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galacticwildfire · 1 year

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Twenty Four

Pairing: Kenobi!oc x Din Djarin

Summary: Satine and Obi-wan’s daughter fought in the war against the Empire and lost her faith when she lost Mandalore. Until she found him. A lone Mandalorian searching for a Jedi.

Warnings: TW for torture, severe ptsd, mention of past miscarriage, brief discussion of abortion. No fluff, only angst. Boba time. Missiles. Head injuries, burns, near death

Word Count: 7.4k

A/N: it gets worse before it gets better but I made a new moodboard

Time itself comes to a standstill as we look upon one another but despite the years, despite going to Tatooine to hunt him down... nothing could have prepared me for this.

"You know why I have come," he tells me, his voice the only thing about him I recognise.

"You should be dead," I say, hand wrapped around the hilt of my saber.

"I should be after you left me for dead," he replies and I feel it, the anger, the betrayal that he should have seen coming. "But you never could do it could you?"

"Neither could you," I remind him, and despite every piece of reason in my head screaming otherwise, I feel safe in that security that he could never bring himself to ever truly hurt me, he just stood by as others did. "You don't scare me Boba."

Something in him almost softens, but only for a moment. "It is not fear I want to provoke, not anymore."

His words catch me off guard and leave me almost confused by the change of heart I feel in him, but I ignore it for the sake of self preservation.

"You look older," he says, as if we were meeting under normal circumstances.

"You look like shit," I tell him, trying to bite back the true horror at what I did to him.

"Getting struck down and devoured by a sarlaac does that," he says and gets to business as if we're negotiating in a messy divorce but there is little else that could be used to describe Boba and I. "I want my armour back."

"I want lots of things back, things you took from me," I tell him, Din emerging from cover with his blaster drawn since negotiations have been established. "But life isn't fair, is it?"

I eye the carved wooden weapons he has at his back, weapons I recognise as belonging to the sand people of Tatooine but it is surprisingly not violence he negotiates with.

"I have brought you a peace offering."

"A peace offering?" I repeat and actually laugh, feeling Din's alarm at the sound. "The only peace offering I would accept is Vader's head and unfortunately that is ashes on Endor."

Looking at him now I wonder what he knows if he's lived in isolation on Tatooine because he looks surprised by my revelation. "So you killed the bastard then?"

Now I'm the one in surprise as I scoff "Don't act like you wanted him dead."

"Of course I wanted him dead," he says and takes a step closer, a step that makes Din raise his blaster. "I'm not after you Mandalorian."

"You left me for dead," Din says and I see a look of satisfaction in Boba's eyes that stirs a new type of rage in me.

"Fair is fair," Boba says, ignoring him to speak to me. "I'd call it justice."

"Revenge you mean?"

"One and the same," he says, determined to hit every nerve he knows how. "That's what you said, isn't it princess?"

If this is how he wants to play, I'll play along perfectly.

"Yes." I take a step closer now, looking him dead in the eyes as I tell him. "It was both when I left you for dead."

"I could take revenge," he tells me, but fails to intimidate. "I certainly have enough reason to, but fortunately for you I am a changed man."

I laugh again, the type of unhinged only Boba Fett can make me after he put that madness in my brain and twisted it into what it is now. "Boba Fett? A changed man?"

He isn't amused and looks back towards his ship "I thought you may say that, so here is my peace offering. My armour for yours."

My face falls and I blink at him "What?"

He doesn't repeat himself. "You heard me."

I shake my head "My armour is on-"

"Was on Kalevala," he says and I go cold. "I'm the one who brought you there after Mandalore was destroyed remember? You took my armour from Tatooine, so I returned the favour. Still covered in blood and ashes on board my ship for the taking. You order the Mandalorian to get mine, and Fennec will get yours."

"Fennec?" Din exclaims and I look back at him in confusion until I sense an unfamiliar presence.

"You have a keen ear Mando," a woman says from up on the ridge armed with a rifle, a woman that Din certainly seems to know and I look at him, raising an eyebrow at the panic I feel from him.

"You were dead," he says and my eye goes back to Boba, able to read him in one glance and I should have known he'd never come to face me without an extra gun.

"I believe it is time for introductions," Boba says while I shake my head at him in warning. "Meet Fennec Shand, a sharpshooter I've brought to ensure this transaction goes smoothly."

"Fuck you," I say and order "Din if she moves kill her."

"So it's going to be that way then," Boba says, almost disappointed. "Alright then, your lover pulls that trigger and she'll unload onto that kid she's locked onto."

And there he is, the Boba Fett I know.

"You wouldn't dare," I breathe.

"I think we both know I would," he says but I know the kid is quite safe. "There does not have to be violence."

"Say the word and he's dead," Din says from behind me, both of us knowing the kid is safe behind that shield.

"This is between her and I Mandalorian," Boba says, he knows his targets, he would know damn well the reputation Din has. "You shoot, Fennec shoots." He looks back at me now. "Your little green friend as quite the bounty on his head."

With those words, all decency is off the table.

"If you think you're going to come here to take my son away-"

"He's a little green to be yours," he says and a chill runs through my bones as he dares to say "But a son for a son seems fair to me."

Din reaches for me as I march forward but holds his position with his blaster trained on Fennec as I slap Boba hard, tears of rage burning in my eyes as I whisper "I hate you."

"I know you do princess," he says, his face may be barely recognisable but his eyes... the same damn eyes. "I'm not here to hurt you."

But I know him better than that.

"I don't believe you," I breathe and the moment my saber is at his neck his finger is on the trigger of his blaster. My match. My perfect adversary. "I will never believe a word you say again."

Still he insists "All I want is my armour."

"Liar," I say, searching his eyes. "You've followed me halfway across the galaxy for one thing only."

He entertains me. "And what's that princess?"

I can't bring myself to say it with Din standing so close but Boba knows. He always knows.

"Revenge," I say, if only to stir something else in his heart that is more bearable for me to feel. "For me."

I'm trembling as he touches my cheek with the barrel of his blaster, but not from fear, anything but fear, and I feel pure horror from Din that I haven't killed him for that simple touch alone.

"I did come for you," he tells me and I don't inch away from him as he leans closer as if nobody else is standing here. "On Tatooine I came for you, but not to harm you."

"Liar," I say again, fighting what I know is the truth. "Why else would you come if not for revenge?"

"I came to help you," he says, the coldness of his blaster on my cheek keeping me still as he asks "Do you really think I'd let you face an Imperial attack alone?"

I feel Din watching with a primal anger I've never felt from him and remind Boba "I wasn't alone and you left him there to die."

"If I didn't kill him he would have killed me," he argues, as if leaving him bleeding out for me to find was only a minor complication. "And I wasn't the one with the shiny beskar."

"No, you aren't," I say, finding a sick pleasure in taking from him the one thing he loves. "Because I have yours and once I put you back in the ground where you belong I'll melt it down and add it to my collection of trophies. Right beside Maul's saber on Kalevala."

He ignores my threat to tell me "You're the only one who wants violence little one."

"I don't believe you."

"Kill me then," he says, calling my bluff. "We both know you can't do it."

A darkness settles over me, the same darkness that led to me being charged as a war criminal. "You have no idea what I am capable of."

"Then do it. Kill me. Do what you couldn't do on Tatooine." The heat of my saber at his neck does little to scare him as he taunts "Or have you started calling yourself a Jedi again?" My hand grips the hilt of my saber tight knowing one flick of my wrist is all it would take. "I remember when your daddy came to kill mine, but he couldn't do it either."

I blink at him in bewilderment "What?"

"I remember shooting at your father myself," he tells me, words he never has before, and I go cold as his own memories flash before my eyes. Cold rain and shots fired upon my father only to end in the flash of a purple saber and a beskar helmet rolling on coarse ground. "He was no match for a Mandalorian."

"Then how come he lived while yours lost his head," I hiss and he grabs me by my hair, holding me by the scalp with his blaster to my head. "Too soon?"

"Let her go!" Din orders, firing a warning shot only for Fennec to fire one back at Din and I smirk at the look of unbridled rage in Boba's eyes, living for the thrill of hitting him where it hurts. "Let her go or I drop you and Fennec!"

"This is between us," I tell Din, smiling as I taunt "I should have aimed for your neck, let your head roll in the sand just like your donors."

With those words he bares my throat, my hair in his fist as he brings his blaster from my head down to my stomach, knowing just where to hit me, but nothing can ever hurt me more than he already has. "You've become a cruel woman."

"Do you think I'm still that nineteen year old girl who cried and begged for you Boba?" I ask him and laugh again at the pain shooting through him, wanting him to suffer as I have. "You killed her that day on Cloud City. There's nothing left you can do to hurt me now."

"I can kill the kid," he threatens. "Like you killed our son."

"Our son?" I repeat numbly and feel Din's own horror as I tell him. "You mean the bloody tissue that was left on the floor of that cell after Vader tortured it out of me?" Boba's eyes go utterly cold now, finally realising it was not my doing. "It's for the better because I was never going to have any child of yours after what you did to me."

"Kyra," he begins, the emotion in his voice making me wince but I'm past apologies.

"It's too late for remorse Boba," I tell him, having no pity left for him and dig the knife deeper. "Everything you blamed me for is your own doing. Every betrayal you believed, none of it was ever real. It was all Vader screwing with your head like he did mine."

Finally after all these years I find myself absolved of my own guilt and see the horror in his eyes as he realises I never betrayed him and that the death of our love is his blood to bear.

His voice is uneven now "If I knew-"

"You would have what? Struck Vader down?" I ask as I push him off me and he doesn't try to push me back. "You were too weak."

"Says the one who's too weak to strike me down now," he says, but the fight is gone from his voice and filled with a quiet ache before he resorts to the one thing he can still hate me for. "Just like your father was."

I raise an eyebrow "You think I'm weak because I'm a Jedi?"

"I know you are."

I give a nod and turn my back on him, walking back towards Din as I raise my hand to choke the sniper up on the ridge and watch her reach for her throat as Boba finally panics.

"Stop that!"

"No," I answer before channelling the strength of the force here and throwing her off the ledge into a nearby rockface. Din and Boba both jump back as she groans on the ground and I use the force to pull her rifle to me, handing it to Din as I return to his side.

"Kyra," Din says quietly as he takes the rifle. "I owe Fennec, she is not our enemy."

"Well he is," I reply and turn back to Boba. "I don't care what you've become, I don't care if you're sorry, not when I have to live with the consequences of what you did."

Boba looks at Fennec, finally realising just what his betrayal led me to become. "I thought you were above that."

"I was, but not after what Vader did to me," I say and I see the look of disbelief in his eye before his hand goes to his throat and that cold rage burns as I hold it tight. "Do you think I'm not capable of the things he was?"

"Then do it," he says, my fist closing around his throat. "If it's revenge you want take it, I won't stop you."

"Only one of us is leaving this planet alive," I tell him, even if every moral my father instilled in me screams against killing a man who is not fighting.

"Then why haven't you killed me yet?" he asks but just as I step forward with my saber in hand I feel it and realise the true enemy that's followed me isn't Boba Fett.

It's the Empire.

Slowly I turn my head back towards Boba, the memory of betrayal haunting me now and my saber hand's shaking as he puts his hands up "I didn't-"

Without warning I throw him to the ground and my saber is at his neck as I curse "You fucking traitor."

He knows there is nothing he could say for me to believe him and instead tells me "It's time to put your armour back on princess, we're in for a fight."

I look up at Din who stands there watching the Imperial ships entering the atmosphere "Kyra the kid-"

"The kid is safe," I promise Din and withdraw my saber and abandon Boba on the ground to go to him. "If it's Gideon we have the advantage you hear me?"

"How?" he asks me. "It's the two of us against the Empire."

I look back at Boba on the ground and Fennec getting to her feet, if they didn't bring them here then they'll have no hesitation killing them. "No, it's not." I take his helmet in my hands as I tell him "We fight, the child is as safe as he can be up on that stone. Get your weapons, we aren't running."

"This is the way," he says and a shadow of a smile plays at my lips.

"This is the way."

I let him go with a press of my lips to his beskar cheek knowing damn well Boba's watching and march to his ship to get my armour. I navigate the familiar interior quickly to get to the storage compartment and much to my equal surprise and satisfaction find my biometric fingerprint still logged and draw a sharp breath as the compartment opens.

My armour as promised sits there, painted blood red and still coated in the ashes of Mandalore.

For just a moment I still feel the rubble crushing me, I can still see the bodies of my people turned to dust after the bombing. I can still feel the ash in my lungs as my hand reached out through the rubble, red with radiation burns. I wanted to die and yet I couldn't help but fight for my life as the darkness closed in on me.

I can still feel Boba taking my hand and pulling me out.

The sound of gunshots pulls me back and I take the painted beskar forged for my body, a lightweight unconventional design perfect for a Jedi. It's all muscle memory as I arm myself with it, the slimline armoured top that wraps around my collarbones leaving my arms bare, the red arm bands in substitute of pauldrons for the sake of mobility, my left bearing the symbol of the Jedi and the right my family's crest. The gauntlets attached to my fingerless red sleeves more lightweight than the typical Mandalorian's, the same with the rest of my armour. Boba brought all of it, not just the beskar but the rest of it I couldn't bear to touch after I'd stripped it from my body and so I make quick work of it, discarding my of Jedi styled clothes in favour of my complete armour since I doubt I'll get another chance to retake it.

Finally I hold the helmet in my hand and for the first time since the purge put it on and ready myself, transferring my saber to my armours utility belt that's still armed with my old blaster and make sure to put the kids ball in one of the pockets.

It feels right as I step out of the ship looking through a visor and raise my blaster to take out the nearby stormtroopers and feel Din's head snaps towards me at the sound of the shots and I can feel it, awe, and then I feel the fear of the stormtroopers as I ignite my saber.

They all come to a halt with their guns raised at me, shaking in their armour as I tilt my head to the side and the moment I raise my hand they're running back to their ship, the landing platform still lowered as they try to retreat and with a single hand, feeling the strength of the force more than I have in years, I bring the ship to a halt as they try to lift off. It's as I tap into the true richness of the force here on Tython I realise indeed the stories are true and I throw the ship into a nearby cliff face with a strength I've never wielded before.

The wreckage hits the ground with injured troopers straining for their weapons and I look back to see Boba and Din both standing there in a state of awe.

"Kill them!" I order and they quickly jump into action, gunning down the troopers on board the wreckage and I move past the bodies to get to the remains of the cockpit, still intact enough for me to make contact with their commander and know in my gut who it is.

"This is Kyra Kryze," I say, ready to take him out. "You're troopers are dead Gideon."

"That may be, but not even you and your bounty hunters can save the child from me," he says and I hear Din yelling for me.

"Kyra!"

I emerge to see three more ships lowering onto the planet and just as I raise my hand I hear rockets, but not from the ship. I look back to see Boba standing there in his own armour now and watch as his rocket hits one of the ships which crashes down into the other, both burning wreckage now in the sky.

I feel Din's hand on my arm, tasting the bitterness in my mouth as I look at Boba and know he didn't bring the Empire here.

"See princess, I did tell you," Boba says and I could kill him for the I told you so alone.

"And like I told you, I'm not weak," I spit at him and then realise that was his intention all along, to rile me up.

"You never were," he says and frustrated I look away from him back to Din who stands behind me with a gentle hand holding me in place, maker knows the only thing giving me peace right now.

"What's the plan general?" Din asks me, Boba and Fennec listening as I look at the final ship landing, but my gut tells me there are far more where it came from and we need to take them out.

"Kill them, no matter how many waves come we eliminate them," I decide, knowing the child is safe up on that rock. "If we don't Gideon will just send them after us again."

"Gideon?" Boba repeats, having missed that part when he was attacking Din. "Moff Gideon? I thought he was dead."

"So did we but you'd know that if you were actually helping me on Tatooine instead of stabbing someone," I retort and feel Din squeeze my arm to bring my back, knowing I need to be focused right now, and ask him "On Navarro what type of strength did he have?"

"Enough that he almost killed all of us," he answers and tells me "We aren't making it out unscathed."

"Retreatings no good if he can take us out with his ship, we're better to hold defensive positions until an opportunity presents itself," I say as Fennec reloads her rifle, remembering the Hoth situation. "We don't know what type of resources he's got and I'm not risking putting the kid in his sights."

"Call for backup?" Din asks knowing the connections I've got but none that can get here in time.

"We are the backup," Boba says and reminds me "We've faced worse than a few stormtroopers princess."

"This isn't right," I say, my gut screaming it at me. "It's too easy, if Gideon knows you're here he'd be sending more firepower than this."

It would be why Gideon waited so long to attack, Boba Fett would be one of the few people in this galaxy he would fear and rightfully so, which makes no sense he's sending mere ships of troopers against two of the most capable killers in the galaxy.

"Then let's take them out," Boba says as the ship lands and the four of us stand there ready to fight as the landing platform lowers and I tilt my head at the black of their armour.

Death troopers.

And there it is.

"Take cover," I order before they open fire and each and every movement of my saber is muscle memory led by the force, my father having been relentless in this particular training after the Clones wiped out most of the Jedi in order 66. He wasn't going to let me fall to a group of troopers with blasters.

Their armour is resistant enough the blasts reflected back don't kill them and hear their commander order "Kill the Jedi!"

And so I use the force to leap over head just as they roll grenades my way and cut through three troopers from behind as Din, Boba and Fennec fire on them from defensive positions but it's then as I look up to the stone my blood runs cold realising this is just a distraction.

Troopers unlike any I've ever seen descend towards the stone and just as I run forward I'm thrown to the ground by a missile that blows the Razor Crest to ashes.

My ears ring as I take in the burning wreckage and feel Din pulling me to my feet, covering me from the Death Troopers fire as he pulls me back behind cover, checking me over to make sure I'm alright before quaking "The kid-"

"I've got him, cover me," I tell him and use my jetpack for the first time in years as I take off dodging the heavy fire from the Death Troopers to get to the stone only to begin losing altitude halfway as the broken down fuel runs out and I hit the ground running, reaching the stone at the same moment they do and I'm met with an onslaught from blaster cannons that I fight through only for the force shield to come down.

"No!" I yell out as I'm thrown into one of the pillars with a force I've never felt before by one of the troopers and get to my feet only to be faced with six of them, big hulking forces of metal standing between me and the child who looks at me with fear in his eyes.

They fire upon me, no doubt with programmed orders from Gideon to eliminate me personally. Reflecting the heavy fire I cut through the chest of the one who threw me and cut down the next through the middle only to be grabbed by the throat with a crushing pressure by another and raised up to see the child being taken and kick my feet against the troopers face, severing the hand holding my throat before cutting through its neck along with anothers before driving my saber through the chest of the fifth.

I rebound off the ground as the final trooper lifts off with the child and I swear I can hear Din calling my name, but just as I go to jump from the stone to take down the final trooper I see it far too late, the burning missile locked right onto me, and in the second before it impacts I raise my saber in a pure final instinct and there's a flash of blue.

Then nothing.

Din

The moment the missile enters the atmosphere I've abandoned my defensive position to run to her as if I have a chance in hell of making it there, there's flashes of yellow as she cuts through the troopers and I'm screaming her name into an empty void and she looks up the moment before it impacts. There's a flash of blue as the forceshield ignites only for the missile to blow the stone temple to nothing not even a second later.

The explosion causes me to fall back and I'm on my knees as I look up at the smouldering ruins, the world itself coming to a standstill as I grasp my blaster between my fingers, in one single moment my entire world gone.

So many moments I'd accepted my own death and I was never afraid, but that was until her and the child came along and suddenly I had everything to lose.

And now I've lost just that, my child, my riduur, my everything.

That is until I feel Boba Fett pulling me to my feet telling me "She's hard to kill, get up there and I'll follow the bastards."

"Come on," Fennec says pulling me along as if there would even be anything left of her after what that same missile did to the Razor Crest. "He'll follow the trooper, she's a Jedi isn't she?" Numbly I nod as she forces me to walk. "Then there's a chance."

"The kid-"

"He's following the kid," she repeats as we make our way up the mountain. "You can't save him but there's still a chance for her."

I'm sick to my stomach at the thought of what I'll find, her body blown to pieces or nothing at all, but as my weak knees take me up the hill they all but give out at the sight of her red figure face down in the ruins and I run forward, dropping to my knees as I take her in my arms.

"Kyra?" I quake as I hold her limp body, armour blackened from the impact and skin scorched but it's as I pull her helmet off and find blood running from her ears and nose I can't breathe. "Cyar'ika?"

Despite the heat radiating from the burns her body's cold, my thermal imaging unable to get a clear reading with the injuries and I'm cradling her head in my hand as I check her vital signs, finding a pulse, drawing a shaking breath as I feel it beneath my fingers. She should be ashes, but I've seen the child perform even greater miracles than this.

"Boba's on their tail," Fennec tells me. "He's locked onto the trooper."

"No!" I panic, stammering. "I don't want the child hurt!"

They're both alive, but they won't be for long.

"Abort pursuit, disengage!" Fennec orders. "Do not harm the child."

"Copy, I'll do a loose follow, see where they're headed." There's a pause before he asks "Is she alive?"

"Mando," Fennec says, unable to quite look at us as she asks "Is she alive?" I give a single weak nod and she confirms "She's alive but barely. Burns covering her body from the blast and severe head trauma, unconscious."

I'd never been truly afraid until right now as I hold her limp body in my arms, appearing dead in every way except for the slight pulse beneath my fingers and the slow rise and fall of her chest beneath the beskar but it's not strong enough.

The child is gone, I can't lose her with him.

"I can't do this alone," I tell her in Mando'a. I'd promised that I'd never let the Empire hurt her again and I broke that promise. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry I failed you. I failed both of you."

Her red hair is between my fingers, warmth seeping from her skull as I clutch her body to mine, trying to convince myself she's still alive, that she still has a chance.

"They're back," I hear Fett say over the com as I listen for her breath but can barely find it.

"Who?" Fennec asks as she comes over, kneeling down to take a look at her.

"The Empire," he answers, telling her what I already know. "They're back."

"That can't be, the Empire is under the jurisdiction of the New Republic."

"This isn't a spice dream, I can see the Imperial cruiser with my own eyes."

The issue of a few rogue warlords is entirely different to an armed and operational Imperial Cruiser. For a moment I hope that revelation would be enough to wake her up, but she's still out cold in my arms.

"Fennec she needs help," I say quickly, unable to keep my voice from breaking.

"Boba doesn't have any plans on letting her die," Fennec says and I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse as she speaks into the com. "Get back down here, she needs medical treatment."

"I'm coming down."

"Come on," Fennec says and I lift her up, taking care to keep her head still and Fennec takes her helmet as we descend back down the mountain with only one way off this planet.

Despite the desperation I've heard enough to not trust him, knowing he turned her over to the Empire once before and I'll die before letting it happen again and when we approach his ship and he takes a step towards her I draw my blaster on him from beneath her legs "Touch her and you're dead."

"She isn't dead yet but she will be and if you kill me and try to steal my ship you won't get very far without my biometrics," he says, having anticipated this. "Do you want her to die?"

"She'd rather die before being given to the Empire," I say, knowing she'd never forgive me if I let Gideon get his hands on her. "And I'll die before letting them harm her."

"I didn't dig her out of the damn rubble on Mandalore to watch her die now," he mutters and my blaster hand shakes as he marches forward and puts a hand on her head, I only allow it when I see how his shakes as much as mine. "She needs a bacta tank."

"It's the outer rims," Fennec says. "Where-"

"I know a place," Fett says and speaks to me. "Something tells me neither of us are getting past the outer rims without being arrested by the New Republic. I can take her somewhere she'll be safe."

"Where?"

"Cloud city," he says, the name only vague to me. "Run by one of her rebel friends, Calrissian."

I look down at her knowing we don't have any time for questions but I still can't trust Boba Fett "You try anything-"

"Oh trust me she'll beat you to killing me when she wakes up when she realises where I've taken her," he assures me. "But neither of us are letting her die."

"Mando, if you want her to live you have to trust us," Fennec says and with no choice I head on board the ship, hardly even registering as Boba Fett enters with the beskar spear, all that's left of the Razor Crest.

The landing dock closes and they head into the cockpit without another word, leaving me there in the hold alone with her and it's then the chill truly settles into my bones.

Only an hour ago we were in the cockpit of the Razorcrest, watching her holding Grogu as she told us the words we'd never heard before her, that she loves us. Words I'd never heard until she came into my life and made me realise I was something that could be loved. The light of my life, the only thing that truly mattered, her and the child, I had my entire future in the palm of my hand and now it's all gone.

I feel the tears in my eyes as I cradle her head and feel the dry blood in her hair, remembering in horror that she has a family outside of the child and I, that I'll have to tell them how she died while I stood helpless.

"Come on cyar'ika," I plead with her, without her and the child there is nothing left to live for. I don't know how I ever lived without their love, a love that made me feel human for the first time since I was a child, a love I can never live without again. "Wake up, please."

But her body only grows colder, her skin blackened from the blast of the missile, wounds that a bacta tank can heal but I remember too well the head trauma that would have killed me if not for IG-11. My hand rests over her pulse, feeling it only growing weaker, her breathing slowing.

"Stay with me," I whisper, shaking as I hold her body and realise her chest is hardly rising. "Kyra?" The colour is gone from her cheeks, her skin turning a shade of grey and I'm yelling out "How long do we have left!"

Boba Fett comes down, helmetless now and looks upon her with an unreadable face "Less than an hour."

"We don't have that long," I insist. "Is there bacta-"

"The Hutts raided it for medicine and credits while I was in the Sarlacc," he answers and gives what could almost be called an attempt at assurance. "I've seen her in worse shape than this, she's tough, too stubborn to die like this that's for certain."

"Well she is dying!" I snap, slowly losing it with every missed beat of her pulse. "Isn't there anywhere closer?"

"If the Empires back then Cloud City is the only place I know for certain won't be doing business with them," he says and I look down at her. "Calrissian is a good enough man he wouldn't turn her away."

"Can you get a transmission to Leia?" I ask him knowing that she'd want her family to be there if she doesn't make it and he seems surprised by my request.

He scoffs "She's told you about that lot?"

"They're her family," I say and he just shakes his head. "They deserve to be there if she doesn't make it." It's then I remember where I'd heard of Cloud City from, Solo's transmission after we were attacked on Tatooine. "Can you contact Solo on the Millenium Falcon, he should be at Cloud City."

He looks at me more carefully now "You've met Solo and all the rest?"

"I know her family and she'd want them there," I say, unable to understand the questions and having no patience for them. "Can you contact them or not?"

He's silent for a moment in contemplation before saying "It's best I don't or they'll try to shoot me down."

I stare at him now incredulously at how he can be thinking about himself right now "Not if they know she's on board."

"Let's just say Solo and I have some history and they won't believe she let me live long enough to be in this situation," he says and despite my desperation I can't blame them if they know what I do. "We'll be there soon, I don't know what she's told you-"

"She'd told me enough," I say sharply, not caring for conversation right now.

He nods to himself before saying "We both love her Mandalorian, she isn't dying on my watch." He steps forward and I pull her closer to me, not wanting a man who hurt her and is comfortable enough laying hands on her how I just saw to touch her. "She's survived worse than this, if you've spent even a night with her you'd know that."

The mention of her nightmares has me shaking at the thoughts of just what she's endured and the revelation I learned on that damned planet, that she was pregnant with this man's child and lost it in torture due to his betrayal.

"If you loved her you wouldn't have betrayed her," I say knowing the man he is, that we aren't so dissimilar. Knowing the lives men like him and I lead and just what she is in comparison to all that bloodshed. "If you loved her you would have died before letting the Empire lay one hand on her."

"Vader promised me if I got her to become his apprentice he would spare her," he reveals to me. "The moment she landed on that planet she'd sealed her fate, I'd tried to keep her away but the moment her ship was reported I went there to protect her and struck the deal. Her precious family were about to die and I wasn't going to let her suffer the same fate."

"And so you turned her over for torture with a blaster at her back," I say remembering the words she told me and feel my own blaster beside me on the floor within reach, checking her pulse and finding it even weaker.

"I did," he says and eyes me as he says "It's clear you haven't known her very long so let me enlighten you. I'd been by her side since she was nineteen, I watched her take back Mandalore from the Empire and I watched her lose it because she was too damn stubborn to realise her precious rebellion would spit her right back out the moment they were finished with her." I'm silent now, remembering Chandrila. "And from what I've heard that's exactly what they did, charged her as a war criminal and left her to Moff Gideon on Tatooine."

My head snaps back towards him at the mention of that night "You left me for dead after beating Cobb Vanth within an inch of his life trying to find us."

"You would have done the same if you'd seen me first," he dismisses and goes on. "I've been dealing with the aftermath of her decisions for almost a decade now. She's as tough as they come but she's got a weak heart. She's pretty enough to make any man forget themselves but there's only so many times you can stop her from ruining herself in the name of being a hero. Hell I pulled her out of the ruins of Mandalore after she tried killing herself when she had to live with the consequences of her decisions. She's her own worst enemy and I'm warning you now Mandalorian no man escapes from her unscathed."

The length of their history makes me still and I begin to realise there's a reason she didn't kill him on sight and with her dying in her arms the last thing I want is to doubt where her heart lies.

"I know her past," I say stiffly, but it's never scared me until now.

"Do you?" he questions. "Are you aware you've been shacking up with a suicidal sadist who's spent her enter life pretending to be something she's not? Don't let her pretty face fool you, she's a cruel woman who let me spend five years believing she'd rid herself of our child out of pure spite before leaving me for dead."

His words do nothing but make me want to reach for my blaster "Do you love her or hate her, make up your mind."

"Love and hate, it's all the same to her as you'll come to learn," he says and I look down at her face, unable to see anything but the woman I love. "She'll want to kill me when she eventually wakes up but she won't do it. She can't. The last night together before she left me for dead she spent beating me until she turned to words to try to provoke me into hurting her to fulfil whatever sick satisfaction it gave her before pushing me into bed. She's a twisted woman, always has been. Whatever she's told you I did to her it was nothing she didn't allow, hell you saw it. She has a way of bringing out the worst in a man, forcing it to the surface."

"Why are you telling me this?" I stammer, panicking the weaker her breathing grows while he stands there like she's not dying.

"So you can run before it's too late."

I scoff now, realising what his play is "So you can have her?"

"I've loved her through all of these years, and no matter what we always found our way back to one another," he tells me and stops before heading back to the cockpit. "You seem like a good man, you love her, but she isn't the woman you think she is."

With her dying in my arms his words change nothing. "We'll see."

He's almost amused "You will see."

He leaves us and I look down at her, the woman I love, a woman who in so many ways is still as much of a mystery to me as she was when I first laid eyes on her. Whoever she was, I saw glimpses of her today that left me shocked, glimpses I'd never seen before that leave me wondering how much of the truth this man is telling me.

But it doesn't matter, not now, not when I could lose her. I trust her with my life, with the child's life, and that is more important than anything that he could ever tell me, not when I have my own past I try to forget. Not when our child is gone and I need her with me to take him back.

True desperation takes hold of me as her lips turn a shade of blue and I hold her face, afraid to move her without knowing the extent of her head injury, clinging to the faint beat of her pulse that is the only thing keeping the last shred of my sanity from breaking.

"Wake up," I plead with her, if there is one thing Fett is right about it's that she's too stubborn to die like this at the Empire's hands. "We need to protect Grogu, he needs us." Still she lays unconscious and my voice breaks "I need you."

When I was dying I had her and the child by my side, I would have died in peace having felt her lips on mine knowing there was someone to mourn me, to raise the child. I may be here, but she would not die in peace knowing the child is in danger, knowing he was taken by the Empire as she was when she was just a child.

As I died the only regret I had was that I had not had more time with her, I would have died a happy man if she opened her eyes to look upon my face when she kissed me and so with shaking hands I lift my helmet now and put it aside to look upon her with my own eyes. If she were to wake now I would have no regrets if only to feel her warm and alive in my arms.

"I love you," I tell her, knowing I might never get to say them again. "I can't- I can't go back to how it was before you and the kid. I can't." I'm choking back a sob as I fight tears, something I didn't realise I was still capable of. "Please, stay with me. Stay with me cyar'ika."

I kiss her cold head, feeling my tears wet her skin as I once felt hers wet mine. I thought I was gone, but she saved me.

I might not be able to wield the force to bring her back from the brink of death, I may be just a man begging the woman he loves to stay with him but that is enough. It has to be.

I'm not letting her die.

#din djarin #din djarin fanfiction #the mandalorian #the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian smut #the mandolarian #the mandalorian x oc #din djarin x oc #din djarin x original character #wildfirewildflower #the mandalorian x original character #Din djarin smut #Din djarin fanfic #the mandalorian fanfic #found.#din djarin x female oc

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galacticwildfire · 1 year

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found.

Twenty Three

Pairing: Kenobi!oc x Din Djarin

Summary: Satine and Obi-wan’s daughter fought in the war against the Empire and lost her faith when she lost Mandalore. Until she found him. A lone Mandalorian searching for a Jedi.

Warnings: TW for torture, severe ptsd, mention of past miscarriage and intimate violence in the flashback. This one gets pretty dark in places and will for the next few chapters. But there is fluff and some smut amongst the angst.

