FicWad

Additional Author's Note: Please keep in mind what lengthy italicized passages generally signify (memories being shared through the Force, etc.).






Calmed by his certainty that all should be well, now, as long as he rises to the challenge, Anakin takes a few moments to truly see himself and his new haircut, instead of just using the reflections in the mirrors to admire the way he and Master Obi-Wan look so right together. Now that he’s actually taking the time to look and really see, he almost can’t recognize himself. Wonderingly, he reaches up touch his new Padawan braid, his fingers a little awkward as he slides them over the unfamiliar feel of the slender bright plait, and then he reaches up a little further, to finger his shorn hair. It feels a lot more prickly and bristly than it ever has before, even when his mom would cut his hair, and with most of the longer top layer gone it no longer looks quite so blond, the hair down closer to his roots being more like the color of wet sand (or maybe a really dark amber) than the light gold that the two suns of Tatooine had bleached the upper layer. Tilting his head to one side, in a considering gesture that he has seen Obi-Wan make many times before, Anakin rubs thoughtfully at his nose and wishes, wistfully, that he could show his mother his new haircut and the beginning of his new Padawan braid, even though he knows that he can’t. To distract himself from that sad thought, he directs his attention back to Obi-Wan and the very long Padawan braid that is still hanging in front of his new Master’s right ear. "Your turn now, Master?" he asks, carefully making it a question instead of a statement.

Obi-Wan exhales audibly, at that. It isn’t exactly a sigh. It’s more like the sound a man might make who’s been punched in the stomach and so had the air all forced out of him in a rush. But he still reaches back to pick up the scissors and hands them over to Anakin. His motions are all unnaturally slow, as though every movement is hurting him, but he doesn’t try to say anything to refuse Anakin’s question or dissuade him from his offer to be the one to cut off the braid, and the shadow of pain and uncertainty in his eyes makes Anakin furious all over again, so that he has to force himself to sit still and not get up out of the chair and just throw his arms around Obi-Wan and never let go again. "There is a yellow band up at the top of my braid. If you will wait just a moment, please, while I move it down just a little more . . . ah. Yes. That should do it. You should be able to cut the braid just above that band, Anakin. Please, try not to scalp me." His tone is light as he says the last, his fingers letting go of the braid whose uppermost band he has so easily and efficiently shifted downwards by a couple of centimeters, but somehow it doesn’t sound quite as if he means it.

Sensing that it is a solemn occasion, no matter how brisk and matter of fact Obi-Wan’s words about it might be or how his not quite cringing body seems to beg for it to please just all be over with, Anakin carefully schools his face into serious lines of deep concentration as he turns around on the chair, reaching up to gently but firmly take hold of Obi-Wan’s Padawan braid in his left hand while he carefully lifts the scissors up in his right hand, opening their blades so that he can maneuver them around until they are framing the root of Obi-Wan’s braid, just above the top of that bright yellow band. Obi-Wan stares directly at him, looking into his eyes instead of into the mirrors, and waits, carefully holding himself very, very still. Anakin can’t help but notice that Obi-Wan really does have beautiful eyes, big and bright and mostly blue, though Anakin can see that there are little flecks of other colors in them, too, tiny little dots of gray and green and an indigo color that’s almost lavenderish and a peculiar shivery silvery-gold that makes Anakin feel strange and shivery, too. Anakin remembers thinking, when he’d finally met him face to face, that Obi-Wan had an extremely kind face and it was no wonder that he’d always seemed to be smiling and winking at him, in his dreams, when he’d caught glimpses of Obi-Wan in Master Qui-Gon’s shadow. Obi-Wan had been so thoroughly distracted by having to look out for and after Master Qui-Gon and his attempts to keep their mission (such as it was, still) on track for a successful completion and his worries about the Sith, though, that he hadn’t had a lot of time or effort to spare to be particularly nice or kind to Anakin (though Anakin remembers, with another warm tingle, waking up that first morning on the ship, thoroughly warm because he’d been carefully wrapped up in Obi-Wan’s big, loose, outermost layer of robes. He hugs the memory to himself as precious, recognizing it as an unprompted and not really necessary act of pure kindness towards him, on Obi-Wan’s part), but Anakin still likes his face and thinks that it is kind. Impulsively, he leans forward a little, kissing Obi-Wan squarely in the center of his forehead, and then carefully cuts his Padawan braid cleanly off.

Obi-Wan appears so wholly surprised by the gesture that he doesn’t seem to notice his braid slipping free and sliding down to the floor. "Why did you do that?" he asks after a moment, his perplexed voice clearly revealing his shock, as though he simply can’t imagine why anyone, much less Anakin, would ever want to kiss him.

Only with great effort avoiding the returning anger that makes him want to snap, Anakin carefully shrugs his shoulders and casually replies, "Just because I wanted to."

"You – you shouldn’t do that," Obi-Wan says after a moment’s stunned silence, his voice, if anything, even more shocked and confused than before.

"And why not?" Anakin flatly asks, hoping to get some kind of real answer out of him because honestly, it’s such a stupid, little thing, and he can’t imagine what could have made Obi-Wan so ridiculously skittish and stand-offish when it comes to such a simple thing as touch. His mother has always liked kisses and hugs and him sitting on her lap, and Master Qui-Gon hadn’t seemed to have a problem with hugs or any of the other small little reassuring touches that help remind a person that he’s cared for and wanted. So why is Obi-Wan so scared of these things?

"I . . . " Obi-Wan is clearly trying to search for an answer, his head bowed low and his brows furrowed in concentration, but in the end he simply makes a small, helpless little noise in the back of his throat and quietly declares, "Jedi don’t do such things."

"What, you mean Jedi don’t kiss? Like, ever?" Anakin demands, confused and not quite sure he believes Obi-Wan, though he imagines that someone as grim and humorless as that Mace Windu guy might say (and mean it as a serious command) that Jedi should never kiss. "But what about hugs? I’ve seen Jedi hug, Master Obi-Wan. And anyway, I thought Jedi were supposed to love everybody. How can you love everybody if you can never even give another person a simple hug and a kiss?"

"You are mistaking compassion for love, Anakin. And to answer your question, no, Jedi do not kiss, and they hug only sparingly, when the situation truly merits and it can do no damage to the Jedi or the Order’s reputation. Or, well, they don’t normally, anyway."

Still not entirely sure that he believes Obi-Wan, Anakin nonetheless can’t keep from frowning as he declares, with the utmost seriousness, "Then I don’t think I want to be a normal Jedi, Master Obi-Wan, Sir, and I don’t think you should try to be one, either. I don’t think that sounds like a very good way to live. Or very healthy, either. Mom always says we all need to know that we’re loved and wanted, if we want to be able to grow up straight and true. Maybe that’s why you’re not so tall as you should be, Master, because you didn’t have anybody to love you and hug you like they should have."

Obi-Wan just looks at him for several long moments with the most peculiar and perplexed expression on his face – like he suspects that Anakin is having a joke at his expense (even though he’s being entirely serious) but can’t quite put his finger on what it is that’s supposed to make the joke funny – before he finally simply flatly declares, "You’re a funny little boy."

Huh. Strange. Padmé had said the exact same thing to him, on Tatooine. Shrugging, Anakin heaves a long-suffering sigh and allows, "Everybody else thinks so, too. But I’m really not a little boy, Master Obi-Wan. Sir. And before you say it, I’m not really needy or difficult, either," he continues, adding two other complaints that he can remember hearing from the other Jedi in the Temple on Coruscant, in the brief time that he was there. "I just know what feels right to me and what I like so I do or I pursue those things. See? It really does make perfect sense." When Obi-Wan just continues to stare at him uncomprehendingly, Anakin gives another sigh and a small shrug and slides out of the chair. Bending over, he scoops Obi-Wan’s cut braid up out of the floor and holds it up questioningly, asking him, "Can I keep this?"

For some reason that particular question succeeds only in making Obi-Wan look even more lost than ever before. "If . . . you would truly like to hold it, then I . . . suppose it could do no harm. For just now," Obi-Wan finally allows ever several long moments of shocked silence.

