into Anakin’s chest. He catches it unthinkingly. “Would you like to sign in, sir?”
“Get out of here,” Ben barks, snatching the flimsi from Anakin’s hand and pushing it back to the counter. “Like I said, the only one’s impressed with that is the younglings.”
“I don’t know, your man looks impressed,” Obi-Wan says slyly, even as he pushes himself away from the counter and around the edge of it.
Anakin isn’t sure what he looks like. He doesn’t think impressed is the word he’d use though.
When Obi-Wan brushes past him, the static electricity in the air jumps between their shoulders. Anakin feels as if he’s been shocked.
Obi-Wan must feel it too because he stops only a few inches away and looks at Anakin. For the first time, his expression is open. Curious. Considering.
“Get!” His brother insists, and Obi-Wan obeys, throwing one last look over his shoulder at Anakin before he slips out the door.
The shop feels somehow much bigger now that the other man has left.
Ben sighs and rubs a hand down his face. He looks older now. More worn. “So that was my brother,” he tells Anakin wearily. “Who you would most likely see frequently if you were to take this job. I would understand completely if you would like to start by talking compensation.”
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Canon-adjacent (implied no respawns, or at least heavily impaired respawns, but otherwise canon-ish setting) platonic husbands philza and missa with philza getting himself into a good deal of bother.
TW: needles, blood, major character injury, implied temporary major character death, panic attacks
The mob was new. Of all the things that could do such harm to Philza... there's a lot of them, if he's insufficiently careful, but this one was new. New, and unpredictable, and now very dead.
Very dead, but having left a giant gash from Philza's ribs on one side, to his opposing hip. It's bleeding - heavily - but nothing a potion can't fix.
Philza puts pressure on the wound with one hand, and searches his bag with the other. He grabs a couple of potions - it's a nasty looking wound, and he's already feeling weak - drinking them or pouring them on it as the bottles dictate.
He gives them a second, then another, and the wound doesn't close.
Before he's even had the chance to think /shit/, or /poison/, or /what the fuck was on that mob's stupid scythe/, he has both hands on the injury. His first hand - the hand with his communicator on - is looking pretty gorey already. He puts pressure, realises it's barely helping, then slips his hands around.
He grabs the edges of his skin, pinches them together, and he thinks /okay, fuck, what do I do now?/
For once, Philza does not have an answer. He's a good distance from spawn, his communicator is soaked in blood to the point he isn't sure it'll work and he's very sure he can't see the screen, and if he moves he'll bleed faster. There's also the niggling knowledge in the back of his mind that his thinking is impaired, that he's poisoned and it's likely to have more effects than just preventing his wound closing, that right now if he acts on anything he comes up with then he'll do something extremely dumb.
There's no winning, not when he's having thoughts like that.
Staying put is a shit plan, it's a completely shit plan, and he's pretty sure all versions of him would agree. No matter how he holds the wound he's still bleeding, blood bubbling out between his fingers. If he stays here, in a random glade, a couple of hundred blocks north of the closest build, he's going to die.
If he gets up, if he tries to walk those few hundred blocks... With where the wound is, every single step is going to shift it. He won't be able to pinch the wound closed as he is now, and with every step any healing that's miraculously happened will be undone. He might even tear the damn thing more. He's a couple of hundred blocks north of the Hide and Seek Arena, and nobody's even going to be there at this time of day; if he tries to walk, he's going to die.
What else? What else? He tries to bash his communicator to life, just in case. He keeps the HOLD switch on when he doesn't need it, usually. With his ring finger he manages to reach said switch, and try to flick it. The blood has gotten into the mechanism, disabling it. And with HOLD on... Even if the other buttons escaped the worst, they'll be disabled to. If he gets out of this, he's begging Tubbo or Aypierre or Pac or /someone/ to redesign the damn things, make them blood proof. He's not going to get out of this, though.
He's going to die, and it's going to fucking suck.
Those are, as far as he can tell, his options. None of them are survivable, but at least if he's walking he's /trying/ to live. It'll kill him faster than waiting for help, sure, but Philza's never been much good at standing still.
He pushes up from the tree, and gets eight steps before his knees buckle beneath him.
His hands fly from the wound to catch himself, then back to it to close it back up.
Philza might not be thinking straight, and he might not be good at sitting still, but he's nothing if not stubborn. He grits his teeth, and pinches the wound closed, and drags himself to his feet.
He makes it ten steps, then fifteen, then a whole thirty before he can only make it four. With every attempt his vision grows a little darker, his heart a little faster, his teeth set a little harder into their grimace.