Word Count: 7.8k

A/N: okay this was originally 10k words so I cut it off at the start of the interaction which means next chapter is going to be the definition of female rage and is already half written. My apologies for making everyone wait so long but it is back and next chapter will follow soon where shit will truly hit the fan.

ALSO I have gone back and rewritten from chapter 20 onwards, everything is the same but just fleshed out with more smut so enjoy

I was heaving on the floor of the cell on Cloud City, blood surrounding me, screaming into oblivion as if the pain in my heart was enough to kill me, to spare me. Screaming in rage in the slightest chance he could hear me. My bloodstained hand hovered over the burning brand on my ribs, heat pulsing from it but my mind, it was my mind Vader had picked apart.

Desperately I threw myself against the door of the cell as if I could break it down, as if my pain alone could give me the strength of Vader but I was no Skywalker. I was a broken girl with a planet of glass for a home and no one to protect me.

In my fit of madness it felt as if the world was ending and with each slam of my body against the metal I heard the bombs dropping over Mandalore, felt them shake the ground beneath me and waited for the burning world to collapse down upon me and this time finally end me so I could die with my people.

After what could have been minutes or hours I finally heard the door's seal break from the outside and raised a bruised and broken hand, reaching for what I thought would be Vader's saber to die if only to lay one strike down upon him, but instead I found her.

"Leia?" I gasped out and collapsed then and there as she took me in her arms. There was one person left to protect me after all."I didn't know- I didn't-"

What part I meant, I didn't know. All I knew was I'd been betrayed.

"Kyra?" she whispered in horror clutching me to her until I cried out from the contact to the burning brand, blood from my hands now staining her white suit. "What did Vader do to you?"

I'm gasping as I wake, struggling against the weight of Din in the tiny sleeping compartment, not realising where I am as I break it open and throw myself down onto the floor of the ship, looking up at the lights but no shocks rack my body and no blows come. Terrified tears stain my cheeks as he gets on his knees in front of me, repeating my name cautiously until he reaches for my face to bring me back to where we truly are.

"Kyra?" his voice quakes as I struggle for breath, hand reaching for my throat still gasping for breath and he pulls me into his arms, my head in the crook of his neck as I grasp his cloak for something to hold onto, to convince my mind and body that I'm safe. "You're safe, you're safe cyar'ika."

His voice trembles and I'm shaking violently as he rocks me in his arms and I don't know how long we're there on the floor until I can bear to look at him and he holds my face in his hands, not needing to ask, knowing enough by now to know what haunts me.

"You're safe," he tells me again, thumb caressing my cheek as I look down at my hands, finding them clean of blood even if I can still feel its warmth. "Kyra?" I shake my head, inching away from his touch. "Kyra, it's me, you're safe."

And yet my mind is twisted and its wires damaged enough I still sit there for moments more trying to connect what I see with the fear in my mind, trying to rationalise it, trying to tell myself there is no danger and therefore I should not be afraid.

On undamaged minds that may work, but not mine.

"Din?" I finally whisper, my mind finally equating his touch with calm, with safety, and I let him take me back into his arms as slowly I ground myself in him.

"I've got you cyar'ika," he promises me, trying to hide how deeply I've scared him. "I've got you. I'll never let anyone hurt you again."

I wish I could believe that, for just a moment I almost do.

"The Empire," I begin as he takes my shaking hands in his own. "They aren't gone."

He slowly shakes his head. "No, they aren't."

I nod numbly and tell him "I want them gone, for good, no matter the cost."

A cost the Republic is not prepared to face, the cost of mercy.

But they never showed me mercy.

"We will start with Moff Gideon," he tells me, giving me something to hold onto as he rests his forehead on mine. "We'll kill anyone we have to. We'll do whatever it takes no matter the cost to keep you and the child safe."

His promise echoes through the empty chambers of my broken mind, reminding me of my purpose. To keep the child safe. Exhausted and wanting to forget everything but his touch I shut my eyes and do what I've always done, what I did when I was just a child captured by the empire, tell myself it was just a bad dream, a bad dream that never happened.

But it did.

I wake to the child nuzzling into me, still resting in Din's arms in the middle of the ship with a blanket wrapped over me, everything numb. But for the child's sake I take him in my arms and try to smile, and feel in the child a pain not so dissimilar to my own, a dark pain, a fear. But even more blinding is his compassion as he reaches out to try to ease my own pain, the compassion that makes a Jedi.

I close my eyes and feel flashes of sabers and blasters and hold the child a little tighter, feeling something is terribly wrong, or will be. Something more immediate than the nightmares that haunt us both.

"Kyra?" I hear Din ask, more than in tune with my expressions by now. "What is it?"

"Can you take the kid up to the cockpit, I need to meditate," I tell him and feel surprise at my own words, despite being a Jedi I could count the number of times I've meditated in the last year on one hand despite how devoted I once was to it.

"Alright," he says uncomfortably, not wanting to leave me alone, but somehow pulls me out of that darkness with one silly question "Is that a Jedi thing?"

"Yeah," I say, laughing softly as I wipe tears from the corners of my eyes. "Yeah it is."

Before he lets me go he squeezes my hand tight and says "If you need me, get me."

He has never treated me like glass, and now is no exception despite how badly I know he doesn't want to let me out of his sight. I'm thankful for it.

"I will," I tell him and watch as he lifts the kid up, able to find some joy in the sight before they disappear up into the cockpit and I'm left to contemplate what these dreams coming back mean.

I cannot remember the last time my nightmares had me in such a state. I remember Lando's concern when I'd wake in similar states not knowing where I was and trying to escape, how he'd call Leia trying to get me help with little luck. It is the first time Din has truly seen it, I know it's left him more shaken than he'd admit.

The closer we get to the planet the worse this feeling of doom is, perhaps it's being in close proximity to a place the force is so strong while in such a state, perhaps it's a warning.

Either way, there is a nagging paranoia in me that from experience can only be two things. The Empire and Boba Fett and so I try to rationalise before I jump to conclusions.

If Boba's been living in poverty on Tatooine as all but a ghost for this many years it is safe to say he wouldn't even have the capabilities to follow us, but still, I'm remembering parts of dreams I thought I'd long blacked out and so I force myself to sit in a meditative state to uncover what they are trying to tell me. Luke would probably drop dead from shock if he could actually see me meditating to work through my problems. I hardly remember the girl who managed to train Luke to be the Jedi he is, it's past time I found her again.

Yet my subconscious forces me to remember many events I'd rather not touch until it takes me to those early days with Boba, back before I ever feared him. When I'd found him weeks after my parents deaths, a man who captivated me as no other had, hired help I was stupid enough to not let go. I was one of the only people to ever tell him no when he refused my offer to join me, and most certainly the only one to live, and sure enough we found a price he accepted.

In the early days there was little fighting between us, it was something built on mystery and a curiosity to learn more of one another, and then a deep respect. Captivating by this stranger in a time when I found myself growing ever more estranged from my aunt for my methods that she found either too pacifist or too extreme, her faith in me was little despite the strong front we put on. I found myself leaning on him as a trusted advisor to guide me through troubles with Mandalorians who resembled him more than myself, even if he was a clone to all others he still upheld our creed and significantly more credits than he did before he met me.

Long days on Mandalore fighting and mourning, days when I found myself struggling to hold what power I could and was somehow under the illusion I had power over this deadly man and mistakenly thought I was the one to seduce him in the dangerous game we played. I don't know how many times he asked me if it was what I wanted that very first time, leaving no room for me to regret it when he warned me of exactly what he was before he ever touched me. I all but begged him too, wanting to feel like a woman instead of a broken child, but I was too young to even begin to comprehend what I was getting myself into.

But at nineteen you truly do believe you are sure of what you want, and he knew he was the only man I trusted. At some point before it fell apart that very first time he truly respected me when he watched me wield the Darksaber to defeat men twice my age and size who challenged me for it. Like that one of Vizsla who I sent back into exile after I defeated him in combat before all the clans for the crimes he had committed against my mother alongside Death Watch that final time when I was sixteen and struck Maul down.

That was the moment I gained the respect of the people, a respect Boba told me I'd thrown away by leaving Bo-Katan as regent to return to the Rebellion.

Little did I know it was that very moment I returned to the Rebellion I'd lost whatever real love was between us. That was the moment we found ourselves on opposite sides of the war as he turned to the Empire to fill his pockets.

Every dark thing inside of me he brought out, and I was powerless to stop him as he turned my rage into something that haunts me to this day. It haunts me when I know at some point Vader put credits in his hand to bring me to him and I wonder for just how long before Cloud City he was trying to seduce me to the Empire's side so I'd go willingly.

To this day I still don't know what were lies, all I knew was that despite everyone he'd done, he loved me and I him.

"You can claim you're better than me, doing what you do for the greater good, except you're lying," Boba told me that last night together. "You don't care about the greater good or honour, you do what you do because you want revenge. You kill because you like it. You have a cruel streak in you, princess. Deep down you are just as ruthless as I am."

I hated how safe I always felt with him even though I should have been terrified, because he was the only person in the galaxy who I could show the worst of me and he wouldn't even blink an eye. Even on Tatooine when I was Jabba's prisoner. Because the worst of me was only a fraction of the worst of him. "If I'm a killer then what are you? A masochist? A traitor? You are a man without honour Boba Fett."

Those last words struck a nerve. "You can pretend all you want. But you aren't a good person. You aren't a hero." He had me backed up against the wall of his room that Jabba's guards had thrown me into as a personal thank you for giving him Han. Jabba's gift to Boba. "Do you really think they'll love you once they know everything you've done?" His hand was around my throat as burning tears slipped down my cheeks. Not to choke me, but to keep me still as he revealed "Do they know you're the one who led me straight to Solo? That I incinerated your friend Skywalkers aunt and uncle?" I shook beneath his touch. "That you knew all along he was Vaders and lied to him, to everyone." But it was when his blaster pressed against my exposed stomach I knew that he knew. "To me."

"I lied to you?" I repeated dangerously, now in pure disbelief at the words I heard. "I?" I pushed him off of me then, my voice raising to a scream of pure rage as I shoved him again into the opposite wall. "I lied to you? All you ever did was lie!"

"I never lied to you princess, I told you exactly what I was," he said as my hand itched for a blade. "You just never wanted to hear the truth." He stepped back towards me, telling me the words that were the truth. "You are not an innocent, you are not a victim, you are the one who never listened when I warned you of what I was and what would happen."

It was the truth, and yet it didn't make him an innocent either.

"Look at it," I told and slapped him across the face before I grabbed it and pulled his eyes down to the brand Vader left on me. "He left it just for you." He shut his eyed like a coward as I hissed. "Turns out he doesn't like his little bitch fucking his targets."

He pulls my hand back, and I'm smiling knowing I've hit him where it hurts. "I'm no one's bitch."

"You were mine," I remind him, knowing he was once my hired blaster. "A shiny bar of beskar and you're owned by anyone."

He grabbed me by the chain around my throat. "And you're the one in chains now princess so tell me how that's worked out for you? No home, no family, no one to love you that won't soon be dead. No one but me."

I slammed him back into the wall, reaching for any weapon within reach I could get my hands on "You fuck-"

"Hate me all you want princess, you love me."

"No," I lied, hating myself because it was true. "How can I after you fucking left me to Vader, after you betrayed me!"

"No more than you betrayed me," he said as if I had a choice, as if I wasn't screaming on the floor of that cell on Cloud City and it was then as I reached for his blaster he grabbed me again, throwing me back and pinning my wrists to the wall. "You took my chance to be a good man from me, to be a father-"

Tears burned in my eyes and I realised the greatest cruelty I could inflict upon him was to let him believe whatever Vader told him and I stopped fighting then as I looked him in the eye. "And I would do it again."

He held me by the throat and I watched seething as he dragged his blaster along my exposed body, the same blaster he'd used countless times to do such unholy things to me, and I didn't look away as he pressed it into my stomach.

He was deadly silent, finger over the trigger as I searched his cold eyes and felt the things he never learned to hide from a person like me.

"I know you Boba Fett," I told him, I might have been the only person in the galaxy who did. "I know you love me." Finally his fist closed around my throat to prove to both of us that he didn't but I hardly blinked as he held it tight, enough to constrict my airways but still unable to bring himself to truly hurt me and somehow that made it worse. "Don't be a coward now, you could choke me to death and still would never come close to inflicting the pain Vader did."

"You were my target," he told me, digging the knife deeper with his words since he couldn't bring himself to do it physically. "From the moment you returned to the rebellion. You were my target when I dug you out of the rubble on Mandalore, every night together was all to get the information I was paid to bring to Vader, but you knew that didn't you?" I didn't give him an answer, I couldn't even give myself one as he tapped his blaster against my cheek. "And you let me do it because you loved me."

I could have used the force to pull the trigger, to end this as I begged him to do half a year before. For my blood to be on his hands, the blood of the woman he loved. It would have been cruelly poetic, but I was too bitter to die before seeing the end of the empire.

"How?" I finally asked him as I searched his heart and mind, finding such strong love twisted with darkness, finding the same in mine own heart and that darkness was what I could not forgive. "How could you do this to someone you love?"

"This was never love," he told me, seeing what I couldn't but his heart- he could not hide it from me, not from a Jedi.

"Liar," I breathed, smiling at the hate in his eyes, his lips hovering just above mine. "If it wasn't we would have killed each other a hundred times over by now."

"Kyra."

I jump at the sound Din's voice, pulled from the meditative state that's reminded me of why I don't meditate. I wanted clarity not pain, and I certainly don't have the time to unravel years of torture before I can figure out what the immediate danger at hand is.

"Are you alright?"

I nod stiffly, composing myself but still Boba's words haunt me amongst much else.

"I'm just thinking, that's all."

"About the nightmare?" he asks and comes over to me, sitting down in front of where I am and takes my hands in his. "We're raising a child together ner karta, there isn't anything you can't tell me."

But there is. There is so much I haven't been able to speak a word of to anyone. Not even Leia after she found me there a bleeding mess on the floor but she knew. Her and Lando both saw me there, Lando in all these years has never once dared to mention what he saw and Leia... we held each other all through that night, not having to speak a word of what we'd both lost.

"Sometimes I dream of the war," I tell him, not going into detail. "More often than not they turn into nightmares."

"But not like that," he says and gently presses "All these nights we've spent in the same room, I've never seen you like that."

I swallow hard and tell him just enough "In my nightmare I was trying to break out of a cell and when I woke I didn't know where I was."

He nods slowly, thumb running over the side of my hand, gently calming me but the only interpretation I can find of those dreams is that something is coming and I can't afford to let myself end up trapped and helpless again. I need to heed Boba's words instead of pretending I am not what he knows me to be. I never fought out of the goodness of my heart as a Jedi should, it was a search for justice that quickly turned to revenge.

The time of pretending I am a peaceful person is over, I've trained Luke and Leia, I did my duty to them in resisting those violent urges to keep them from being tempted by darkness. I will fight darkness until the day I die instead of surrendering to it, but I can't deny my Mandalorian nature.

"My mother Satine, she was the most staunch pacifist in the galaxy," I tell him and realise how little I've told him of her. "She watched Mandalore be destroyed by civil wars before either of us were born, her father was killed during the last of them. I never knew him but he was a follower of the old ways, a warrior. It was him who taught Bo-Katan the way, and her who taught me. It was at the end of these wars your people were exiled to the moons of Mandalore."

"Concordia," he reveals and suddenly it all makes sense. "My people were of Concordia, it was there we lived before the purge."

"And that was the divide that almost got her killed more times than I can count," I tell him while he listens carefully. "She believed that the moment we commit to fighting we've already lost and that was the ideology that kept Mandalore neutral until the Empire decided otherwise and she did her part, playing along in order to protect her people until she couldn't." It's then an old guilt surfaces, a wound Boba would always tear open to be cruel. "All because her daughter was a Jedi. I had worked with the Rebellion for three years at that point, since the last time Death Watch tried to kill her, and so when she surrendered and was taken to Vader Leia and I tried to rescue her. By the time I found her Vader had tortured her to the point her body had all but given out, and her last words to me, the greatest pacifist to ever live, were that Mandalore's fate was in my hands now and to never stop fighting."

He's silent in contemplation of my words until he says "And you've never stopped. Even now you're still fighting the Empire."

"But what if I'm fighting the wrong battle?" I ask him finally, trying to find some meaning in these nightmares. "What if running around the outer rims fighting Imperial remnants is the wrong battle, one I've been fighting since the moment the war ended. What if the battle I should be fighting right now is for Mandalore? What if fighting the Empire to keep ourselves safe isn't enough?"

"Then I'll stand behind you," he swears to me but cautiously asks "What's brought this on?"

"I want Moff Gideon dead, I want my enemies to burn," I confess to him, that violent streak I've tried to hide baring itself. "I don't want to just hide away with Grogu living the reclusive life of a Jedi. I want justice, I want the one thing a Jedi shouldn't which is revenge."

He tilts his head towards me and I can feel the concern as he takes my hand "Then when we kill Moff Gideon we will find other Mandalorians, the fight for Mandalore is not lost unless you say it is."

I look at him and ask a careful question "I know you have the same ruthless streak that I do Din. You're a bounty hunter, I'm a soldier. We're both killers." He's quiet, not knowing where I'm going with this but all I know is that I need him to see the parts of myself I don't know how to love myself, to prove to myself Boba's words aren't true, that there will be no one to love me but him. "We might fight for peace, but that doesn't mean we aren't killers all the same."

"I know what I am," he tells me, voice rough. "Before the child, I was a cold-blooded killer, a bounty hunter, but I thought you hated that."

"No," I say quickly, immediately separating what Din is from what Boba was and realise "I'd be lying to you if I said I ever did. You said that you were never a hero like I was but I was never a hero Din, I never did the things I did for the greater good. I did them because like Ahsoka said, I had my mothers passion for justice but more than that I wanted revenge for the things the Empire had taken for me and to protect what I feared losing. I could never admit it because that is not the way of the Jedi."

"But it is the way of the Mandalorian," he says and I look down at our joined hands. "If you think that for even a moment that seeing that side of you would make me love you less then you're wrong." He lifts my chin back up as he tells me "I only love you more."

And with those words he makes me realise something no one else could in almost ten years, that I don't need a bloody and violent love that leaves me in agony. Not when I have him, a man who knows my past and what comes with it and yet loves me unconditionally. Who has taught me I can love without pain.

The next thing I know I'm in his arms and he's holding me tight, the cold beskar feeling like home as I tell him "I love you Din Djarin. When I'm with you, somehow everything makes sense."

He chuckles lightly as he tells me "I wish I could say the same but I'm still trying to wrap my head around all this Jedi stuff."

I laugh with him now, the darkness forgotten as I tell him "This is what I mean, you can always pull me out of anything, no matter how caught up I get in my own head."

"Well it's hardly like you don't have anything to worry about," he tells me, always practical in his reasoning and admits to me "Sometimes I swear all I do is worry. Is this what it's like being a parent?"

My smile turns a little sad. "I wouldn't know, but I'm learning." My fingertips run along the edge of his helmet. "And I'm glad to be doing it with you, with a man who understands what it's like to be willing to do anything for those we love, no matter how violent."

He tugs me close as he tells me "Do you really think I fell in love with a peace loving Jedi? I fell in love with a Mandalorian woman who could hand my ass to me on a silver platter."

I laugh against his helmet "You've barely even seen me in a fight yet."

His voice is deep as says "The day I see you in beskar fighting is the day I'll be on my knees begging to make you mine."

My chest tightens at what he's suggesting and I play coy "I'm already yours."

He pulls me into his lap, squeezing my waist as he tells me "Not until I can call you my wife you aren't."

"Din-" I breathe, my hands on his chest plate as he pulls me flush to him and my forehead touches his, wanting it, wanting something I swore to myself I'd never want again but here I am.

And I'm not afraid anymore.

"I want to kiss you," he murmurs, taking my hand and holding it to his beskar cheek.

"Then kiss me," I say, pressing my lips to the beskar, quite comfortable with the circumstances that come with it "I can-"

"I don't want you to close your eyes," he tells me quickly, and he nervously lifts up his helmet as he would if he was drinking and I gently put a cautious hand on his before I can see anything.

"Are you sure?"

"I am," he says and lifts his helmet enough that I can see the patchiness of his beard, his lips. I take his shaking hand in mine as I bring my lips to his, tracing the outline of his jaw with them, leaving soft kisses in my path.

"I love you," I breathe, letting him feel my words as I kiss him. "All of you, helmet and all."

"And I love you," he says, his voice raw and unmodulated and beautiful.

"I know I'd love to hear more of that voice," I say, running my thumb over his lips.

I can feel his smile. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," I smile back, kissing him softly before pulling his helmet back down. "But only what you're ready to give."

"I want you to see me," he says, but I can feel the conflict behind those words. "The creed I- I know it isn't what I was raised to believe but-"

"You don't have to explain my love," I tell him gently. "I understand, and I love you. You don't need to force yourself to abandon the beliefs you hold or make any decisions until you're sure of them."

"Thank you," he breathes, hands heavy on my body, showing me his love and need for me in the way he knows how since words don't always come easy to him, but he does better than he thinks he does. "I love you Kyra, more than anything."

Except for the child but we both know that.

"I know," I promise him and he grips my waist just right and I have to bite back a moan as he begins tugging my dress up and I gasp out as he lifts me up, my back slamming into the wall as he pulls my legs around his waist, his strength always stunning me.

I'm breathless as he asks "How do you want it?"

"Rough," I answer, needing the release, needing the feeling of him inside of me that clears my mind better than any amount of meditation could and he holds me up with ease as he unzips himself and tugs my dress up to my waist, finding nothing beneath.

"Ever practical," he teases, wasting little time as I feel him line up with me, always ready for him.

"Always," I smile only to find myself choking out his name as he enters me. "Din-"

"That's it," he says soothing me through it, this being one sensation I don't think I will ever get used to. "Say my name."

By the time we're approaching Tython we're in the cockpit with Grogu, dressed now for combat in case it finds us as it so often does. Grogu's in my lap while Din's doting over him from the pilots seat.

"Grogu." The kid looks up from his ball in surprise at hearing his name and Din chuckles lightly while Grogu goes back to his ball but he can't resist. "Grogu?"

Grogu looks back up at him and Din makes a sound of astonishment that leaves me sitting there drowning in adoration for this man but remember I'm still responsible for training the little green rascal. "Din, cyare, try the trick you did with Ahsoka, the one with the ball."

He nods and holds his hand out, voice gentle "Give me the ball."

Grogu leans away, not wanting to give up his precious ball and looks up at me as if asking if I'm really going to let him take it and I chuckle "It's okay Grogu."

"Grogu," Din says again. "Give me the ball." Grogu resists, and I begin to wonder if I should be more concerned over his attachment to that ball than to us. "Come on."

He hands it over and I do find it interesting he does understand us almost completely when we speak with him even if he can't talk back, not yet at least but considering all the poor thing's gone through I wouldn't be surprised if he was selectively quiet and that it's delayed his speech. One of the many things we will work on together.

Din holds the ball up between his fingers and Grogu leans forward on my lap "Okay, here we go. You can have it, just like before." Grogu reaches out but not with the force and Din tilts his helmet towards him "Grogu come on, you can have it."

And then I feel it, the focus and nod approvingly as he uses the force to reach out and bring the ball to him and as he catches it Din proudly exclaims "Dank Farrik!" Grogu quickly drops the ball and I kiss his little head as Din quickly backtracks "Hey no, I'm not mad at you, you did good."

"You did Grogu," I affirm gently as he coos "So good."

Grogu listens to Din as he says "When the nice lady said you had training I just-" for a moment I remember my own father training me, how excited he'd get when he saw the progress I'd made and Din reaches forward to put the ball in his hands "You're very special kid."

"You are," I say cuddling him in my lap. "And I'm going to train you just as my dad trained me. " He coos up at me and I smile "I'll teach you to use the force and to speak, to read." Din's watching as I lift him up and he squeals happily. "I dare say your dad will teach you to use a blaster."

"Not a proper blaster yet, but a training one," Din says and I laugh as he makes the motion with his hand. "He won't be able to pull a trigger so it will be one of the ones you squeeze."

"Oh maker I love you Din Djarin," I tell him in pure adoration and feel the warmth beneath that beskar. "And I love you too Grogu."

The kid's smiling as he reaches out, dropping the ball to touch my face and I kiss his forehead, holding him as Din reaches over to squeeze my knee before lowering us into Tythons atmosphere.

I'm absentmindedly humming to Grogu as we enter and look about realising we have absolutely no idea where to find this singular rock on a planet that's no doubt filled with old Jedi relics but thankfully it finds us as we lay eyes on what looks to be a type of temple with a stone in the centre.

"That the one?" Din asks me as if I know anymore than he does but remember I am meant to be the Jedi after all.

"That's the one."

"Alright kid," Din says. "Let's take you to the magic rock."

I shake my head at him while smiling, it's hard not to love him when he views the force with more wonder and mysticism than anyone I've ever met, it makes me see it through new eyes.

He circles it looking for a place to land while I hold Grogu up so he can see and Din says "I can't land on top, we'll have to travel the last stretch with the windows down."

"That's fine," I tell him but can't help the anxiety that comes as we land, that nagging feeling still there. "I just don't want to be too far from the ship."

He nods and he has a hand on my back as we walk out, I sigh when I see the distance we have to walk "Well, we'll be stretching our legs at least."

Din just tilts his head down towards me "Do you really think I'd make you walk?"

And so moments later we're flying to the top, Din holding the kid and I, and it makes me begin to reconsider the issue of my own armour. I discarded it out of shame but now... now it feels as if I'm starting to atone for my defeats.

Perhaps it's time I pick up my armour again, if not for myself then to better protect the child and Din's words are certainly a contributing factor.

We land at the seeing stone and I take in the geometry of the temple, hesitant at what exactly this seeing stone entails but the force's presence here is undeniable. I'd heard stories but feeling it is something else entirely.

"Well, I guess this is it," Din says but still I look back towards the ship, not denying the feeling in my gut but try to not let it show for Grogu's sake.

"The legends say this planet is where the call of the force was heard by the first Jedi," I say to Grogu, the recognition of the name having come to me in the ship. "I remember the stories my father would tell me of the wars here between the light and the dark." I look around, having found the stone but know there should be far more ruins scattered across the planet Luke would find interest in and tell Din. "I want to stay and look about but I've got a bad feeling."

"A bad feeling?" he repeats, trusting my instincts by now.

"I can't pinpoint it, but I want to leave as soon as we're finished at the stone," I answer and he looks about confused since it seems we're the only people on this planet and decide. "After this we're going to Kalevala."

"Kalevala?" he repeats back to me, no doubt knowing the planet since it's in the Mandalore sector but in confusion as to why I'd want to go there

I've come to the place the Jedi originated from, but something is calling me back home and being here, it's as if the force itself is telling me to return.

"To my family's castle," I say and he tilts his helmet towards me in disbelief.

"Your family's castle?" he exclaims. "You have a castle?"

"I'm royalty Din," I remind him and that seems to shock him more than anything else I've ever revealed to him. "You know this."

"I know but there's a difference between saying you're a princess and having a castle."

I look at him incredulously. "Din, I literally ruled Mandalore."

"I know, I know" he assures me but still asks "You have an actual castle and you're living in an apartment on Chandrila?"

I blink at him in offence before confirming "Yes, I have a castle."

"Here that kid?" Din says to Grogu as we walk towards the stone. "You're gonna get a castle."

I laugh as we reach it and remind him "You know for him to inherit we have to take the proper adoption vows."

He stops for a second as if he hadn't even realised he hasn't yet. "You're right, we haven't." His voice is heavy as he tells me "Before you came along I- I could never bring myself to call myself his father. He was always a foundling in my care I thought I would have to give up, but now-"

"Now things are different," I say and hold him as I tell him "He's your son, your foundling, no one's going to take him away from you." I rub Grogu's head as I say "Isn't that right Grogu?"

He smiles and I take him from Din to place him on the rock "Okay now, I don't know what's going to happen but you're going to do what uncle Luke, and no doubt many other Jedi have taught you, and meditate." He makes an annoyed sound as I put him down and sigh "I understand, but you've got to do it, okay?"

He makes a sound resembling an okay and that's good enough for me. Din and I stand back waiting for something to happen and he asks me "Do you feel anything?"

Nothing overly strange aside from the impending doom and overwhelming concentration of the force and ask him curiously "Why, do you feel something?"

He looks around before answering "I feel the wind." He takes a glove off and holds his hand up. "Kind of."

Definitely not force sensitive then.

I take his hand and squeeze it, bringing his attention back to Grogu who sits on the stone watching us instead of connecting to the force.

"Grogu, concentrate," I lecture him. "I know you can feel it."

Din tries to help as he says to Grogu "This is the seeing stone, are you seeing anything?" Grogu just coos and he looks at me and asks "Can you?"

"I will" I answer, knowing if I sat on that stone and meditated I could certainly see many things, but it is Grogu who first needs to. "You see he and I always feel the force but because of how strong it is here it is easier for us to channel it and to have visions."

"Visions of what?" he asks me and I swallow.

"I dare say nothing happy," I tell him stiffly. "But we need Grogu to reconnect with the force without fear and for me to be able to use it to communicate with him as Ahsoka did."

He turns his head towards me and quietly asks "Why can't you?"

A question I've been asking myself for a while but the answer is simple, a combination of my own neglect in connecting with the force and the fact the only force sensitives I ever knew were my father, Luke and Leia. It's out of my expertise.

"You see Din, some people are naturally stronger with the force than others, they would be taken to the Jedi temple to be trained but there are those who are stronger than others. Grogu is one of the strongest to live, as was his father or rather sperm doner," I find myself muttering. "My father was never exceptionally strong and neither am I, he was only a few years younger than myself when he finished his training. It was his devotion and discipline to the force and to his training that made him strong in comparison to his apprentice who was much like Grogu, all raw strength but little discipline."

Grogu makes an offended sound and Din assures him "We know you're trying hard Grogu, it's okay. You're doing great kid."

"He is, compared to myself which has been a reasonable enough amount of raw strength but little discipline these past years. Meanwhile Ahsoka was likely one of the stronger Jedi if she was given to Anakin to train," I explain to Din. "And she's still had more training than I, proper training in the temple by many masters which is something I've never had. My father taught me well, but our time together was cut short. Despite training Luke I still have much to learn, and if Grogu can remember his training and I can see those memories it can help both of us."

"So you'll sit on the stone after him?" Din asks and I nod, turning my attention back to getting the kid to concentrate.

"Feel the force Grogu," I instruct him. "I know you can. It's strong isn't it?" He nods and I prompt "Now close your eyes and let yourself feel it, you don't have to be afraid, we're here, you're safe."

Sometimes I still find it strange, the jump from training a nineteen year old grown boy just older than myself to a child. Although it isn't that different really, Luke may be all serious now but maker knows he wasn't when I was training him.

Din looks around and asks me "Is he supposed to see something or is something supposed to see him?"

I actually stop for a moment at that question and wonder "Both could be possible."

Still Din walks around the stone as Grogu tries to concentrate wondering "Maybe there's a control or something."

I watch as he uses the settings of his visor to search for any mechanics in the rock until I have to interrupt.

"Din, ner cyare," I say, finding his effort to be involved in his training truly endearing, I really can't help but adore it, but have to inform him"That's not how the force works. Let the kid concentrate."

But just as the kid looks as if he's gotten into that meditative state his eyes open up and he reaches for a butterfly.

Din sighs and tells me "I'll never understand the force."

"You will," I assure him and squeeze his hand. "The first thing is to remember it is not physical or literal, it is a sense as much as hearing or seeing, or rather feeling like you'd feel an emotion, but it takes effort to connect with." I look at Grogu and tell him "Effort Grogu, now close your eyes and focus."

I use the force to non fatally flick the butterfly away and after a sound of protest he closes his eyes and finally settles into a meditative state leaving Din and I in a state of awe as the inscriptions around the stone come alight and a force shield emerges around Grogu.

"Holy-" I hear Din begin and nod in agreement, not having seen anything quite like this before but our awe is interrupted by the sound of something entering the atmosphere.

Slowly I turn to see the ship entering the atmosphere and the very blood is drained from my veins at the sight of it, a ship I know far too well.

My eyes fall shut, everything making sense now.

"Is it a Jedi?" Din asks in confusion and slowly I shake my head. "Kyra?"

I can feel him so strongly, that whisper that's haunted me right here, right now.

This can only end bloody.

"Get the kid," I order, drawing my saber. "Now!"

But as he goes to grab the child the forceshield blasts him back onto the ground and with wide eyes I help him up, anxiously looking up at Slave I and back to the kid.

"Is it the Empire?" Din asks me but I can't even bring myself to speak his name as I grab Din's blaster and he yells out as I fire five shots right into the forceshield only for each one to be reflected. "Kyra!"

"The kid's safe here but we need to get to your ship and get weapons," I order him, the forceshield being enough protection for me. "Get ready for a fight."

"What-"

"Ship, now!" I order and he yells out after me as I run down the mountain, keeping low as I make my way through the scrub, his voice fading out as he runs after me and I don't stop until I'm met with blaster fire and he quickly takes cover as I reflect the shots with ease and stand out in the open, unafraid and perhaps already a little mad.