With a delighted smile, Anakin takes hold of Obi-Wan’s right hand and tugs on him until he moves, woodenly allowing Anakin to steer him around and then sit him down in the chair that Anakin has so recently vacated. After Obi-Wan has settled down, Anakin climbs unabashed up into his lap. Obi-Wan doesn’t try to protest or shy away from him this time, and Anakin settles back with his head pillowed comfortable against Obi-Wan’s chest, thoroughly pleased with himself. The direct approach might be for the best, after all. To that end, he leans back and then nods once, quite firmly, before declaring, "Good." Then, squirming a little to make himself comfortable, he nestles himself back up against Obi-Wan’s chest, shifting around until he’s half wrapped in a fold of his outer robe, with his arms snaked securely around Obi-Wan’s waist and back beneath that robe entirely. "See, now? This isn’t so bad. If you’d only had somebody to love you and hug you and kiss you when you were growing up, properly, then you would have known that already."

Obi-Wan – who until that moment has sat stock-still beneath him, too shocked even to twitch in protest – shifts underneath Anakin a little at that, moving enough to glance down at him. "It wasn’t that I didn’t have – well, I mean, there wasn’t, of course, but I – oh, never mind! This is fine, I suppose, for now." He leans back in his chair, staring pensively at their reflections in the maze of mirrors.

Contentedly closing his eyes, Anakin holds Obi-Wan’s severed Padawan braid tightly in his right hand and relaxes into the warmth of his body, snuggling in a little closer when Obi-Wan finally, with a soft sigh, gives in and raises his right arm up around Anakin, holding him back. Anakin smiles as he cuddles in close, relaxing, luxuriating lazily in the nice warm feel of holding and being held by someone he loves . . .

. . . only to catch himself startling as he feels himself being handed over to somebody else, the coils of the cut Padawan braid being gently pried out of his grasping right hand. Startled and not entirely awake again yet, Anakin makes a sound of protest, struggling to open eyelids that feel as if they weigh a ton each, but an oddly gentle hand lays itself across his eyes, keeping them closed, and his new Master tells him, with a touch of the Force in his voice, "Go back to sleep now, Padawan. The funeral is tomorrow and there is to be a victory parade, as well, for the people of Naboo. And Masters Yoda and Windu have asked to see you again, early tomorrow morning. You need your rest." By struggling with all of his might, Anakin manages to keep from falling straight back down into sleep again, but he can’t quite make his eyes open. The best he can manage to do is to make one more noise of protest. "I am sorry, young one, but I must have my braid back, now," Obi-Wan tells him in that same gentle, distant, detached voice from before, the one that makes him want to cry out in frustration. "Sleep, Anakin. I will see you in the morning, before your audience with the Masters. I promise."

Anakin feels himself being carried by the same set of strange arms – it’s a woman, he can tell it’s a woman, but it’s not Padmé (he can tell because she doesn’t smell the same as Padmé) and so he can’t be sure who it might be – and then laid down on a soft and inviting bed. He is about to let himself slide down into sleep when he suddenly hears a familiar voice, speaking quietly from across the room, the sound of it giving him enough strength to stay awake for at least a little while longer.

"Obi-Wan. Am’chara. Please, don’t be angry. I need to speak with you. Please – "

"Milady Amidala." Obi-Wan’s voice is cold and hard and forbidding, and Anakin shrinks away a little at the sound of it, imagining that it must be hurting Padmé a great deal. "Please don’t speak to me in such a manner. It is not proper."

"Obi-Wan, Bendu, please – " There is a note of such pure anguish in Padmé’s voice that Anakin shivers again, not wanting to draw any attention to himself but unable to keep himself from shivering. Thankfully, no one seems to notice his small movements.

"Padmé. Don’t, please. We have an audience," Obi-Wan only says, his voice unbending.

"Sabé," Padmé immediately whispers, her voice as small as Anakin has ever heard it, "please leave us."

Sabé, who has been hovering near Anakin, by the bed, manages only a protesting, "Milady – " before a low and savage bark of humorless laughter from Obi-Wan cuts her short.

"I have nothing to say to you, milady, that cannot be said in mixed company. My reminder was meant for you, that you might think of your dignity before you spoke," Obi-Wan declares, biting each word viciously short, as though he hates the presence of them in his mouth and wants to get the words all out as swiftly and succinctly as possible.

Padmé cries out wordlessly, almost as though she has been struck. "Obi-Wan, please! If I have offended you – "

"Your offense was not against me, or I should have already forgiven you," Obi-Wan only declares, cutting her off short. "Your offense was against a child too young to defend himself, and for that reason I find that I am having far more difficulty in forgiving you."

"But Obi-Wan, Bendu, he was only sleeping – " she tries to protest, but Obi-Wan will not allow her even so much as that.

"Oh, aye, only sleeping and not eating or drinking for over two full days. I am plainly astonished that he was not ill with dehydration when he awoke," Obi-Wan snaps, his voice absolutely unforgiving, as close to flat-out anger as Anakin can ever remember hearing it. "And you can thank his rather substantial and self-protective connection with the Force, for that."

"Obi-Wan, I didn’t know – "

"If you were not able to marshal enough order to make sure that the needs of one small boy-child – who happens, for reasons that I frankly fail to fathom, to adore you unquestioningly – could be seen to adequately, then you should never have offered to see to his care, Padmé!" his Master only snaps, and it is only then that, with a start, Anakin’s brain wakes up enough for him to realize that they have been talking about him the entire time. For a moment, then, he considers cutting in, reassuring Obi-Wan that it’s alright and that he doesn’t need to be angry at Padmé for his sake, but before he can make up his mind either way Padmé tries to speak again, this time attempting to apologize rather than to excuse her actions.

"Obi-Wan, I’m sorry – "

"But you are not sorry for the sake of your mistake or even the sake of the harm you might have done to Anakin, however inadvertently. You are sorry only because you believe I’ve taken this into my head as an excuse to draw away from you – though in reality I am as close to feeling real fury towards you as I have ever been – and this notion hurts your feelings, Padmé," Obi-Wan cuts her off mercilessly, his voice as hard and unyielding as iron. "And I warn you, now, that you should not try to protest against this claim. If I truly thought that you could deny this, I would not be nearly so far from forgiving you as I currently am."

"Obi-Wan – "

"No, Padmé. I am not angry with you, not precisely. But I am sorely disappointed in you, and right now I have no wish whatsoever to see or speak with you. Perhaps later. Not right now."

The protest, when it comes, is so anguished that it is barely even a whisper of sound. "But there is so little time, now!"

"You should have thought of that," is the uncompromisingly grim and hard retort, "before you dismissed the promise that you had made to me, in sight of my Master’s body."

There is another soft, agonized sound, then, almost as if Obi-Wan has actually struck her, and Anakin, after a desperate struggle, finally manages to make his eyelids obey him and move. Trying to be as careful as he can, he opens the eye that seems nearest to the source of the voices to a slit and takes a careful peak. He’s back in the same bedroom as before, only this time the door to the room is open. He can see the figure of a woman (it has to be Sabé. It looks too much like Padmé to be anyone but Sabé) cloaked in dark green velvet, just beyond this open door. Her back is to the door but he can see her bowed head and the hands clutching at her shoulders, as if for warmth, and he can tell that she’s just as unhappy with all of this as he is but doesn’t feel as if it’s her place to interfere. He wishes she would change her mind, but he can tell from the way she’s standing and holding herself that she won’t and so he dismisses her from and his mind and turns his attention to the other two figures, who are both actually inside the room with him.

