Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

“You’re nervous,” Seventeen said, sliding into Obi-Wan’s personal space with the deft assurance of knowing he was welcome. He tugged Obi-Wan closer to him, arms sliding around to hold him.

“Shouldn’t I be?” Obi-Wan retorted even as he leaned against Seventeen, his eyes still fixed to the sight of the Keldabe skyline. His hands slid over Seventeen’s arms.  “Tomorrow we’ll be in Sundari and I’ll come face to face with a version of my younger self.”

“And your Jedi buir,” Seventeen added, noting the omission.

“My Master, yes,” Obi-Wan said. 

Seventeen held Obi-Wan tightly and waited.

“Master Jinn was…is a compassionate and skilled Jedi in his work,” Obi-Wan began. “He is grounded in the Living Force more than any other Jedi in the temple. It makes him…certain of his path forward in a way others take for arrogance and it made following him as his Padawan a challenge at times.”

Seventeen pressed a kiss to Obi-Wan’s head.

“Often, I would be left to do the official mission while he investigated something else which had caught his attention, or he would divide our duties rather than have us work together,” Obi-Wan sighed. “It’s how we came to be parted in the original mission we had to Mandalore.”

“You loved Kryze,” Seventeen said factually.

“I was eighteen,” Obi-Wan said dryly. “We were young, passionate. We debated fiercely about a wide range of topics in the way only two young people can. We saved each other’s lives and relied on each other because we were alone and in danger. We came to love each other a great deal in the moment.” He shook his head. “We both knew it would never work when we returned to reality. It’s why she never asked me to stay and why I never offered.”

“You grieved her death,” Seventeen said, careful to keep any note of jealousy out of his voice.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said. “She was a dear friend.” He turned in Seventeen’s arms to face him. “You are my heart, dear one.”

Seventeen kissed him lightly and hummed as they rested their foreheads together. The weight of the ring which had bound them together sat with a comforting weight on his finger. 

“My Master,” Obi-Wan said quietly, “we didn’t have the best beginning and our early years were…not a good foundation. After Mandalore, when I left Satine behind, after that he trusted me more. We built a good relationship for the most part. I wouldn’t be who I am without Qui-Gon’s teaching.”

“I wouldn’t be who I am without Prime’s,” Seventeen said. “It doesn’t make him a good man or a good buir.”

Obi-Wan breathed in a little sharply, absorbing the point. He pressed closer to Seventeen seeking comfort. Seventeen gave it to him without question. He had long since figured out that Obi-Wan’s relationship with Jinn was a complicated mess – more from what Obi-Wan did not say than from what he did. 

Skywalker had idolised Jinn. Seventeen had once heard the boy wax lyrically to a group of troopers about how the Jedi Master had saved him from slavery, and how it had been Jinn who should have raised him to Knighthood, without a care for how his words cut wounds in Obi-Wan.

“Just try not to punch him in the face,” Obi-Wan murmured with his usual dry sense of humour. 

Seventeen smiled and kissed his riduur again. He revelled at the way Obi-Wan melted against him. He loved being with Obi-Wan, spending each day together. Sometimes he remembered the infrequent snatched times they’d found in the war and wondered at how that had sustained them.

His thumb brushed over the ring on his finger.

They still didn’t know how the rings had sent them to the past.  The science of it remained unknown.

Obi-Wan had theorised that perhaps it wasn’t just time they had traversed but they had yet to find anything which would say they had landed in a different universe than their own. Neither he nor Obi-Wan were certain if their arrival had created a splinter universe or whether they were simply writing over the events in their own.

Ultimately it didn’t matter.

They had landed in the past and they’d been given an opportunity to change things. Still, actually determining to change things had not been a decision they’d taken lightly.

It had been a surprisingly hard decision to change things once they’d realised they’d landed on Concord Dawn, not far from the old Fett farm, but years into the past.

Thankfully, they’d had the handful of old untraceable Outer Rim currency Bail Organa had pressed upon Obi-Wan to aide him in his exile. That had been enough for them to rent a room at the inn in the town which had been a short walk from where they had landed.      

Obi-Wan had been exhausted. The end of the war, losing the Jedi, losing their boys and Cody to the machinations of the Sith, Anakin’s Fall – all of it had taken its toll. Seventeen had been reeling from losing their boys and Cody, from the sheer unrelenting absence of his vode.

For a while they’d curled up around each other and simply held on.