"Kyra!" I hear Din barking out, trying to get me to take cover but I am not hiding.

"Come out Boba," I call and feel the pure panic from Din as he finally realises who we are facing, realises why my first instinct was to draw my weapon. "You hunted me down on Tatooine, don't run away now!"

I should be terrified but I'm not. He has haunted me for half a decade now, ten years since I first laid eyes on him. I know him too well to fear him.

But it's as he emerges cloaked in black a different horror has me in its grasp and I look upon the man I once loved as he stands before me, scared and deformed, as if he's aged twenty years from the damage done to him.

The damage I did to him.

I draw a sharp breath and he sees it, he sees the horror in my eyes as I whisper his name.

"Boba."

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galacticwildfire · 2 years

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Bobby's Daughter | Dean Winchester

Dean Winchester x Original Female Character

Dean and Stevie Singer have been inseparable since childhood. Now with Sam away at college and with their fathers no longer speaking they crave one another more than ever, and find that love they have for one another has changed as they’ve grown older.

When the demon who killed Stevie’s mother comes for her, Dean makes the decision to disobey his father’s orders to go after her, and the two of them hit the road, unable to deny what’s between them any longer.

Only to discover Azazel has the same fate planned for Stevie as Mary, which causes Dean to make a decision he can never take back while she herself battles with the most important decision of her life.

Both of them willing to do whatever it takes for their family, even if it means they hate each other forever.

A/N - Starts in 2002 with young Dean and Stevie, then jumps to season one and will continue through the first seasons loosely following canon.

Under construction/being rewritten

#dean fanfiction #dean winchester #dean #dean winchester x original character #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester x oc #dean winchester smut #dean winchester fanfiction #bobby singer #sam winchester #supernatural #supernatural fanfiction #wildfirewildflower #bobby's daughter #jensen ackles #dean winchester x female original character #fanfiction #smut

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galacticwildfire · 2 years

Text

The Storm Queen | Game of Thrones

Robb Stark/Jon Snow x Original Female Baratheon Character

All current 30 chapters are published on wattpad and Ao3

Cassana Baratheon learns she is betrothed to Robb Stark amidst her plot against her mother’s family, and finds that what they have is far deeper than an oath, until tragedy strikes and she finds herself drawn to the Bastard of Winterfell. She struggles between duty, her heart, and what she has always desired.

The Iron Throne.

The trueborn daughter of Cersei Lannister and Robert Baratheon cannot ignore what has always been hidden in plain sight, and the battle for the Iron Throne begins.

Her own blood, Baratheon and Lannister alike, become her enemies and she soon learns the price for those who venture near the throne, a throne Robb despises. The lines between friend and foe and lover blur as she seeks alliances between the greatest players in the game and those who share her thirst for revenge against the Lannisters.

When secrets long hidden finally unravel, can the rightful heir to the Iron Throne survive her enemies and a love that threatens to destroy her?

Or does fate have other plans?

Tags/warnings; arranged marriage, angst, eventual smut, fluff, strong violence, strong language, alcohol abuse, sexual violence, love triangle, infidelity. Eventual and temporary Margaery, Oberyn relationships.

A/N: I plan for this to span the entire series as one of my longer fanfictions, it will probably make people mad because it’s written in true game of thrones style with sex, death, and everything in between. There are currently twenty chapters written which I will gradually upload, they are available on wattpad and I plan to also upload to ao3. OC is sixteen at the start, some content will not be suitable for all audiences. So please only read if you are only eighteen. Sex scenes will occur but will not be explicit until the oc is nineteen or so. There will be sexual violence in the rare chapter but will be explicitly tagged in my usual tagging/warning system and emphasised. This story is plot focused rather than smut focused, and will be quite long and different to my other stories which I have posted.

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galacticwildfire · 1 year

Text

found.

Twenty Five

Pairing: Kenobi!oc x Din Djarin

Summary: Satine and Obi-wan’s daughter fought in the war against the Empire and lost her faith when she lost Mandalore. Until she found him. A lone Mandalorian searching for a Jedi.

Warnings/tags: Trigger warnings for flashbacks: suicide attempt, violence, gunplay, trauma. For the rest of the story: near death, jealousy, violent impulses, threatening, descriptions of ptsd and injuries, mentions of miscarriage, angst angst angst, Din and Lando united against Boba

Word Count: 7.9k

A/N: it gets worse before it gets better but the next chapter is angst to the extreme. I have the proceeding fight between her and Boba written but it would have pushed the chapter to 10k words so expect it in the next one. I wanted to spend some time in Boba's pov exploring the other side of their story from his eyes. Also one scene is very much inspired by the "we don't like him do we" one from ginny and gerogia,

ALSO THAT NEW EPISODE. NOW THAT IS MOTIVATION TO WRITE.

Boba Fett

From the cockpit I can hear the Mandalorian talking to her as if that alone could undo a missile impact. He loves her. Not that I can blame him. Once I was in the same state as him after pulling her out of that rubble after the oxygen in her lungs had been replaced with chemicals, not that she was conscious to see it. Much like now, but something tells me she'll know.

She always does.

Perhaps I said the things to the Mandalorian that I did out of spite, perhaps I respect the man, maybe I want to kill him, maybe it's the fact it was easier to voice the hate in my heart than to look at her dying in another man's arms.

He's terrified, I was as well when I saw the missile impact.

But I was right when I told him she's both too stubborn to die and too hard to kill. A trait the rest of the Jedi didn't share, one I attribute to her sheer spite more than Mandalorian blood, but what keeps me calm is knowing I've seen her perform stranger miracles than surviving a direct hit from a missile.

Fennec and I sit in silence as we enter the system until she finally breaks it.

"You neglected to tell me the woman who had your armour was formerly pregnant with your child."

There is frustration in her voice, almost repulsion, not that I can criticize it when she heard the whole of it. "Was. A long time ago."

She is hardly one to judge, but she does. "That information would have been valuable before engaging."

I scoff, forgetting most aren't familiar with warriors like Kyra "How so?"

"I hadn't accounted for a vengeful Jedi," she says and shakes her head, touching her throat from where Kyra strangled her. Her willingness to use the force to commit violence is something I had not accounted for, but I should have known threatening her would only make her snap.

"Well it seems she is the only one of those left in the galaxy," I say, glad to know at least one of us has not changed.

"We owe them Boba," she says stiffly. "For the child."

"I know," I say quietly. I owe her. If she has claimed this child as hers, whether as a padawan or a foundling, or more likely both, it's my duty to return it to her. "And we will help them if she lets me live long enough."

Physically I know she can kill me, she may be one of the few people still alive who can. I haven't been on the receiving end of an attack from her, not truly at least, but I've seen enough to know what she is capable of, it's only ever been her heart and damned code that's held her back from committing massacres.

I've heard the rumours, that her and Skywalker walked into a room with Vader and the Emperor and only they left alive. I hope she killed them, with Skywalkers strength and her skill they are they only people in the galaxy who could.

I'll never forget the day I stood in that throne room on Mandalore when Viszla challenged her, a hulking man with a full foot on her and still he ended up beaten.

And that was without her Jedi tricks.

"Mando filled the space you left in the guild after the Sarlaac," Fennec warns me, I'd done my research and came to the conclusion that Kyra would only find herself in league with a man who could rival her. "I can assure you that he's just as likely to drop you once she's safe."

"Great," I find myself saying. He's taken my woman and my reputation without even realising it. "He can take what he wants, but there is no other bounty hunter like me. Only me."

"Except for the fact you're in love with the same woman," she says, more frustrated I withheld important information from the mission than anything else. "That you had also neglected to inform me of."

"Fucking the same woman," I correct. "I never said anything about love."

"I'm not deaf," she shortly, no doubt having heard the conversation below. "I thought living with the Tuskans was what made you soft, not her."

"She did," I force myself to admit. "And it got me all but killed."

"Better not make the same mistake twice then," she says and that's the end of the conversation, yet for just a moment I remember what it was like to have Kyra beside me in this cockpit, remembering it all too well. Right from the first time we met, when she paid me to smuggle her to Mandalore after her mothers death, hiding behind a veil and giving no name.

"First time dealing with a bounty hunter?" I asked her, having picked up on the fact she was some aristocrat but I never could have known the Mand'alor herself was sitting beside me.

"Something like that," she answered. "I sat in that Cantina for hours, I approached you because of that armour you wear, those who follow the old ways have a code of honour about them for the most part."

"Then why are you suspicious of me?" I asked her, her body cues obvious enough.

"Because suspicion has kept me alive."

I was almost impressed although cautious when I realised I had a refugee onboard. "Would I be right to assume you aren't quite friends with the Empire?"

"No one is friends with the Empire," she said, and there was a regal yet frustrated tone to her voice that should have alerted me to who she was as it was all too similar to the Duchess Satine's. "We all live under their rule, for some that is more difficult than others."

"We all do what we must to make a living," I told her, just wanting to make my way through the galaxy with some credits in my pocket. "Why make life more difficult for yourself?"

"That's a good question," she said, she was a young woman but spoke with a self righteous wisdom that felt too familiar. "Some of us are born into difficult situations, it's all we know."

"With the wealth you have it can't have been that difficult," I dismissed. "You sure have enough beskar to keep yourself comfortable."

"Blood money," she replied and those words sparked my intrigue.

"What money isn't blood money?" I asked her, but she knew that and still judged it with the true hypocrisy of a Jedi. "Did you forget who you hired?"

"A bounty hunter," she answered simply. "And from the price you charged that man on Tatooine a very good one I suspect, expensive enough for these parts anyways."

"If you've lived your life on Tatooine you would know it is the rate for Bounty Hunters of my experience, it's in the outer rims where blood money runs thick," I said and tilted my head towards her. "Unless that is just another part of your story."

"You doubt I'm Mandalorian," she said and then left me stunned as she spoke in Mando'a. "I am more than most who claim to be."

Oh little did I know just how much until we were entering Mandalore's atmosphere and she was telling me to fly past Imperial ships straight for the palace and I felt like the greatest fool in the galaxy realising I was sitting beside the spawn of a Mandalorian duchess and a Jedi, a Jedi I'd once tried to kill.

She'd kept up her game of disguise all the way from Tatooine until that moment, even after I'd found the bodies of the stormtroopers she'd left on a layover planet the moment I'd let her out of my sight. I'd sat here in this very cockpit dumbfounded at having been blindsided for one of the very few times in my life, that the aristocratic woman I'd agreed to smuggle was a very capable killer and I didn't even know it. That I didn't know I was sitting beside someone who moved like a ghost and shed blood without blinking an eye.

I think that was the very moment I knew I was fucked.

Maker knows I still am and she might not even make it to Cloud City. But I can't afford to think like that, after all she's endured she won't die today. She can't. Not like this.

She's older now, closer to the age I was when I met her, and with age has certainly come both beauty and bitterness. She's no longer a girl shouldering the weight of Mandalore and the Jedi on her shoulders, but a battle scarred woman who has lost more than most could ever fathom. Something I did not understand, not until the murder of the Tuskans. It is easy to blame those with a responsibility until you are the one carrying it, and having failed.

I went to her on Tatooine not just for the armour, I didn't beat Cobb Vanth just for beskar, but for her. That was when I discovered the Mandalorian and knew something had changed.

All those years during the war, from retaking Mandalore after her mother surrendered it to that day on Tatooine, we found our way back to one another. No amount of hate or betrayal could ever change that. Even that last night together no matter how much she hated me it didn't stop her from pulling me into bed.

I tried to convince her to abandon it all, but she wouldn't. Even so, after Cloud City I turned on Vader. She can scoff at me and deny I'd ever draw a blade on him, but I did when he told me he knew she was pregnant when he tortured her but it was too late to undo the damage that had been done. I never knew she'd lost the child then. For months I tried to get back to her until I lured her to Tatooine, expecting her to be half a year or more pregnant and there she stood as I'd last seen her with such rage in her eye that I believed what Vader told me she would do and she let me believe it.

Vader twisted both our minds, and now I know the truth all I feel is shame. Shame that the one good thing in my life, my one chance at a future to be a good man as my father was, I ruined it.

I ruined her.

And yet I can't accept what is right in front of my eyes.

That she loves this strange Mandalorian in a way she did not love me.

All those years of running around the outer rims together so her family would never know about us and now this Mandalorian seems to know them all. That was what told me all I needed to know in my questioning. She loves him, I knew that when I watched her find him bleeding out on Tatooine, but here she suddenly is with a child and a man she'd brought to meet the people she loves most. The two things her and I never had, the two things that were impossible for us despite how close we came to having it.

Everything I wanted for us, the freedom to travel the galaxy with just her and our child, a life together without the war or the Empire or the Rebellion. Just us.

Everything I wanted, everything I spent years fighting for, suddenly she has with another man.

That wounds me more than any words she could ever say.

I would have done anything for it, but she would never abandon the Rebellion for anything, not me, not Mandalore, nothing.

We were in bed together in an inn on a world where no one would know us, it was the unspoken condition of our arrangement following our reunion after Mandalore. We were each others secret.

My arm was around her shoulder, tired smiles on both our faces as I watched her inspect my new blaster. She was warm in my arms, the only soft thing I had in my life.

"It's expensive," she said, despite her insistence that blasters were uncivilised in comparison to a lightsaber she had no problems wielding one.

"I'm expensive," I reminded her, not that she needed it.

"Oh I know," she assured me and it earned a low chuckle. I watched in quiet amusement as she lined the blaster up with a decorative plate on the wall, making blaster sounds with her mouth.

I raised an eyebrow at the display "It sounds a bit more sophisticated than that."

"Yeah alright shut up," she laughed and I reached around to put a hand over hers. She didn't need any instruction with a blaster but I knew she liked it and so did I.

"It's silenced," I told her as I watched her face. "Yet still able to penetrate the thickest of armour. It's a smooth design, not bulky. Perfectly rounded edges."

"Hmm," she hummed as her already naked body warmed and I ran the barrel along her jaw knowing how she liked it, and there was nothing more erotic than watching her face as I fucked her with my blaster. Nothing. She bit back a moan as I ran it over her lips, getting her just how I wanted her as she tilted her chin up towards mine, her eyes fluttering closed as she murmured my name "Boba."

"Princess," I said, liking how she melted with a single touch and tried in vain to get her to leave that damn inn with me when I had her in the only state I could ever get her to beg in "You should come with me for a while, wherever you want to go."

Her eyes opened and that lovestruck look was gone. "You know I can't."

"You can, you just won't." With that she sat up and held the blankets to her chest and I sighed as I tried to bring her back "Kyra-"

"Don't," she said harshly as I broached that one subject that was sorely off limits.

"Is it so wrong to want you with me?" I asked her and pressed my lips to her shoulder. "Would anyone know if you disappeared for a few days..."

"Yes, considering I'm leading an attack in a few days they would," she revealed, always in anger giving more than she would otherwise and sighed "Boba, you know I want to."

"Then what's stopping you?" I asked her, bit by bit trying to get her to see what she was too stubborn to admit. "The rebellion will survive without you."

"If you want me that badly then come with me," she countered, as defiant as ever.

"That would make things more complicated than necessary," I said, by then she'd had to have known what I was doing and who I was working for, how couldn't she when I was running into her rebel friends in the field.

"You're the one making things complicated by hunting down my friends," she finally snapped and I leaned back in defeat knowing it was only a matter of time before she brought up the last altercation. "Fuck Boba, of all the targets you could take-"

"Solo pays the most," I said and the way she shook her head in anger spurred something in me. "Why do you care?"

She said it as if it was obvious, painfully in denial Solo would fuck her if given the chance and she was far too defensive of him for my liking. "Because he's my friend."

I scoffed "Why are you fucking him too?"

Her eyes widened and I knew I'd certainly hit a nerve in the way she slapped me hard without a moment of hesitation and I grabbed her wrists, pinning her down beneath me despite how she struggled and spat out "Fuck you Boba."

"Are you?" I repeated and saw a sick pleasure in her eyes at riling me up how she did despite how deeply the accusation angered her.

"Why would you care if I was?" she countered, and this time it was her who crossed one of our many unspoken lines. "Don't tell me you love me?"

It had been two years since she'd found me in that cantina, since she'd paid me in beskar to take her to Mandalore and had somehow convinced me to stay as her commander. She was arrogant enough not to take no for an answer and for some reason I allowed it. Of all the work I'd taken, being paid to fight for her and then fuck her every night was far from the worst of it.

Until it became more than that.

I never expected to want to stay, I never knew how invested I'd become until she decided to give it all up to return to the rebellion and left Mandalore in the hands of her aunt. Being the daughter of a Jedi and a pacifist the vengeful temper was a surprise I couldn't place, not until I met Bo-Katan Kryze. They both knew that Bo-Katan was everything Kyra could grow to become, while Kyra was everything Bo-Katan could have been.

Bo-Katan had been defending the palace with the darksaber Kyra had handed to her upon pointing her regent whilst Kyra fought on the front lines against Darth Vader and his legion before the bombs came. They both survived, I don't know what words were exchanged but it was enough for Kyra to bring down the ruins of the palace upon herself while her aunt and her Nite Owls lived.

I didn't know I loved her until I pulled her out of that rubble on Mandalore, but I couldn't admit it, not to her. I was Boba Fett and she was an inconvenience, one I found myself indulging in every chance I got.

"Don't be stupid," I said but she looked right through me and I hated it. "I don't like other men touching what's mine."

"Last time I checked I'm not yours, not when the only time I can have you is like this."

"I'd beg to differ."

She pushed against my hold on her but I didn't let up until she said "No I'm not fucking Han you jealous bastard." Maybe I wanted to believe it so I had an out but the moment I released her wrists she grabbed my face and pulled me down between her legs as she told me "I have what I want." Her next words were the closest either of us could come to telling ourselves and each other the truth. "And that's you Boba."

I watched her eyes darken at the feeling of my blaster between her legs and knew I had her as I gave her a single command "Show me."

And even as she sunk down onto the blaster she still believed she was in control, but if there was one thing she knew how to do, it was to take what she wanted.

It was that attitude that put her on the throne of Mandalore but it was her loyalty to the rebellion that lost her it, her misplaced loyalty that put us on opposite sides of this war. For a moment I was more than a bounty hunter, I was the right hand of the Mand'alor, an honourable man. I watched her fight every challenge to her reign, I watched as she tamed the clans who would have overthrown her if they saw a moment of weakness.

That was until she received one call from the Princess of Alderaan and she put the darksaber in her aunt's hands to run off to the rebel base with her battalion of warriors. That was when it fell apart, the screaming match in the empty throne room in the dead of night. All because she was too afraid to lose her so called family, all because she was that vengeance mad after her parents deaths. I understood the thirst for vengeance and would have been by her side to take it with her, but not when she thought vengeance meant returning to the rebellion.

She should have been glad she was born after the fall of the Jedi order, or else she would have been cast out for her insufferable heart. Her one and only weakness.

Mandalore would have withstood the Empire under her rule if not for it. If she'd made decisions without it instead of letting her own stubbornness and vendetta against the Empire leave Mandalore unstable and open to attack. She was always too much like her mother in believing through sheer willpower alone she could save Mandalore and they both lost it. In the end her mother surrendered it to the Empire so it would survive whilst Kyra did it so she could avenge her parents.

Now she's running around the galaxy with a Mandalorian who won't take off his helmet and a kid that was one of Yoda's species without a clue in hell what she's doing.

If I know anything it's that she protects and avenges what she's lost with the fierceness of a true Mandalorian. I left the Mandalorian to die and the kid was taken whilst we had them at blaster point. We enter the planets atmosphere and I know if she doesn't murder me when she wakes up I'll call myself a lucky man.

"Slave I, turn your ship around or be met with force," the air traffic controller says and I just sigh having anticipated no less.

Before I can try to tell them their beloved rebel hero is on board the Mandalorian comes up to the cockpit and buts in to speak into the com.

"This is Din Djarin, tell Lando Calrissian I have Kyra Kenobi on board and she is gravely injured."

There's chatter in the background before being asked "Is Boba Fett on board?"

"Yes but the General needs immediate care or else she will die," he says, sounding how I feel. "Let us land without violence, either Calrissian or Solo will vouch for me."

I can't help but scoff at him being chummy with those two and Fennec gives me a warning look, clearly acquainted with this Din Djarin and not wanting a fight.

"Alright, proceed to land."

And so I land the ship in the same spot where she ran to me upon arriving on Cloud City, not knowing the Empire was already there and it being too late for her to escape.

Perhaps this time I can make things right.

I have to.

Din

The moment the landing dock opens I'm carrying her limp body out of that ship, being met with city guards and finally Calrissian who rushes out.

"What happened?"

"She has internal injuries," I say, knowing how is not urgent right now. "She's barely breathing.

"We've got a bacta tank," he says but just as we rush forward towards the building he comes to a stop, only just taking in the ship and immediately reaches for a blaster "Did he do this to her?"

"No," I say, gathering Calrissian knows their history. "We can deal with him later she needs help now!"

I can't keep the urgent edge from my raised voice, not when she's all but dead and we run inside. I'm cradling her head to my chest to keep it as still as I can as he leads me through the halls until finally we reach a medic bay. Calrissian immediately starts giving orders for the tank to be readied while I strip her of her armour to her underclothes without hesitation, this not being how I'd planned on taking it off when I first saw her walk out of that ship guns blazing in beskar.

Calrissian brings over the harness to hoist her into the tank and the two of us get her inside it, in any other situation I'd cut a man's hand off for touching her in this state of undress but it hardly matters now when she's minutes from death.

"Be careful, her head-" I begin as the nurses secure the breathing apparatus and it's in the way her limp body hangs as she's hoisted inside the tank for a moment I'm sure I'll be sick and I'm bracing myself on the wall, trying to keep myself from collapsing on the spot now she's out of my hands.

"Sir I need to ask you some questions," the doctor says and I struggle to compose myself as he begins "How did she obtain these injuries and how long ago?"

"Direct missile hit around an hour ago," I answer and watch the colour drain from her face. "She- she's a Jedi. The same missile blew my ship to ashes but somehow she survived."

Calrissian's swearing under his breath and nothing feels real as I'm bombarded with more questions he ends up answering.

"Age?"

"Twenty eight."

"Pre-existing health conditions?"

"Severe post traumatic stress," Calrissian answers as I step closer to the glass, putting a hand on it as if I could touch her, feel her pulse no matter how faint to assure myself she's still alive. "Previous head traumas, long term damage to her organs and nervous system from electrocution."

My head snaps around towards him at those words, suddenly finding myself overcome by panic at having not known this whilst she was dying under my watch.

"Force lightning it," he tries to explain but those words don't help. "It doesn't matter how but she's had heart palpitations for years but stopped taking medication for it. She has cognitive processing difficulties, memory loss and disassociation as lasting effects of torture. It's a long list of health conditions but nothing overly out of the ordinary for a war veteran."

Well it's too long for me and I repeat "Lightning?"

"The Emperor," he says and I only tilt my head in confusion. "She hasn't told you about when her and Luke went to kill the Emperor?"

I feel my eyes widen beneath the helmet and I look back at her in pure shock, I knew about Darth Vader but somehow she never mentioned that.

"They killed the emperor?"

"No, technically not but she definitely tried-"

It's then we're interrupted by Boba Fett "She still alive?"

"You can get out!" Calrissian snaps at him and immediately my hand is on my blaster as he appears in the doorway too calm for my liking.

"In the purge she suffered chemical burns to the insides of her lungs and crush wounds," Fett reveals whilst I stand there ashamedly ignorant of this information, knowing none of it aside from the effects of torture. "She suffocated and I had to restart her heart manually before I could get her help, you'll want to keep an eye on her vitals."

"Noted," the doctor says and hesitantly looks between the three of us before asking "Now before we can do a full body scan I need to ask if there is any chance she could be pregnant."

I freeze beneath my armour, utterly still at the possibility that has not occurred to me before now. I don't know how many times I've been inside her in these past weeks, countless, almost every chance we've gotten away from the kid and everytime I was always as deep inside of her as I could have been when I finished. She never mentioned any protection and I never asked despite knowing I should have, perhaps selfishly wanting the consequences of such an act to happen and silently hoping so did she as she always wrapped her legs tight and held me inside of her after we'd both finished.

Now after everything I've learned, that she was once with child... there are so many things we never discussed that we should have, so many things I never knew.

Finally I stammer "Yes- she could be."

Boba Fett stays wisely silent, that is until Calrissian awkwardly steps in and says "She has a birth control chip, it shouldn't be expired."

He doesn't look at me and I don't want him to, having tried to forget what I heard in the cockpit when she spoke to Solo after the attack on Tatooine. I was stressed over Fett coming after us when I'd heard Solo telling her they should let off some steam together, I certainly saw the panic that took hold of her and then the frustration when I asked if I'd have to worry about this one coming after us as well after she took off to hunt Fett down in the night.

She told me the truth about Calrissian with little emotion other than guilt, that he wanted to marry her and she ran away. Something that hadn't surprised me after that night. Although I was more than surprised to see him when I met her family, but quickly realised if she deems him family that is something I have to accept.

And as far as I'm concerned right now he isn't the one I need to worry about.

"Well I'll be damned," Fett says and realise Calrissian can't look at him either. "She let you fuck her after what you did?"

I'm caught off guard, trying to keep an eye on Kyra in the tank to see if she's making any visible improvements, but those words certainly draw me back into the conversation.

"What I did was nothing compared to what you did," Calrissian says but that sparks enough alarm in me that my hand is on my blaster.

"What you did?" I repeat and Calrissian's eyes are on the floor, guilt written across his face.

"Ah, you don't know," Fett says, almost amused.

"I know what you did," I counter and draw my blaster on Fett, Calrissian quickly drawing his own as well. "I know you're the one who betrayed her."

"I couldn't have done anything if Calrissian hadn't betrayed Solo and the others first by inviting Vader into the city to ambush them."

I keep my blaster hand still as Calrissian replies "I never invited him, and if I recall you were the one by his side as they laid siege to the city."

"But not before you'd told Solo they were safe here," Fett argues. "She would have never stepped foot in this city if you hadn't betrayed your old friend first."

"I was there that day Fett, I heard her screaming for you to kill her after you turned her over," Calrissian says, repeating what I know from Kyra to be true. "Don't act innocent."

"Oh I know I'm not innocent," Fett replies. "But neither are you."

"Enough," I say sharply, not having the patience for any more of this and tell Calrissian "Moff Gideon took the child and I need to find a lead. He had to take Kyra out with a missile to stop her from cutting through his troopers and I'll need her with me. How soon will she be awake?"

His face falls and he tells me "I'm sorry, I know what that child means to both of you." He looks at Kyra before saying "I don't know how long it will take, but you got her here in time to save her life that's what matters. As for the kid I'll call in the cavalry and we'll make a plan."

I give a single nod, it will have to be enough for now. It has to be enough to keep me from losing my mind. She trusts her family, and I have to trust they won't let any harm come to her child.

"You should leave," I tell Fett and Calrissian points his blaster at him. "Or she won't be the one to kill you."

"Her and I have business," Fett replies and looks at me as he says "I'd say find me when she wakes but I have no doubt she'll do that herself."

He leaves and Calrissian and I stand there, the doctor stands in the corner of the room with her head down going over the vitals and organising the medical droid to run tests.

"Fett's going to be a problem," I immediately say, not wanting to know what business he has planned.

"He always is," Calrissian warns. "I was there when she found out he was still alive, I broke the news to her and she went straight to Tatooine to kill him so why is he still alive?"

A good question, one I don't want to answer.

"I've learned she likes to draw these things out," I tell myself, I'd settle for watching her torture him over the alternative.

"You going to kill him?" he asks and I have no doubt he wants to almost as much as I do.

"He tries anything I'll take care of it," I answer, my finger itching over the trigger, the only thing stopping me is Kyra. It's her blood to spill not mine, no matter how badly I want to.

But what is truly stopping me as much as it makes me want to kill him where he stands is the thought she doesn't want him dead. That somehow she still loves him.

I'd suspected it from the start when I knew she'd come to Tatooine to kill the man that armour belonged to, with every piece of information she revealed I'd suspected it but it wasn't until that night after the attack when I woke to find her gone I realised it went far deeper than I could have known.

Unfortunately something tells me I'm about to find out just how deep.

Hours later I'm sitting there alone, the doctor out running the test results and from what I can gather she's confused as well as concerned. She should be dead, but after spending this much time with the kid I know these are things no scientist or doctor could understand let alone explain.

All I can do is guard her body as she rests before me suspended in the tank, as unresponsive as she was when I brought her in despite the doctor assuring me her vitals are growing stronger.

Despite knowing she will live nothing has ever felt so dark.

The kid is still gone and nothing will feel real until I have them both in my arms, until I can kiss her and do the one thing I thought I'd have more time to do.

I won't make that mistake again

Calrissian's called Solo to Cloud City since he's in the outer rims, if she's still unconscious by tomorrow morning I can rely on him to get me to Navarro so I can put a team together to get the child back. Time is running out and I need to do it with or without her as much as the thought terrifies me.

I want to keep her safe, I don't want to put her in the field if she isn't able to fight, but she's the best fighter I've got. She was able to cut through those battle droid looking troopers with her lightsaber when our blasters could barely take out the Death Troopers. If we face the ones who took the child I doubt blasters will do the job.

I'd dreamed of seeing her in beskar and it was as much of a sight as I'd imagined it to be if not more, having never seen armour in such a design before but considering her fighting style it makes sense. Seeing her wearing a helmet made me want to get down on my knees as much as I'd anticipated it could.

I just never thought it would be on my knees screaming her name in vain.

I eye her saber sitting beside her armour and take it, having only held it to give it back to her and study the mechanics of it, wisely pointing it away from myself as I activate the ignition and the yellow blade ignites. It's lightweight, making a sound as I move it through the air, easy enough to maneuver so simply but nothing like how I've seen her move it. I can't imagine the years of training required for her to be able to wield it how she does with such deadly precision and mastery.

I disengage it as Calrissian enters the room telling me what I already know "She should be dead but she isn't and the doctors can't explain it."

I find myself repeating Fett's words "She's hard to kill."

"She is," he says and begins "Her and I... that had finished a long time ago, years ago, I only knew about the chip because we'd slept together a few times since then but that was over well before you two met."

While it's assuring to know she isn't still sleeping with him I don't care about that, not now. Now when she isn't in my arms and someone else is waiting for her to wake up.

"How much as she told you about Boba Fett?" he asks me, going where I didn't want to.

"Enough," I answer. She had told me everything important, except for one detail that I've gathered she'd convinced herself wasn't real, or at least tried to force from her memory. "She was pregnant when he betrayed her?"

He gives a stiff nod and lowers his voice "The empire had already garrisoned the city when she arrived. I saw him give her to Vader, saw her screaming for him to kill her and I saw the aftermath." He shakes his head, unable to look at her. "Leia and I found her in the cell after Han was taken away, we'd heard her screaming and trying to break out, there was blood all over the floor and she kept saying to Leia she didn't know."

I feel sick knowing now the true extent of what the Empire did to her and understand now why she's so fiercely sought to protect the child by any means necessary. I now understand her vengeful streak towards the Empire and know when she wakes I'll be by her side as she takes it.

"In all these years we never spoke of it, I think part of her had blocked it out completely," he says, confirming my suspicions. "I never knew her before that day, I only knew who she was after that but Leia told me she was never the same as what she had been before. Leia was the only one who'd known her before the Death Star. I loved her, but I wondered what she would have been like if not for the Empire."

"She told me you bought her a ring," I say and he nods in confirmation and that dark paranoia in the back of my mind from that night she ran haunts me. "She told me Boba Fett was what caused her to run."

"It seemed like it should have worked her and I, but it didn't. I loved her in one way but in these past years it's been in another, as family," he confides in me, not hiding his care for her. "I would have married her but I was never what she wanted or what she needed. Boba Fett was what she wanted and in her own twisted way she still loved him after she struck him down. That was until you and the kid came along." I still at hearing those words from a man who once loved her, words that couldn't be more different from Fetts. "You're what she needs and I know you're what she wants."

"And I need her," I say and it's then I catch movement out of the corner of my eye from the tank. "Kyra?"

We both stand and what was a movement of her fingers quickly turns into kicking and thrashing as she tries to free herself and I'm yelling "Help me get her out!"

Kyra

I stood in the ashes of Mandalore after having escaped Vaders ship. My aunt, the last of my blood, turned her back on me and left me there on my knees.

The world was dead, and so was I.

Cold tears ran down my cheeks beneath the beskar of my helmet. There was not a thought in my mind, only the crushing weight of the darkness. Vader had felt it too as he twisted my mind. Death would have been more merciful, but he would not let me die. No. He wanted to turn me, to make me his apprentice in his final act of vengeance against my father.

Everything was still, a wasteland of the life I'd once had and the girl I'd been.

Vader would come for me again, he was likely already on his way.

For the first time I believed if he finished what he started I would fall to the darkness. That despite my fathers counsel on the strength of those who resist the darkside I was no longer that strong anymore.

And so I slowly removed my helmet in the ultimate act of defiance against the Empire, against Vader. I would not die at his hands like my parents did.

The air was toxic, that much I knew with the first breath and I raised my gauntlet to record one final message knowing Leia would find me. Knowing she was the only person in the galaxy who would understand why I did it.