Obi-Wan is standing by the foot of the bed, on Anakin’s right side, unmoving, with his telltale ramrod-straight back directly towards him. Even though he can’t see his face, he has a pretty good idea what it looks like, and for a few moments is simply selfishly glad that this face is not being turned towards him, since he’s sure that he would just crumple up and cry and want to just die, if it were. Padmé – standing about a pace and a half inside of and just to the right of the open door, as though she’d thought to try to simply walk directly up to Obi-Wan, at least until he had started speaking to her – certainly looks like she’d like to do all three of those things, and Anakin finds that he can’t blame her at all for the feeling. Huddled up small within the depths of yet another one of her richly fantastic court gowns – some kind of elaborate but oddly airy (at least in comparison to the other royal gowns he’s seen) confection of rose colored shimmersilk that makes her look like an opening flower instead of like some heavy, dark, stark, bejewelled mannequin – her face looks so pale that it almost may as well have been painted, and her eyes are so huge and dark that they almost look like black holes gouged out of a white mask instead of actual eyes in a real face. She just looks at him, with her broken white face and her huge dark eyes, desperately searching his face and form for some sign that he might relent, before finally, with another one of those quietly agonized little inchoate noises, she simply folds in on herself, actually collapsing down into the floor in what Anakin at first thinks is a faint but almost immediately realizes is instead a gesture of heartfelt apology and unabashed pleading, measuring the length of her body against the floor in front of him, her folded hands pressed to the carpet beneath her forehead. For several heartbreakingly long moments, Obi-Wan simply continues to stand silently where he is, unmoving and apparently unmoved, but at last his shoulders move to the shape of an unvoiced sigh, and then he strides across to where Padmé is huddled, trembled, face-down against the floor. He stands over her, then, for a few more long moments before he finally reaches down and lifts her bodily up out of the floor by her shoulders.

There is a horrible moment, then, when Anakin is afraid that Padmé might ruin it all by throwing herself bodily at Obi-Wan, but no, she simply stands there, trembling visibly, with her head bowed low. After another moment’s pause (as though he has been waiting, too, to make sure that she would not do anything so foolish as attempt to hug him), Obi-Wan begins to speak in a low, rapid monotone, declaring, "This is my Padawan braid, severed in recognition of the fact that I have become a full Jedi Knight. I wish for it to be burned with the body of my Master on the morrow. Please, see to it. I find myself in need of meditation. If you find that you still wish to speak with me, you may come to my rooms in two standard hours. Otherwise, good evening to you." He gives her a stiff, formal nod of his head, then, and passes rapidly out of the room.

Padmé, left staring down at the slender bright braid in her hands, gives a low, strangled cry of mingled fear and frustration . . . and perhaps, also, of longing. Head bowed, she begins to sob, in earnest, even as she cries out, "Sabé! Sabé, please, come and take this from me before my fingers can accustom themselves to the feel of it and I can begin to create reasons to try to justify keeping it for myself!" Turning, she practically throws the braid into the reaching hands of her body double and good friend, and then, with another strangled cry, she flees from the room as well, her incongruously bright and cheerful rose skirts whispering softly as she runs.

Anakin, up until then frozen to the bed in shock, is about to jump up and run after her, determined to get Obi-Wan’s Padawan braid safely back for himself and to convince Padmé that it would be criminally wasteful to burn such a beautiful and meaningful object in a funeral pyre when Sabé, with a startled little low cry, flings the braid carelessly down on the room’s desk and runs after her mistress, leaving the door half open behind her. Anakin, saved from having to get up and reveal that he has been kind of accidentally eavesdropping on the whole convoluted and confusing conversation, forces himself to wait for a count of twenty, and then spring up out of bed, rushing over and scooping his Master’s discarded braid carefully up off of the desk. He only has two hours, at most, and he needs to get busy, if he wants to find a way to save his Master’s splendid braid from the fire. Sabé should be with Padmé up until the moment she leaves to go see Obi-Wan, so he should probably have the entire two hours in which to work, but it doesn’t sound like either one of the women ran very far, so he needs to be quick and quiet, just in case. These suites of rooms all seem to be interconnected, so hopefully he’ll be able to find what he needs in either the trunk at the foot of the bed or one of the wardrobes. He’s almost certain that he’s been placed in the one of the bedrooms of an actual handmaiden – probably one of the younger ones, maybe even one of girls left behind from when Masters Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan had first rescued Padmé from her imprisonment on Naboo, which would explain why the room was empty, since such a young girl would doubtlessly have gone home to be with her family in the wake of the invasion and liberation of the planet – so hopefully it won’t take a whole lot of searching or luck to find what he needs . . .

***

Obi-Wan Kenobi opens his eyes and stares at Anakin with blank incredulity. Although it feels as though a great deal of time has passed, while he was within Anakin’s mind, sharing his memories, he knows that only a few quiet minutes, at most, have elapsed since he took Anakin’s offered hand, and so he feels no great constraint to hurry himself. After several long moments of staring, while Anakin’s face blooms with a wide and wildly self-satisfied smile, he finally simply demands, "Are you telling me that you replaced my Padawan braid with a plait that you cobbled together in about an hour from the hair you’d snatched out of half a dozen different dolls and whatever bits and pieces of useful finery you could find to approximate the bands and beads I’d been awarded by Qui-Gon, and that nobody even noticed?!"

With a huge grin, Anakin nods, explaining, "Well, Padmé didn’t come back into the room for it, because she didn’t seem to trust herself not to simply keep it, instead. Sabé came back in a little over two hours after she’d left, with a young man I’d never seen before and never saw again, either, in tow. And she just slid the braid off the desk into a little velvet pouch, handed the whole thing over to that young man, said a few things to him that I couldn’t hear but which I imagine were orders, regarding placing the braid in Master Qui-Gon’s hands on the pyre, so that it would be visibly present when the fire was lit, and then they both turned around and left the room. That was all there was too it. I put your braid away with my things, where I knew it would be safe, and no one was ever the wiser because no one who could have told that something was wrong ever handled the /Padawan braid /I made out of the dolls and clothes of the handmaid whose room I’d been put in. And since I took hair out of so many different dolls and was careful to put everything that I could back exactly where I’d found it and as near to like I’d found it as I could, I doubt if even their owner ever noticed that anything was missing."

"Anakin, you are a marvel and a genius. Remind me to thank you, properly, for this, later on, when we have more time," Obi-Wan says finally, after another incredulous shake of his head, running the fingers of his hands reverently along the length of his Padawan braid for the first time in far too many years and then giving Anakin a smile that is nearly as wide and bright as Anakin’s own. Squarely meeting Anakin’s eyes, he then quietly and solemnly offers, "It isn’t too late for the ceremony of exchange, if that is what you truly wish."

"Yes." /The response is so fervent that Obi-Wan solemnity slips a little, a small quirk of a smile slipping its way onto his lips. But Anakin, suddenly very serious indeed, explains, "Master, I know I disappointed you when you came back from your part in the Battle for Praesitlyn to find that I’d not only already been raised to Knight, without you there to cut my braid for me, but that I was indeed entirely braidless, having gotten rid of the damned thing almost as soon as I’d parted company with Masters Yoda and Windu. I know it probably sounded like a poor excuse then and it will doubtlessly still sound like a poor excuse now, but the truth is that without you there the ceremony didn’t seem to /mean anything. I had to let him do it, Master. You’d told me to obey the commands of the Council and to treat its members as if they were actually you, and of course it was supposed to be such a high honor, a reward for a job very well done, to have Master Yoda himself offering to cut my braid and raise me up to Knighthood then and there, right in the center of the Council Chamber. And Master Windu was just looking at me all the while with that smug, superior look of his, sure that they’d caught me out, that I would refuse and they’d have the proof they needed to split us up, the break up the team once and for all, and I just couldn’t let them do that, I couldn’t give them their excuse. I had to let him do it. Only it wasn’t real, it didn’t feel real, without you there. It wasn’t the Padawan braid that you had started for me, on Naboo, with a bit of your own hair to give it enough length to actually look like a real braid, the braid that you’d helped me reattach entirely, a couple of times, and to mend more times than I’d like to remember, the braid that you had marked and decorated and made special and real with your own hands, and which I’d been planning to give to you, when you finally cut it from me, as a sign of my thanks for your devotion. It was just some item that belonged to me because Master Yoda had put it into my hands and said that it was mine. I know that probably sounds like an excuse, now, but – "

Remembering the newly shorn and tearful, all but inconsolable Knight who had literally been curled up on his doorstep (too uncertain of his welcome to even go inside the suite of rooms that, only a day previously, had belonged to him, as well) when Obi-Wan had arrived back at the Temple, after Praesitlyn, and his own terrible sense of bereavement, to be shorn of his Padawan braid and not to have it happen at the hands of Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan cuts him off before he can get any further, telling him, "Anakin, it’s alright. Really. I understand. You don’t need to try to explain. I wanted to burn my own braid with Qui-Gon’s body, remember? It wouldn’t even still be here, if not for you. Since giving it immediately away seems to have preserved it so that you can have it and be proud of it, now, then I’m glad that you did what you did. You’ve been wiser in this than I was," he adds, giving Anakin a proud and reassuring smile, being very careful to avoid saying the name of the person who had kept Anakin’s braid, the shadow of whom is unwittingly responsible for the lingering darkness in Anakin’s eyes.