A week later, they’d found the Fett farm and started to make it a home. It had been long abandoned. The fields were overrun with vegetation. The homestead still had the charred blaster marks and scars of fire from the fight that had ended the lives of Jango’s buire. The rooms were a frozen memorial of family life before it had been so thoroughly destroyed.

Over a moon cycle, Seventeen and Obi-Wan had set things to rights, cleaned everything out, storing priceless family treasures into the attic. They’d set fresh linens on the bed, eaten simple stews and broths to regain their health. Neighbours had appeared to help them, accepting their tale of Seventeen being a long-lost cousin, of a fight with Death Watch that had cost them everything and brought them to the farm searching for a new beginning. The same neighbours began bringing with them tales of the family Seventeen had only ever known from whispers about Prime’s old life, and then, tales from the wider galaxy.

It had been the tale of the Jedi withdrawing from Senate control that had shocked Seventeen and Obi-Wan out of their passivity.

Part of Seventeen had wanted to ignore it; had simply wanted to spend a life with Obi-Wan and to Sith hells with the rest of the galaxy. They could have stayed at the farm, adopted a couple of ade. But Seventeen had known himself well enough to know that he’d have never settled for that comfortable existence for long, and his riduur certainly wouldn’t have. Obi-Wan was a Jedi in his soul.  He took his duty to the wider galaxy, to serving the people of the galaxy in whatever way he could, seriously. Obi-Wan had never been meant for the life of a farmer.

Venturing out from the farm to the local town, they’d realised that it had been their arrival in the past which had already set changes in motion once Obi-Wan had used an old data terminal to slice into the temple Archives.

There had been a shockwave in the Unifying Force when they’d landed in the past. It had motivated the Jedi to change.

Obi-Wan had been shaken by the revelation.

Seventeen figured that the Jedi had gotten the wake-up call they’d needed to avoid their genocide.

But the Sith were still out there. Sidious in his Palpatine guise and whoever his Master was. Maul was already in Sidious’ grasp and being trained.  They were all still a threat.

Finally, Seventeen and Obi-Wan had settled on strengthening Mandalore as their purpose. The Sith had already interfered to weaken Mandalore by supporting Death Watch and Vizsla in their attacks on the Haat Mando’ade, in promoting and supporting the pacifist rule of the New Mandalorians in the Senate. If they could build a strong Mandalore, it would kriff up the Sith’s plans and give them a better base from which to launch a counterattack.

Unfortunately, their plan meant rescuing Jango Fett.

Seventeen would have happily let his genetic donor rot on the spice ship, but he conceded that restoring Fett as the Manda’lor was the easiest path forward. He reconciled himself to the knowledge that in doing so they’d effectively prevent his vode from existing.

But Fett had been very damaged. Half-mad with grief, half-mad from the spice addiction he’d picked up as a slave shackled to working with it. There had been the foundations of Sithly mind interference in Fett’s head: a bloodlust for revenge on the Jedi rooted deeply, with Fett’s devotion to Mereel’s memory and the Codex burnt away. It had left Seventeen wondering whether Fett’s entire existence after Galidraan had been orchestrated by the Sith, even his supposed escape from slavery, his rebuilding himself into something of a functional being enough to become the best bounty hunter in the galaxy.

Obi-Wan had gently undid the Sith damage to Fett’s mind, but Seventeen knew deep down the damage was done. He hadn’t been surprised when Fett still went after Vizsla in a fit of temper. If they hadn’t realised and followed him…

Fett’s death at Tor Vizsla’s hand had given Seventeen the opportunity to challenge the dar’manda. He’d won the fight decisively and taken Vizsla’s head. The clans of the Haat Mando’ade had recognised Seventeen as the Manda’lor and many of those who’d followed Vizsla had changed allegiances when they’d realised there was another choice on offer besides Death Watch’s terrorism and the New Mandalorian’s pacificism.

Seventeen could hear the call of the Darksabre’s crystal across the room. The crystal had recognised Seventeen as worthy and it adored Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan hummed. “What are you thinking about so seriously?”

Seventeen kissed Obi-Wan briefly. “How we got here.”

Obi-Wan smiled, the twist of his lips a touch bitter-sweet. “Sometimes I think we would have been better staying on the farm.”

Seventeen chuckled lowly. “Me too, cyare.” He cupped Obi-Wan’s cheek tenderly. “You do not have to meet with either Jinn or the version of you here if you wish. Kal and Silas will stand as my seconds.”