He still gets back up, and gets back up, and gets back up until -
Until he can't any more.
In a hazy blur Philza tries his comms again - still not working - before letting go with one hand. He bleeds even faster without it, yes, but like this? He's too exposed, too exposed, and he can hear the wolves coming. Wolves who might be fine, but might also be looking for an easy meal.
Even dying his instincts kick in; Philza drags himself into a more defensible position, and clamps his fingers around the wound once more.
His body already sprawled on the floor, it's impossible to fall further when his eyes slip shut. Vaguely, vaguely, he's aware of his fingers falling limp, away from the wound and /ah/ he thinks /well, we had a good run, didn't we universe?/.
The universe doesn't answer, or if it does Philza's too far gone to hear it. Maybe the acceptance should scare him, but as he lays beneath a tree, it feels warm, it feels gentle - it feels like coming home.
There's something on the tip of his tongue, some memory just out of reach, some deep-set knowledge he really must know.
He doesn't chase it, he simply leans into the warmth and tries to let go.
"Phil!"
... Missa?
He might be too weak to hear the universe, but not the terrified scream of his husband.
It drives Philza, that flicker of a scream. He manages to get one arm under himself, push up, and-
And he doesn't even get to see the terrified man sprinting towards him, as his vision stays black and his body collapses back to the floor.
---
Philza doesn't expect to wake, not to silence and certainly not to soft Spanish sung by a hoarse voice. Whatever pillows his head is oddly shaped but warm, though everywhere else is freezing despite the weight of blankets. An arm is draped over him, and fingers brush through his hair.
He's also in a fucktonne of pain.
The singing hitches like a sob and - yeah no, that's not an angel, Philza's somehow fucking alive.
He'll take it, but it fucking sucks.
Memories are difficult, fragmented. He's...
He's supposed to be holding shut the wound in his side and /fuck/!
Limbs like lead, Philza tries to move, tries to pinch his bleeding flesh shut once again. It's hard, it should be impossible, but he's Philza Fucking Minecraft and he refuses to die!
He refuses, but one of those arms shifts, tries to stop him. Someone kisses the top of his head, shifts to hold his hands, whispers "you're alright, you're okay" in a gentle tone.
The singer, the singer whose name sits beneath his tongue and Philza can't quite grasp it, but he knows they are /wonderful/, /amazing/, his entire fucking /world/.
Well, maybe not all of it, but a massive fuck-off chunk of it at least.
And it is alright, he is okay, until something catches against his wound.
White hot agony, trailing up and down his entire spine.
Philza... Philza doesn't tense, doesn't scream, doesn't fight - his instincts are strong and his instincts have saved him before and he's just an injured, mutilated bird in the hands of a predator and for a moment all he knows is fucking pain and PLAY DEAD.
He doesn't tense at the pain, he goes limp. He can't even choose how his breathing catches - stopped in his throat, wings slack, body slack, unmoving and unresponsive as can be.
Someone calls his name, but blind pain and blind terror are winning, as in the certainty that he must survive. His name comes again, more frantic, then as a scream-
A scream.
A familiar scream that isn't his own and-
Oh, /fuck/, humans don't play dead in the same way, do they?
Through the pain and the fear and the hands on him it's hard, it's so hard - harder still when he hears running feet from else where and everything he is screams /predator, predator, predator/ - but he does it.
Philza takes a deep, loud, gasping, purposeful breath, forces his body to lock again, forces himself to stop playing, to breathe.
The wonderful voice above him stops screaming and starts sobbing, fingers tracing his jawline as he sobs over and over again.
The running feet stop, and there's a discussion in quick, panicked Spanish - too quick for any Philza, but especially for an injured one - before other hands are touching him, pressing him, assessing him.
His instincts are desperate but Philza remembers the screams before. The fight is exhausting, harder than it should be, but he forces himself to keep breathing, keep breathing, keep breathing. Just for the voice, just for the wonderful person who owns the voice and he knows means the world to him.
He tries to stay awake, he really does, but there's only so much he can do. He's tired, and breathing is /exhausting/, and the lovely voice belonging to a stupid but brilliant man isn't singing to him any more, and the longer he's here the more he realises he must actually, legitimately, be safe.
Safe, what a funny idea. But a nice one.
Philza gives in to temptation, and lets himself fade.
If he's safe, he can let consciousness be someone else's problem.
---
Philza wakes next to a warm pillow, and frozen blankets, and the distinct smell of honey tea. There's no singing this time, but familiar fingers trace his cheek and Philza feels them and thinks /Missa/.