"If – if you say so, Master," Anakin finally doubtfully allows.

"I do, Anakin. And since I am the one you seem to have been worrying about upsetting, I believe I should be the one to have the final word on the subject, don’t you?" he asks back, raising a questioning eyebrow when Anakin continues to look at him with his lower lip caught uncertainly between his teeth and the crease of a troubled frown between his own eyebrows.

With a small, slightly abashed grin, Anakin ducks his head into a nod, laughing a little as he says, "I guess that is only fair. Alright, then. So we’ll both agree that we’re happy with how things have turned out and not worry about the rest for now, I guess?"

Resisting the urge to lift a questioning eyebrow again, sensing the seriousness underlying the question, Obi-Wan finally gently declares, "Unless, of course, you would rather not, Anakin."

"I – I think I need to ask you one thing, first. I don’t really want to ask it, Obi-Wan. But I – I think I need to. I think I should," Anakin finally admits, with a look of quiet misery that lets Obi-Wan guess, even before he opens his mouth again, what it is that he is going to ask. "She – she really did love you, didn’t she?"

Obi-Wan is tempted to close his eyes, to shut out the sight of Anakin’s quietly miserable face, but resists the urge to do so in favor of maintaining steady eye contact. "Yes, Anakin. I’m afraid she did. Please, try to understand. For the longest time, I didn’t even realize it. I fear that I may have inadvertently encouraged her, because I was so inexperienced in such things that even the idea of her being attracted to me simply never occurred to me – at least not until she became brave enough and certain enough of her feelings to approach me openly about her desire. Even then, for a very long time I was certain that it was just a foolish crush, born out of too much familiarity, and that she would forget it, and me, if only I maintained enough distance for a long enough period of time. By the time I realized how serious it was, it was already far too late. We had become friends, of a sort, in spite of all my attempts to avoid just such a level of familiarity, and as much as it pained me to hurt her, I could not bring myself to deliberately cause her a great enough amount of pain to drive her purposefully and finally out of my life. I had . . . grown too used to her irregular presence in my life, I suppose. So long as our communications were largely by holocomm and by courier, I was able to think of her as an ally, and a colleague, and perhaps, even, as a friend, of sorts. In short," he adds with a sad little half smile, "I could think of her much as I did of Bail Organa, only with an added protective element, because of her youth and our past history, which led me to speak more openly and naturally, perhaps, than I ever should have allowed myself to speak with a person outside of the Jedi Order, much less a person who I knew, by that time, harbored warmer feelings for me than perhaps was safe. Anakin, I will not dissemble or seek to hide anything from you, in this matter. I love you too much and I have too much respect for you and your intelligence to do so. Padmé Amidala was a very special young lady, one of the few rare souls able to truly touch and impact my life. I cared for her a great deal, but it was the caring of a friend, of one inclined towards the protectiveness of an elder brother, not towards the actions of a potential lover."

"She wrote to you, and spoke to you, regularly, after we came to back to the Temple from Naboo?" Anakin asks after several long moments of silence, his voice both slightly hurt and oddly sad, as though he has suspected something similar for a long time but has been managing to fool himself into disbelieving just because thinking about it, otherwise, would hurt so much.

"Yes, Anakin," Obi-Wan agrees, his voice very kind and gentle, indeed.

"She never tried to contact me, though. Not in all that time. Or to visit, even though she’d promised that she would, before we left Naboo," Anakin sadly remarks.

"She asked about you, when we would speak, from time to time, Anakin. Please, try to understand. Master Yoda himself had asked her not to contact you, for fear that any such contact might prove to distract you, unnecessarily and perhaps dangerously, from your training. She was trying to do the right thing, by obeying Master Yoda’s request. She didn’t want to divert your attention away from your training or make things any harder on you than they already were. She knew that we weren’t exactly getting along well with the High Council, Anakin. We spoke of that together, several times. She didn’t want to give Master Yoda or anyone else on the High Council another reason to criticize or take exception with you and your training," Obi-Wan explains.

"That actually makes it worse, not better, because on the one hand she was willing to risk Master Yoda’s wrath by keeping in contact with you, and on the other hand she was willing to do a bit more than distract me from my training/, in the end, after I finally got to her," Anakin only declares, a bitter note creeping into his voice as he shakes his head. "I never should have agreed to go to Naboo with her while you went after the assassin. I knew it was a bad idea to split up like that. You knew it was a bad idea. Stars’ end, even /she knew it was a bad idea. And yet still we did it, because that’s what the High Council told us we had to do. You know, the more I think about it, the more amazed I am that the Jedi Order survived as long as it did, with enemies as ruthless as the Sith out there, plotting against it, all the while. Every single major decision the High Council has ever made, in regards to us, has, as far as I know, initially been exactly the wrong thing to do. I shudder to think of how many innocent lives the High Council has destroyed or helped to ruin, Obi-Wan, I really do. But I suppose that’s neither here nor there. We were talking about Padmé, weren’t we, not the High Council. Padmé, who pretty obviously fell in love with you almost as soon as she met you. And who you didn’t realize even had a crush on you until . . . ?"

"The day she revealed that she was Amidala, after she’d made her plea to Boss Nass and the Gungans." This time Obi-Wan does close his eyes, in a vain effort to try to block out the memory of that day and of his awkward and incomplete (so incomplete as to be all but useless, in the days and years to come) revelation about Padmé’s feelings for him.

"May I see?"

Anakin’s question is voiced in such a quiet voice that at first Obi-Wan is certain that he has somehow misunderstood. His eyes, snapping open, search Anakin’s face, trying to make some kind of sense out of what it is that he thinks he has heard but cannot quite believe has been asked at him. What he sees there, though, makes him quietly warn Anakin, "I am afraid that it would hurt you, love. I was so very oblivious to her, to what she was feeling. Even when things got to the point where even I could tell that she was not looking upon me in at all the same way I was looking upon her, I still managed to come to practically all of the wrong conclusions."

"Just this once, though, would like to see for myself, please. I think – Obi-Wan, I truly think that it will be easier for me, in the long run, if I can see for myself what it was that she felt for you, so I can get it straight in my head that it had nothing to do with me. Please?" Anakin asks again, voice and face both very serious.

Helplessly, Obi-Wan lowers his eyes and sighs. He has a very bad feeling about this, but he can’t say no to such a reasonable and bald-faced plea. With his eyes still averted, he holds out his hand, waiting for Anakin to take it and remembering Naboo . . .

***

After making her revelatory announcement – not that the actual contents of her revelation truly were a revelation to anyone except Anakin and Jar Jar Binks – and winning Boss Nass over to her side with her humble and heartfelt plea for the aid of his people, in winning Naboo back from the droid armies of the Trade Federation, things finally begin to come clear to Obi-Wan. After Boss Nass takes them out of the swamp to the edge of the grass plains that run south to the Naboo capital city of Theed, certain that any attack on the droid armies will have to be mounted from the plains, and Captain Panaka leaves for a daring reconnaissance of Theed itself, the pointedness of Padmé’s questions, during the first round of conferences, makes it clear that Padmé’s intentions, in recruiting the aid of the Gungans, consists less of a last ditch hope for actual strength of numbers and more of a strategist’s attempt to find a sacrificial pawn to offer up at stakes and command attention away from other, less obvious pieces in play, while they seek to capture the one prize that might put an immediate end to the games. After Captain Panaka returns with reports of an underground resistance movement already well underway but an even stronger enemy than they have feared, Obi-Wan is sure of her plan. And, sure enough, she proves him right, outlining a desperately risky and personally dangerous but nonetheless strategically sound and rationally workable plan, to use the Gungan army as a distraction, to engage the droid armies, while the rest of them sneak into Theed Palace, to capture the Viceroy and, in one bold move, behead the entire Trade Federation and its armies. He is nodding and smiling, by the time that round of conferences comes to an end, throwing himself wholeheartedly into the effort to get all of the various little details hammered out, his approval of the plan much stronger than the oddly tentative support that his Master offers. But then, his Master seems to once again be distracted by the Tatooine boy, so perhaps that is why he seems distant from the proceedings . . .