"Leia," I said, hearing the rawness of my own voice. "I survived the bombings but Mandalore is glass and ashes. There is nothing left." I knew it would break her heart, but she would understand. "Vader won't kill me, he won't stop until I turn and become a monster." My voice broke "I will not let him touch me again." The tears came and I whispered "I love you, and I'm sorry, but I can't let him make me into what he is. I can't live knowing my people are dead because of me. I can't." My voice was a mere whisper, feeling as if I'd broken the sacred vow between us two princesses after watching her survive her own planets destruction and Vaders torture, something I could not do. "I'm so sorry."

I wasn't afraid as I left my helmet in the open so they'd know where I was buried and stepped inside the ruins of the palace, it and I both barely standing. With each step forward I heard my fathers voice telling me to turn around and go to Luke and Leia and that was the first time I cut myself off from the force so all I would hear was silence as I got down on my knees and raised my hands to bring the palace down upon me, channelling the force for long enough I could hear my fathers voice in that final moment.

In the darkness my life flashed before my eyes from the start to an end I'd never seen before and the rubble crushed me, my chest feeling as if it would collapse from its weight and my lungs burned from the inside out. I was all but gone from the world when I heard a ship circling above and then a voice screaming my name as the darkness closed in on me.

"Kyra!"

In my slow death as the last bits of consciousness slipped I fought one final time at the sound of his voice and gasped out with ashes in my burning lungs, choking on the chemicals that replaced any oxygen left in the atmosphere, everything pure agony as I tried to dig myself out of the ruins.

"Kyra!"

But it was not the voice I remembered. No. It's his.

"Din!" I scream finding the strength to truly fight this time. This time my limp body won't be dug out of the ruins as I barely cling to life, this time my hand breaks through the rubble and reaches for his. "Din!"

"I've got you," he says as he grasps my hand, pulling me from the darkness. "You're safe."

I'm gasping for air as I come to, finding myself weighed down until I'm pulled free, my body falling against hard familiar beskar. "I've got you, I've got you cyar'ika."

"Din?" I gasp out and cling to him as he clutches me in his arms, dripping and shaking with no comprehension of where I am, only that I'm with him. That I'm safe. "Din."

He cradles my head, his own hands shaking as he pulls a blanket around me and I look up at him, hardly hearing Lando leaving the room yelling for someone to contact Leia until the door slams shut and I don't understand the fear, the pure devastation that consumes him.

"Din?" I whisper, my head spinning as I try to make sense of where I am and what's happened, but I don't even have a moment to think before he's pulled his helmet off and his lips are on mine, hard and desperate as I taste tears.

I'm frozen in bewilderment until he pulls away and orders "Open your eyes."

The request leaves me shaking my head, knowing something isn't right. "What-"

"Please," he whispers so heartbreakingly that I have no choice but to obey and my eyes open to look upon his face for the first time, finding beautiful brown tearful eyes and reach for his face wondering if this too is a dream. "Cyar'ika."

In my dreams he'd smile not weep, and I'm too overwhelmed by his own agony to truly take him in as he deserves to be. In my dreams I'd kiss him and tell him he's beautiful and mine and that I adore him. But in this moment all I feel is fear.

In this moment nothing feels real.

"Din?" I breathe, trembling as I search his eyes and my heart stops knowing only one thing could do this to him. "Where's Grogu?"

He shakes his head and pulls me to him, hand buried in my hair with my face pressed into the beskar of his chest as he quakes "He's gone, they took him."

Those words all but convince me this is a nightmare and suddenly I'm ten years old again, screaming as I was stolen from outside the palace walls of Mandalore except this time I'm feeling my own fathers horror at his child being taken from him.

Pure devastation washes over me as he clutches me tight and my shaking hands come to touch his beskar and yet I feel nothing as my fingertips run over what should be cold and know this can't be real.

But with the sound of a ship flying past it comes back to me in flashes.

Slave I.

Boba.

The child.

The Empire.

The missile.

My body jolts as I step out of Din's embrace, hyperventilating while I search for my saber, my armour, until I find them both nearby.

"Kyra," I hear Din say but the words echo around me, nothing is real. Not him, not me, nothing. Nothing but the cold rage that overcomes me. "My love."

"No," I whisper, my trembling hands moving to arm myself. "No-"

"We're going to get him back," he tells me as I struggle to even hold my armour with the feeling in my hands all but gone. "Cyar'ika-"

He turns me back to him and I look upon his face with cold tears running down my cheeks and he takes my hands in his, bringing them to his lips as I stand there a trembling mess, unable to remember how I got here. Unable to remember anything but flashes.

"We're getting him back," I grit out, looking into the eyes of the man I love as I swear to him "We're taking our son back, now help me with my armour."

He does, but not before kissing my forehead, the weight of what he's done unable to truly sink into either of us in this state and I pull his lips to mine, tasting his tears and mine both before the sound of footsteps has him pulling his helmet back on and helping me dress myself in my armour.

He's pulling my sleeves up and securing my weapons belt when I sense Lando and blink in confusion, it's only then as I truly look around I realise where I am.

Cloud City. Din must have brought me here knowing I'd be safe with Lando.

"Are you alright?" he asks me as he rushes in, speaking too fast for me to comprehend. "Leia knows you're here and the Falcon's just arrived." Still I struggle to comprehend the words being spoken to me until he says "Boba Fett is still here."

Boba.

Still all I remember are flashes, guns blazing and threats made until one sticks.

"I can kill the kid, like you killed our son."

He did this.

And he's going to die for it.

#din djarin #din djarin fanfiction #the mandalorian #the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandolarian #the mandalorian x oc #din djarin x oc #din djarin x original character #wildfirewildflower #the mandalorian x original character #Din djarin fanfic #the mandalorian fanfic #found.#din djarin x female oc #boba fett x oc

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galacticwildfire · 2 years

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Illicit Affairs | Obi-Wan Kenobi

One

Obi-Wan Kenobi x Naberrie!oc

Rhea Amidala meets Obi-Wan Kenobi when he and his master come to her younger sisters aid and he discovers the queen's sister was once a Jedi, expelled from the order for her unwillingness to forgo love and attachment. The two stranded together on Tatooine find common ground despite their differences, and above all a hope within the other for something greater than themselves.

Word count: 4.8k

Tags/warnings: invasion, attachment issues, some arguing over ideology, not many warnings for this chapter, family issues

A/N; Hey guys, this series is basically going to be a love letter to obi-wan kenobi, from episode I to his show, with Padme's older sister being that constant in his life. You all bet your asses we are gonna have two Jedi’s with healthy relationships with attachment who want to be together who get fucked over anyways.

32 BBY | The Phantom Menace

Every last instinct I have screams at me that something is terribly amiss, even if it's fallen on the deaf ears of my sisters council. She has the title and the ornaments that force them to listen, she is young and wise, in their eyes I am merely a failed Jedi whose council is void, and so I'm left to anxiously watch as she gives her address to the Trade Federation.

"Again you come before us, your highness."

"You will not be so pleased when you hear what I have to say, Viceroy. Your trade boycott of our planet has ended."

Her voice is deep and strong, it is still strange to me seeing her like this, a queen. She is far too grown up to be fourteen, but then again so was I at her age.

"I was not aware of such a failure."

"I have word that the chancellors ambassadors are with you now, and that you have been commanded to reach a settlement."

"I know nothing of any ambassadors," the Viceroy denies, a clear lie. "You must be mistaken."

"Beware viceroy," she warns. "The Federation has gone too far this time."

One thing I truly admire about my younger sister is her clear headedness. Her firm resolve without becoming emotional, something I lack despite my years of trying to master it.

"We would never do anything without the approval of the senate," he says and I could laugh, knowing what a mess all that has become. "You assume too much."

"We will see."

The address cuts off and she gives me a look, allowing me and only me to see her frustration. One of her first acts upon becoming queen was to name me as both her protector and her military advisor considering my involvement in intergalactic affairs whilst with the order, a new role for a new era of uncertainty, and the second was to change her name to protect our family. I had already changed mine long ago from Rhea Naberrie to Rhea Amidala, but while hers was to protect our family, mine was out of shame.

The great failure of our great family.

Oh how my mother looked at me in horror when Padme decided to change her name to the one I had chosen years before. The family pride and the family disgrace. The Amidala Sisters.

The great Queen, and the great scandal.

I sit by her side as we receive a hologram from Senator Palpatine, and further admire her brilliant patience, it's a shame the roles weren't reversed as she would have made an excellent Jedi. But I was the one with the midichlorian count much to the disappointment of our family.

"Negotiations haven't started because the ambassadors aren't there? How could that be true?" Palpatine asks us. "I have assurances from the chancellor his ambassadors did arrive."

"It's because it isn't true," I answer for my sister, having accompanied my own master on many such missions to know how they work. "The viceroy is conducting dirty business, he-" I stop as the connection becomes disrupted, the hologram distorting before disappearing.

"Senator Palpatine?" Padme asks and we share a confused look. "What's happening?"

"Check the transmission generator," Captain Panaka orders. "A communications disruption can only mean one thing, invasion."

"Dirty bastards," I curse under my breath at the Trade Federation, getting to my feet whilst Padme sits in denial. "We need to intervene, now."

"The Trade Federation would not dare go that far."

"Well, they have," I say frankly, the only one Padme allows to speak so bluntly in her presence. Whilst she took on a new name to protect our families identity it's known by all that I'm her sister and sworn protector as well as advisor.

"The senate would revoke their trade franchises," Panaka argues. "They'd be finished."

"Unless the senate is well, the senate," I reply, unlike Padme having little hope in their running of things. "We cannot sit and argue consequence when they are clearly not thinking of any."

"We must continue to rely on negotiations."

"Negotiations?" One of the ministers questions. "We've lost all communications, and where are the chancellors ambassadors?"

"He's right," I say to Padme, feeling it in my gut. "We must act quickly."

"This is a dangerous situation your highness," Panaka agrees. "Our security volunteers will be no match against a battle hardened federation army."

Her eyes immediately go to me, fourteen and yet still my little sister. "My sister will keep me safe, I trust her instincts, but I will not condone an action that will lead us to war."

I lean in towards her, trying to get her to see that this will not end how she wishes. "We may not have a choice."

She looks at me with the brown eyes we both share and I know she will let this go to war over her dead body.

Alone Padme and I watch as the Trade Federation's army comes, and I plead with her to reconsider her strategy.

"Padme, I know you do not want war but when they bring it to our doorstep we cannot just silently resist," I tell her as she stares out the window. "We must fight back."

She shakes her head. "No, fighting will only lead to death."

"So will this," I tell her, remembering what I was taught. "There is a reason the Republic for all its pacifism has the Jedi as its army, they are peaceful but know when to fight to protect it."

She looks at me, knowing I would not dare defend them unless I was desperate. "The Republic would refute the idea the Jedi are its personal army."

"But it is the truth," I tell her, knowing it better than she ever could. "You were not raised for battle, I was, so believe me when I say we are facing one."

She looks forward again, at the army closing in on the palace. "We only have our security force, we have no army. If I send them to fight they will be slaughtered."

"Then send me," I say and she stills. "If I'm all that stands between the Trade Federation and this planet then so be it, I will not sit by and watch it fall."

She looks at me, her emotions disguised behind the heavy makeup she wears, her handmaidens preparing Sabe to take her place as she reluctantly agrees. "Then you will fight."

I hide in the shadows as she gives herself over in surrender, her security detail disarmed, but someone on Naboo has to be still armed. Someone has to be waiting for the right moment to get her off this planet. I didn't spend my childhood training for a moment like this to fail, not again.

It's been five years since I came home from Coruscant expecting my family to welcome me with open arms only to find them horrified that I had failed what they saw as the ultimate honour. I left the order after watching in horror as they ripped children screaming from their parents arms, after countless fights with my own master and the council over the Jedi's ideology. Because I believed love was more important than what they preached to me, believing I would find it home on Naboo, only to be sorely wrong.

The greatest irony was leaving Depa Billaba, the closest thing to a mother I ever knew for one I hardly remembered. It was only my sisters who welcomed me home with open arms. One who I grew up alongside and another who did not know me, but nonetheless accepted me as her own.

And so in shame I became Rhea Amidala, the lost Jedi who shamed a proud family

Padme is the only purpose I have now, and while she chooses to surrender peacefully the Trade Federation's intentions are nowhere near as peaceful as hers. If I can't get her off this planet then I have to escape alone, I have to call to our allies in the Republic for help since the communications have been lost and the Chancellors ambassadors are nowhere to be found.

Naboo cannot resist an army of battle droids, not alone, and I have no qualms about walking into a room of politicians on Coruscant and demanding action.

From the upstairs balcony I watch our people being herded and rounded up until a movement in the river catches my eye and see a submarine surface that does not belong to the Trade Federation, and my eyes narrow in disbelief at the man who emerges from it.

Qui-Gon Jinn?

It seems we have not been abandon afterall.

Quickly I move from the balcony to follow their movements and catch voices from the stairwell where the Viceryoy is arresting Padme.

"How will you explain this invasion to the senate?"

"The queen and I will sign a treaty that will legitimise our occupation here."

Now that she certainly won't do.

I feel for the blaster at my belt and debate opening fire, but I have no saber to deflect the battle droids fire and no clear path of escape for Padme and her handmaidens, not yet at least, and so I sneak along the open corridors above the courtyard, following them until I catch movement just nearby, two Jedi and a Gungan.

Taking a risk I poke my head up and they spot me, the younger man a few years older than myself sees me first, not a Jedi that I recognise, but he taps his master on the arm to bring his attention to me with wide eyes, clearly not having expected anyone to still be walking free, and point for them to follow me.

They meet me along the overhead pass where Padme and the others are about to pass below surrounded by battle droids. The younger one raises his saber, as if in question, and I nod raising my blaster. Not a moment later we jump down onto the street below, the sound of sabers so strange to me after so long as I take out the remaining droids with my silenced blaster.

"Your highness," I say, checking Sabe over to not give anything away before I check on Padme and she gives me a nod to assure me she's alright.

"We should leave the street, your highness," Qui-Gon says and I keep my head low, knowing he is one of the few masters who could still recognise me, Jedi like ourselves who cause as much trouble for the council as we do, or rather did, tend to become acquainted.

"Get their weapons," I order what's left of Padme's security, Sabe disguised as Queen Amidala is ushered forward and I check on Padme again as I hand her a blaster, knowing I taught her how to use one and to use it well.

"Jedi?" she asks and I nod, briefly meeting the eyes of the padawan as we keep moving forward until we are out of sight. "Do you know them?"

Quietly I hush her despite the looks we get and Master Qui-Gon tells us as we reach cover "We're ambassadors for the Supreme Chancellor," Qui-Gon tells us.

"And I am the queen's protector," I reply and search his eyes for any sense of recognition, if he remembers me he doesn't give it away. "I take it negotiations didn't go as planned?"

"The negotations were short," the padawan remarks and I meet his eye again, still not recognising him but he looks to have been a few years above my class.

"In fact they never took place," Qui-Gon tells us. "It's urgent that we make contact with the Republic."

"They've knocked out communications," I tell him, right now wishing her damn council had listened to me when I warned them something wasn't right. "They have no plans to allow us to contact the Republic until the queen has signed a document legalising the invasion."

"Do you have transports?"

"In the main hanger," Panaka answers and points. "This way."

I walk beside the padawan as Panaka guides Padme and her detail into the hanger where others have already been gathered to talk strategy.

"There seems to be no actual fighters on the Federations side," I tell the two Jedi. "Just battle droids."

"There's still too many of them," Panaka says but he doesn't know what Jedi are capable of.

"That won't be a problem," Qui Gon says and turns to Sabe. "Your highness under the circumstances I suggest you come to Coruscant with us."

"Thank you ambassador," she replies while I shake my head at both of them in warning. "But my place is with my people."

"Queen Amidala, I must protest," I say, looking both of them in the eye. "You won't be much good to your people dead, you need to address the senate."

"They need her to sign a treaty to make this invasion legal," Panaka reminds us. "They can't afford to kill her."

My voice is harsh. "No but they can torture her into signing it."

I feel a coldness wash over Padme

"There's something else behind all this," Qui-Gon says to Sabe. "Your Highness there's no logic in the Federations move here. My feelings tell me they will destroy you."

"I agree," I say jumping in before anyone else can. "I feel it too although none of you were willing to listen when this blockade began."

"Now is not the time for hysterics Lady Amidala," Panaka chastises.

"And now is not the time for the queen to become a martyr," I retort. "The queen trusts my feelings even if you may not and I can assure you now is the time to act and survive."

None of the handmaidens react, each of them knowing my past, but I get a strange look from the padawan, Qui-Gon simply looks amused.

"Our only hope is for the senate to side with us," Padme's advisor says. "Senator Palpatine will need your help."

"Either choice presents grave danger to us all," Sabe says and looks to Padme for guidance.

"We are brave, your highness," Padme replies.

"If you are to leave your highness, it must be now," Qui-Gon says and Sabe looks to me, knowing Padme looks to me as well, and I nod in agreement.

"Then I will plead our case to the senate."

"Thank the maker," I murmur under my breath. "Now let's leave."

I follow the Jedi into the hanger, walking in front of Sabe with my blaster in hand as Panaka instructs "We will need to free those pilots."

"I'll deal with that," the padawan says and I follow him, firing as he ignites his saber, freeing the pilots and directing them to the ship as he finishes off the droids. "That should be it."

"No, it's not," I say grabbing him by the wrist as another squadron of battle droids emerge and order him "Cover me until we get the pilots on board."

He gives a quick nod and does as I ask, using his saber to deflect the blaster fire, covering me for long enough I can take out most of the droids by blaster until everyone is safely on board the ship.

"Come on!" I say and we finally jump onboard as more droids come, electing for escape rather than fighting and Qui-Gon who's been protecting the others follows us onboard, the last to get on before the ramp raises.

I put my blaster back in its holster as it shuts and we take off, meeting the padawan's eyes as we let out a breath of relief and everyone collects themselves, thankfully Qui-Gon doesn't stop to ask questions as he heads to speak to the pilot, leaving his apprentice with me.

He's handsome, certainly on the brink of becoming a Jedi Knight judging by his age and I clear my throat before I say "I don't believe we've been introduced."

"Obi-Wan Kenobi," he answers shaking my hand, the name still not familiar. "Jedi Padawan."

"Rhea Amidala," I reply. "The Queen's sister."

"Ah," he says, it now making sense to him why I'd be the one trying to order her about. "I take it you didn't agree with the surrender?"

"Someone had to be armed," I reply at how he found me but know it's a miracle no one but I spotted them arriving. "Nice submarine by the way, stealthy."

"You saw that?" he exclaims, now slightly embarrassed as he picks up the sarcasm in my voice, and I just laugh.

"Not as sly as you thought huh?" I tease with a raised eyebrow and immediately know by how he stiffens up at being jested with that he truly is one of those who's painfully devoted to the code, surprising considering who his master is. "Come on, they'll need us in the cockpit."

He follows me into it and I come to Panaka's side as he shows us the blockade, only to find myself hanging on to the back of a chair as an alarm starts blaring and the Federation launches their attack.

"Shield generators been hit!"

I try to stay calm as the droids are dispatched to the roof, but it's not a pretty sight as they continue to be shot off and I find myself looking at Master Qui-Gon, he doesn't seem awfully worried and I have to trust his judgement more than my own.

"We're losing droids fast," Obi-Wan says and we share a brief look of concern at the dire situation we've quickly found ourselves in.

"If we can't get the shield generator fixed we'll be sitting ducks."

I jump as another droid is blown off and they announce. "The shields are gone."

Immediately I turn to security. "Get the queen and her handmaidens towards the escape pod, and don't tell them why otherwise she'll fight with you, go!"

But before they can go to Padme we hear "Power's back! That little droid did it, he bypassed the main power drive."

"Never underestimate a droid," Qui Gon tells the captain, ironic considering its battle droids we're facing.

"Now get us out of here," I say but before we're in the clear there's another problem.

"There's not enough power to get us to coruscant, the hyperdrive's leaking."

I just shake my head as Qui Gon says "We'll have to land somewhere to refuel and repair the ship."

"Here master," Obi-Wan calls out. "Tatooine." I walk over to look at his screen. "It's small, out of the way, poor. The Trade Federation have no presence here."

"How can you be sure?"

"It's controlled by the Hutts."

"Do it," I agree and tell the captain. "Tatooine, we have no time to waste."

"You can't take the royal highness there!" Panaka argues. "The Tutts are gangsters."

"They still bleed like the rest of us don't they?" I argue, knowing the Federation will be scouring the sector for us and I'd take my luck with them over battle droids. "What would you rather? Hutts or her being captured by the Federation?"

"Lady Amidala, you might be her protector but I am her chief of security-"

"I am her sister!" I snap back, having been sent to negotiate in enough diplomatic messes to know what awaits her if captured. "Her safety is my only priority and you are taking your orders from me, we are landing on Tatooine."

Qui-Gon puts a hand on my shoulder, his voice calm as he speaks to Panaka. "It would be no different than if we landed on a system controlled by the Federation. Except that the Hutt's aren't looking for her, which gives us the advantage."

And with that it's settled, no one would argue with a true Jedi and feel Qui-Gons eyes on me, knowing from the careful look he gives that he does indeed remember me.

"I'm sure the queen's sister was not questioning your authority Captain Panaka," he says, even now sticking up for me as he often did then. "But merely acting out of love."

"And what is more important than love?" I find myself saying.

"Balance."

Obi-Wan looks between us confused but I find relief in Qui-Gon being here, of all the Jedi that could have come I have faith in him.

"Exactly, which is why love is just as important as apathy," I say, remembering the words I spoke five years ago. "For balance." I look between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and clear my throat. "Thank you for coming to my sister's aid."

"I dare say you had it half-handled by the time we got there," Qui-Gon says. "You are a talented combatant."

"Well, I'm not much else but that," I say almost bitterly and look at the radar. "Come, we better get the R2 droid who saved our lives before he's blown off like the others."

I stand back with Obi-Wan as Panaka presents the droid to Sabe, despite Qui-Gon recognising me instantly his padawan is still oblivious to the fact he's standing beside one of his own.

"Without a doubt it saved the ship as well as our lives."

"It is to be commended," Sabe says. "What is its number?"

"R2-D2, your highness."

I can't help but smile. "Thank you, R2-D2."

I can feel Obi-Wan's eyes lingering on me, confused by my exchange with Qui-Gon but it's hardly as if he'd assume I was once a Jedi. It's something I've tried to forget myself despite just how integral it is to my very core.

"Padme clean this droid up as best you can, it deserves our gratitude."

Padme takes the R2 unit while Sabe gives permission for Qui-Gon to come forth and speak.

"Your highness, your sister Rhea has already given her approval and with your permission we're heading for a remote planet called Tatooine. It's in a system far beyond the reach of the Trade Federation."

"I do not agree with the Jedi on this," Panaka argues and I speak up.

"I do. I trust Master Qui-Gon's judgement."

Panaka knows well my past, as to the most important members of padme's security, and whilst he's hesitant to listen to my judgement Padme trusts it completely and with that it is settled but I still feel the Padawan's inquisitive eyes on me and so I meet them, holding his gaze as I leave the room.

I sit alone with Padme, helping her clean up R2.

"Do you know the Jedi?" she asks me now we're alone.

"Master Qui-Gon is a Jedi I respect greatly, he has views different to the council, similar to mine," I tell her, remembering him well. "He was not my master but he took it upon himself to mentor me at times, and so he no doubt recognises me although he has not said anything. As for his Padawan I can't say I do, although there we many of us and he seems to be older than I."

She nods and asks "Do you still regret leaving?"

The question surprises me, it's always been a forbidden topic amongst our family, but it's just us now. She was just a baby when I was taken by the order, whilst Sola and I reconnected with tears I was a stranger to her, but thankfully five years have remedied that.

"Sometimes," I admit to her. "I miss having a purpose, in some ways I miss the family the Jedi are at its core, but its ideology... it was my master who in fact encouraged me to leave. She said how I viewed things was not wrong, and that I had the potential to be a great Jedi but that my mind and heart were too strong for the council." I reach across and squeeze her hand. "That is one thing we have in common, our headstrong minds and hearts, it's like arguing with a stone wall. Even at fourteen they knew I'd be too much trouble. Just like you are now."

She smiles. "I wouldn't call myself trouble."

"Oh but you are," I smile fondly. "Be proud of it."

She looks behind me and I follow her eyes to find Qui-Gon. "Rhea, may I have a word?"

"Of course master," I say and Padme leaves us.

He's unsure of what to say at first, still surprised to have come across me. "Sister of the queen, is this what you're doing now? Causing trouble for yet another poor unfortunate council?"

"I don't intend to but somehow I always seem to, much like yourself," I say, smiling to myself. "It is a relief to see you Master, it truly is."

"I'm surprised you were so welcoming, considering how you left," he tells me and my smile fades. "You were five or so when they found you weren't you? Many argued you were too old to be trained."

"To be indoctrinated," I correct. "I was six with two loving parents and two sisters. My parents gave me up seeing it as an honour but I was taken from everything I'd ever known and loved only to be told I was not allowed to love anymore, that my very emotions were poison."

He nods in understanding. "Yes, that is the great irony isn't it? We are meant to love all, have unlimited compassion and yet not for anyone in particular."

"You see," I breathe out in relief. "It's madness."

"It's order," he quickly corrects, but does admit. "Too much order. Even Obi-Wan my own padawan pleads with me not to go against the council. Do you remember him?"

"No," I answer, shaking my head. "At least I don't think so."

"That's fair, he is older than you," he says and tells me "I'm afraid he does not have much left to learn from me, and I know your Master Billaba still feels the loss of her own padawan."

I let out a humourless laugh, trying to push back those feelings of regret. "I left to find my parents and yet they didn't want me back, I loved them and they loved me but viewed me leaving the most prestigious order in the galaxy as a great shame whilst grooming my sister to be queen."

"You love her greatly," he states. "But you feel no purpose."

His words cut deep because they are true. "Are my emotions so obvious?"

"Very," he says. "But you always did feel greatly, you had a great passion for justice that I remember well, a instinctual need to protect."

I look away, knowing it was that very thing that caused me to be expelled from the order, even if I said I left, even if that's what I told my parents and everyone else, I know the truth and so does he.

"We must be getting close to Tatooine," I say clearing my throat and he follows me into the cockpit where Obi-Wan sits with the pilot as they prepare to land.

"That's it, Tatooine."

"There's a settlement."

"Land near the outskirts. We don't want to attract attention."

Qui-Gon takes over and I follow his padawan to the see the state of the shield generator for myself, not liking any of this but knowing she is safe enough here until we can get it working.

"I'm afraid I'm not one for mechanics," I tell him as we examine it. "But it's not good is it?"

"The hyperdrive generator is gone, we'll need a new one," he tells me and I sigh knowing in the outer rims very little is done for the Jedi out of the kindness of peoples hearts.

"Ilooks like we might be doing business with the Tutt's after all," I remark as Qui-Gon walks in.

"Well that will complicate things," he says and warns "Be wary, I sense a disturbance in the force."

Obi-Wan nods. "I feel it also master."

I look away, surprised despite my years disconnected to also feel that something isn't quite right. The one thing I've retained from my training is my gut instinct and talent for combat, a warrior on a pacifist planet.

"Don't let them send any transmissions," Qui-Gon instructs and says to me "Rhea, I recommend you stay with the ship, if any troubles come this way two Jedi are better than one."

Obi-Wan's head whips around to me "What?"

Qui-Gon leaves as quickly as he came giving me a look that can only be described as a very intentional oops, leaving it for me to explain.

"I'm sorry did I hear that right?" Obi-Wan asks me. "Jedi?"

I hang my head, finding it difficult to confess after so long. "I was."

His eyebrows narrow together, his voice softening. "Was?"

"Rhea Naberrie," I tell him, the name I was called then. "I- Qui-Gon was just pulling your leg, I was a padawan but I was never a real Jedi."

Many younglings and padawans do not make it to the rank of Jedi, many are sent to the service corps if the council does not believe they have the aptitude despite having the force so it's not unusual for there to be failed Jedi, but he's intune enough to know it's not that type of situation.

"But you know him," he says and presses "And he knows you."

"Yes, you're correct," I stiffly acknowledge but thankfully we're interrupted by Rabe before I have to explain anything. "Yes Rabe?"

"Lady Amidala," she anxiously begins. "Padme has gone with Master Qui-Gon."

"What?" I blurt out and she stammers.

"She insisted upon going with him."

"Of course she has," I sigh, knowing she wouldn't just sit on board, that she has to be out there doing something to help remedy this situation and bite back my frustration. "Thank you."

She leaves and I bring a hand to my forehead, wishing she at least told me first so I could go with her, but Qui-Gon is right in needing us to protect the ship.

"Rhea?" Obi-Wan asks, concerned.

"Sorry she-" I laugh at the irony. "I was just telling Padme she's just as much trouble as I was at her age and to be proud of it, but oh it's not as fun being the one dealing with trouble."

"Do you want to go after her?" he asks me and I shake my head.

"No, Master Qui-Gon is right, we need to stay with the ship," I decide, for once in my life following orders considering all her handmaidens are on board and Padme would be devastated if any were to be harmed. "She will be safe with them, and it's best I'm here in case there's any trouble. I trust Qui-Gon's judgement."

"So you do know him," he says and notices how I tense. "You were a Jedi."

"A padawan," I correct and realise we are indeed having this conversation and so I spit it out. "I left the order."

He's absolutely bewildered and can't hide the judgement in his voice. "Why?"

I let out a dangerous laugh, knowing not to get into this. "Oh no, today is not the day for an ideological argument."

"Ideology? You sound like my master."

"Good, because he's the one who mentored me," I reply much to his surprise. "Oh come on, a troublesome young padawan with a big mouth and tough head, someone had to."

He sighs, indeed matching what Qui-Gon told me. "Of course he did, but- but why didn't he train you then?"

"He had you it seems and I already had a master, Master Billaba," I tell him and lean against the broken generator. "She was like a mother to me, wise and strict but fair, she wasn't as wrapped up in the ideology as much as some of the others."

"Like who?"

"Yoda," I answer, almost scoffing at how obvious it should be.

"You can't insult Master Yoda," he scoffs back at me.

"I can insult anyone I like, and Yoda might be old and supposedly wise but he's too caught up in the nonsense to allow any sort of reform," I argue, having indeed stumbled into an ideological argument with this padawan. "The Jedi Order needs to grow and evolve instead of being stuck in its archaic ways, being Qui-Gons padawan I know you know what I mean."

He lets out a frustrated sigh. "Of course I know what you mean and I don't disagree, but to leave the order over it-"

"I didn't have a choice," I grit out, reliving the argument I had with my mother years ago and back track. "I was taken older than most and from the moment I was taken there all I heard from the council was to cease attachment, 'oh the girl is dangerous because she misses her mother.'"

"But attachment is dangerous-"

"I was a kid!" I end up snapping at him.

"We all were," he argues back. "We all had family but it was our duty-"

"Duty? What duty did we have as children? We were kidnapped and indoctrinated, I was old enough when I was taken to remember it. If it was up to them they'd have us no more sentient than those damned battle droids!"

He scoffs. "Battle droids? You mean what the Jedi have just saved you from?"

"I was doing perfectly fine before you came," I refute.

"Is that why everyone had been rounded up by the Trade Federation?"

I laugh dangerously. "Classic Jedi, thinking you know everything, so frustratingly arrogant, and wasn't it your job as the Chancellors ambassadors to prevent that from happening in the first place?"

"I'm sorry, but as a military advisor isn't it your job to prevent us from having to get involved?"

"It's a little hard when my planet won't allow a military to be built!"

"And that's my problem?"

"Yes!" I exclaim. "It is the Republic's job to protect the planets within it and it's your job as their army to enforce that!"

"We aren't the Republics-"

"Then why are you here?" I retort, gesturing about to our surroundings. "If it isn't your problem, and you aren't doing the Republics bidding then why are you here?"

"Because it is the job of a Jedi to protect the innocent," he finishes and I clamp my mouth shut. "Only someone consumed by their hatred would think otherwise."

"Hatred?" I repeat, truly astounded that he sees everything so black and white to interpret justified anger as hatred. "My home has just been invaded and my sister's life is in danger and we are stranded on a planet in the outer rims hoping we'll come across what we need to fix the engine to get off here before the Trade Federation begins killing people." Now he's the one who clamps his jaw shut. "And I would rather not be standing here being interrogated by a padawan who should be doing his job instead of criticising me for leaving a corrupt organisation I don't agree with."

He sighs, realising fighting with me will only lead to more fighting rather than a victory and says "My master sees its flaws but he doesn't leave it, he works with them to help people."

"Then I applaud him, he is a good man," I say, our respect for Qui-Gon being the only common ground between us. "But I help my people in other ways, which is what I'm trying to do now."

I turn my back on him and he reluctantly follows as I march back through the ship to the cockpit for an update. "Have you heard from Master Qui-Gon?"

"Not yet my lady," they answer and I'm tempted to go after them but remember why I must stay.

"So we sit and wait," I find myself muttering.

"Yes," Obi-Wan says and his sarcasm is enough to make me want to leave this ship regardless. "Perhaps you could meditate, maker knows you need to."