There's a steady bip bip, and a sting, and his existence is cloudy with painkillers.
All of those sensations - every single one - adds up to /probably/ a good thing.
This time, awake, Philza manages to open his eyes. His vision is blurry, but the light is dim, and he's able to drink in the image of his husband above him sipping on a steaming mug.
Missa's eyes gaze vacantly into the distance. Philza does not chase them down. Instead he reaches up a shaking hand, just about managing to make it high enough to stroke Missa's cheek.
He sees Missa blink, and look down, and whisper "Phil?"
Philza can only gather so much strength, but he smiles his soft smile and mouths back "Missa".
---
A few hours and a nap later, Philza is sat against Missa's chest, and curled in his arms. They're both in an exhausted daze, Philza never having really quite left one, and Missa having been running on fear for too long. It strains the stitches a little, but not so much it bleeds, and Philza will live.
He's had the summary of what happened - Missa found him in the woods, bought him back, called for help healing him even as he cleaned and stitched the wound himself. There's talk of the poison, about it being new, and the struggle to synthesise an antidote before they ran out of blood they could give him.
From the haunted look in everyone's eyes, it was a fucking close run thing.
He'll have to thank Pac and Mike later, for that. He's already asked Fit to pass the message on, along with dropping his communicator off for cleaning, upgrade, and repairs, but, fuck, he knows the sort of toll the two are willing to put themselves through for people, and he knows he owes them.
He hopes Mike stopped Pac poisoning himself this time - Jesus Fucking Christ that man will be the death of Fit one of these days - and given the turn around might even be correct about it.
Silver lining - there's now an antidote for the next time someone runs into one of those fucks, and Aypierre is already working on a way to mass produce it.
And then there's Roier to thank, who might still give Missa side eye at times - and what even happened there - but who knows his way around the hospital /and/ seems to have kept his husband something approximating calm, and then Tubbo let slip they'd had to round up blood donations from everyone compatible to keep him alive and make up for the blood loss and, fuck, at this point he should probably get Chayanne to help him batch cook a /lot/ of shortbread to box up and hand around.
And then there's Missa, his Missa...
He's not sure /why/ Missa sang until his throat could barely function, especially when Philza was too unconscious to appreciate it, but...
But it was also Missa who found him, who saved him.
Philza presses a kiss to his fingers, then presses those fingers against Missa's throat.
"Hm?" Missa asks. "Phil?"
"Thank you," Philza shifts his hand, keeping the backs of his fingers against Missa's throat as he strokes along his chin with his thumb.
"I didn't do much," Missa whispers, his voice still suffering.
"You found me," Philza says. "You saved me."
"The... wolves?" his voice lilts slightly on the word - with Philza's communicator gone and head missing a significant proportion of blood assigned to it, they're stuck in English. "They found you."
"They would have eaten me, not saved me."
"No!" Missa's eyes widen, and arms tighten around him. "No, they are good- good boys!"
"I'm teasing," Philza promises, and maybe he is now but it had been a very genuine fear at the time. "I'm teasing, it's okay, I'm okay..."
He's not, he feels like death, and the painkillers he's been given will wear off soon. But, he's breathing, he's alive, and it doesn't look like that's changing any time soon.
Missa curls around him, hugging him close, protecting him from all sides. It's a position Philza is intimately familiar with, having done it so many times for his children.
"I was scared," Missa's voice breaks. "I was scared - you scared me."
"I'm sorry," and Philza /is/, he never - he's never wanted to be the cause of such worry, such fear. "Missa, I- I'm so sorry."
"You were dead," Missa says, the sobs free and almost drowning his struggling voice. "You were dead, in my arms. I held you dead in my arms."
A mistranslation? Philza wouldn't be here, if he were dead, he knows that much for sure.
"I'm right here," Philza promises, rather than call out his confusion; English is hard, and it's no time for a grammar lesson. "You got my dumb ass out of there, and got help. We're okay, I'm okay."
"Don't leave me," Missa answers. "You're- you're- banned! No leaving me, never leaving me."
Philza doesn't think his words are reaching through the tears; he pools his strength, and reaches up, and holds his husband close. Missa's arms wrap around his chest - not tight, moving as he breathes and clinging to that pace.
"We're okay," Philza whispers - despite the exhaustion, despite the pain, despite the catheter still in his arm just in case the bleeding restarts and he needs another transfusion, despite how controlling his body is like piloting sludge. "We're okay."
And maybe, this time, they will be.
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