As he watches his Master escort the boy a little away from the others, after their rather late midday meal, and sit down with him, to show him how to meditate (by example and not direct teaching, so as to avoid directly contradicting the orders of the High Council), Obi-Wan sighs quietly and shakes his head. Master Jinn will do what Master Jinn pleases, and damn both the consequences and his reputation in the process. Obi-Wan is too tired to try to struggle with him any longer about this. So far as he knows, Qui-Gon has always been his own worst enemy. Obi-Wan has been seeking to protect his Master from himself for approximately twelve years, now, to little avail, and just this once Obi-Wan is simply too tired to keep fighting. Perhaps it is wrong of him to cease struggling, when they are on the verge of so much danger, but he is only just now recovering his full range of abilities with the Force, after that damnable blaster shot he took when he first touched down on Naboo, in the midst of another swamp, all those days ago, and he’s literally too tired and too sore to try to press his luck. The last time he tried, his Master had become so angry that at one point Obi-Wan had actually begun to cringe back away from him, certain that Qui-Gon was going to physically strike him, and he’s still trying to recover from the shock and shame of that. It would be folly to invite more such ill-will and confusion, when he has so recently made the move to make peace between them, again, and their uneasy accord is still so fragile. So, with another sigh, Obi-Wan rises from the remains of his meal and strikes briskly out away from their little camp, intending to gain enough distance between him and the others to find a quiet spot where he can settle down and meditate some by himself, in peace. He has been walking for only a few minutes, at most, heading directly towards one of the straggling trees that mark the uncertain borderlands between the grassy plains and the swamp, when a figure suddenly appears from the other direction, coming around from behind the tree he has almost managed to reach and startling him out of his rather morose introspection.

Padmé is clad in the same uniform that all of the other handmaidens (except, of course, for the decoy Queen, the handmaid Sabé) are wearing: functional tall black boots, trousers and a lightweight, long-sleeved, closely fitted to the body tunic of matching burgundy shell spider silk (a deceptive cloth, resembling fragile silk but in reality armor strong enough to turn a vibroblade and even a weak laser or particle beam) beneath a matching burgundy heavy velvet overcoat (its thick velvet pile so dark that it actually appears black, in low light) with long, loose sleeves and a high neck, with surprisingly only a bit of gold braid, at the seems where the full sleeves meet the shoulders, and a lining of bright scarlet shell spider silk in its skirts to call attention away from the overcoat’s heavy practicality. It is the most purely functional uniform that he has yet seen the handmaids wear, and yet somehow Padmé still manages to make it look like royal raiment. With a slight shake of his head, he wonders, again, just how she and Sabé ever managed to fool so many, in the Senate, and just how blind this must make the Senators who have been fooled by their little deception. Before he can give it much thought, though, Padmé looks up and sees him, and her entire posture and attitude changes, her certainty and strength both falling away from her as she stops short and her shoulders and head bow a little, as though she has some reason to be ashamed in his presence and is wishing that the ground could just open up and swallow her. Startled and a bit concerned by the change that the mere sight of him has induced in her and unwilling to intrude on her private time, he stops short and gives her a formal, deep bow of his head to acknowledge her, saying quietly, "Milady Amidala."

This is apparently the wrong tack to take though, because Padmé’s face crumples as though Obi-Wan has shouted at her or actually struck her instead of simply offering a politely formal acknowledgment of her presence in preparation to retiring and leaving her in peace, her eyes flooding with tears that are visible even from three long paces away. He stands there for a moment, staring, stunned, while her shoulders shakes and her head bows and she finally cries out, like a wounded child, "Oh, don’t, am’chara, please, don’t! Don’t look upon me as if you no longer know me! I am still the same person as I was on the ship when we were fleeing towards Tatooine and you let me cry against your shoulder over the existence of evil in the galaxy. Obi-Wan, please, I don’t think I could stand it if you were to stand apart from me, now. This has been so much harder than I ever thought it would be, when I agreed to let Sabé stand in for me during the duration of this crisis. I know I have lied to you and I am sorry for it, you cannot imagine how sorry, but the rules of court are absolute and to have spoken of this before now would have been to invite danger upon my loyal handmaids, so I tried to compromise, I tried to prepare you for this, when I told you, on the ship, that I owned another name, for my position in court, and I – "

Obi-Wan is so startled by both her misery and her apologetic rambling that all of his diplomacy leaves him and he blurts the first thing that comes to mind, a not exactly respectful declaration of, "But Padmé, I knew, and my Master did as well, almost from the beginning, that you were really the reigning monarch of this planet. Really! You shouldn’t worry yourself. I am not offended by your disguise. I think it was a clever effort, if a bit flawed in execution, and I’m sure it would have stood you good use, if you and your handmaidens had remained the prisoners of the Trade Federation."

"You – you – you both/ knew? But – but we were all so careful – I was so very careful because I wanted you so badly to know and I couldn’t risk breaking my vows to the others! How did you know? How /could you have known?" Padmé only demands, not exactly crying now, though her lower lip and her entire body has developed a fine tremor and her eyes are still leaking a little bit of moisture at their furthest edges.

Feeling incredibly awkward (he always seems to be saying the wrong thing, lately! He really should learn from his mistakes and simply try to keep his mouth, from now on), he gently tries to explain, "I’m sure you all thought that you were being very careful, milady, but if you had wanted to keep such a secret among such close quarters, then you should have been more careful to hide yourself away among the other handmaids, not drawing attention to yourself, and seen to it that Sabé called upon the others for their help and their opinions more often. Master Qui-Gon and I have an advantage that others would not, in a case, in that we have our abilities with the Force and the Force can tell a person, quite plainly, the relative strength and basic composition of another person’s spirit, as well as how much attention and merit and care the other people around that person might feel towards her. The attention of Captain Panaka and your handmaids was, from the beginning, focused quite powerfully around you, Padmé, not around the apparent Queen, and your spirit shone like a sun while their spirits only flickered with the dimmer, distant fire of stars. The Force made the deception plain within moments after Master Qui-Gon and I had joined and freed your party from the droid guards, but because the deception was of course not merely being maintained by your actions alone and since it was, after all, a sound decision, in terms of practical protection against your enemies, it seemed wiser to let the deception stand, unchallenged, for as long as possible."

"But – but you said that our execution of the deception was flawed, Obi-Wan, and it sounds as though you believe you could have figured out the truth for yourself, even without the Force to aid you," Padmé notes after several long, considering moments, making him wince not only for his bluntness (which surely must have offended her) but because he has been hoping that she would be too distracted to catch on to that ill-considered remark.

"Padmé, I am sure that you all believed you were being very careful, but I’m afraid that events conspired to throw us into such close quarters that it would have been impossible for the deception to stand long, even if you had all been much more practiced at running this ploy than you were. It would have been a proliferation of small things that would have tipped the scales. When we first liberated your party from the droid guards of the Neimoidians, before the apparent Queen would make her decision regarding my Master’s plan to flee from the planet, she turned to her handmaids for a sign of either approval or disagreement, and you were the only one who answered her. After that little astromech droid helped us escape from Naboo with the ship still at least mostly functional, the apparent Queen singled you out to see to cleaning it up and showing our appreciation, for its aid in our escape. When we had landed safely on Tatooine and a sudden decision came, at the last moment, from the Queen’s party, demanding that one of her own be included on the party sent out to obtain the parts necessary to repair the ship, it was you, alone, who was offered up as the one who would go – the one who must go. And your behavior on that trip, as my Master has indicated, was not consistent with that of a mere handmaiden and small-time functionary of the Queen’s court. When you spoke, then, it was with the firmness of absolute conviction and the surety that you possessed the strength of will and a backing of power sufficient to make good on your claims, if necessary. And it was the same whenever you spoke up, really, but in this case your attitude was obviously not that of a simple watcher sent along on Master Qui-Gon’s sufferance. You disagreed with my Master’s plans and you spoke against them bluntly, as one who was used to command and to having both her opinions and her proclamations taken seriously, and my Master has reported that, when he tried to draw your attention to the fact that you were only supposed to be just another simple handmaiden, you seemed surprised and amazed and called on the threat of the Queen’s displeasure over his decisions with awkwardness coupled to a finality that made it seem as though you could read your Queen’s mind and predict all of her reactions with a hundred percent certainty. Can you see, now, why the deception would not have held? There was just too much of a proliferation of things that, taken by themselves, might not have been so revealing, but altogether were far too telling as to your actual standing among the Naboo party. Plus – and I would be remiss in my duty, as one of your protectors, if I were not to mention this, Padmé – I fear I must point out that you have a tendency, whenever you become truly angry, to slip into the same syntax and vocal pattern as the apparent Queen uses. On the ship fleeing from Naboo, you became offended, when we were talking of knowledge and balance and I asked you if you were not trying to ask after the wisdom of the Jedi Order, and for a few moments, then, you spoke to me as Queen Amidala would have, not just as Padmé Naberrie of Naboo," he carefully adds, wincing inwardly over the admission but unable to bring himself to lie to her about this, even if only by omission.