"Or perhaps you could keep your nose where it belongs."

"Gladly," he says but before either of us can leave the cockpit a transmission comes through from Qui-Gon and we reluctantly share the same air as we listen to their dilemma, realising we lack the currency to negotiate with the Tatooine.

"Are you sure there's nothing left on board?"

"A few containers of supplies," Obi-Wan says, calmer than I am. "The queens wardrobe maybe but not enough to barter with, not in the amount you're talking about."

"There's little on board, everything of worth remains on Naboo," I say, frustrated. "Can you force their hand?"

"I'm afraid I cannot," he answers as Obi-Wan shakes his head at me for suggesting methods that are not the Jedi way. "But it's alright, I'm sure another solution will present itself. I'll check back later."

It goes silent and Obi-Wan and I sit there together, the tension between us thick as I wish I'd just gone with Qui-Gon, knowing I'd be better use there than arguing with his padawan.

Obi-Wan's the first to break the tension "Are you sure there is nothing we can barter with?"

"Not enough to buy a shield generator with," I mutter as the direness of the situation truly hits me. "We need to get the queen to the senate."

"I know," he assures me, his voice becoming lighter when he feels the pure anxiety that begins to fill me. "And we will and in the meantime, like you said, she's safer here than on Naboo."

"Well, I'm not wrong," I say but still shake my head. "I don't like sitting here and waiting for a solution to present itself."

"You said you trust Master Qui-Gon's judgement," he says and implores "I myself question it at times but we must both trust it now."

"It's not your master's judgement I question," I assure him, my anger forgotten. "It's the senates will to act on this invasion."

I expect him to blindly defend the senate but he surprises me "Politicians will be politicians, I don't trust him and you're smart enough not to either, but you must have faith that we will find a solution to the Trade Federations attack."

"My sister's only been queen for a few months, she's fourteen and facing the worst catastrophe in living memory," I lament, knowing this is not what she should be dealing with and yet she has taken it upon herself with nothing but grace. "She's brilliant and I have full faith in her, but I worry others will not listen to a fourteen year old girls demands for action."

He doesn't dismiss my concerns and instead says "Well with you advocating for her I dare say they'll be forced to listen or else be brutally rebuked until they have no choice but to agree to your demands."

I smile to myself and see a glimpse of one on his own face as I admit "Well, you aren't wrong."

Our eyes meet and this time it's different, there's no distrust or hostility and he's the bigger person in saying "I'm sorry for arguing, I should have listened when you warned me against it."

"Don't apologise, you didn't know what you were getting into," I admit and force myself to follow his example. "Although I am sorry as well, you have not faulted in your duty to help us."

I reserve my temperament for those who refuse to listen, I thought he was one of those until now but he's proven me wrong in my own misgivings.

"Let's start over," he says and I wonder if he's thinking the same about me as he extends his hand. "Obi-Wan Kenobi."

I look at it still slightly hesitant but trust my instincts when they tell me to trust him. "Rhea Amidala."

He offers me a gentle smile, and as I take his hand I can feel the force, can feel a good old soul in him, a light that's so rare even amongst the Jedi that it stuns me. A light I'd convinced myself wasn't real, but here it is in front of me.

And perhaps for the first time I care what someone else thinks of me as I hope he sees the same in me.

#obi wan kenobi x oc #illicit affairs #wildfirewildflower #obi wan kenobi x amidala!oc #obi wan kenobi x f!oc #obi wan kenobi x original character #obi-wan kenobi x oc #obi-wan kenobi x original character #obi-wan kenobi fanfiction #obi wan kenobi fanfiction

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galacticwildfire · 2 years

Text

Illicit Affairs

Three

Obi-Wan Kenobi x Amidala!oc

Word count: 7.5k

Tags/warnings: okay guys we have all the romance this chapter with the beginnings of the angst, also fck palpatine

A/N: this story is a decades long tragedy. be prepared.

My dreams were sweet, and we would have stayed like it for as long as we could if not for the commotion telling us we're about to reach Coruscant.

We look at each other in a mutual state of awe, no words needing to be spoken as he helps me to my feet and guides me out to where Padme is getting ready since she will be addressing the senate herself in due time.

She wears a brave face but even so I squeeze her hand and promise her "It will be alright."

She nods weakly and I hold her tight as we near the planet, my eyes meeting Obi-Wans as the discomfort begins to set in. The knowing I've not returned here since I left five years ago.

Anakin lingers near Padme as we prepare for what's to come, it's clear he's taken a liking to her, it's sweet.

"He made this for me," she tells me, showing me the charm he carved. "He said it will bring me good fortune."

"What a sweet boy," I smile but she still looks concerned.

"He misses his mother."

I nod knowing what she is asking me and I take Anakin aside, bending down to talk to him.

"I know this is hard, leaving home for a place you don't know, with people who are strangers," I tell him and reveal "I was like you once. Some people came and told me I was special like you are, they took me away from Padme and my parents, it hurts and there's no other way of going about it."

"When will it stop hurting?" he asks me and I feel Obi-Wan and Padme both watching.

"You'll miss her," I say to him, knowing they're simple words that could never begin to prepare him for the truth of it. "But that's okay, because it means you still love your mom and nothing is wrong with that, no matter what anyone tells you." I hold the little boys hand tight. "But Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan will take good care of you now, like they've taken care of me."

Qui-Gon comes to stand beside me. "She's right, challenging times are ahead but you will overcome them all. Rhea, a word?"

I nod, immediately assuming it's about Obi-Wan but instead he says "When we arrive your sister will be greeted by Senator Palpatine and the Chancellor, however Obi-Wan and I will be meeting with the Jedi Council and I ask you come with us."

I look to Obi-Wan in panic who assures me "It will be alright, your sister will be occupied but to ensure her safety we need you on board with what we bring to the council."

"Which is?"

Qui-Gon tells me with no sugarcoating "That what can only be a Sith lord is after your sister."

My heart stops but when it beats again it's with purpose. "How do we stop him?"

"I don't know yet," Qui-Gon admits. "But we will."

I look at Obi-Wan again who nods in agreement. "All will be well Rhea." Qui-Gon leaves us and Obi-Wan reaches for my hand as I clam up. "You may have left the order, but you still have every right to stand before the council as we do. Master Dooku left and he still visits the temple often, it's nothing unheard of." I nod anxiously, still struggling for words at the thought of once again being put on trial. "Rhea?"

"I just want to stand there and represent my planet, I don't want an interrogation," I tell him and warn. "If they attack me I will defend myself."

"I don't doubt that," he says and jokes "I certainly won't make the mistake of arguing ideology with you again."

We both laugh but it's overshadowed by Qui-Gons theory. "A sith- why would a sith be after us?"

He's at a loss. "I don't know, but I promise you we will find out."

He looks around at the crowded room with Qui-Gon speaking to Captain Panaka and Anakin and Padme talking before discreetly guiding us to somewhere more private where it's just the two of us.

"If we are facing a sith, we will need as many Jedi as we can get," he begins and takes my hand. "I have no doubt the council will allow us to continue our assignment and stay with you and your sister until this mess is dealt with, but even then I-" he struggles with his words. "I don't want this mission to end."

Those words alone confess something forbidden for him and so I assure him "Neither do I."

He treads carefully "I know how you feel about the order but if there was a way you could continue on this assignment with us after it's done, cleaning up the collateral and finding the sith, would you?"

"I would," I answer in a heartbeat. "But I don't think the council would allow me, how I left- it was not pretty or graceful. The rage you've seen, it was far worse when I was fourteen."

"I don't doubt that," he says, thumb running over the back of my hand and I feel his nervousness. "But that rage pales in comparison to the rest of you."

Softly I ask "And what is that?"

"Good," he answers without hesitation. "Someone who cares very much for her family and her own people and strangers alike, and I would call the highest form of compassion. A quality it seems the councils overlooked."

I know I'm blushing as I struggle with the flustered smile those words bring to my face. "Compassionate, I don't think I've ever heard that word used to describe me in the slightest."

"Then how about some others," he says and I look up from our hands to meet his eye. "Discerning, passionate, enlightening." I feel our bodies being drawn together as I'm drawn into his blue eyes. "Loyal, captivating, opinionated." I feel my breath hitch in my throat as he continues "Alluring."

"Alluring?" I breathe, knowing allure is something a Jedi should certainly not feel and turn the tables. "And what of you Obi-Wan? Understanding, bright, quick-witted." I feel his free hand trailing along the bare skin of my arm, goosebumps rising. "Perceptive, hopeful, devoted." My own hand comes up to touch his face, fingers tracing his jaw. "I don't think I've ever met someone who has as much faith as you do."

"And it isn't misplaced," he promises me and I find myself lost in his eyes, feeling something that I try to fight and yet my chin tilts up towards his as I feel his fingertips on the small of my back and I only look away from his eyes to see our fingers lacing together and when I look back up I'm breathless at the closeness of him.

He tilts his head down and the tension between us is unbearable as his lips hover over mine, but even I know this is wrong, that this will only cause us pain and whisper "We shouldn't."

"I know," he says, but it's as if trying to resist the pull of the force. "Trust me, I know. I swore I wouldn't..."

He trails off in pain, and I turn my head away and step out of his embrace, sensing something deeper behind it and now I'm the one in pain as I breathe "Obi-Wan, whoever you loved...you won't find her in me."

He looks up and quickly insists "No- that's not-" with the step he takes forward I take one back and he tells me "Rhea that's not what I'm saying and that has nothing to do with the way I feel about you."

"Feel?" I repeat, the madness of this finally dawning on us both. "We hardly even know each other."

And yet somehow he knows me better than anyone ever has.

"You know that's not true," he says, clearly believing what we feel isn't by chance. "Search your feelings and you'll know that this-"

"Is something that is forbidden," I say, shaking my head knowing just what will happen to him if he breaks the code. "I was expelled, I suffered the shame of being a failure so listen to me when I tell you that it is not a fate you want to face."

At the mention of being forced out of the order his face hardens and he agrees "No it's not, but it isn't that simple."

"Isn't it?" I ask him, defending myself from the pain I know this will cause, knowing someone couldn't love me unless they saw someone else in my eyes. "You loved someone, and that someone is not me and it can't be me."

"Your right, it can't be," he says, but even as he looks at me now I swear I can see him looking at someone else. "Maybe when we first met I saw her in you, combative, opinionated to the point of extremism, willing to do anything to defend your people." He treads forth towards me with extreme caution. "Had she said the word I would have left the Jedi Order, but I always knew it was meant to end, it had to."

"And for that you have my condolences," I say stiffly, only feeling pain at his words as I go to leave. "But I am not her."

He grabs my wrist, pulling me back. "I don't want you to be." I still don't look at him as he says "There is love, and then there is this." I want to pull my hand free, I want to curse him and pretend all that has passed these past days never happened, but I can't. "I know you can feel it."

I do, when we laid together under the stars it's all I could feel, a pull to each other that was as strong as the force itself, and standing here now I hate it. "I don't want to feel it."

"And you think I do?" he exclaims and with that I look back at him, eyes burning into him and yet he doesn't let go. "I swore to myself I'd never let myself fall in love again and that I have succeeded in, but this- I've never been faced with anything like this. With someone who makes me forget everything I've ever been taught, who makes me feel things I don't want to feel, makes me question everything I've ever believed in-"

"And you think you don't do the same to me?" I half yell and laugh sadly, him not knowing the half of it. "You don't think that what I feel makes me question everything I fought against, that the people who turned their backs on me can't be as rotten as I believe if they somehow made someone like you." I'm cursing his name as much as putting him on a pedestal. "I was doing just fine until I met you, I never had anyone look at me the way you do, see through me how you do. I was fine being the failure everyone hated until you made me feel like more than that."

"Because you are," he says, now taking both my hands in his. "Just because you turned your back on the order doesn't mean you aren't a Jedi."

"They turned their back on me," I say hoarsely. "Not the other way around, and I won't let them do the same to you because the force is playing some sick joke on us-"

"I thought you would know better than to think the force would do such a thing," a voice interrupts and we jump apart at the sight of Master Qui-Gon who looks upon us with a heavy heart. "The council will not turn their backs on any of us, not if I have something to say for it." He looks between us and lowers his eyes. "Now come, we have business to attend to."

He leaves us and we're silent, the space between us agony as he reaches again for my hand and says "What I feel for you has nothing to do with anyone else." As much as I don't want believe him I know his words are true. "When we took this mission I- I could never have expected you." His voice is resolute as his eyes meet mine. "I believe that us meeting was not a mistake."

"How is this not a mistake?" I ask him, my voice filled with pain as reality dawns on us. "How can this possibly end in anything but pain?"

He's vulnerable as he says "Do you think I don't know how this ends? I do, I've spent years training myself to force those feelings aside until you came and taught me it doesn't have to be that way. That you don't have to be emotionless to feel the force. I don't know what this is Rhea, but I know that this pull to each other is something greater than feelings."

"Which is why we cannot act on them," I say, finally stepping away from him as I hear the rest of the crew departing. "Even if we wanted to."

With those words I walk towards the exit of the ship and step out onto the ramp, needing the fresh air to breathe, watching as my sister is greeted by Palpatine and the Chancellor and is guided away by these powerful men, both of whom I can't bring myself to trust. Especially Palpatine. He reeks of what ambitious men reek of. His eyes catch mine as they leave and he offers me a nod with a smile I trust even less. Senator's have their terms, now I wait for him to finish his and ice him out.

"Come," Qui-Gon says to me as Obi-Wan comes to my side, keeping a distance between us. "We must convene with the council."

I nod, not having any more words left in me and Obi-Wan and I share a sad glance as we follow behind Qui-Gon, our blissful moment of peace on Tatooine finally over.

We arrive at the Jedi Temple, Qui-Gon having not spoken another word about how he found Obi-Wan and I, but there is no mistaking what he saw. He knows his padawan and sees through me almost as easily, perhaps it would be easier if he were to scold us, to tell us it is forbidden, to do for us what we struggle to.

And yet he only seems saddened.

When we come to the temple I feel myself freeze up, and despite it all Obi-Wan comes to my side.

"You can face them," he tells me and and puts a hand on my shoulder. "I'll be right there with you."

Those words shouldn't ease me as much as they do and looking up at those temple steps I know I have to do this. I'm not doing this for myself, but for Padme.

Which is what gives me the strength to take that first step, then the second, and the rest until I come to walk through the halls I grew up in once again. Remembering who I was when I last did.

Rhea Naberrie. Just fourteen, a Jedi padawan.

I have every right to be here, the council does not change that.

Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon who stay by my side as my former peers gaping at the sight of me all grown up now.

Rhea Amidala. Nineteen. Protector of the Queen.

And as Obi-Wan reminded me despite how much I have fought against it, still a Jedi at heart.

My steps pick up pace as we approach the lift to the council chambers and I don't dare look back as I step inside and look at Obi-Wan, his eyes telling me all I need to hear. That this is right.

My dark hair is bound in a braid arranged atop my head, and so I pull the pin holding it togetther to let it fall out in a single braid down my back, how I wore it the last time I stood before the council, prosecuted.

Fourteen and afraid of the old men I stood before. Now I watch my sister doing the same without a glimpse of fear. I must have at least a fraction of the courage I taught her to have.

And so I step from the lift, proud as I enter the council chamber and feel a dozen heads turn my way, horrified and bewildered all while I wear the same face I taught my sister to have.

"I present Lady Rhea Amidala to the Council on the matter of Queen Amidala," Qui-Gon says as they take me in and I meet my old masters eye.

"Rhea needs no introduction," she says sadly and shifts uncomfortably in her seat. "Although I would ask why you have brought her before us and how she is of relevance to the matter at hand."

"I am sister to Queen Amidala," I answer proudly and watch her eyes fall. "During our escape from Naboo we were forced to make an emergency landing on Tatooine for repairs. During which we came under attack by an individual who wielded a lightsaber."

It's then Qui-Gon steps forward. "He was trained in the Jedi arts. My only conclusion can be that it was a Sith lord."

"Impossible," Master Mundi exclaims while I raise an eyebrow at my least favourite council member. "The Sith have been extinct for a millenium."

"I do not believe the Sith could have returned without us knowing," Master Windu says and I can't help but scoff. "What was that padawan?"

Yoda corrects "A padawan no longer, expelled she was."

Obi-Wan's head turns to me and he mouths "Expelled?"

My story has always been that I left willingly, only the masters would know the truth.

"She was on mission with Master Billaba and I when she betrayed orders and was expelled for intervening in Jedi business and endangering a child," Master Windu says and that is one accusation I will not take.

"You took a three year old girl from her mother, both of them screaming and fighting tooth and nail-"

"Their owner permitted it-"

"Exactly, they were slaves!" I yell and try to reign myself in. "You paid the slave owner for the girl while her mother screamed and was almost killed trying to get her back."

"And so you returned the girl into slavery to her mother," he says and my stomach churns. "Only to strike down the slave master, causing a diplomatic crisis with the Republic."

I feel Obi-Wans eyes on me, no doubt shocked considering the current situation with Anakin. Except his mother agreed to it, and Anakin is old enough to be willing.

"You should be grateful I did not do it on Tatooine," I spit out, perhaps I would have if it was I who went with Padme and not Qui-Gon. "If killing slave masters and freeing children goes against the Jedi code then so be it."

"You broke intergalactic laws-"

"And I'd do it again," is all I say of it, without allowing for a shred of remorse. "But I did not come here to be interrogated on matters of the past. My duty is to my sister, which is the reason I stand here as an official representative of Naboo as she was attacked by a Sith Lord."

"Break laws young Naberrie did," Yoda says ignoring me. "Much anger in you there is, much recklessness, judgement clouded by feelings they are."

"It was my mistake in teaching her the seventh form," Master Windu says, the master who oversaw my training almost as much as Master Billaba. "I had faith that she could handle it, my faith was misplaced."

I keep my face from showing the hurt those words bring and can feel Obi-Wan's silent comfort, almost as if he's in my head telling me it's not true.

"Master Windu, that is hardly appropriate," Qui-Gon scolds. "The girl has come here as a representative of her planet under my invitation, not a rogue padawan, and I will not have her treated as such."

"Master Qui-Gon, you would do well to remember the troubles she caused for our order as a whole," Windu argues. "She is reckless and spiteful and bringing her here before us for whatever reason only reflects poorly on yourself."

"Then so be it," Qui-Gon says, and never before has anyone defended me so shamelessly. "If I remember correctly you took the girl under your wing when she was only a young padawan, before you even assigned her to your own apprentice Master Billaba. Your faith in her was not misplaced and the only person to blame for her spitefulness is the council for giving it reason."

I feel Obi-Wan's immediate fear at his masters defiance as I stand there wide eyed, but the council do not seem phased and I realise this must be a frequent enough occurrence.

"Standing here now she displays exceptional courage, only to be attacked for coming before you and demanding action after her sisters life was endangered by what we must suspect is a sith."

Finally I clear my throat and step forward. "Master Windu, Master Yoda, my feelings do not cloud my judgement," I say, declaring what I was too afraid to at fourteen, but I know my heart well enough now. "They make me see clearer, they make me stronger not weaker. That is your Jedi orders greatest mistake, equating feelings with darkness when all they bring me is closer to the light." It takes all the strength in me not to look at Obi-Wan. "I know my own heart and mind, and those worthy of seeing it too know my truth, and right now my priority is to assist the Jedi Order in bringing down this Sith Lord to ensure my sister's safety."

"But you are no longer a Jedi," Master Windu says, Billaba my former master quiet. "You surrendered that privilege when your emotions caused you to go against the order and almost started a war between Slave Owners and the Republic."

"I am a Jedi," I declare, and Qui-Gon gives me an encouraging nod. "Whether or not I am a member of this order the force is with me, and it's will is greater than your authority. The code is flawed, I know many Jedi believe it to be so even if they are afraid to speak it." I can feel Qui-Gon's pride in me at those words. "The force is what makes a Jedi, not the code. How can any Jedi can have control over their feelings if they refuse to feel them? How can you tell someone that love leads to darkness when it brings them closer to the force?"

"Master if I may speak." I look back at Obi-Wan stunned as he steps forward in my defence. "While we all live by the code there must be allowance to the interpretation of the code, as Master Qui-Gon has taught me," Obi-Wan carefully treads, neither Qui-Gon or I sure where he is going with this, but Qui-Gon looks upon his padawan with nothing but pride. "While it is true she is an individual who does harbour great emotion, she is able to wield it well, with there never being a moment of darkness attached to it. Perhaps a slight of anger or fear, but the same as we all are susceptible to despite our training. Her circumstances are not black and white."

"No, but they are her undoing," Master Windu says whilst my eyes linger on Obi-Wan, trying to hide that very emotion right now in this moment. "She went rogue and almost caused a diplomatic disaster for the order. That is a type of recklessness that does not simply disappear, but is only emboldened."

"Then perhaps it was your own mistake Master Windu," I accuse. "For bringing me to the order at an age where I could not be indoctrinated like the rest."

"You're right," he says coldly. "I should have left you and saved myself a headache."

"Enough!" Qui-Gon intervenes. "I will remind you again that she is not here for interrogation. She is here on business on behalf of the Queen of Naboo. Now, can we get to that business."

Finally they allow it and give me a nod to speak.

"My sister narrowly escaped this attack as Master Qui-Gon fought off the attacker until we could escape," I say, knowing I will not leaving until they act. "I stand here on behalf of Naboo demanding action. Our planet has been invaded and our people rounded up and put into camps. The senate has yet to act in our favour and as my sister's military advisor I will act to save my people no matter the result of the senate." That is a fact no one in this room doubts. "But I myself cannot stop a sith, and so I request Master Qui-Gon and his padawan be allowed to continue with this mission to stop this attacker with the councils support in launching a full investigation and providing extra security to the queen."

The council is quiet in contemplation, Yoda especially.

"We will use all our resources to unravel this mystery, we will discover the identity of your attacker," Master Windu finally says but does not give a when or how. "The council will convene on this matter, you are dismissed."

Qui-Gon bows and goes to leave but I stop him.

"Wait- is that all?" I look to the council. "So you wait until it attacks us again and then decide to determine a further course of action?" I quickly realise that is exactly what they intend to do. "No, that's not good enough."

"Rhea, please," Master Billaba pleads with me. "We will do all we can for your sister."

"It's still not good enough, I was sent here on her behalf and with her authority I demand further action be taken," I insist and find Temple guards beginning to escort me out. "Don't touch me!"

They grab me as Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan both try to intervene but not before I end up in a physical altercation with the guards whilst Master Billaba orders the guards to let me go but it falls on deaf ears.

"The Sith are back!" I yell as the guards attempt to pull me from the room but I am long past the point of grace. "Has the order become so blind you could not see it? And what? What do you do now you have this information? Nothing! You send two Jedi on a suicide mission hoping it will be discreetly dealt with?" I break free from the guards and hold my ground. "A Sith roams free yet you are more concerned by what my presence could bring upon your precious order? Are you all blind!" I feel Obi-Wans hand on my arm but shake it off, it's my anger they say that clouds my judgement but in it I see clearly. "I remember now why I left, why I pushed and pushed against the order until you rid of me. It's because of this right here. So preoccupied with order it borders on madness while the Sith have risen up and what do you do? Sit here in your chairs judging me when my failures are only representative of your own!"

They're all silent as I look around the room and my eyes fall on Qui-Gon "Am I wrong?" I look back to the council. "Are any of you so brave to agree with me, or do you disregard me for the sake of order and conformity? Because I have spent the last years in the political sphere, and you are becoming far less of whatever the Jedi should stand for and more of an oligarchy of righteousness!"

From their silence I know my words cut deep, and I pray I do not leave them with a peaceful mind as I finish "And you shall lose more Jedi until you overcome it."

I leave the room before I can be escorted out heading straight for the lift and pushing past a man I vaguely recognise as Master Dooku as Obi-Wan chases after me.

"Rhea!"

"You heard what I said and if you want me to apologise I'll say it all again!" I yell back and curse under my breath as I walk into the lift "Pretentious bastards."

Before the door can slide closed he pushes in, still trying to reason with me. "Rhea-"

"I am not going back in there."

"I'm not asking you to," he says, his voice breathless. "I'm coming with you so they don't pull you out of here and drag you out."

"That's why I'm leaving willingly," I retort but he has questions of his own.

"Why didn't you say you were expelled?"

"Because of the shame," I tell him, still remembering my mothers face. "I was expelled from the order for refusing to sit back and watch innocents suffer. They said I was turning sith by killing a slave master when it was justice," I insist, begging him to believe me without even realising it. "All I could hear was my baby sister screaming and my older one fighting for me when Mace Windu took that girl away, all I could remember was once being that little girl and after repeatedly being chastised and ripped apart by the council I snapped!"

He grabs me by the arms to keep me still as he tells me "I'm not fighting with you Rhea."

"Do you understand now?" I ask him and watch something in his eyes change. "Do you understand now why I hate everything the order stands for as much as I do?"

His hands are still holding my arms when the lift opens and he quickly withdraws them, instead grabbing my wrist and pulling me with him.

"Come with me," he says as he leads me through the Jedi Temple and I follow him, half expecting to be brought to a confinement room but I'm surprised when he brings me to the living quarters, and finally to what must be his room.

He pulls me behind the corner and checks to make sure no one's seen us before pulling me inside and making sure the door closes behind us.

"Obi-Wan?"

His hands are on my face, his voice desperate. "I understand and I know what they say about you isn't true, I know because I've seen it, and I meant every word I said in there." Tears wet my cheeks and he wipes them away as he did before. "What you said about your heart, I know it's true."

"I know," I breathe unevenly. "Because it took every bit of discipline in me not to look straight at you, otherwise they would have known."

"Known what?" he asks as if we're both fools.

I smile shakily as I look him in his blue eyes. "You know what."

And he does know. He knows the attachment he and I both harbour, something the code forbids. Yet we've both fallen pray to it.

"I've had blind faith for so long," he tells me, thumb stroking my cheek. "But you and Master Qui-Gon, you're right about the council, about the code." His body is close to mine, his breath warm in the dark room. "Especially you. I- I don't know what I have faith in now. But I know I have it in you."

My breath is only a whisper "No one's ever truly had faith in me before."

All my life I've only heard how reckless I am, how ashamed they are of me, how any faith was misplaced. Until now.

This isn't love. Not yet. But it could be.

I know it because all I feel when he touches me is hope.

"I do."

And perhaps hope is the most dangerous thing of all as our lips meet and just like that there is no going back. Where he was restrained he's now free, and where I was lost I'm now found.

He pulls back, checking that I'm alright and I answer by bringing his lips back to mine, at first rough but then gentle, juxtaposed, the gentle and the rough, meeting for something beautiful.

My hands reach for his face while his fingers through my hair, my braid falling apart as he comes to hold me in an embrace unlike anything I've ever felt before, both of us giving into something we were always warned against, and finding nothing but light.

"Is this as terrible as they tell us?" I ask him and he breathlessly shakes his head, kissing me again longingly before answering me.

"No, this is-" I can see the conflict in his eyes as he gives in to me "This is anything but that."

We dare explore that forbidden thing with every touch of our lips, wrapping ourselves deeper in one another, and I don't think I've ever felt the force as strongly as I do now in his arms, and I know he feels it too.

My hand runs down his chest, until I can feel his heartbeat beneath my palm and smile as it pounds beneath his chest, bringing his own hand to feel mine and feel him smile as well. He takes my hand, fingers lacing together palm to palm, eyes fluttering shut as our bodies meet as if they were forged to do so, a oneness I've never felt before with anyone as our lips touch now so gently that anything more feels as if it would overwhelm every sense I have.

"Obi-Wan," I breathe, feeling the sensation even his name brings.

"Rhea," he whispers back, his blue eyes meeting mine, and that's how Qui-Gon finds us when the door is slid open, our bodies together and lips barely apart.

He does not jump away as I'd expect, but merely stares frozen at his master who looks to the floor and sighs, all of us knowing there is no explaining this. Before we could have feigned innocence, one friend helping another, but not now, not like this.

"Well then," he says, unsurprised but not disappointed, and eyes us with contemplation. "We best find a way out of this predicament and then we will deal with this."

By deal with he doesn't mean fix, but rather find a way to help us.

"Master," Obi-Wan begins and Qui-Gon just raises a hand to quiet him.

"Rhea, Padme is leaving for the senate, her ship waits for you outside."

I nod, slowly pulling myself away from Obi-Wan, neither of us able to form any words.

"Here, let us escort you out," Qui-Gon says and we're silent as we leave the temple.

Obi-Wan and I keep our distance and I look behind me when I feel someone watching only to meet the eyes of Master Dooku who's looking straight at me, as if through me.

His stare haunts me long after I've left the temple and indeed we find a ship waiting for us, along with Anakin.

"The boy has come to be tested by the council," Qui-Gon tells me. "I suspect you'll have words for him."

I nod knowing what he's asking of me, and walk forward towards the boy. The slave boy who left his mother for a chance at a better life and yet has no idea what's ahead.

"Now Anakin," I say, bending down to his height. "Are you sure you want this, that you don't want to return to your mother?"

"I'll miss her, but one day when I'm a Jedi I'll go home to free her," he tells me, and I know the council may be rid of me, but they'll have their hands full with him.

"I hope so Anakin," I say and look behind me to Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. "Now I don't know if you'll see Padme or I again, but I do hope our paths cross. These two Jedi will be here for you, they'll be your new family. Now, you may not like everything the council says, they can be very tough and often wrong, but you are an exceptional boy and they are the ones lucky to have you, never forget that."

"Really?" he asks, and I can only assume he's never been told that, just as I never was.

"Yes, now go on," I tell him, watching as he goes to Qui-Gon who promises me.

"We'll look after him."

"If anything doesn't go to plan," I say, meaning he doesn't pass their tests. "We will care for him."

"I know you will," he assures me, and it's only as he goes to leave a panic fills me, Obi-Wan and I looking at each other in alarm and I call out.

"Wait!"

Qui-Gon looks back but my eyes are on Obi-Wan, a realisation that has only just hit me. That they may not be leaving Coruscant with Padme and I if the council refuses to take action. "Are you coming with us?"

Obi-Wan looks to his master for answer as well, and he assures us "We will complete our mission, patience young padawans."

Obi-Wan and I stand there as Padme calls me to get onboard, I want to run forward towards him but out here in public I know I cannot, so I give an emotional nod and jump inside the speeder as they return inside the temple.

Oh what a beautiful tragic mess we have gotten ourselves into.

"What was that?" Padme asks me as we take off.

"What was what?"

She gives me a look but does not press. "The verdict?"

"Regardless of the council's decision, Master Qui-Gon won't abandon us," I say, realising the reason he was prepared to leave the council session so easily was because he's already made up his mind and that they will not sway it. "We will kill the attacker, and we will free our people."

She looks forward towards the senate and says "We will, and I will not accept no."

I am beside Padme in the senate, an illegal blaster beneath the royal robe I wear. While they make their points to the Chancellor I'm scouring the room for any sign of the sith lord, reaching out through the force in a way I have not done in a long time but there is a freedom in being the exiled. A freedom to use the force as it feels fit, the natural way instead of the order.

But even then I find nothing but a general unsettlement.

"Honorable Represenatives of the Republic, I come to you under the gravest of circumstances," Padme begins when it is her turn. "The Naboo system has been invaded by the droid armies of the Trade-"

"I object! There is no proof!"

Padme is past the point of anger, she is already grieving and underneath her tough face she is afraid for her people, for all of us. But if I can do what I've done today, she can do this also.

"We recommend a commission be sent to Naboo to ascertain the truth."

They all argue amongst themselves and I listen to Palpatine in Padme's ear.

"Enter the bureaucrats, the true rulers of the Republic," he tells her and I listen carefully to just what he is feeding her. "And on the payroll of the Trade Federation I may add. This is where Chancellor Valorum's strength will disappear."

I cannot argue against him despite my dislike for the man, the Republic is corrupt and there is no doubt the Federation has allies here.

"The point is conceded," Valorum declares. "Will you defer your motion to allow a commission to explore the validity of your concerns?"

We don't have time, the very suggestion of it is an offence of the worst kind and in that very moment the flaws of the senate are laid out for me plainly.

"I will not defer," she declares, remaining firm. "I've come before you to resolve this attack on our sovereignty now! I was not elected to watch my people suffer and die while you discuss this invasion in a committee!" She decides and I'm glad if there is one thing I've taught her, it's strength in the face of adversity, to not be afraid to raise her voice to a room of people who refuse to listen. "If this body is not capable of action, I suggest new leadership is needed." I nod proudly as she proposes. "I move for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum's leadership."

There is outrage, but she is just what I've taught her to be, unapologetic and controversial.

I only wish I could see myself as I see her.

As we wait for the voting I look out the window of Padme's apartments towards the Jedi Temple, wondering how Anakin is going, how Obi-Wan is feeling.

"What occured during the meeting?" Padme asks me knowingly. "Was there an argument?"

"They attempted to escort me out after I had some choice words for the council," I say, but don't want to put anymore worries on her and so I leave out the altercation. "It was all alright though in the end, I remembered just why I left but Obi-Wan took care of me."

"Yes, you two seem close," she comments, but does not insinuate anything. "Do you think he'll take care of Ani?"