Obi-Wan shook his head. His red hair was in the same cut he’d worn through the end of the war, his beard neatly trimmed. There was a touch of grey creeping in which Seventeen figured made Obi-Wan look distinguished. The Jedi was as fit as ever. 

Seventeen was thankful that he himself appeared to be aging normally. How they didn’t know, but it appeared that the time travel had ‘fixed’ anything medically wrong with them. His own dark hair was shaved to a neat fuzz, his face clean-shaven. It made wearing his buy’ce easier.

“Best to get it over with, dear one,” Obi-Wan said. He sighed, his gaze going distant. “Our people already do not like having either Master Jinn or Padawan Kenobi as part of the talks. I foresee a lot of mediation in my future.”

Seventeen didn’t disagree. “I’m surprised the Duke asked for Jedi assistance; we’re hardly Death Watch.”

“No,” Obi-Wan said wryly, “a renewed Hatt Mando’ade is a much greater threat to the Duke’s rule than Death Watch, especially one under your competent leadership.”

“Only because I have you,” Seventeen immediately retorted. “This was meant for Cody, not for me.”

“We may still meet our son in this life,” Obi-Wan murmured, “I refuse to believe that the souls of your vode are never meant to be born.” 

Seventeen hugged Obi-Wan gently. 

“The best thing for Mandalore is for Adonai to swear Sundari and the New Mandalorians to the Resol’nare.  We just need him to believe that and do it,” Obi-Wan said.

“How much do you think Jinn will interfere?” asked Seventeen.

Obi-Wan frowned. “The flimsiwork from the Republic and the Jedi noted that they would act as a neutral party in assisting talks, but whether my old Master will be convinced to follow that or to advocate for what he feels is best…” He grimaced. “He is friends with Valorum and the Republic has a vested interest in keeping Mandalore aligned with a pacifist governing body. That was the mandate when he and I had our mission here and, of course, that was infinitely preferable all round to Death Watch.”

“So, a lot of interference,” Seventeen concluded.

“I fear so,” Obi-Wan said. He shook his head a touch. “Have we heard anything more on Pre Vizsla’s whereabouts?”

“Our intelligence has him hiding out in the mines on Concordia with the remnants of the Watch and his clan,” Seventeen acknowledged.  “We’re prepared for an attack during the talks. Vizsla will want to make a statement. He’s likely to target all of us, I would in his place. Wipe out the leadership of my rivals in one blow.”

Obi-Wan nodded grimly. “That was his reasoning last time. He just wasn’t prepared for Satine’s survival and her ability to convince enough of the Haat Mando’ade clans to support her.”

“How much of that was her and how much of that was you?” pointed out Seventeen.

Obi-Wan smiled. “Surprisingly most of it was her, cyare. She was different at eighteen, not so militant or extreme in her policies. She was closer to the Resol’nare than many might have believed.”    

“What happened?” asked Seventeen.

Obi-Wan shook his head. “She was so reliant on the Republic in the early days to maintain her rule and the Banking Clans and Trade Federation wanted the beskar. I fear Master Jinn also wasn’t enormously careful in how he reconstructed the New Mandalorian government. According to Ashoka’s last communication, Almec was totally corrupt and in the thrall of the Sith Lord.” He pressed his forehead to Seventeen’s. “I fear she was led into a more extreme pacificism in order to maintain peace, but I truly do not know. I do know the Satine I met during the years of the war was not the same girl I’d admired in our youth.”

“I look forward to meeting this Satine then,” Seventeen said. Perhaps there was hope of achieving some kind of agreement with the New Mandalorians. He tugged on Obi-Wan’s tunic. “Come on, we should get some sleep.  We have an early start in the morning.”

They kissed lazily before parting to make ready for bed.

He wasn’t surprised when Obi-Wan’s unease led his riduur into pressing close to him in the bed for comfort. Obi-Wan had been skin hungry in the wake of their time travel, the trauma of his losses translating into a need to be held.

Seventeen pulled him closer into the curve of his body. He held him tightly and felt Obi-Wan slowly relax physically even as the anxiety which had edged into their bond faded into acceptance and peace.

“Sleep, ner Jetii,” Seventeen whispered. “We’ll face tomorrow together.”

“I still have such a bad feeling about this,” Obi-Wan whispered back.

Seventeen smiled and dropped a kiss on his riduur’s head.  “Of course you do.”

fin.

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