"I have been betraying myself all along and did not even realize it?" Padmé cries, her voice and her eyes plainly horrified by the notion, making Obi-Wan wince at his blunder over bringing this topic up at all yet again.

"Padmé, please don’t take it like that. I am sure that is only because we were in such close quarters for so long that it was so apparent – "

"You mean you don’t think the Senate guessed?" she cuts in, her voice very small and her eyes filled with a desperate hope, her hands clasped tightly together near her breastbone in a plainly pleading gesture, as though she is asking about something so very important to her that she is almost afraid of the answer she will receive.

Almost sighing with relief, glad beyond words to finally have something good that he can report, Obi-Wan swiftly reassures her, "Milady, I don’t believe that even Senator Palpatine guessed the truth, and from what I have heard it is difficult indeed to put anything by that man."

With a thankful little cry of, "Thank the Force!" and a smile that lights up her whole face, Padmé quickly begins to explain, "This whole charade has been as much for Senator Palpatine’s benefit, am’chara, as for mine. The Senator for Naboo and I had not yet had a chance to meet, before the crisis began. The former monarch of Naboo, King Veruna, abdicated, vanished, and then was discovered to have been killed, just before the blockade began, and Captain Panaka had raised some concerns regarding the Senator’s well-being. Plausible deniability could protect him, if the enemies of Naboo were to attempt to harm him."

"While the chance to see, honestly, how he has reacted to the crisis has also cleared him of any lingering doubt as to his devotion to Naboo and whether or not he might have been mixed up in whatever nasty business claimed King Veruna’s life, I suppose?" Obi-Wan asks with a soft half smile, regarding her expectantly now that she seems to have recovered, somewhat, from her inexplicable earlier agitation.

With a plainly delighted little laugh, Padmé throws herself bodily at Obi-Wan, her action so unexpected that he nearly startles and takes a step back away from her as she is still coming towards him. He has to hold himself very still, as she reaches up to throw her arms around his neck, the loose sleeves of her overcoat falling back away to bunch around her shoulders and tangle with the edges of his over-robe, to keep from flinching away, unused as he is to essentially being tackled with a hug and not quite sure what the proper response is or what he should do with his hands. "Just so, Obi-Wan, am’chara/, indeed! You have read my soul in this, /cariodal/, as you always seem to do. /Thank you, Bendu. You don’t know how this helps to settle my mind!" she whispers, her voice suddenly so happy and relieved that she almost still seems to be laughing, in an odd way, her mouth so close to his left ear as she speaks the words that she is almost touching his earlobe and her warm breath rushes in a warm, ticklish wave across the sensitive skin there, making him have to hold very still indeed to keep from twitching and revealing his discomfort with her closeness.

As she continues to cling to him, precariously balanced on tip-toes to reach his neck, he finally, awkwardly, bends down a little, to help give her easier access so she won’t be in danger of overbalancing and losing her footing, and puts his right arm loosely around her back, his hand tentatively placed high on her back, near her right shoulder, in what he is fairly certain is a safe place. With a small, almost inaudible sigh, Obi-Wan thinks to himself (not for the first time), I really shall have to find someone who is not a member of the royal party and is qualified to tell me what that strange word she is always using around me means, one of these days. Cariodal as well – that seems to be a new one. He also notes, wistfully, that it had been much easier to deal with Padmé when he had still been so exhausted and in constant (if usually low-level) pain from that unfortunate blaster bolt that he hadn’t really been able to spare enough concentration to really think overly much about what he was doing. He has no real idea what to do or say, and as her hold on him grows, if anything, a little bit tighter and more secure, as she takes advantage of his one-armed hug to pull herself closer to him and not only snuggle into the crook offered by his encircling arm but to actually maneuver herself in under the fold of material at the right edge of his loose over-robe, Obi-Wan begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable with the entire situation. Jedi, being reserved being who follow a Code that specifically forbids the active cultivation of unnecessary attachments, are not given overly much to displays of obvious affection or even of reassurance, and Obi-Wan is both unaccustomed and ill-at-ease with both the frequency and the degree of touch that Padmé apparently feels is acceptable to give to him. He is unused to the feel of another person purposefully and willingly doing even so much as touching him on the shoulder or taking his hand, much less embracing him bodily like this, so close that her entire slender form is pressing firmly up against him. It feels . . . strange. And wrong, in a way that he can’t quit put his finger on, other than to think that he’s not entirely sure that this kind of hug is quite as proper or acceptable to the Jedi as it apparently is to Padmé.

As the moments of discomfort gradually lengthen into first one long minute and then another and Padmé seems no more prepared to let go of him than in the first few instants after throwing her arms about his neck, Obi-Wan shifts uncomfortably, wondering if he might dare to say something to her, as his neck begins to feel the strain of bending itself beneath an unfamiliar weight of two slender but surprisingly strong arms. As though in response to his thought, though, those arms tighten a fraction more. With a sigh, Obi-Wan gives in the inevitable and carefully puts his second arm around Padmé, too, hugging her just tightly enough to lift her entirely off of her feet, so that he no longer has to try to bend awkwardly down to help her reach his neck. She makes an odd little noise – not exactly a squeak and not exactly a sigh – as he adjusts both arms so that they are secure around her waist and then lifts her effortlessly off of the ground, and to his surprise her legs swing a little bit as she shifts in his grasp, her entire body tilting a little to his right, so that she is not entirely flush with him anymore. Even though her body slides slightly to the side, so there is less of it pressed directly up against him, in a way the new position that she ends up in against him is almost worst, for her loosely dangling left leg is canted up over and around his right leg, almost as it would be if she were to attempt to wrap that leg up around his hip, while her right leg is draped down across the center of him, her right hip pressing firmly to the bottom center of his stomach, so that the slender length of her rounded thigh comes to rest wedged halfway in between his legs. Obi-Wan freezes in place, shocked badly enough to feel more than a little frightened at the unfamiliar feeling of weight and warmth pressing insistently up against his hip and in between his legs, no longer merely discomforted but actively alarmed as Padmé continues to shift slightly but tellingly in his embrace, not able to think of a logical reason why he should be so dismayed over such a relatively slight change in their relative positions but unable to ignore or at first overcome the rising sense of panic that keeps him rooted to the spot, letting her move as she will, as though out of some vain hope that his stillness will prompt her to stillness and then to calmness and thence to letting him go.