"Of course," I assure her, squeezing her hand. "He is in the best hands he can possibly be in. Now, no more worrying about everyone else."

"That's easier said than done."

"I know," I say quietly and wrap an arm around her as we look out at the city together. "If we do not get action from the council I will find another way."

"How?" she asks, but I know she would not like it.

"We'll do whatever it takes," I say, knowing how far I'd go even if she would never approve of my methods. "Your hands will be bloodless, I promise."

"If only it worked that way," she says and the door opens with Panaka escorting Palpatine in.

"Your highness, Senator Palpatine has been nominated to succeed Valorum as Supreme Chancellor!"

My stomach sinks with those words and my eyes shift to him, realising what power play he's enacting using Naboo as his gambling peace, his ulterior motives. Darker doubts fill my mind now surrounding him, if this was his plan all along in eliciting Padme to move for a vote of no confidence...

"A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one." Padme lets no emotion pass her face, she does not care who is chancellor but only for Naboo. "Your majesty, if I am elected I promise to put an end to corruption."

"Those are big promises," I say from the background, stepping forward. "What we need is action now, not wasting time campaigning on empty promises."

He tilts his head at me, finding my distrust curious.

"Who else has been nominated?" Padme asks.

"Bail Antilles of Alderaan and Anle Teem of Malastare."

"Bail Antilles is a good kind of man," I tell Padme, avoiding Palpatine's glare. "He would most certainly help us."

"I feel confident our situation will create a strong sympathy vote for us," Palpatine says ignoring me and boldly declares. "I will be Chancellor."

There is a glimmer in his eyes I don't like and pray Bail will be elected, the dislike I have for Palpatine is enough that it makes me want to campaign against him, regardless Padme is not in the mood for entertaining this.

"I fear by the time you have control of the bureaucrats there'll be nothing left of our people or our way of life."

"I understand your concern your majesty." I sense his frustration as he sees me by Padme's side, between him and her ear. "Unfortunately the Federation has possession of our planet-"

"And who has been the senator charged with handling such issues?" I accuse, daring to wonder if he let this happen. "It is such a convenience for you I'm sure that this tragedy has led to your nomination for chancellor."

The accusation I make is clear to all ears in the room, even Panaka who I always stand at odds with is partial to it, but it is Padme whose eyes are cold as she looks upon him.

"Your highness, perhaps your sister ought to be removed from the situation at hand, her emotions seem to have overcome her."

"Senator, you almost sound like a Jedi," I say and laugh, leaving him almost disturbed. "And just as I told them earlier, now is not the time for further complacency."

"Senator, this is your arena," Padme says, having had enough with politics and sitting in a senate that will not hear her, but then says "I feel I must return to mine."

"What?" I stammer, sharing an alarmed look with Panaka.

"I've decided to go back to Naboo," she says, and while I may argue with her over such matters, the look in her eyes tells me there is no arguing with her on this.

We will not achieve anything further here. It is time to take things into our own hands.

"Your majesty be realistic," Palpatine panics. "They'll force you to sign the treaty."

He goes to follow her but I step between them, forcing him to stand in place.

"I will sign no treaty senator," Padme says with a bite in her voice. "My fate will be no different to that of our people. Captain, ready my ship."

She leaves with Panaka, leaving me alone with Palpatine.

"You best please my sister or the chancellor won't be the only one facing a vote of no confidence," I warn him, and he knows I mean my words. "Do not return to Naboo unless you are successful in prosecuting the Trade Federation, and if you do find yourself chancellor you best remember it was our peoples blood that got you there."

He eyes me carefully, where he's seen me only as an inconvenience he sees me for what I truly am, a threat.

"I will be keeping a close eye on you, Lady Amidala," he says slowly and I turn my back on him without another word to go to Padme who stands with her handmaidens, prepared for whatever may come.

"We will go home," I promise her. "And we will all do whatever we must to free our people, damn the senate."

There's a shadow of a smile on her face. "I've been waiting for you to say that."

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galacticwildfire · 2 years

Text

Illicit Affairs | Obi-Wan Kenobi

Two

Obi-Wan Kenobi x Amidala!oc

Word count: 6k

Tags/warnings: some angst, mostly fluff, a bit of darth maul

A/N: enjoy the fluff while it lasts because my god will there be angst. Also this is one of my favourite star wars chapters I've ever written

Obi-Wan and I stand outside the ship, watching the sand storm in the distance as it becomes clear to us this won't be just a quick stop.

"Follow after them," I tell Panaka and for once we're in agreement. "The rest of the crew will be safe with me, but I need to know she's safe."

"At once," he says and leaves to track them down, leaving Obi-Wan and I in charge.

I know it's raised questions in his mind why I'd send the queens guard after a handmaiden but he isn't an idiot, he knows there's reasons why a young queen has a selection of nearly identical handmaidens.

"Well, this is definitely going to slow them down," he comments while I nod.

"She better be careful," I find myself muttering and sigh "I trust her, but still."

"Still you worry," he finishes. "That's understandable. Let me guess, Padme is your sister and the queen inside is a decoy?"

Considering he's in charge of her safety as much as I am I nod. "Yes. That's right."

"It's smart," he appreciates. "So the queen is with my master then." I nod again and he assures me. "She is safe with him."

"I know, but I don't trust him to be able to keep her from doing anything risky, which is why I've sent Panaka. She'll listen to him."

"By risky you mean anything you'd do?"

That brings a shadow of a smile to my face. "Precisely."

I look at him and see a shadow of one on his face as well now we've called a truce and curse myself a little for actually liking him, I will give it to him that it's been a long time since someone's held their own with me in an argument and not despised me afterwards. It's an unfortunate past time for me arguing over ideology.

But that isn't why I like him, no, it's something deeper than a mere respect, perhaps an appreciation for his company during this anxiety.

It's then I hear Rabe call for me "A transmission from home!"

Obi-Wan and I share a look before heading back inside the ship where Sabe takes the transmission and I brace myself as an advisor appears.

"The death toll is catastrophic," Padme's advisor tells us in a hologram. "We must bow to their wishes. You must contact me."

"No," I immediately say switching it off. "He's a captive, we can't trust him now."

"She's right it's a trick," Obi-Wan agrees. "Send no reply. Send no transmissions of any kind."

"They'll only use it to reverse the signal to find our location," I say and he nods in agreement as I order the crew "Ensure there is no way they can intercept a location from the ship."

"Yes my lady," they immediately say but Obi-Wan isn't finished.

"Obi-Wan?" I ask as he leaves the room and follow him into the cockpit. "Obi-Wan?"

"I'm contacting Qui-Gon," he tells me, bringing this to his masters attention. "Master Qui-Gon, there's been a transmission from one of the Queen's advisors begging the queen to bow to the Trade Federation's wishes and contact them."

"It sounds like bait to establish a connection trace," he says, agreeing with what Obi-Wan and I believe.

Obi-Wan looks to me as he apologetically asks "But what if it is true, and people are dying?"

"Then those decisions fall to me," I tell him with a weight on my shoulders since Padme isn't here. "All we can do is wait for them to return so we can get off this rock and appeal to the Senate."

If it were up to me I would have acted the moment they first threatened us as her advisor for military matters, except there is no military despite my urging of Padme to begin expanding the security force. If we had a military I'd storm the city and wipe out the Trade Federation but that's not the Naboo way, it's not how Padme was raised. It was how I was raised. With Mace Windu over my shoulder, being my masters master.

"Either way we're running out of time," Qui Gon tells us before cutting the connection and we share a heavy look.

"I'm sorry this has happened to you and your people," Obi-Wan tells me, and he genuinely does mean it, he wants to help as much as I do.

"The trouble with being a pacifist planet with no military is this," I tell him and remember "Mace Windu trained my master and took a liking to me because I suppose I was more like him than the others, I had his urge for action over inaction, the only issue was I took that too far." He takes my words in and treats them with concern. "He'd be useful now."

"Mace Windu is an oddity that much is for sure," he agrees, the purple lightsaber being the least of it. "But have faith in Qui-Gon."

"I do," I assure Obi-Wan as we head back into the room with the generator, empty of handmaidens and security, just us. "I don't know how many diplomatic missions I accompanied Master Billaba on and yet I'm useless when I find myself in the middle of my own. Panaka and the rest don't respect my council, they know Padme just appointed me that so I'd feel some purpose."

"You do have purpose," he says and upon seeing the look on my face insists. "You do."

"Whatever purpose I had I gave it up when I was just fourteen," I tell him and he's quiet as I sigh and finally admit the truth. "Five years ago I was Padme's age. I knew I didn't fit in how I should, so I'd look to Qui-Gon and Mace Windu to convince myself I had a place there, but that's the thing, they took me when I was still old enough that I could remember a different life."

He nods in understanding and confides as he may have before if I hadn't jumped to arguing for the sake of it. "I've tried to hold onto my own memories, they slip away with age but there's still fragments, my mothers shawl, my fathers hands." Emotion creeps into his voice. "I think I had a baby brother."

The way his voice wavers with vulnerability exposes my own. "I have an older sister, Sola. She's only a year older than me, we were inseperable, and Padme well, she was just a baby when they came for me."

He looks confused "But it's Republic regulation to test children upon birth for force sensitivity?"

"Somehow I slipped through the cracks," I find myself saying but remember "Now I think about it all those off world relief missions my father would take me on as a child may have been for a reason. He was the one who fought against me being taken after all so maybe they did come when I was younger when I wasn't there. I mean, what better excuse is there to give than the potential Jedi is away helping those in need? Perhaps whoever they sent thought it could only benefit me and decided to come back in a year."

"It is a reasonable answer," he says, seeming surprised almost but I can't pinpoint why.

"I had just turned six when they came and tested the family, Sola was normal, Padme- I think she might have been a little higher than normal but whatever I am it's enough that they told me they couldn't wait any longer and that I had to go with them and my mother happily agreed." A tear slips from the corner of my eye despite my best efforts and I don't wipe it away. "I didn't understand, she just stood there with my father as my sister cried and I was screaming. It was actually Master Windu who took me and well, you can imagine he wasn't gentle with the dressing down he gave me about my emotions." I realise my hands are trembling slightly as I grip the flowing fabric of my jumpsuit, red and gold like the royal colours of Naboo but with none of the extravagance, a halter around my neck with a fitted waist and a flowing bottom. I cling to the feeling of the fabric, to ground myself as I was taught and look up at the ceiling as I ramble. "I know it sounds pathetic, all of the Jedi were taken from their families but for some reason it was something I could never get over."

I'm jolted out of my daze by the touch of his hand on my cheek, wiping away that single tear and the touch is so foreign, to be comforted. "It's okay Rhea," he says gently. "You don't need to explain."

I let out a tearful laugh as I reach up to touch his hand, grasping it tight for some sort of stability before pulling it away from my face, still unable to be contented with being comforted. "You can see why I never made it as a Jedi now can't you?"

He shakes his head. "You can't blame yourself for loving your family, it's only human. Master Qui-Gon tells me that it's not as if we aren't allowed to have these feelings whatever they may be, but that it's our responsibility to let them go instead of holding on."

I look at him finding a new middle ground, realising perhaps Qui Gon's led his interpretation of the code to something more human than I'd first observed.

"I wish all Jedi thought as you and Qui-Gon did," I admit to him. "If they did perhaps I would have come here with you as an ambassador instead of as an escapee."

My eyes meet his and I realise my hands been touching his for far too long and release it, not knowing what to do with how that makes me feel as he tells me "You might not be a part of the order, but that doesn't change what you are."

I give him the same kind smile he gives me and my eye catches the glint of his saber. "I do miss it, my saber."

He raises a curious eyebrow "What form did you study?"

"My master insisted on III but I preferred form V."

He's almost amused. "Of course you would."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I laugh.

"It's a form built on dominating your opponent," he says and remarks "If that isn't you in a nutshell."

I want to try to refute his assessment but it's accurate. "Well, you aren't wrong. I was top of my class at a young age with saber skills, I remember Master Dooku even paying special attention to me but he'd left the order by the time I was old enough to become a padawan and so Master Billaba took me on. I worked on my form but it was Master Windu of all people who saw the emotions in me and gave her permission to teach me VII."

"Seven?" he exclaims, truly scandalised now. "That's seen as taboo by the council, forbidden even."

There's a troublesome glint in my smile. "Exactly, but under certain circumstances they'll allow it. It was Master Windu who invented Vaapad and taught it to my master and she taught it to me with his permission. My masters believed my passion only fueled my strength because for me there was no darkness since it didn't come from a place of fear, but justice."

"Passion?" he repeats, and I know that would be a rare word for Jedi like him.

"Yes, the forbidden fruit," I say, tasting the words with a dramatic touch to my voice. "Oh such a dangerous thing passion, oh no Obi-Wan Kenobi don't dare speak the word or else you'll turn Sith!"

He can't help but laugh and so do I, smiling as I lean back against the broken hyperdrive generator, feeling a kinship I haven't felt since I left the order.

"That is one thing Master Qui-Gon does not discourage," he suddenly tells me. "Passion."

"Really?" I ask and keeping it light inquire "So, does that mean you've explored forbidden attachments."

From the way his cheeks redden and his eyes sadden I have my answer. "When I was a lot younger and a lot less wiser."

He'd be in his early twenties but Jedi always do grow up too fast and become consumed with grief far too young. I know many padawans would play kissing games and such, but have an inkling that what he's referring to isn't anything like that.

"Are they alive?" I ask, treading carefully, feeling the energy change between us.

He gives a stiff nod. "Yes, that's what I was assigned to do, keep her alive." Now it's him who struggles with words and hesitates before telling me. "For a year I was with her, protecting her, but I never acted on what I felt until the mission came to an end."

I'm quiet, his forbidden attachment wasn't playful or even sexual, it was something far deeper.

"You loved her," I realise and he looks away, I don't press further. "It seems I mistook you, because you would know the struggles between love and duty better than I ever could."

I see him realise that he does, perhaps more than he ever admitted to himself before.

"It was a long time ago."

I nod, taking the burden of conversation off of him, finding myself able to speak with more ease with him than anyone I've ever known despite this short time in each other's company.

"I've never been in love despite all my concerns about attachment," I confide in him, finding irony that I raise such issues when I've never had to deal with them as he has. "I've certainly never been loved either."

His eyes meet mine and it's as if he can read my feelings "But you want to be."

"Who doesn't?" I reply quietly. "If you had the chance to love again wouldn't you take it? Code and duty aside of course."

I watch him ponder that question and he's conflicted "I wouldn't want to suffer that loss again."

"To love without fear, that's what I desire," I tell him, realising in my heart just how alone I've been for so long. "I'm willing to take whatever grief may come, if only to be loved."

Here we are, two Jedi, discussing the most forbidden thing we possibly can.

Love.

Before either of us can dig this hole any deeper I feel my transmitter going off and it jolts me back to the situation at hand.

"That will be Padme," I say, her call breaking the tension. "Excuse me."

I find myself breathless as I leave the room to enter the empty hallway, and feel hot tears on my cheeks as I'm overwhelmed by the loneliness I've been suppressing for so long without even realising it.

How can I object to the Jedi's code of attachment when I've never even been in love? And yet here is Obi-Wan, carrying this weight in his heart that I could never understand and still obeying the code completely.

"Rhea?" I hear her asking and sniffle, wiping the tears away as he did before.

"I'm here," I say and force a smile, even though she cannot see me. "How are you?"

"Safe," she answers. "A boy has given us shelter from the storm, he's quite nice, the people here are welcoming, even if they are slaves."

She's always had a heart so big, and so did I once.

"I'm glad you are safe," I tell her. "Everything is fine here."

"You don't sound fine," she replies and asks "What's wrong?"

"The past always finds a way of coming back Padme, know that," I tell her and breathe, knowing even if I've never been loved in the way I crave that I have her and Sola. "I love you more than life, you know that."

"Of course I know that," she promises me. "I love you too."

Tears continue wetting my face. "I'll see you when you get back, okay?"

"Okay."

The communication ends and I'm crying, desperate to protect her and Sola, not out of fear of losing them, but just wanting to make everything okay for her so she never feels what I do. So she never has to know what it is to be thrown away and discarded, by your family, by the people who raised you, only to grow up and find that it was all for nothing.

Because despite everything, I'm still alone inside.

It's late when Obi-Wan finds me outside, watching the setting Tatooine suns in contemplation, feeling the force more strongly than I have in years.

"It's a sight isn't it," he remarks, but I can hear the worry in his voice.

"It is."

I feel his hand on my arm, his voice gentle. "You should come inside, it gets cold at night here."

"Not colder than space," I reply, taking a moment just to stand there with him, with another person who understands the conflict in my mind. "I'm glad I've met you Obi-Wan."

"And I you," he says and I look back at him, immediately feeling a sense of comfort. "It looks like we'll get to know each other better than we planned, this plan they've cooked up means we'll likely be here for a while longer."

"Do I even want to know?" I ask him and he sighs.

"It involves a child and podracing."

I laugh at the ridiculousness of it, deciding I don't want to know. "That's all I need to hear."

He notices the goosebumps on my arms, clothes designed for weather on Naboo, for training in the sun, not for places like this and takes his cloak, wrapping it around my shoulders. The familiar feeling of a Jedi's cloak is oddly comforting, although I suspect it is only because it's his.

His hand lingers on my arm, neither of us go to remove it as we look back towards the setting suns and I say "No matter how ugly a planet's society may be, or how corrupt, there's always beauty no matter what,and I'd rather stand here watching setting suns a thousand time's over and feel peace then dwell on fear and all that horridness."

I can hear the tragedy in my own words, at how with age I've become more of a Jedi than I ever intended, and he can feel it too. "

"You can feel it here can't you?" he asks, that peace. "The force."

My smile comes naturally to me. "The force as it should be. No rules or order. Just being. Just living with it and feeling it. How it should be." But there's also something else and I look in the direction Padme and Qui-Gon went. "But there's something strange here, you can feel it can't you?"

"I can, and so can Qui Gon," he tells me, it's then his transponder beeps and his hand slides up and down over the fabric covering my cold arm as he looks and answers it. "Master?"

"I need an analysis of this blood sample I'm sending you," Qui Gon says and we share a confused look before heading back on board the ship.

"Wait a minute," Obi-Wan says as we return to the empty cockpit to receive the transmission and I sit beside him, his cloak still wrapped around me.

"I need a midichlorian count," Qui Gon tells us and my stomach sinks with a sick feeling. He's found a child, but it's forgotten the moment I look at Obi-Wan's screen.

"Is that real?" I exclaim as the results come through.

"It's off the charts?" Obi-Wan says in equal disbelief. "Over 20 000. Even Master Yoda doesn't have a midichlorian count that high."

I'm speechless, the two of us sharing a look as Qui Gon says "No Jedi has."

"That- that's impossible," I stammer.

"What does it mean?" Obi-Wan asks Qui Gon.

"I'm not sure," he answers and trails off. "I'll check in with you soon."

The connection ends and Obi-Wan and I stare at the screen, then look at each other as if making sure it's real, and no matter how many times he runs the test it's the same result.

"So," I finally say. "It seems Qui-Gon found that strange something in the force."

"That he has," he agrees and we share an alarmed look, not even able to imagine what this will mean and gets out a device to test it. "Let's test ours to make sure it's not a system error."

I nod in agreement and he takes samples from us both to run and I'm actually curious to see what mine is, the results come back almost immediately. Obi-Wan and I's count is within a few hundred of each other, his 13000 and mine 13800, higher than some masters but nothing exceptional, it's only a guide for raw ability. Skill and force mastery as we're constantly reminded are far more important than that count.

Obi-Wan's may be lower than mine but with a decade more of proper training I have no doubts he'd best me in a fight using the force. I would win hand to hand with a saber, I know damn well I always surpassed even the best students in my training, but the force is something else.

"So, it works," I say, us coming to terms with the fact Qui-Gon has found the most powerful child known to the Jedi Order. "I think Master Yoda's going to finally die when he hears this."

He nods in agreement, equally stunned. "I don't know how my master always gets into these situations."

"I dare say it's no coincidence we landed here," I realise. "It does seems we may be here for a long while yet."

He nods, coming to that possibility too and I sigh, pulling his cloak tighter around me as I stand and he asks "Where are you going?"

"Outside," I tell him, not wanting to stay cooped up in the ship. "I want to look at the sky." He hesitates and I coax "Come on."

He follows me outside and I look up, having rarely seen any night skies but Naboo's or Coruscants, and finding it almost as beautiful as the twin suns.

"One thing about our galaxy is every planets sky is always different, some barren and others filled with more than our minds could ever comprehend," I begin and tell him "It's where I often feel the force most and remind myself it is in everything, every star and planet in the sky and all the space in between."

He comes to stand by my side and admits. "With all the rules I tend to forget the force is more than just the code."

I smile to myself, us finally on the same page. "It's something I only truly discovered after I left the order, when I had to search for it in every living thing to find it instead of being reminded of it every waking moment." He's looking at me as I look at the night sky. "I find I only truly understand it when I realise it isn't meant to be understood, but felt."

His face is drawn in contemplation and I wander forward from the ship to bask in it, finding myself one in it and extend my hand to him "Come on."

He comes to me and takes my hand, letting me guide it up towards the stars. "Tell me that meditation could ever make you feel as one with the force as when you just let yourself feel instead of focusing on the absence of feeling."

Our entire lives we've been trained to feel the force through the absence of all other emotions, to feel only nothing, instead of feeling everything without blocking anything out, and I watch as he lets himself finally feel all of it.

"Luminous beings," he begins and I feel a change within him. "It's what Qui-Gon once told me we are, it's easy to forget it."

"It is," I admit, his hand now in mine and only now consumed by the force do I feel something else, a white light between us. "And just like finding that boy, I do believe things happen for a reason. Leaving the order, finding you and ending up stranded here." I have to believe it, despite how my mind likes to fight with my instincts. "I forget it, I get angry and hostile and forget everything I've ever been taught but somehow on quiet nights looking up at the galaxy I manage to find it."

All this time I've been lost, but finally I feel as if with him coming into my life I'm being pulled by the force in his direction, and I trust it.

He squeezes my hand and I finally look at him, finding galaxies in his eyes. A man I fought so fervently with, all for the sake of letting my hatred loose, and now finding little of that left in my heart.

I feel drunk on starlight now as I finally stop fighting my mind and let myself feel, pulling him down to the ground with me where we lay on our backs side by side to take it all in.

"Do you feel it?" I ask him, the strangeness that we've both felt, not just in a boy miles away, but in the space between us.

I don't need to clarify just what it is I feel as he confirms "I feel it too."

He's the one now who guides my hand having studied the star maps, pointing out the distant star systems and nearer moons, both of us smiling and laughing into the night, our hearts lighter than I knew they could ever be. My own having never felt such pure peace in its nineteen years.

I look over at him as he explains something about the moons orbital cycle and find myself more entranced by him as I study his face in the moonlight, I don't know for just how long I do so until he turns his head towards me and whatever words he's saying are forgotten when he catches my eye and I feel my breath hitch.

For just a moment I see a flash of something in his eyes, a hesitation, both of us knowing in the back of our minds this is everything we were always cautioned against, but it disappears with the feeling of the force and I see him let himself feel it, all of it, instead of trying to focus on the absence of emotion.

All I know as I look into his eyes is that this is that forbidden fruit, utterly unexpected and yet almost as if it has to be the will of the force in how we came to meet and unlike how I was told it would feel. There's no fear, no pain, nothing of the sort.

Only light.

The suns have risen as I stir awake and find my head resting on something unfamiliar and open my eyes to find my head resting on his shoulder, slowly feeling his arm around me and feel the weight of his cloak draped over us, not remembering quite how we ended up like this but vaguely remembering something about being cold.

"Obi-Wan?" I murmur, and feel his hand smoothing over my hair. "What time is it?"

"Morning," he answers from the light that hits us, sounding like he's not long woken up himself. "It seems we dozed off."

I laugh softly. "No shit."

His hand is touching my cheek as I look up at him, a gentle smile on my face that quickly disappears the moment we realise just how wrong this is despite how right it feels and I suddenly go to sit up, sand falling out of my hair and he has to help me up as I twice at my stiff muscles.

"Up you get, there you go," he says with a hand on my back and we're both laughing quietly to try to ease the tension that is utterly different to how it was when we got on that ship. "Sleep well?"

"Better than I have in days," I answer truthfully, it being the first night I haven't laid awake in either frustration or fear. "And thankfully the world hasn't fallen apart while I did."

"Don't say that too soon," he cautions. "Our lives are depending on a nine year old with a podracer."

"Don't remind me," I say having to laugh from the ridiculousness of it. "Oh Obi-Wan, we are in quite the mess aren't we."

"That we are," he says, but it's with the accidental brush of his fingers along my spine I'm blushing and he looks around as if just remembering where we are. "But it seems we got the easier part of the mission, guarding the ship."

It's then I can feel something on the tip of my tongue. "Obi-Wan, Obi- Ben? Old Ben Kenobi!" I yell out in sudden realisation. "I do remember!"

"Oh no," he groans. "Masters nickname for me when I was younger."

I'm laughing as I finally realise why I couldn't place him despite knowing Qui-Gon. "Oh now I remember Master Qui Gon mentioning you, he kept calling you old Ben- I truly thought he meant an old man not you."

"Because he said I had the soul of a old man," I'm almost crying from laughter, still half asleep. "It's not funny!"

"It really is because it's true," I laugh and he laughs with me as I reach out to touch his face after having spent the night looking into those bright eyes. "You are an old soul Ben Kenobi, but a beautiful one of that." At the colour that comes to his face I give him a thoughtless peck on the cheek and I get to my feet, a little dizzy, but happy. "Now we better actually check the ship's still intact."

I grab his hand to pull him to his feet and we walk through the ship with a newfound ease with one another, finding the pilots and security also at ease and the handmaidens giggling like the fourteen year old girls they should be, and I'm wondering from the looks they share as I walk past if they caught me outside with him.

"See, we're still flying half a ship," he says as we look around, everything in order.

"Except it's not flying that's the problem," I remind him and we head back outside to check everything out there is alright, no Tuskan Raiders creeping up on us.

I smile up at the suns kissing my face, feeling Obi-Wan slide his cloak off my shoulder's so I can feel the sun on my skin and smile up them as I bathe in it.

"Oh that is beautiful," I smile, craving the warmth it gives me and know I truly was built for Naboo's weath.

"It's not the only thing," he murmurs as if he half expected the words to remain in his head and I can't help the smile on my face as I look at him, standing there and looking at me in a way I can only call awe.

"Is that so?"

"You're made for the sun," he tells me and after a moment of contemplation continues. "Tan skin, dark hair and those big brown eyes of yours, you look as if you could bathe in it forever and you'd only grow richer from it."

His words leave me speechless and I manage to get out "I didn't realise you were so poetic Obi-Wan Kenobi."

"And I didn't realise Rhea Naberrie was well, you."

"Me?" I question, suddenly confused and he elaborates.

"You aren't the only one who remembered some things, I remember the fuss now when you left,' he reveals, finally having placed me just as I've placed him. "They called you reckless and even dangerous but looking at you now, you couldn't be further from that."

"Reckless or dangerous?" I tease but the look in his eyes makes my breath catch in my throat.

"Well you might be a little reckless, certainly a whole lot of trouble but not dangerous," he tells me, and he might be the first person, or at least the first Jedi, who has looked at me and seen what I never could. "I have no doubt you'd be deadly in a fight, you're a Jedi after all, but there's no darkness, none of that, just light."

Now I am truly speechless, especially so as he extends his saber to me and I look up at him "Obi-Wan..."

"Go on," he says with a warm smile. "I know you miss it."

He places his saber in my hands, a sign of trust, and the rush that goes through me as I ignite it brings tears to my eyes and I smile at the blue light, and at him.

"I do- I do miss it," I breathe, feeling it in my soul. "I truly do miss it."

"Then perhaps there's a way," he proposes and there he is, a light I never expected. "A way you could become a Jedi again."

Hope.

And something in me causes me to throw my arms around his neck, on the tips of my toes to reach, the saber in my hand hope materialised. When I pull back to look at him I can feel the space around us slow, his touch almost overwhelming as he holds my cheek, as my hand wraps around the back of his neck, and I realise what it is to be lost in someone's eyes.

It's in that very moment as the light is so blinding I can't feel anything else and as I search his eyes I realise just what it is I've been searching for since leaving the order, and it's right in front of me. Whether it's him, or the force, or something else. It's going to be with him.

"Rhea," he begins as we become aware of this strange feeling between us until he looks past me, feeling it just before I do.

"What is it?" I ask him, unable to determine it myself.

"I'm not sure," he answers. "But it's something strange." He looks at me before removing my hand from the back of his neck only to take it in his own. "Come on, let's find out what it is."

Quietly we make our way through the desert, the force calling us over to the horizon and we trek until we find a cave that looks unsuspecting enough but still he draws his saber and discreetly puts himself in front of me.

We expect something, anything, but when we enter we find it utterly empty, which confuses us both as we walk through it.

It's only when Obi-Wan stops I realise he's in pain.

"Obi-Wan?"

"I feel grief," he tells me as he walks through it. "Agony."

"I- I don't feel any of that," I say quietly, seeing only the light that breaks through the holes in the roof. "I just feel... relief, the type of relief that makes you want to cry, I-"

I find myself lost for words as I put a hand over my heart at the emotions that come to me, stronger than anything I've ever felt or knew I could feel, even if it's relief it's accompanied by agony just the same.

He looks back at me and I realise he's feeling it too as he reaches for his own heart.

"Obi-" I begin as I step forward as he grimaces. "Obi-Wan."

"I'm alright," he tries to insist but we both know he's not. "It's just- I've never felt anything like this."

"Neither have I," I say and reach for his hand with the need to hold onto something for stability.

"Are you alright?" he asks me as if he doesn't look as if he's about to collapse under the weight of the agony he feels. "Rhea?"

"I'm fine," I assure him, faring better than he is at least and see him looking around the cave with a pure dread. "Obi-Wan?"

He shakes his head and I hold onto him as begins "This..." he trails off unable to find the words.

"What is this?" I find myself whispering, the emotions I feel, I wish I could say they weren't my own but I know somehow that they are.

"I don't know but I don't like it," he answers shortly and grasps my hand tight in his. "We're leaving."

I don't argue with him as we leave the cave behind and yet as I look back over my shoulder I leave with a knowing that someday we'll return to it.

Neither of us acknowledges what we felt inside of there as we quickly make our way back to the ship, each of us with a newfound eagerness to get off this strange planet and just as we reach it we see them in the distance and I look at him in astonishment.

They did it.

"Rhea!" I hear Padme calling out and I let go of him to run forward towards her and she practically jumps into my arms. "We're back."

"Did you get it?"

"We got it," she smiles up at me and I instinctively look back at Obi-Wan, smiling in relief as I meet his eyes and nod in confirmation, hugging her again as Qui-Gon comes. Once the commotion has eased we realise Qui-Gon is not staying.

"Master?"

"I'm going back," he tells Obi-Wan and me. "Some unfinished business, I won't be long."

Obi-Wan sarcastically remarks "Why do I sense we've picked up another pathetic lifeform?"

"Don't insult Jar Jar," I retort, both of us laughing and Qui-Gon chuckles.

"I'm glad you two are finally getting along. It's the boy who's responsible for getting us these parts," he tells us and we quickly remember him, having forgotten about the boy with a midichlorian count that should not be possible after the events of the evening. "Get this hyperdrive generator installed."

"Yes Master," Obi-Wan says. "That shouldn't take long."

Qui-Gon goes again as quickly as he came, and we happily get to work.

I sit on top of the hyperdrive generator while Obi-Wan works on replacing the parts.

"You know what, I'm going to try to be optimistic and not worry about the ordeal that's going to be the senate until we actually get there," I tell him as I pass him the tools he needs. "But that being said I am worrying a lot."

"Your planet is under invasion, it would be strange if you weren't worrying," he replies as my legs dangle off the edge. "You quite happy up there at least?"

"Very," I answer, trying to make it last. "How are you going down there."

"Almost done," he answers and he lifts me off the generator by the waist, his hands lingering as he asks "Can you go check to see if Master Qui-Gon's near, he's been gone a while I'm starting to worry."

"Of course," I answer, still sensing some residual grief from that cave and peck his cheek again as I leave him to finish fixing the generator, but the moment I walk down the platform I know something isn't right.

My eyes catch a droid nearby, a surveillance probe, and my stomach drops knowing we're the only thing in miles it would be looking at. My instincts kick in, whether it's from the Hutt's or someone else I shoot it down and at the sound of the blaster shot Obi-Wan runs out.

"Rhea!"

I turn back to him, blaster still in hand and warn "Somebody's been watching us."

It's then both our heads whip around to the sound of a speeder and we see Qui-Gon running towards us with a boy following and a speeder not far behind.

"Anakin drop!"

The boy drops to the ground while I fire on the speeder, only for Obi-Wan to grab me in equal horror as a red blade emerges, clashing with Qui-Gons green saber.

"Go!" Qui-Gon yells out. "Tell them to take off."

It's then me grabbing Obi-Wan, dragging him back to the ship and he remains calmer than I would be if that was my master, ordering the pilot to fly low so we can escape rather than fight, and I stare down at the red and black man who meets my eye and all I feel is pure darkness as Qui-Gon manages to jump on board and we disappear into the atmosphere.