Instead, Padmé rises up against him, using the leverage of her arms where they are still locked around his neck and her own upward and slightly forward momentum from where he has just lifted her off of the ground to pull herself more firmly up into and slightly over him, so that instead of just hugging herself to him her body is actually draped down across his. Nestling her chin securely above his right shoulder before snuggling down into the crook formed by the joint of his neck and shoulder, she then shifts her left arm down from around his neck and under the outer fold of his over-robe to wrap across his back (in the process worming her way even more thoroughly underneath that robe, so that most of her body is sheltered beneath the heavy dark brown material), her small, slender fingers tangling themselves securely into both layers of his tunics. Padmé shifts her right arm a little, too, but only enough to let her thread the fingers of that hand into his hair, stroking her fingers slowly but rhythmically over and through his short, spiky, Padawan’s haircut, pausing at the end of each caressing motion to toy, briefly, with the small, short tail of hair secured just over the nape of his neck as if she were considering pulling out the tie holding it in place. Every time her hand hesitates there, Obi-Wan has to force himself to hold still and not simply strip her bodily away from him. Fortunately, even though her fingers keep toying with the short tail of hair at the end of every single caressing stroke across his head and through his hair, she never is quite so bold enough as to try to remove that tie, or else he is not sure that he could have kept from stripping her hands away from him, whether it would have offended her or not. He truly does not want to offend her, but the way Padmé is touching him is making him so increasingly uncomfortable that it requires a constant act of pure will to resist trying to either twitch his head away from her or else to simply strip her hands and arms entirely off of him and drop her back down to the ground, at least an arm’s length away from him.

Obi-Wan is certain that this would not be nearly so difficult if only she weren’t insisting on playing with his hair so much. It is entirely distracting and he wishes she would stop moving that hand over him. If only she weren’t doing that, he is certain he would be able to simply stand there and quietly continue to hold her, ignoring his own irrational alarm over the odd positioning and the feel of her legs. She is so slender and light that (even without him calling on the Force) she weighs hardly anything at all in his arms, barely any more than that boy, Anakin Skywalker, had weighed, that night on the ship, when he had come out of his meditative trance to find the youngling curled up in the floor next to him, sleeping, and lifted the young child up and wrapped him in his over-robe . . . If only her hand were not moving through his hair over and over and over again, he thinks that he could probably pretend that he were simply lifting up that sleeping child again and dismiss everything else to the awkwardness of carrying another person. Though Obi-Wan has never thought of her in such terms – she looks and even behaves far too much like an adult, most of the time, for such thinking – Padmé is still a child, practically speaking. The data files he had been given to read, on the way to Naboo, when he and his Master had been planning to negotiate a peaceful ending to the Trade Federation’s blockade of the planet, had been quite clear on the fact that the newly elected Queen Amidala was only fourteen. Naboo, though, because of its scant population – the settlement, though easily old enough to be well-established, having been established almost simultaneously with the end of the Old Sith Wars, has suffered greatly over the years, between the planet’s involvement in the terribly devastating New Sith Wars, the few but nonetheless still quite destructive wars fought among its own populace (both human against Gungan and human against human), and the near-annihilation of the human population, during the latest and most serious widespread outbreak of the virulent hive viruses that still are not fully understood well enough in the medical field to be entirely curable or even easily containable, roughly a century earlier (in the aftermath of what otherwise would have likely been a genocidal war brought by the humans of Naboo against the Gungans) – tends to raise its young ones so that childhood is fairly brief, if generally not quite so brief as Padmé’s has been.

In many ways, Obi-Wan understands that Padmé has been raised for the station she now occupies, as the elected monarch of Naboo, in the same sort of way that an initiate in the Jedi Temple is raised to one day become a Padawan learner. Between what he has read about Queen Amidala in his data files and what he has been told by Padmé herself about her life, Obi-Wan would not hesitate to claim that Padmé Naberrie has been specifically raised for a life of public service. The youngest child of Ruwee Naberrie and Jobal Thule Naberrie (a skilled builder and architect and later a teacher at Theed University and a former social worker and housewife who has volunteered much of her time in a variety of social service roles so that she might continue to help the underprivileged), born in a small and isolated village in the Gallo Mountains, Padmé has had a strong sense of civic duty instilled within her from essentially the moment of her birth by both of her extremely socially conscious parents. And since her parents relocated to Theed soon after her birth, so that she and her elder sister (and only sibling), Sola, would be able to take advantage of the higher quality of education and richer, more diverse way of life available in the capital city, Padmé has also been schooled in both local politics and foreign affairs since a very early age. Precociously intelligent and having advanced rapidly through an accelerated and highly specialized course of learning at a Theed school for the gifted that essentially functions as an offshoot of Theed University (a prestigious and widely recognized institute of higher learning known even on Coruscant for its rigorous courses), where she had tested phenomenally high in both intelligence and empathy, Padmé had, at the tender age of seven, chosen to follow in her father’s footsteps and join the Refugee Relief Movement, aiding in their efforts during the Shadda-Bi-Boran exodus. At the age of eight, she had then joined the Apprentice Legislators, formally announcing her intent to follow a career in politics.

Although her behavior had been meant to allow Obi-Wan to assume, earlier, that she had tested into the select group of individuals from which the royal handmaids are drawn, he has been well aware, from reading about Queen Amidala, of the fact that Padmé had actually been appointed to the position of Senatorial Advisor and recognized as a full Apprentice Legislator by age eleven before being elected Princess of Theed at age twelve. Padmé had then earned the right to her so-called route title within the royal court and become Queen Amidala in a planet-wide election that lasted less than four seconds, a combination of personal charisma and appeal, exceptional scores on her education certificates, and a wide-ranging plan for reform following the scandalous reign of King Veruna securing her position as the elected monarch of Naboo. In truth, Padmé had left most of her childhood behind, willingly, in the year between her seventh and eight birthday, when she had made the decision to build a political career for herself after her brief stint in the Refugee Relief Movement. In accepting a nomination and joining the race to elect a successor for the newly abdicated Veruna, Padmé had, like a youngling accepting an invitation from a Master to become a Padawan, chosen to leave any lingering remnant of childhood behind and take on the mantle of a full adult. Though it had happened a year after a Padawan’s time of choosing would have occurred, Obi-Wan has a feeling that the life she had chosen, in the six years preceding her election to the throne of Naboo, may have required her to grow up even a little bit more quickly than a Jedi initiate in the crèche does. It is one of the reasons why he does not often think of Padmé as the young girl that she actually is: it would be hypocritical of him to regard her as child when her life has, in a way, been comparable to that of a Jedi initiate’s, with serious training and even more serious work replacing what would have otherwise been years of relatively carefree innocence, of childhood. Obi-Wan has not either thought of himself as a child (nor would he consider others of comparable age in training within the Jedi Order thus) or accepted being treated by others as a child since fairly early on in his twelfth year. It would be terribly hypocritical of him to think of or to treat Padmé Amidala, who is fairly well along into her fourteenth year, as a child.

This sudden need of hers to cling to him, though, in combination with the actual feel of her in his arms (as long as he ignores her dangling legs, anyway), serves as a sudden and pointed reminder as to just how young Padmé actually is, and it is a slightly disconcerting realization. It makes him wonder if perhaps he and the others (not to mention the entire human population of Naboo, which seems to expect to be rescued from the tyranny of the Trade Federation by their newly elected and very young Queen) have been expecting too much out of Padmé, if perhaps they have all been unfair to her by treating her as a very capable, experienced, and intelligent adult instead of a very young and precocious girl who is actually quite new to her current station in life. The line of thought is both confusing and dismaying, since the thought that he may have caused Padmé hurt or even actual harm by seeking to do her the honor of treating her as an equal, of sorts, rather than as the young girl that she actually is, is surprisingly painful. Which leads directly to the question as to why the possibility should bother him so much. True, Padmé is an extraordinary young woman – or, well, girl – and he admires her bravery and her ability to find ways to fight for her people that do not rely on either simple brute strength or waiting on the convenience of the Senate, and she obviously seems to enjoy his company as well as to respect him enough to worry about his good opinion of her. In fact, if he were not a Jedi Padawan and she were not the ruling monarch of a world within the Republic under his protection, one might even go so far as to say that she has come to care for him as a friend or brother or –

Oh. Oh, Force./ Surely not. /Surely he is reading the situation wrong. Padmé is a very bright young lady and she has known, from the very beginning, that he is a Jedi Padawan, and surely she would have more sense than to –

At that exact moment, Padmé makes a small noise in the back of her throat and moves against him in a decidedly unnerving matter, at the same time seeming to push back against him, as though to shove away from him, and also to pull herself up even more firmly over and against him, shocking down to the depths of his soul, but he has no time to react to her (purposeful?) movement because in the next instant she’s raised her head and turned so that her cheek is all but touching his, her mouth against his ear (her busily stroking hands having tucked his Padawan braid out of the way, back behind his ear, earlier), and she is murmuring a soft, concerned, "Obi-Wan, am’chara, are you all right? Is something wrong?"

Obi-Wan tries to turn his head away from her but that small hand slides around to cup the side of his face and then he cannot move, for fear of seeming to turn in towards that hand. "I – I have had a thought that disturbs me," he finally admits, his voice sounding strange (thin and strained) to his own ears. "Padmé, you – you know that I will be a Jedi soon; Master Qui-Gon and I . . . we have had a few disagreements over the course of this mission – he believes I am too wrapped up in the details of the mission, too consumed by my need to fulfill the actual command of the High Council, and I am afraid that his connection with the Living Force, which is much stronger than that of most other Jedi, is distracting him from his duty to the Council, to fulfill the mission – but there have been signs, for a few years now, that my Master has considered me to be either ready or nearing full readiness for the Trials, and whenever the Council agrees with him on this matter I will hopefully become a full Knight, in my own right, dedicated to the Order and bound to obey the will of the High Council in all things – "

"Yours is a life of duty, cariodal. I am aware of that. We are both bound to our own separate duties," Padmé declares, mercifully cutting him off before he can fumble any more after a way to voice his concern without accusing her outright of folly, her voice quiet and grave and more than a little sorrowful. "But right now there is nothing more to be done but to wait until tomorrow, and since we do not know what may come to us tomorrow, other than battle, it seems to me to be a good idea to spend what time we know we have yet together clearing the air and offering what comfort to one another that we can. I saw the way that you and Master Qui-Gon spoke together, earlier, and how whatever it was that you said to him seemed to mend the terrible rift growing between you. It gave me hope that you might be able to forgive me as well, since you seem to have forgiven your Master so easily for his recent cruelty and negligence towards you. Because of that, I have been hoping to speak to you ever since circumstances forced me to reveal my other name. I did not want to go into battle tomorrow worrying that I might have offended you, by lying to you in order to keep this information from you, and fearing that I might have missed out on my last chance to make things well between us again."

"My Master has not been cruel to me, Padmé. I was in the wrong and so it was only mete that I be the one to apologize," Obi-Wan can’t quite keep the puzzlement out of his voice as he says this. Qui-Gon Jinn is his Master: so long as he is teaching Obi-Wan as his Padawan, it would not only be impossible for Qui-Gon to truly neglect him, but it is Qui-Gon’s privilege, as Obi-Wan’s Master, to behave in any manner that he might wish towards him. In any case, even if he disagrees entirely with his Master’s actions in the Council Chamber, as still only a Padawan learner, it is not his place to argue with Master Qui-Gon over them. It baffles him that Padmé seems to believe otherwise. But that is neither here nor there. The important matter at hand isn’t Padmé’s motivation for seeking to speak to him but rather her reasons for clinging to him as she has been doing, and his fear as to what that motivation might mean about Padmé’s feelings for him. So he continues speaking, telling her, "But you have not offended me, so there is no need for you to apologize to me now. So why are you still so unsettled?"

"Will you think less of me if I admit it is because I have as little wish to die as to see or learn of any of my companions or the Gungans being hurt, and I am almost certain that either one or the other will happen before the sun has set tomorrow?" Padmé asks him in return, her voice still immensely grave but also very small now.

"But that is not the only thing that is troubling you at the moment," Obi-Wan tells her quietly, his voice carefully blank to avoid appearing judgmental or accusative in any way. "If it were, you would be speaking to me of your fears instead of clinging to me in mute misery."

"Obi-Wan, I – I’m sorry, Bendu, I truly am. I don’t wish to impose upon you. I don’t wish to make a fool of myself. And I truly don’t want to make this any harder than it already is. I am usually more composed than this. I am usually more careful than this. But I find I have no more strength to spare and not enough wits left for fine words. This is so much more difficult than I ever dreamed it could be. I know – Obi-Wan, I know that our lives are bound by our duties. And I would be the last person in the galaxy to try to avoid anything that I truly feel is my personal responsibility. I have already forfeited at least one person’s happiness other than my own to duty. I will not hesitate to make whatever sacrifice may be required of me, either tomorrow or next day or the following, to continue to fulfill that duty faithfully. But for right now, cariodal/, for just this little while, please, could you just not ask me any more questions? I can’t tell anymore if I wish to take comfort for myself more than I want to be able to give it. I just know that I am afraid and confused and too tired to keep as close a watch upon my words and actions as I should be, at the moment, but that I want to be here with you, right now. I want to lay these doubts to rest and clear the air between us while I know I still can. This feels right to me. This makes everything else – all the worries about tomorrow and the fear for my friends and loyal companions and those who have sworn to protect me and to aid in the battle for Naboo’s freedom – go away, if only for a little while. Please? Just hold me for a little while longer. I can be brave in a few moments more, /am’chara. At least I think I can. Please?" she finally asks, after several long moments of silence, her voice so small and so full of pain that he feels ashamed, suddenly, of his own doubts and suspicions.

"Of course, Padmé. I’m sorry. Forgive me. I don’t know what is wrong with me, lately. My mind seems to be full of all sorts of ridiculous notions and nonsense. I seem bound for folly, however I turn," Obi-Wan sighs quietly, regretfully, hoping she has not guessed the specific nature of the ill-conceived thought had driven him to question her so closely even as he tightens his arms around her a fraction so that he is actually willingly hugging her to him instead of simply woodenly holding her aloft next to him and suffering her touch without moving or actively reciprocating her gestures – which, after all, appear to be meant only for purposes of comfort.

"I find that difficult to believe, am’chara/. You are always too hard on yourself. I don’t know who or what has taught you to always immediately assume the worst of yourself, but it is a dangerous and self-harmful habit of yours that I dearly wish I could break you of, Obi-Wan," Padmé replies with a sigh of her own that exhales warm, moist breath into his ear and makes him twitch ever so slightly in response before he can help himself, in direct response to which she moves the hand that is still cupping the side of his face so that her thumb moves in an arc across his cheekbone, caressing him in what is plainly meant to be a soothing manner but that instead only serves to remind him how strange and discomforting and somehow wrong so much willing touch seems to him. "Forgive me if I am being forward to the point of bluntness, /cariodal," she continues, not seeming to notice his returning confusion or the agitation that it is trying to inspire in him again, "but if our plan goes badly enough awry tomorrow that I should fall, then I wish to die with a clean conscience. You are the most honorable and conscientiously duty-bound man I have ever met, Bendu, and you are also so unbelievably hard on yourself, holding yourself to such ridiculously high standards, that I fear you shall come to real harm some day, when you discover that what you have been striving for is an impossibility. Please, be careful, Obi-Wan. I know the Jedi Order places its confidence in a very unbending and binary Code that promotes a certain way of life, and that this way of life seems to inspire certain beliefs and behaviors that are not precisely . . . healthy. Obi-Wan, I know you have said that your ability to touch the Force in some way provides a balance to your life that is otherwise sorely lacking, because of the demands of this Code – though I for one still fail to see how this could be so – but I worry for you, and it would break my heart, cariodal, if I were to discover some day that you have come to serious harm because of the habits of thought and belief and behavior instilled in you by this Code that you say your Order swears by."

Thoroughly confused and embarrassed by her words, Obi-Wan quietly replies, "I am afraid that I don’t take your meaning here, Padmé."

With a sorrowful sigh, Padmé tells him, "I know you don’t, cariodal./ That is most of the problem right there," she adds with a bitter sounding little laugh. "Just – /please/, Obi-Wan, be careful. Be mindful of your own health and well-being, /am’chara/. That is all that I ask. /Please. It is not selfish to see to your own well-being, especially when there are others depending on you."

"I – I will certainly try to do so, Padmé," Obi-Wan finally replies, his confusion plain in his voice, after several long moments of silence.

"Thank you, Bendu. That is all that I ask of you. All that I dare to ask," Padmé sighs and turns slightly, pressing a kiss to his cheek, before snuggling her head back into the crook of his shoulder and subsiding, her arms tightening in a hug of almost startling tightness.

Stunned, embarrassed, and confused beyond words, Obi-Wan simply silently continues to hold her, certain that he will never fully come to understand this remarkable young woman but no longer entirely sure if this lack of full comprehension is necessarily a bad thing . . .

***