"Master!" I yell out, Obi-Wan and I coming to Qui-Gons side while the boy yells out for him.

"I'm alright," he assures us, out of breath. "Or at least I think so."

"What was that?" Obi-Wan asks, my hand on his shoulder as I stand over them.

"I'm not sure," Qui-Gon admits. "But it was well trained in the Jedi arts, my guess is it was after the queen."

I feel Obi-Wans hand reaching out for mine now as I curse under my breath and the little boy asks "What are we gonna do about it?"

Qui Gon sighs and says "We shall be patient."

"Patient!" I snap, spinning back around and feel Obi-Wan trying to calm me down. "Whatever it is is after my sister and you're saying we should be patient?"

"There's not much else we can do right now," Obi-Wan tells me, hands gripping my arms to keep me in place. "Remember what you said about not worrying."

I narrow my eyes at him but don't argue, as at peace with the force as I may be in his presence when my sister is involved that goes right out the window.

"If we see it again, it's dead," I say and he gives a permitting nod, not arguing with that after it tried to kill his master.

"Anakin Skywalker," I hear Qui-Gon say and turn my attention to the boy he's taken. "Meet Obi-Wan Kenobi."

"Hi," the boy says happily, shaking Obi-Wans hand. "You're a Jedi too? Pleased to meet you."

The apprehension I had when we heard about the boy eases when I see he's happy and considering he was most likely a slave I have no arguments but Obi-Wan and I both look at each other when we realise his age. I was taken at six and this boy would be even older than that, nine or so maybe, far too old and yet everything on this planet has been nothing but strange.

"Anakin, meet the Queen's sister Rhea," Qui-Gon says to the boy and he happily shakes my hand as well.

"Pleased to meet you too," he says and tells me "You look like Padme."

I chuckle and so does Obi-Wan, the boy's bright or at least fascinated with my sister.

"I'm pleased to meet you Anakin," I say and check him over to make sure he's not hurt after that ordeal. "Come on, let's get you some water."

With everyone back on board and hours now into our journey to the capital I stand with Padme as she watches the transmission we received while she was away, her face stone as most of the crew sleeps.

"We determined it was a trick to provoke us into giving up our location," I tell her, but it makes little difference. "We don't know if the reports of the death toll are true."

"But they could be," she says and her attention is only taken away from the matter by the boy sitting nearby and I watch as she goes over to him, her compassion stronger than her fear.

"Are you alright?" she asks him.

Only now the reality of leaving home is sinking in for the boy and I watch with concern as he says "It's very cold."

I watch as she brings him over a blanket and feel a familiar hand on my shoulder.

"You look cold as well."

I run a hand down my bare arms, not protesting as he wraps his cloak around me.

"The boy's right, space is cold," I say turning to Obi-Wan, leaving Padme with Anakin. "Is Qui-Gon alright?"

"Thankfully yes," he answers and asks me "But are you?"

In all honesty I shake my head. "My planet has been invaded and now someone who is trained in the Jedi arts is after my sister. I'm far from alright."

"Come on," he says guiding me somewhere quiet. "You should be sleeping, or at least resting. Once we reach the capital I suspect we won't be getting much."

"There's not many places to sleep on a ship like this," I yawn, despite having slept well I dare say we spent the better half of the night awake with one another. "Padme's only fourteen and dealing with all of this and more, she needs me."

"She has her handmaidens and you both need sleep," he says, likely knowing the sleep I got with him in the night was all I've had in days. Now I've had a little my body craves more, it craves it with him beside me.

We sit down together in the engine room, warmth radiating from the shield generator and I turn my head to look at him, us shoulder to shoulder, and notice the tiredness in his own face. The grief that's been there since we walked into that cave.

"So do you."

"Well come on then," he says, wrapping an arm around me with the excuse of keeping me warm and immediately he puts me at ease in a way that no one else ever has. "Let's sleep."

"Let's sleep," I repeat, him taking me in his arms enough that my head rests comfortably against his shoulder, both of us finding comfort in one another and I swear as I fall asleep I feel his lips on my forehead.

"Sweet dreams."

And I smile it back as I slip into sleep. "Sweet dreams."

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galacticwildfire · 2 years

Text

Illicit Affairs | Obi-Wan Kenobi

Five

Obi-Wan Kenobi x Amidala!oc

He hopes for her to rejoin the order, while she hopes for him to leave, and both are left reeling from their illicit affair, until ten years later he is once again called to her sister's service and they are catapulted into each other's lives by a war that will set them on the same path of secrecy and tragedy.

Word count: 6.4k

Tags/warnings: oral f!recieving, fingering, unprotected penetrative sex w pulling out (jedi don't excel in sex education), fluff with an undertone of underlying angst and mourning (sorry qui-gon but they couldn't wait)

His fingertips stroke the loose locks of the hair that have fallen out of my braid as I listen to his heartbeat beneath where my head rests on his chest, my oxygen mask on the table beside us. The sun is rising and the city celebrates.

But for us it is a different story.

Qui-Gon was a mentor for me, never my master, but a figure I could turn to when I felt there was no one else who understood how I thought. A figure who embraced me again the moment he found me here on Naboo, who still made me feel welcome despite being excommunicated from the order, who gave me faith. Who put my saber in my hand and let me be what he believed I am destined to be.

But for Obi-Wan, he lost his master, a father. He has lost truly.

No words need to be spoken between us, only felt with the touch of our hands, holding onto each other with such a desperation that to let go would feel like losing strength because that is what we give one another.

Strength.

And hope.

We stay like that until we see ships entering the atmosphere through the open window, slowly we rise and my body aches to the point I have to lie back down, and so he is the one who looks out towards the window, our hands still joined.

"Master Windu and Master Yoda," he says and his face falls. "They know."

Of course they would feel the death of a fellow Master.

But it is Obi-Wan who suffers.

"Obi-Wan," I breathe hoarsely and he looks back at me, hand coming to touch my face, eyes falling down to the bruises around my neck and he manouvres me up until I'm sitting at the edge of the bed albeit bent over, my head still pounding and throat aching as he bends down so he is looking up at me, eyes fixed on me with concern, but it is his pain which I cannot bear.

He helps me force more painkillers down my throat and kneels down, face level with mine as I lean forward and press a kiss to his cheek which still tastes of salt from the tears, knowing soon we must depart from here to face the day. We faced the night together, but it's the thought of facing the day without him that I don't know if I can do.

"I can't bare the thought of what comes after this," I confess to him, tears in my eyes as I hold his face in my hands. "I don't want you to leave."

"I won't," he promises me, eyes level with mine.

"You won't have a choice," I whisper tearfully, now the mission is done, he has his duty to the order. "Obi-Wan, you're job is done here."

He shakes his head, denial in his eyes as he kisses the inside of my palm. "My job is not done until you return to the order with me."

"Obi-" He kisses me, his lips soft but so full of pain and I know he can taste my tears as he lets go of my lips to kiss away them away, murmuring "I'm not leaving you, I won't."

In our eyes is madness, the knowing that to part would be to die.

"Obi-Wan I-" before I can confess my heart to him I feel movement in the hallway and sense Padme, no doubt coming to check on me and tell him "Come to my room here in the palace."

He gives me a determined nod and it's then the door opens, Padme's caught by surprise by us but is far from scandalised after all she's seen these past days.

"Obi-Wan, you should know more Jedi have come to the city for the celebration and to deal with the aftermath of the invasion."

"We'll be there," Obi-Wan says, speaking for me knowing I still struggle with it. "Thank you, your Highness."

"May I take my sister home?" she asks him and he nods, helping me to my feet and giving me to Padme, checking me over to make sure I can walk. "Thank you."

As she guides me out of the room I look over my shoulder at him, knowing where he will meet me.

She does not ask me anything until we are in my room in the palace and she has had a bath run for me. Once the attendants are gone and it's just us she speaks plainly.

"You have feelings for Obi-Wan," she states and I nod. "I thought Jedi were not allowed-"

"They aren't," I say hoarsely and try to tell her "Nothing has passed between us."

Much has passed between us, but nothing physical, nothing like the scandalous things she'd expect of me, not yet at least. Only the very thing the code forbids, attachment.

She nods, not quite believing me, but does not press further. "Rest, I will see you this afternoon."

She leaves me to refresh myself for the celebration and the chancellors arrival to the city, for the people of Naboo it's celebration, for us it is cleaning up the aftermath.

Knowing Obi-Wan will come looking for me I remove my lightsaber singed clothes and put them aside as I slide into the steaming bath, for the first time seeing the extent of the bruises which cover me and let my head fall back against the tub, not even bothering to undo my braid which falls into the water.

Not daring to think of what comes next I try to rest, but when the door slides open and he silently slips in locking it behind him, I know that the moment of reckoning will come soon.

My head pokes up and my eyes meet his, he immediately averts his gaze, flushing but my modesty is the last thing on my mind.

"Obi-Wan," I breathe, the cloudy water resting just above my breasts and coax him over, fully vulnerable for him.

He comes to my side, cautious as I look up at him with wide eyes, and reach for his hand, bringing his trembling fingers to my lips, kissing each individually, my eyes never leaving his.

"Rhea," he breathes with uncertainty, while I am certain of only one thing.

"I don't want to think of tomorrow," I tell him. "All I want to feel is you."

To be completely consumed by him and nothing else. Just him.

His lips touch mine, sending shocks through my naked body, each touch of his fingertips along my shoulder electric. From the bath I'm peeling the cloak from his shoulders with wet fingertips, each damp mark upon his clothes evidence of our sin. But with the light that shines upon us all I see is him.

He pulls away as I go to rise from the bath and he takes my hand, eyes never leaving mine as I stand naked and he holds my hand like a gentleman as I step out, water dripping from my body onto the stone floor and feel him wrap his own cloak around my shoulders, giving me some modesty, giving him something for him to undress as he turns me back around to him, breath heavy and eyes dark as he takes my braid, moving it over my shoulder so he can use his fingers to untangle it until a mess of dark curls frames my face and he takes me in, like he's memorising my face as I do his before kissing me.

For the first time I taste his tongue, soft and inquisitive, much like his hands running over my cloaked shoulders and down my arms while I find my hands on his chest, aching for the skin beneath my fingers wrap around the edge of his robes, pulling at them as his hands fall to my waist, squeezing over the fabric he wrapped me in, both of us aching.

He breaks away to caution me "If we keep going-"

"I want to," I quickly answer much to his surprise.

He searches my eyes, seeing no hesitance and instead asks me "Have you ever-"

I shake my head and my gut tells me to inquire "Have you?"

"Once, long ago," he tells me and I know who he refers to, the mystery woman he loved years ago, and he holds my face between his hands. "Tell me you want this."

"I do," I breathe without any doubts and confess "I- I've never done this before, but this feels right, that it's with you."

"Are you sure?" he asks again, anxious that I could regret this and I nod, bringing his hand to my lips, desperate for him.

"I want you Obi-Wan, all I want is you, to feel all of you," I tell him and whisper. "Please, want this as much as I do."

"I do," he promises me, fingers tangling in my hair as he brings his lips back down to mine, hands now certain as they slide the cloak from my shoulders, letting it fall to the floor, all that's left covering me is the curls falling over my breasts and his voice is deep. "More than anything."

My entire life I've always tried to be in control, since leaving the order I have been, always trying to take the lead, always trying to take care of everyone else. But now I let him take it, wanting to be taken care of for once. Wanting him to take care of me, even though I should be the one taking care of him.

"Let me," I breathe, turning my attention to his robes, removing his belt and loosening the robes that cover his chest and open them to find his bare chest beneath all while he's fixated on the curls over my breasts and I'm smiling as I have to bring his attention back to my eyes with a finger under his chin and tease. "Obi-Wan."

His cheeks are red and pupils blown wide as he leans in and kisses me, pressing soft kissing along my chin down my neck. "Your hair," he murmurs in my ear, coming to hold me in his arms as he breathes me in. "I love your hair."

I smile as his lips move down my neck, kissing over the bruises as my breathing becomes sharper as he moves my hair back over my shoulder, replacing it with his lips, straining his neck as he presses hot kisses to my flesh and I move him back to the couch, leaning him on the armrest as he pulls me between his legs to get better access to me. My hands work quickly at his robes, in my struggles practically tearing them from his shoulders, my hands rough as I finally remove them, all while his are gentle, cautiously exploring my body, sliding up and down my arms, my back, trying to take his time with me.

It's my mistake as in my rush to feel I try to climb into his lap, only to overbalance us and forgetting he's sitting on the arm of a couch toppling us down into it, my hand slamming down onto his chest as we fall and the other landing beside his head. I can't help but let out a gasp as we collide only for him to laugh, me following and we slow down for a moment. My naked body atop his and my hair hanging down like a curtain around his face. We're smiling at each other as he strokes my cheek, eyes looking upon one another in the softest type of awe as he brings my face down to touch his, foreheads touching and noses bumping as I feel his smile, as I feel the light.

"Rhea," he breathes my name like it's a prayer, some precious sacred thing. "All I feel is you. No pain, no fear. Just you."

"Hope," I finish for him and he nods, eyes falling closed as I run my fingertips down his chest, through the soft ginger curls on his chest to the darker ones at his navel, and feel his breath hitch, taking note of how he likes to be touched and bring my lips along his jaw and down his neck, kissing slowly until I feel a moan deep in his throat and suck gently so I don't leave a mark, but it's enough for him. I bring his hand to my waist before slowly dragging it upwards to my breast and he scrapes the side of it with his knuckle, experimentally graze my nipple before taking my breast in his hand, much of my weight being dispersed between there and my hips, my thighs.

"You're soft," he murmurs, thumb running over my nipple while the other rests at my waist and breathes "I want to touch you."

"Then touch me."

He grinds up into me and I can't help the whimper that rises in my throat, one he captures with his mouth, and I gasp as he lifts me up in his arms, carrying me to my bed where he lays me down on the edge, finally taking control as his lips move from my neck down between my breasts, paying particular attention to the softness of my waist and navel, fixated most on the softest parts of me, my thighs being no exception as his lips skim over my hip bone down to my knee, fingertips running along my calf and beneath my knee as he brings it up over his shoulder to give him better access to the inside of my thighs.

He holds my gaze as he presses kisses to the soft flesh there but my head falls back as his lips kiss where no one's ever even touched and my other leg comes up over his shoulder, his hair brushing the sensitive flesh between my thighs and his tongue-

"Obi-Wan!" I cry out and he looks up at me, eyes dark and breath heavy, and now I'm the one crying out his name like a prayer. "Don't- don't stop, please- oh-"

My hips lift up off the edge of the bed as he tastes me, and all I see is light through my closed eyelids until I'm a mess beneath his lips, not that he seems to mind. I'm crying out his name, pleas falling from my lips as pleasure consumes me, utterly wrecks me, and my hips finally return to the bed. My breathing begins to steady as he softly kisses up my abdomen, lips kissing the hollow of my jaw, my cheek until I bring them to mine, spent, but with so much more yet to explore.

"Obi-Wan," I breathe, him kissing my fingers as we hear the sounds of the trumpets outside, recognising its tune, that the chancellor has arrived. "Can we just stay here?"

He chuckles softly. "I wish we could, but they'll be questions if we're nowhere to be found."

I raise a teasing eyebrow "Well, as long as they don't know we're here."

He sits me up in his lap and plays with my hair as he tells me "Your sister needs you more than I do."

"She doesn't need me," I say, knowing she is the last person to ever need someone, at least not in this moment, and my voice turns serious. "But you do."

"Your sister's waiting for you, and there's no doubt Master Yoda and Master Windu will be looking for me," he says regrettably as I hold his face in my hand and he leans into my touch. "Tonight. Tonight after everything is done I'll come to see you."

"You better," I joke lightly, to hide my own desperation. "If not I'll be the one seeking you out."

"I don't doubt that," he says and looks around, reaching for a blanket to wrap around me and covers my hand with his. "Qui-Gon told us there was a reason for this, and I believe him. Even if it feels like madness."

Is that what I do to him? With the touch of my fingers on his chest I feel his heart skip a beat and know it is true.

"Well Kenobi," I say, my hand on his chest trying to keep it light despite the fear that nags at me. "You should get going then."

He raises an eyebrow and I laugh as he throws me off his lap back onto the bed, peppering me with kisses until he finally can tear himself off me and stands at the edge of the bed looking at me lying there naked twisted in blankets, chest heaving. I can see him look from the clock to the window before picking up his robes in frustration, flustered, and I smile exhausted at him from where I lie on the bed, laughing as he goes to step forward to give me another kiss before deciding against it, too flustered to fall into another trap.

"I-" he tries to find words but can't and just ends up shaking his head, smiling like an idiot. "I'll see you there."

"See you there," I smile and he steals a few more looks at me lying there naked before he heads out the door, only a few moments pass before he walks back in.

"Forgot my cloak."

I truly can't contain my laughter as he scuttles across the room for his cloak and back out, waving as he leaves and I can't help but adore that man.

I take a look at the clock and curse, realising the trumpets only give us fifteen minutes notice for an arrival and now I'm the one scuttling across the room for clothes, finding myself a crimson coloured dress suited to the warmer weather and look at myself in the mirror, my curls absolutely wild thanks to Obi-Wan and I don't attempt to tame them, but reach for my boots, fingers fumbling as I try to lace them up and reach for my belt, my saber tumbling to the floor in my haste and I take a moment to pause knowing the council will want to see me.

And I want them to see me with my saber.

To remind them that they can't be rid of me that easily.

Obi-Wan has joined the greeting party before I have, Padme's head turning towards me and eyes widening at the sight of my hair, wild whereas hers is always styled to perfection, her eyes darting to the culprit before coming back to me and shaking her head a little, amused, before looking back to the ship which is landing.

A soft voice calls my name. "Rhea."

I look to see Obi-Wan with Anakin and walk to them, anxious for what's coming.

"When they arrive you will come with me to greet them," Obi-Wan says, looking at little Anakin and then back to me. "The council will depart the ship with the Chancellor, I want them to know what you did, that you're as much a Jedi as I am."

I nod, trying to suppress an emotional smile at his faith in me, and we look to the ship as it opens. I expect the Chancellor, but it is Palpatine who exits, there's a moment of mild confusion before my stomach drops and my face hardens.

He won.

He won the election.

That slimy bastard actually won.

Obi-Wan looks at me, sensing I'm displeased and the Viceroy is brought before us for Padme to address.

"Now Viceroy, be glad it was I who found you and not my sister. Otherwise I doubt you would be alive to face the senate," Padme says to him, it being nothing but true. "Now you will have to go and explain all this."

Panaka steps forward. "I think you can kiss your trade franchise goodbye."

I wear a proud grin as the Viceroy is carted off before Palpatine again comes into my field of vision, Obi-Wan nods to me and we step forward together, a united front for the Jedi to see, with Anakin beside us.

"We are indebted to you for your bravery Obi-Wan Kenobi," Palpatine tells him and looks to me, unable to hide the disturbance he sees at the strangulation marks on my neck. "I hear it was an equal effort for a Jedi Padawan soon to be knight and excommunicated Jedi. This will cause a stir amongst the Jedi Council I am sure of it."

"Good," I answer proudly. "I hope it does."

He looks down at Anakin. "And you young Skywalker, we will watch your career with great interest."

He continues over to Padme and the council look upon Obi-Wan and I, it is Mace Windu who is bold enough to make a comment.

"So, you killed a sith."

"We did," I Obi-Wan answers proudly. "Although it was Rhea's Vaapad that truly caught the Sith off guard. It was her who held off the Sith in single combat, it was only I who finished him"

Not quite the truth, but I'm not going to correct him when Mace Windu actually looks impressed. "It seems the faith I had in you young Naberrie was not completely misplaced."

"Well, it took you long enough," I tell him, unable to help myself and my stomach drops at the sight of her. My former master steps forward and I'm left speechless as she takes my hands in hers.

"We are in your debt Rhea."

"Thank you Master," I swallow.

She lets go and Obi-Wan and I stay behind as the council moves in closer to hear what Palpatine says to Padme but I have to turn my back to them to hide the smile on my face, at the fact that finally, finally I have made them proud.

"See," Obi-Wan tells me. "There's still hope."

And I believe him.

Obi-Wan leaves to meet privately with Yoda while Padme and I finally take a moment to breathe.

"Before we left Tatooine Obi-Wan told me he believed there was hope for me to return to the order," I tell her, pacing around the room. "I didn't believe it, but now- oh Padme, they were impressed with me. Master Windu was impressed. I truly believe he's right."

While my head is in the clouds, Padme is grounded.

"Only days ago you told me why you remembered you left the order," she says, going back to Coruscant. "I saw you after your meeting with the council, you swore you had done the right thing leaving and now you want to go back?"

"It isn't about wanting to go back, it's-"

"About him," she says and I fall quiet. "It's about Obi-Wan."

"Padme-"

"I see how you look at each other, you don't think I haven't noticed every time you've disappeared since the moment this all started that it's been with him? All the hours you've spent together alone, and that when you're apart you're always looking for him? You have feelings for him, and that is why you want to return."

"You need to understand-"

"I do understand," she says, and her voice softens. "But I want you to understand why you want to return. Is it because you agree with what the order stands for, or is it because you're falling in love with him?"

I sit down and tuck my knees up to my chest knowing she's right, and the fantasy of it fades away. After I met with the council I was determined I had made the right choice, that my stance was right, but Obi-Wan... he sees me, he has faith in me, he believes we met for a reason and so do I.

"I think I am Padme," I confide in her, and try to force myself to think rather than feel. "For so long I've been searching for a purpose and now that I've found it again I'm not ready to let it go."

She nods and begins. "You know, there's a reason I took the name Amidala when I was elected. I took the name of my older sister because she taught me what strength was, she taught me to fight for what I believed in even if it meant being outcasted and outspoken. You leaving the order made me believe that no matter how powerful something is that I can stand against it and use my voice for the greater good. It was the strength you taught me that got me through this ordeal. Do not forget it now."

I look at her, seeing the girl I was at fourteen, a girl I can't help but feel I'm betraying. "I just- all I know is that the force brought me to him and I can't ignore that."

"Then don't," she advises. "But stand your ground, do not give into the council's demands for you to conform."

I breathe in deeply. "Obi-Wan is now speaking with Yoda about training Anakin, if the council doesn't agree to train the boy I believe he'll follow Qui-Gon's example and leave the council if he must to train him, to honour Qui-Gon."

"Then wait to see if he will join you in leaving before you force yourself to join him."

I look at my sister, wondering just when she became so wise, far wiser than me and know that no matter how much Obi-Wan has come to mean to me, she will always come first.

Please Obi-Wan, please leave the order, please don't make me leave her.

I can't.

I can't betray myself and everything I believe in to love him.

I stand in the shadows waiting for him at sunset, waiting for him to leave his meeting with Yoda, finally after what feels like a lifetime he emerges and he walks over to me, hugging me tight.

"Well?"

"I'm a Jedi Knight," he says and I smile despite the way my heart falls. "Anakin will be my padawan."

I smile despite the pain, the pain at the decision before me now the council has agreed to allow him to train Anakin. "That is incredible Obi-Wan."

He kisses my forehead and looks around, pulling me into a more private place. "Everything is falling into place."

"Yes," I breathe, smiling up at him, only allowing my face to fall as he embraces me and it's hidden in his shoulder. "It is."

I cling to him tighter now, breathing him in and memorise the feeling of him, unable to ignore the sickness in my stomach at the thought of having to let him go.

When he pulls back I have to force myself to smile and the brightness in his eyes makes me want to cry as he holds my face so gently. "You will be a Jedi again Rhea, I promise you."

"Careful," I tease. "Don't push your luck too far."

"Well, it worked with Anakin," he says, thumb brushing the corner of my lip. "Qui-Gon, he believed in change, in there being a place for people like you and him. This is the start of that."

"I hope so," I tell him truthfully, but he can see the sadness in my eyes. "Come on, once the sun is down the funeral will start."

We stand together watching as Qui-Gon is cremated. While I'm filled with uncertainty Obi-Wan has found peace knowing he is fulfilling his master's wishes.

Oh Qui-Gon, what would you tell me now?

"What will happen to me now?" Anakin asks, and I wish I could ask the same.

"The council have given me permission to train you," Obi-Wan tells him as a silent tear rolls down my cheek. "You will be a Jedi, I promise."

Hidden by the sleeves of his robe Obi-Wan's hand reaches for mine, his pinkie locking around mine as we watch on, and he can feel that I do not share his confidence in all this, but he doesn't say anything now, not when we are surrounded by the council who I will no doubt face again come tomorrow.

Anakin will be a Jedi, but my fate is still uncertain.

Once the flames have begun to ease Obi-Wan looks to me and whispers as the council disperses "I will see to Anakin and then I will find you."

I nod and watch as he leaves with the boy, and Padme comes to my side.

"Are you alright?"

I look at her and nod, knowing she is not the sister to burden with this.

"Have you spoken to mom and dad since the hospital?" I ask her and she nods as well.

"They're okay, they all are, grandma as well. They were taken to jail separate to the camps, it seems despite everything we do to hide my identity someone in my council gave them up to the Viceroy. I don't want to think what might have happened if you and the Jedi had not killed the sith lord and saved us all in time."

I shake my head, feeling the burden of duty more heavily now than ever. "It's my job," I tell her, as much as myself. "To protect."

"Rest," she tells me, and clarifies. "That is an order, not a suggestion."

"Yes my queen," I smile slightly and she leaves along with her handmaidens while I stand there looking at the dying flames cursing myself for putting myself in this position.

It's almost midnight when I'm standing on my balcony looking out at the city, my home. Looking to the district where my family no doubt sleeps, my father, my mother, and my sister Sola, while Padme is just down the hall.

I know what the council will ask of me, the sacrifice they will ask me to make.

But I know I can't do it.

When he enters, knowing something isn't right.

"Rhea?"

"I can't do it," I immediately tell him and turn back to look at him standing there caught off guard. "I cannot leave my family, I cannot abandon everything I fought for because I am falling for you Obi-Wan."

He cautiously approaches. "I would never ask you to."

"I know you wouldn't," I say and let out a huff. "But the council will."

He shakes his head "You don't know that."

"I do," I say, unable to just sit and pray for the impossible. "And they will Obi, I'm not Qui-Gon-."

"They swore they would not allow Anakin to be trained but I stood my ground and they made the compromise," he says, taking my face in his hands. "Tomorrow we will go to the council and we will fight for you to return on your own terms. You can be proof to them that a Jedi can love their family while serving as part of the order. Qui-Gon believed in change, this is exactly what he made way for. He had faith in you, and so do I."

I nod, needing to keep faith and right now he is the only thing I can keep faith in, it's him that gives me the strength that I will need for tomorrow. To be the woman Padme admires, the woman Padme took the name Amidala after.

But I can't walk into that room under false pretences.

"Obi-Wan," I breathe as he holds my face in his hands. "Tell me that if I walk into that room tomorrow, that whatever this is, you won't change your mind?"

"Why would I change my mind?" he asks me in pure confusion and I place a hand over his chest, choosing to be honest.

"Because I don't even know what this is and I am afraid that you don't know either."

His face draws together in concern and he moves closer to me, thumb stroking my cheek as he tells me "I don't think either of us know what this is, but I know what I feel and I know what this can be, and I don't want it to end."

"I'm falling for you Obi," I tell him and watch his eyes soften. "Maybe I already have and that terrifies me, but the moment I look into your eyes all I know is I don't want this to end either." And it's with those words I make my choice. "I will stand my ground," I declare, searching his eyes for the strength I need. "I will fight."

He smiles in relief and kisses my forehead as I steady my breathing, and he murmurs in my ear as I find myself tugging him closer "Now, what was that you said about falling for me?"

I let out a breathless laugh and look back up at him "Tell me Obi-Wan, if this is not falling what is?"

He gives me a somewhat pained smile. "I never thought I'd ever fall for anyone again, yet there you came, charging into my life with a blaster in hand and here I am, a Jedi Knight fighting to get my secret lover back into the order."

He sounds like he can't even believe it himself and I tease "Is that what we are, lovers?"

His cheeks flush as he tells me "You make me feel alive in a way I never have, make me question everything I have ever believed about the code and make everything Qui-Gon taught me make sense. Meeting you has been like having everything I ever believed in turned on its head, and seeing everything that I never saw before, seeing you. Qui-Gon believed we were brought together for a reason, neither of us know what, but it's enough that I know I need you and I will fight for us as long as you let me."

There's tears in my eyes as I breathe "I will. I will let you fight for us, and so will I."

His lips collide with mine, my one certainty in this uncertain world, that he and I were brought together for a reason. That together we have a purpose.

We stumble back towards the bed, lips and hands desperate, clothes being torn off and discarded on the floor with little of the gentleness of earlier until we are both bare for one another and I pull him down on top of me, needing him like I've never needed anything before.

"Rhea," he breathes as I kiss his neck, feeling his pulse racing as his hand drags along my naked body whilst mine explore his, the muscle beneath his warm skin and my lips are on his shoulder as his hand slips between my legs and he brings his other to hold my face, eyes searching mine as he touches me.

"Does this feel good?" he asks me as he curls his fingers inside of me.

"Yes!" I gasp out as I grind into his palm and his lips are on my jaw. "Obi, I need you."

"Shh," he chuckles, even though I feel him achingly hard against my leg. "We have all night."

Except I'm already starting to reach the same peak his mouth brought me to before with every rocking motion of his hand and I'm smiling breathless as I tell him "I'm not going to last all night."

"Good," he grins and kisses me, each movement of his hand precise until I'm choking out his name and he's holding my hip down as he murmurs in my ear. "That's it sweetheart."

I'm gasping out his name and drowning in his eyes as I come undone under his touch and I'm seeing stars as he kisses me. I wear a weary smile as I hold his face and suddenly he's the one who's flushed as he looks down at our naked bodies.

"Don't go shy on me now," I tease and he wears a nervous smile.

"It's hard not to when you're so beautiful," he tells me, searching my eyes. "And when you make me feel the things I do."

With those words I kiss him and a wave of seriousness washes over us and my legs are opening wider for him as he slots between them, our lips moving together slowly in between the promise leaving my lips. "I feel it too."

Suddenly all I feel is him and the force, it becoming stronger with every touch, with every kiss, until our bodies become one and we are one in the force. But more carnally he's so deep inside me I feel him hitting a wall I never knew existed, filling me so completely. My legs are wrapped tight around his hips and his fingers laced with mine, using it as leverage for his thrusts, his forehead falls against mine as he breathes my name. His movements are slow but deep, carefully picking up pace with each thrust, holding my body in his embrace, his breathes soft grunts against my own mouth, wide open in ecstasy praying his name.

As his body tenses above me he stills himself, pulling out and kissing down my neck, down my breasts until I bring his mouth back to mine and he flips us over, pulling me on top of him and the way he looks at me there on his back as I take him inside of me is one that will be engrained in my mind for long to come and he's the one gasping out my name now. I'm uncertain of how to move until his hands are on my hips, and a soundless cry leaves my throat at how good he feels like this, grinding down into him as he's as deep as he can possibly be and I bring my hand to my lower stomach, swearing I can feel him through there.

"You feel incredible," he breathes unevenly as he helps me find a steady rhythm, slow and deep and excruciatingly good, sighing his name as he sits up, our chests pressed together and eyes level as we move together and we share a breathless smile as he holds my face "My darling."

"Obi," I sigh and my forehead rests on his as his fingers dig into my waist, our bodies moving faster and I swear I hear a curse leave his lips as I tighten around him, yet still aching to be closer to him, to be able to feel his own heart and he watches me come undone, his lips swallowing the sounds of it as he slips out of me, warmth spilling across the inside of my thigh that he cleans up as my head falls onto his shoulder, smiling breathless as he kisses my forehead and brings my lips back to his, soft and sweet.

I smile, our bodies flush together and spent, the connection forged like light binding us, so bright I could almost reach out and touch it, and find myself touching his face.

"That- that was," I try to find the words "Wow."

"It was," he says and there's a strangeness to it. "It- it's not usually like that. The force-"

Neither of us know how to explain it, but there is no explaining the force.

He looks at me, searching my brown eyes like they're something to be explored, and perhaps he deems them important enough to be. His nose bumps mine as he moves in to kiss me, both of us savouring the taste and I look out towards the balcony to the dark sky.

"It seems the night belongs to us," I tell him, relishing the cool Naboo breeze.

"It does," he says, kissing my forehead. "So let's make the most of it."

I smile as he lays me back down, his fingers lacing with mine as we set out to explore all of each other that two possibly can within a night, the dawn uncertain.

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galacticwildfire · 2 years

Text

Illicit Affairs | Obi-Wan Kenobi

Eleven

Obi-Wan Kenobi x Amidala!oc

Word count: 7.4k

Tags/warnings: fluffy, alcohol, mentions of sex, obi-wan being scandalised, anakin being anakin

We sit in Padme's apartment, all three of us no doubt developing bruises from throwing ourselves out of windows and speeders. But Obi-Wan doesn't need to know I did just the same hours before he arrived here, even if I'm starting to feel the bruises from that fight.

"You all look awful," Padme says, making us tea well past midnight, Dorme her only companion besides the security. "So you believe it was a bounty hunter?"

"She said it was a bounty hunter," I say, gladly accepting her tea. "Who then killed her before she could give him up."

"Thank you very much," Obi-Wan says accepting Padme's tea, as well mannered as ever. Both of us too afraid to ask for caf instead since Padme would rouse on us considering the time and I know better than to ask her for alcohol.

"We will find him Padme," Anakin's promises her while Obi-Wan and I share a look, too exhausted to listen to Anakin fawning over her.

"I have every faith you will," Padme says, sitting down beside him as I move into the kitchen to find something extra to add to it while she's distracted and Obi-Wan follows.

"More sugar?" Obi-Wan asks, wanting any excuse to not have to watch Anakin's shameless flirting, and instead I reach for the top cupboard she thinks I don't know about it. "Ah."

"If you don't tell Padme I'll give you some," I say and he gives me a stiff nod, not arguing as I pour more than a standard drink into each of our teas, knowing we both need it.

"So, what's next," I ask him, just wanting to sleep but not wanting to part from him yet.

"Tomorrow Anakin and I will see the council so we can move forward with the investigation," he tells me and I give him a soft smile at his decision.

"Thank you Obi-Wan."

"Well considering Anakin got you electrocuted it's the least I can do."

I laugh and feel Padme look over to me before keeping Anakin occupied.

"Would you like to join us?" he asks and I'm surprised.

"You want to bring me back in front of the council?"

"Well you have a way of getting things across," he says with a small smile. "Let them regret not taking you back."

I can't help the mischief in mine. "Pissing off the council, now you've got me on board."

"Well that's not how I'd phrase it, but yes," he smiles, reaching over to squeeze my shoulder and hesitates before asking. "Tell me, have you still been continuing your training on your own?"

On my own? No.

"Yes," I tell him, lying to him a foreign feeling, but now isn't the time for all that. Not when we have a lead to follow. "I've spent the last ten years trying to train myself for better or for worse."

He searches my eyes but makes the decision to believe me.

"Then let them see that," he says and lets me rest my head on his shoulder as he rubs my back. "You should sleep."

"So should you," I reply, knowing we're just as stubborn as each other. "But you don't want to leave Anakin flirting with my sister."

"Yes, well, he could at least be more subtle about it."

"We were hardly subtle," I chuckle, smiling at the memories. "Is this what Qui-Gon thought whenever he'd catch us alone in empty rooms?"

"Well," he says as I look up at him and his eyes are on mine. "When you put it like that."

Fondly I remember as I hear the two of them talking "We were that young once."

I was Anakin's age, and he was Padme's.

"It is strange looking back at it now isn't it?"

"It's not that strange," I say, understanding what I felt better now than I ever did before. "It's the most natural thing, finding comfort in another person."

He wraps his arm around my shoulders, almost like an old friend would. Almost. "You aren't wrong."

I reach back for his hand and squeeze it tight. "We should sleep, Anakin will watch Padme."

He nods and we head back out to them.

"I doubt they'll try anything else tonight so we're going to rest," I tell them. "We'll be seeing the Jedi Council in the morning."

Padme nods and looks between us before saying. "Sleep well."

She's soon back into conversation with Anakin as I take Obi-Wan to the guest bedroom, finding it of course occupied by Dorme and so against any sense I have I take him into mine. His own senses must be gone for he actually comes in.

He hangs his cloak up over a chair while I sit on the edge of my queen sized bed. For a moment neither of us say anything but just look at one another, feeling everything between us.

"I'm glad you're here Obi-Wan," I finally say, knowing words can never express how much.

"So am I my dear," he says and I can't help myself as I come to my feet and find myself in his arms. An embrace of two people with ten years of longing for one another, what I wanted to do the moment I saw him. I feel him breathe me in as he holds me tight and breathes my name "Rhea."

Gently I feel him untying my braid and letting his fingers run through it until my hair is loose and feel his breath hitch in his throat as I nuzzle my head in the crook of his neck, neither of us wanting to move. When I finally look up at him it's clear that ten years has changed nothing except make the ache of longing deeper.

We don't need to say anything as he lays in my bed, my head on his chest, both of us too exhausted to think rationally, to think of consequences. In our positions all we do is think of the consequences of our actions, all we do is try to be rational. But when we're with one another it doesn't matter. Because it's just us and no one else.

"Obi?"

"Hmm?"

"Have you been happy?" I ask him, such a silly question but one that's been on my mind these many years and the question is one that leaves him silent in contemplation for a moment.

"I've been happy enough," he tells me, having to bite back a gasp as his fingertips run along my spine. "But that doesn't mean I haven't had doubts." The pain in his voice makes my heart ache. "Have you been happy?"

"I feel as if all I've had these many years are doubts," I confide in him, years of utter self destruction all in the name of not feeling that aching numbness inside of me, Dooku quickly nipped that in the bud. "When Padme told me you were coming..." I can't find the words and instead tell him "I've missed you."

Three simple words that could not even begin to touch the agony I've been in.

But he knows.

"I've missed you too," he says quietly and holds me, both of us barely conscious at this point. "Sweet dreams my dear."

"Sweet dreams Obi," I smile softly and feel his lips on my forehead as I drift off into my dreams, for the first time not having to imagine him holding me.

The room's filled with light as I wake, I could be forgiven for thinking the events of the previous day were the dream of a homesick girl, but here he is.

I look up at him, finding him awake and watching me with nothing but adoration in his eyes, something I return. My hand trails up his chest to cup his bearded face and his eyes fall closed at my touch, his chin tilting so his lips can brush the edge of my hand and my own eyes close at the roughness of his beard next to the softness of his mouth.

"Obi," I murmur sleepily and feel his tired smile.

Although our peace is just as quickly disrupted by Anakin.

"Obi-Wan?" Anakin calls out from the hallway like a lost puppy and I just laugh while Obi-Wan sighs.

"A common occurrence?"

"I'm convinced I've atoned for all my wrongs as a padawan through training Anakin," he groans, with a strong love for his padawan but also a deep frustration. "Patience is the first thing I came to learn."

"Old Ben Kenobi," I chuckle as his fingers lace with mine. "Qui-Gon did foresee it."

"That he did," he says, still groggy from sleep yet the most beautiful I've ever seen him with the light in his eyes. He was always handsome, a handsome boy with a baby face and bright eyes, but now here he is bearded and wise with eyes that are still just as bright. The sight of him is enough to make me forget all the reasons this very moment we share should not be happening.

"You're more beautiful than ever," he murmurs reaching out to play with my hair as if our thoughts are the same.

"And you're more handsome than ever," I say reaching out to stroke his beard before running my fingers through his long hair. "You truly are a sight, I don't know how the council allows you to walk around looking like you do."

That makes him chuckle "Well after this I dare say they may put a stop to that."

"Obi-Wan?" we hear Anakin still calling and sigh as Obi-Wan reluctantly sits up.

"I best coach Anakin on what to say, or rather not say, before we see the council."

I nod, not quite ready to let him go and we sit there together in bed for a moment with my head on his shoulder, as if it is how we could wake up every day despite it being the first in ten years.

He looks at me as if trying to regain his senses, telling himself he's already gone too far, before shaking his head and leaning forward to press his lips to my forehead, fingers running through the curls of my hair as I let myself be consumed by that simple innocent touch for as long as he'll let me.

"I'll see you outside," he says, forcing himself to pull away and he doesn't look back as he takes his cloak with him, knowing if he does he may not leave.

With the ghost of his lips on my forehead I force myself to leave the sheets that smell like him to get ready. I go to shower but the feeling of him on me is too comforting to remove just yet, and so I hesitate before stepping inside remembering it's the council we'll be seeing. I can't afford to leave any trace of him on me.

But even as I shower I can't help the memories that come of that night together and the dawn after, and yet even then they pale to feeling of waking up with him now and I press my eyes shut as I confront the fact it isn't feelings I had for a boy a decade a go that I feel, but an overwhelming adoration for the man he's become.

And that- that is more dangerous than any memory could be.

I dress myself nicely in crimson, regal enough to be seen with the dignity and respect befitting my position as a former Princess of Theed but still suitable enough for a fight if one finds me. After all much of the training I undertook with Padme and her handmaidens was learning to fight no matter how inappropriately dressed we are for it, and so I leave my long hair loose, unable to bear it any other way.

When I leave my room Padme is already looking at me with a raised eyebrow, knowing the room Obi-Wan came out of is mine. I give a guilty smile and she just shakes her head at me, knowing she was right about how I feel, hell she was so right I can even admit it.

Obi-Wan stands there with two cups of caf in hand, one for him and one for me. The simple gesture warming me more than the drink ever could.

"Ready?" Obi-Wan asks me and I nod, ready to once again face the Council.

Even if the last time I faced them was when I lost him, and so I know this time we won't make the mistake of letting them see our hearts so plainly.

Neither of us speak of the night nor the morning as we go to the temple, partially because Anakin is with us, but moreso because neither of us are willing to admit it is a mistake in every definition of the word, not one we're prepared to face, not one we're prepared to end.

As we come to the steps of the temple I can't fight the ache in my chest at the memories of the last time I stood here. The decision that brought me here and the decision I made as a result of deciding to leave him in peace. So many decisions, some right and some wrong, but they've all brought me back to him.

And that fact alone almost makes me believe in fate once again.

"Rhea?" Obi-Wan asks quietly, hand on my arm as Anakin goes on ahead of us.

"I'm ready," I say nodding along confidently but ask "Just don't leave my side."

"I won't," he swears to me, and together we climb the steps of the temple and walk through its grand hall filled with masters and children, and somehow through Dooku's manipulations I'd forgotten the joy that can be felt here, the peace. The memories that weren't all bad.

Perhaps I'll tell Obi-Wan of the last time I stood here, perhaps I'll tell him of what brought me here and why I left without seeing him. I will in time, once Padme is safe.

Obi-Wan is watching me, the small smile on my face as younglings run past and he guides me to the lift up to the council chambers and I feel a strange peace despite the uncertainty.

As we stand in the lift he asks me "Do you know how to conceal your emotions in the force?"

He doesn't need to tell me why, and I don't need to ask, I just nod, I learned from the master of it after all. "Yes."

Last time neither of us knew how and they saw straight through us and this- whatever this is - we aren't making the same mistake twice.

"Now," he begins gently. "Speak with authority, you aren't a renegade padawan anymore, you're a general. Command the respect you deserve."

His choice of words surprise me until I see the deep respect in his eyes and nod, assuring him. "Don't worry dear, I'm quite good at that."

He leans in and teases "Respect, not fear."

I laugh and ask "How do you know it's fear?"

"Do you think I haven't kept an eye on you?" he asks me and there's mischief in his eyes as he tells me "I may be aware of broken hands and terrified politicians."

"Well, they're politicians," I say, still recovering from that revelation whilst trying to reason my methods but he only looks proud. "Someone has to remind them they serve the people and not themselves."

He hums, eyes bright as he says "And there you are, my fiercesome troublemaker."

"Don't say that," I tease with a smile. "We haven't even started making trouble yet."

He raises an eyebrow "Haven't we?"

And somehow despite entering this elevator with every intention to hide whatever this is Anakin is there as it opens and finds us like that, leaning in with playful smiles and I'm thankful the lift opens to a hallway before the actual council chamber.

Anakin's amused at catching his master like this "Do you need a moment Master?"

"No," Obi-Wan says quickly straightening himself up, having a reputation to maintain as the cranky old master. "Do you Anakin?"

"No, no," Anakin quickly says and steps aside "Ladies first."

"Someone's taught you manners it seems," I say, looking back at Obi-Wan and flashing him a smile before making myself serious and stepping forward towards the council chambers, concealing both my feelings and heightened force signature as Dooku taught me to.

Considering he was good enough at it to conceal being a sith lord's apprentice I trust I can do it well enough to hide seven years of training and my feelings for Obi-Wan.

I shouldn't be surprised that when I step inside the council chambers the council all take a deep breath, especially when they see me by Obi-Wan's side.

"Hello," I say, knowing I need no introduction. "I am here on behalf of Naboo's security force to petition you to allow Master Kenobi to begin an investigation into the assassination attempts on Senator Amidala's life."

There is no argument from the council, but they all eye me warily as Obi-Wan gives a brief explanation of last nights events.

"Track down this bounty hunter you must Obi-Wan," Yoda instructs and I stand there pleasantly surprised.

Master Windu agrees and says "Most importantly find out who he is working for."

"Rhea has told me she has suspicions that these attacks are coming from the Separatists," Obi-Wan informs them and it seems I've concealed my feelings so well he misses the flash of panic I give him to shut up. "And being permitted by Count Dooku."

The council all sit more upright at that and suddenly all attention is on me as Windu repeats "Count Dooku?"

Fuck.

"Just a suspicion," I shrug, having been in the public eye long enough to pull off a convincing lie and choose my words carefully. "My sister's idea really, she is convinced that these attacks against her may be happening in order to influence the Military Creation bill, in truth it could be coming from either side of the political mess that we are all caught in."

Obi-Wan knows I'm lying, or at least certainly hiding something but doesn't let anything cross his face that could reveal so and draws the attention from me "I would ask that General Amidala is permitted to assist me in this investigation on behalf of Naboo's security forces."

They are hesitant, no doubt remembering ten years ago when we stood before them Obi-Wan asked them to reinstate me to the order. They would have known well what the true reason was, as clearly as we see through Anakin now.

That alone raises suspicion amongst them but they are not ready to fight either of us on this. In their eyes it's been ten years, I am a general and he is a Jedi, neither of us are doing anything that could infer we are even friendly, anything more than a working partnership.

"Very well," Yoda permits. "Assist you in this investigation, General Amidala may."

"What about Padme?" I ask calmly, not wanting to leave her alone. "She still needs protection."

"Handle that, young Skywalker will."

Obi-Wan glances to me, both of us immediately hesitant but we don't say anything, not in front of the council. Not when Padme would throw a fit if we forced upon her any more additional protection.

"Anakin, escort the Senator back to her home planet of Naboo, she'll be safer there," Mace instructs. "And don't use registered transport. Travel as refugees."

Even Anakin knows she won't like that idea. "As the leader of the opposition it will be very difficult to get Senator Amidala to leave the Capitol."

"It's alright," I assure him, wanting to leave this chamber as soon as I can to avoid further questioning. "My sister will be reluctant to leave but I will ensure she does."

"Until caught this killer is, our judgement she must respect," Yoda says and I do not argue but instead agree.

"Yes Master."

Yoda looks upon me with a curious eye. "Changed you have, recklessness of youth eased, yet strong with force you remain."

It seems that I cannot hide from Master Yoda, but the others exchange looks of confusion as they don't sense anything beyond what would be expected.

"For the previous ten years I have trained myself in the ways of the force," I tell them openly, much to their surprise. "What is it you call those who walk a different path, a gray Jedi?"

"Gray Jedi?" Mace repeats. "That is a term I have not heard used in a long time."

Obi-Wan looks at me in surprise, but this is not anything he hasn't expected and something tells me he suspects more than he is willing to reveal.

"I suppose that is what I could be called, as Master Qui-Gon once was, " I tell them, feigning innocence, ignorance even. Knowing that if I reveal too much they will easily piece together who has trained me, in truth I'm surprised Obi-Wan hasn't pieced it together. Although I sense his trust in me is clouding his judgement, and repeat to them the same lies Dooku once repeated to me. "I just feel the force as it is, I have no great desire for mastery or power, just to feel it's presence." I keep my voice light, as if it isn't even all that important to me. "It is a peaceful life."

Perhaps those final words are my mistake, because I sense the hesitation from Obi-Wan but nonetheless he supports me in saying "Many indeed saw my Master Qui-Gon as a Gray Jedi."

"That we did," Yoda admits but is still suspicious of me. "And from whom have you been taught."

Even if I told them the truth, that I didn't know he was a sith they would never believe me, at worst they'd kill me believing I had too turned sith, at best they'd still judge me and condemn me for apprenticing under one of the lost and so I lie.

"Myself," I answer as if I'm confused by the question. "I mean, I've looked back at the training I had a padawan and tried to follow that but mostly it's just been finding a type of discipline to focus myself in my duties as a general, meditating on my position in the grand scheme of the force and finding peace in it."

Those words would have been true years ago, they would have been truthful if I spoke them to Obi-Wan the last time I stood in this temple and told him those things as reasons for wanting to accept Dooku's training. Hell, they would have been true those first few years of training too, but not now. Not anymore. Not after all that has happened.

"I am impressed," Master Windu says and the council are relatively neutral, there is no distrust from any of them aside from Yoda. "You have shown great discipline since leaving the order. Now, I encourage you to implement these teachings during this investigation."

"Thank you Master," Obi-Wan and I both say before leaving the chamber and the relief that flows through me is enough his fingertips skim over my elbow to steady me once we are well out of sight, but still he is quiet.

"What's a gray Jedi?" Anakin asks us as we step inside the lift. "Is that a Jedi who uses the darkside?"

"Certainly not," Obi-Wan says quickly. "There is no such thing, for a Jedi cannot use the darkside without being corrupted by it. It merely refers to Jedi who have strayed from the order and the code. My master Qui-Gon was considered one as he had different views to the council and disobeyed them, but I can assure you Anakin he would never have entertained the darkside. Like Rhea he had opposing views and did not necessarily follow the council's interpretation of the code."

"So like me?" he says and I can feel Obi-Wan's anxiousness at those words whilst I can't help but be proud. Even when he was a boy I knew he'd be a little maverick too.

"Well... yes and no. See matters of ideology are quite complicated," he looks to me and I take over.

"I caused quite a bit of trouble as a youngling that got me expelled from the order. I missed my family and did not see why I could not still love them while serving as a Jedi," I tell Anakin, and can feel him echoing the same pain. "I was your age the last time I saw the council and learned the hard way that things are more complicated than I would like them to be."

"I remember Obi-Wan telling me when I was still a child that you'd be coming home with us to the Jedi Temple," he says and I see Obi-Wan's eyes fall to the floor. "That he wanted you to come with us but the council wouldn't let you."

"Like I said Anakin," I say quietly, having heard this the last time I came here. "Things are more complicated than they should be."

"Anakin, you go on ahead to Padme's apartment," Obi-Wan tells him. "I have some more business to attend to before we leave."

Anakin definitely doesn't protest when it comes to Padme and walks ahead of us and I look at Obi-Wan, half expecting an interrogation but whatever suspicions he has he puts them aside for now.

"What is it?" I ask him cautiously, still paranoid, still very aware of the secrets I hide for fear he won't be able to trust me when he knows the truth. I'll tell him when the time is right, when I know he'll believe me when I say I didn't know the truth until it was too late.

"I don't trust him with this assignment," he admits to me and it's a relief it's Anakin he's concerned about, not me. Not yet at least. But I'm sure the questions will come and I need to prepare myself for when they do. "He has exceptional abilities but they've made him arrogant and headstrong and-"

"Weren't we all at that age?" I remind him. "Even at twenty five you and Anakin shared more similarities than you'd care to admit."

He can't deny that, and that very fact worries him even more considering just what he was doing in his late padawan years. "I should speak with Master Yoda and get him to reconsider giving Anakin this assignment."

"And tell them what?' I ask him gently. "That Anakin has been in love with my sister since he was nine years old?" We both know he can't do that, not without compromising their trust in Anakin and this investigation. "He's nineteen, of course he is arrogant and won't listen, and no doubt he's at that age where he just wants to- you know."

He gives a stiff nod, unfortunately knowing just what it is Anakin no doubt dreams about doing with my sister and raises a hand to stop any further elaboration. "I don't need an image."

"Trust me neither do I," I assure him. "But he'll listen to Padme and we both know she is more than capable of handling herself, protection is a formality. Perhaps she might even teach him a thing or two about patience and discipline."

"Then that truly would be a miracle," he says and I put a hand on his shoulder.

"Obi-Wan, breathe," I find myself lecturing him. "All will be well."

He makes an impressed sound as he teases "Don't use my own tricks against me."

"Who do you think I learned it from?" I return, and run my hand down his arm before quickly withdrawing it since we are still in the temple. "Now come on, now I have the hard job of convincing my sister to go into hiding."

Sure enough it is a hard job.

One I come to regret as she leaves Jar Jar in charge.

"I am taking an extended leave of absence." Obi-Wan and I look at each other, remembering well our adventures with Jar Jar on Naboo. "It will be your responsibility to take my place in the senate. Representative Binks, I know I can count on you."

I've served as Padme's representative many times to the point I'd usually be her first choice in a matter like this, but I'll be leading the investigation with Obi-Wan. Not to mention the fact she's still mad at me for being a Separatist so serving in the Republic senate is now out of the question.

"Meesa honoured to be taken onna dissa heavy burden," Jar Jar says, chuffed while I nod along, waiting for the formalities to finish. "Meesa accept this with mucha humility and-"

"Jar Jar," Padme says shortly and I know she's not happy. "I don't wish to hold you up."

Jar Jar takes his leave and Padme marches over to us.

"I do not like this idea of hiding."

"Which is why Obi-Wan and I are going to get this sorted as soon as we can," I tell her only for her to snap at me.

"I have not worked for a year to defeat the Military Creation Act, an act which your-" she cuts herself off and points her finger at me aware Obi-Wan is here. "I do not have to explain your hypocrisy to you."

"You do not have to explain," I assure her and Obi-Wan steps out of her line of sight, wisely choosing to hide by the door to not get dragged into an argument between us. "But I will have you know I only support individual armies like ours and not centralised ones like the Republic wants so we are on the same page there." That makes little difference to her and I say what she doesn't want to hear since she's mad anyways "If you want to see the act be defeated you need to be alive long enough for that to happen."

"Sometimes we must let go of our pride," Anakin advises, unlike his master indeed being stupid enough to get dragged into an argument between us. "And do what is requested of us."

Obi-Wan gapes at him. "When have you ever done that?"

"You've grown up," Padme comments in surprise and then turns back to me. "But I do not like this, I do not like the fact Naboo now has a military, I do not like the fact you led our army while supporting the Separatists-"

"You what?" Anakin exclaims as I give her a panicked look and she quickly quietens.

"Anakin, this isn't your business," Padme says and motions for him to leave before turning back to me. "And now they may be complicit in this."

"I supported them until they showed their true colours," I argue with her, cautious of Obi-Wan listening and what else she might reveal. "I don't like the Republic or the Separatists. There I said it." I raise my hands in my defence, slowly moving back to where Obi-Wan is standing. "Which is why I support you as leader of the opposition, because I'd personally love to slap Palpatine across the face for, well you know. But regardless of the bill Naboo will be safe. Know that much."

She hates what I've done in militarising our peaceful planet despite knowing it's necessary, she came around to it and supported most of my measures, but still thinks I've been extreme in a full military and not just expanding the security force.

She sighs. "I do not wish to be a hypocrite."

"And you aren't," I tell her, relieved I'm actually calming her down for once. Glad enough the roles have been switched. "But Naboo and the galaxy isn't what it used to be. There is more conflict than there has been in a millenia. Militarisation is the small price we pay for safety, just as hiding for a short time is the price you pay for your life."

As much as she hates it, she knows I'm right. "Alright."

"If all else fails I can take your place in the senate," I promise her and she's certainly hesitant but it isn't the worst situation we could be in. "And if there is any trouble rest assured I'll be there."

"You always are," she says and I squeeze her hand.

Well, we've gotten her to agree to leaving, now comes the easy bit.

Hopefully.

Obi-Wan gives me an approving nod at my speech and puts a hand on my shoulder as Anakin get's Padme's bags, while the hard part is done the work is only just beginning.

After a short trip escorted by Typho we stand at the transport platforms where Anakin and Padme will travel as refugees.

I hug her farewell but Obi-Wan is more worried, lecturing Anakin one last time.

"Don't do anything without first consulting either myself or the council."

"Yes Master."

We watch them leave, both of us uncertain of what comes next.

"I do hope he doesn't try anything foolish," Obi-Wan says, anxious Anakin's going to try to seduce my sister.

"I'd be more concerned about her doing something than him," Typho remarks, leaving me uneasy.

"Oh don't tell me that," I say as we watch them depart. "How much trouble can she cause on Naboo?"

"Hopefully only half as much as you," Obi-Wan remarks and guides me back from the platform. "Come on, I know where to start."

Obi-Wan and I walk to a diner, standing a reasonable distance apart considering it's Coruscant and it would be an awful start to this investigation if another Jedi on patrol were to catch us in a compromising position.

"So you said his name is Dex and he might know more about the dart?"

"He's an old friend," Obi-Wan tells me. "He's helped with this type of thing before."

"Uh huh," I say unimpressed by the diner, eager to take it to my own contacts and get off Coruscant. "It seems like a leap of faith when I have some proper forensics analysts on Naboo-"

"Trust me," Obi-Wan says as we walk inside and sure enough his old friend remembers him well.

"Obi-Wan!" the chef calls out with such excitement it leaves me a little stunned but Obi-Wan does have that effect on people.

"Hello Dex," Obi-Wan smiles, as charming as ever with his hands tucked together underneath his cloak, a sight so sweet it's almost amusing considering the tone he was using with Anakin ten minutes ago.

"Take a seat I'll be right with ya."

We head to a booth and he motions for me to slide in beside him as the waitress calls out "Want a cup of jawa juice?"

"Oh yes thank you," he says and must see the look on my face. "It's not as bad as it sounds."

"Please tell me they don't juice jawa's."

"Just bantha hides," he replies and he watches amused as I gag a little. "Since when do you shy away from adventure?"

"Oh I love adventure," I assure him. "I just prefer my juice not to have bantha's in it."

"If I recall you've never been overly fussy about what you put in your-" he begins before realising whatever he is referring to can only be mistaken for one thing and watch him curse himself as my mouth falls open.

"In my what now?" I question, not letting him go that easily and he shakes his head at himself as I taunt him. "Put what in my mouth?"

I shouldn't enjoy watching him fluster this much "I'm talking about those awful rations the Gungans gave us before the battle not-"

He can't finish and now both of us are red and far too close in this little booth. He looks around for his juice so he can put something in his mouth now to shut himself up while I'm thinking back to that night, a night spent making love like it would be our last. Oh little did we know.

I remember how utterly scandalised he was that I'd want to do such a thing, although the scandal was very short lived with him forgetting anything else but my name the moment I put my mouth on him. And that was still only early in the night, two young people in love who wanted to experience all they could before the world tore them apart. By morning there were very little ways we had not had one another and yet right now I can think of many more ways I want him.

He must see a hunger in my eye as he looks away and suddenly this damn booth is too small for the both of us as I find myself hot at the memories that follow and can't let help myself as I say "Well, I'd enjoy what we're both remembering right now more than jawa juice."

He chokes at my words while I smirk to myself knowing he is indeed thinking the same things as I am and he physically can't meet my eye as he tries to compose himself "Good god Rhea."

"You're the one with the dirty mind," I dare to venture, feeling quite satisfied by how utterly red and flustered he is, anything to distract from my own sudden need. "You're blushing."

"I'm not-" he argues but stops when he meets my eyes and murmurs at the mischievous glint in mine "You're going to be the death of me."

"I know," I say and thankfully we're only alone momentarily as Dex comes to sit down across from us.

"Hey old buddy!" Obi-Wan can't get up from the booth quick enough and I watch them hug in amusement at Obi-Wan having made so many friends with the attitude he used to have as a padawan and his friend looks to me. "And who is your lovely lady here?"

"Rhea," Obi-Wan answers sitting back down beside me and Dex sits across from us, taking up the other side of the booth while Obi-Wan tries to put a little more space between us this time, still flushed.

"Ooh a forbidden lover?" Dex teases, the Jedi code being widely known here on Coruscant.

"Something like that," Obi-Wan says much to my surprise and pulls out the dart. "Now, can you tell us what this is?"

"Well, what do ya know," Dex says, examining it. "I ain't seen one of these since I was last prospecting on Subterrel beyond the outer rim."

"Can you tell me where it came from?" he asks, the waitress bringing over his drink. "Thank you."

"This baby belongs to them cloners," he says as Obi-Wan takes a sip, and passes it to me to try, both of us confused by what he means. "What you've got here is a Kamino saberdart."

"I wonder why it didn't show up in the analysis archives," Obi-Wan inquires as I sniff the drink.

"It's these funny little cuts on the side that give it away," he says, showing us. "Those analysis droids only focus on symbols."

"Huh," I say, this guy actually does know his stuff and Obi-Wan can't resist the I told you so look he gives me.

"I should think you Jedi would have more respect for the difference between knowledge and wisdom."

I nod along as I take a drink, it not being as bad as I thought it would be although I still would much prefer the other and pass it back to Obi-Wan who teases. "Don't get my lady here talking about philosophy or else we'll be here all day."

I roll my eyes to hide the colour that comes to my cheeks and take the dart in hand. "Well my dear, it seems we'll have plenty of time to talk philosophy since I've never even heard of Kamino."

"I'm not familiar with it either," Obi-Wan says and asks "Is it in the Republic."

"No, no, it's beyond the outer rim," he answers. "I'd say about twelve parsecs outside the Rishi maze. Should be easy to find, even for those droids in your archives." He leans in, lowering his voice. "These Kaminoans keep to themselves, they're cloners, damn good ones too."

"Cloning, as in livestock?" I ask, that being the first thing that comes to mind.

"As in everything and anything."

"Are they friendly?" Obi-Wan asks as I consider asking the waitress for a cup of caf to take with us since this investigation is taking a very strange direction.

"Depends."

"Depends on what Dex?"

"On how good your manners are."

We both laugh and I comment "Well they should be quite friendly then, I can't speak for myself but we have the most well mannered gentleman in the galaxy here."

"Not just that, but also how big your pocketbook is," Dex adds and Obi-Wan looks to me for that.

"I used to be a princess, that won't be a problem," I add, an elected one but still, and he whistles.

"Got yourself a fancy one Obi-Wan?" he says, slapping a hand down on his shoulder and winking "Very nice."

He leaves us and Obi-Wan takes a sip of his drink to hide the flustered smile he wears as I take the dart from him, rolling it between my fingers. "So, Kamino. I've sat in that senate listening to every damn star system there is, and it still doesn't ring a bell."

"It wouldn't if they're outside the Republic," he says, eyes contemplative as the droid waitress comes back over to us.

"Can I get you anything else?"

"Yes," I begin and Obi-Wan finishes for me.

"Two large cups of extra strong caf to go please, with sugar."

She leaves to get our order ready and I can't help the smile that plays at my lips as I ask "So, where to next?"

"The temple to see Master Jocasta, if anybody knows where Kamino is and about these cloners it's her."

"Mmm well, your friend was quite excited to see you," I say, looking at his face in the light now we finally have a moment to ourselves and see he hasn't changed as much as I thought, still the same bright eyed boy who captivated me so long ago beneath the facial hair that compliments him so handsomely. "Quite happy to think I'm your girlfriend too."

Now he's blushing again, the two of us may as well be padawans with how we're carrying on but he remains as classy as ever. "Well my dear, it's not every day I bring a beautiful woman into the city."

I know I'm sitting here looking like a mess with my hair long and wild, bruises starting to show their colours on me and my eyes tired and dark, but he still thinks I'm beautiful.

"I'm the exception then?"

"You always are," he says and can't help himself now as he murmurs "Somehow I'm only ever in this state when you're near."

"Well," I begin, suddenly breathless. "It's surprising that in all the time I've spent on Coruscant these past years we've never crossed paths."

Every time I came here to serve with Padme in the senate I swear I looked at every face in every street looking for him, but never until now have I found him. Except for that one day I still cannot bring myself to tell him of, because then I'd have to tell him what finally drove me there.

"I'll admit, I've spent more time in the temple with Anakin than outside of it," he tells me. "These last ten years have been much of the same."

"Mine have been all over the place," I tell him in full honesty. "One mess after the other until finally I wound up in a big enough one that you came to me."

And again he makes himself my shining Jedi Knight. "Well, I couldn't hear that you're in trouble and not come to you."

I tilt my head and ask "When you took this mission, did you know it would be me you'd be coming to, not just Padme."

"Well, I figured if your sister was in danger I'd find you right there beside her," he tells me and admits "I spent the entire elevator ride as anxious as Anakin."

I just laugh, it being nothing compared to me. "I'd found out you were coming about a minute before you'd arrived, I think she did that deliberately so I couldn't run away."

"Would you have?" he asks and I smile to myself at what I did instead.

"I certainly hid, but the moment I felt you in that elevator and well... all I felt was you." I'm at a loss for words to explain it, but I know he understands. "Qui-Gon, when he told us there was a bond-"

"Neither of us knew how much until now," he finishes, an understanding between us so deep words aren't needed and he reaches for my hand that rests on the table, holding it tight that simple touch making me draw a sharp breath. "We did say it wouldn't be the end."

If one thing is clear to me, it's that I'm as hopelessly in love with the man sitting across from me now as I was with the man who I held in the aftermath of the battle, the two of us broken and beaten holding onto one another as if our lives depended on it.

I look at our hands now, almost with a sadness remembering how we clung to one another in those dark days, only to be interrupted by the waitress with our drinks. He thanks her and pays whilst I sit there in contemplation, letting myself feel things that should terrify me, but how can I be afraid when it's with him by my side?

I should be afraid, absolutely terrified, I should have been ten years ago and I should be now and yet... all I feel is him.

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