@north-peach OH. MY WORD. How did you read my mind like that? I mean- other than the fact that Obi-Tine is the Best Pairing™ next to Ani-Me™-. @wolfsrainrules your wife has excellent taste in Star Wars HCs you should be proud of her. Also @ravensilversea I’ll just (snatches HC) take this and run wild with it if nobody minds because here we gO. BUCKLE UP EVERYONE THIS IS 3K+ WORDS LONG.
-It wasn’t as if Obi-Wan ever intended to make Mandalore the crown jewel of his eventual totally-not-an-empire-or-kingdom-of-any-sort. He definitely never intended it to be one of the first worlds to bring under his influence (because he never intended to bring any of them into his influence stop laughing Anakin). But when he was still a very young, gangly mercenary with a too-strong Force signature and a budding love of frying anything electronic with Force Lightning, he got hired for a job that felt … wrong. It felt off in the same way his first (and only, because it was a total accident and ended in a lot of bloodshed on his part) job working for a slaver gang. Normally he would run as far as he could the other way but- the Force said to take the job. He’d learned by that point to always trust his Force Instincts over his own head, so he took it with the intent to wreak havoc and run the moment it went sideways or turned out to be a kidnapping ring or something.
-He never expected to be shown a pretty Mandalorian heiress walking down the street, with a Force aura so bright and strong and beautiful Obi-Wan could feel it from three blocks away and be told to kill her.
-The reasonable thing in the mercenary world would have been to turn and leave. Not his desired job, not his problem. Obi-Wan, being Obi-Wan, had done the only thing he could think of and kidnapped her off the street to keep that sniper from getting a clear shot. The heiress (Satine of House Kryze, future leader of all Mandalore) had immediately kicked him the head and nearly crashed his speeder trying to escape.
-That Obi-Wan got a puppy crush on the stubborn, headstrong, oddly violent for a pacifist heiress was a bit of an understatement, but also besides the point. The point was that Obi-Wan had managed to talk her down somehow despite his shiny new concussion, explain to her what was going on, and then end up as her bodyguard as they hared all over the galaxy for the next year and a half, evading her pursuers and weeding out the traitors that wanted her dead before she could ascend to Mandalore’s throne. He refused any monetary payment during and after the entire affair, only accepted the spiffy manor and honorary membership in House Kryze because Satine insisted.
-There was also that marriage certificate that was technically only legal Hutt Space (supply stop on Nar Shadaa gone very sideways, Satine blamed him, but personally he blamed the drunk crime lord that officiated the entire thing) and the Force-bond that had formed between after that one assassin got too close and Obi-Wan had saved her life using the Force in a way neither of them entirely remembered or understood (the bond he treasured the rest of his life, could feel like a literal second heartbeat in his ribcage while Satine found she could look out at the world and feel the Force, like swirling tide of color and life and emotion all around even if she could never touch nor command it). But they had both agreed to keep those a secret at least until Satine and Obi-Wan were of formal legal marrying age. Her family had already had collective panic attacks over her year and half long disappearance and then sudden reappearance with a scraggly Force-wielding mercenary at her hip and a declaration that said scraggly teen was going to be formally adopted into the family. There was no need to make Satine the last of her House via collective catastrophic heart attacks.
-If he made a point to visit Satine whenever he had the chance, dragging along his latest strays in the process, nobody ever said anything. If anyone ever noticed that Obi-Wan picked up his diplomacy and veiled threats from sitting in on various council meetings with Satine, or that Satine’s once rigid stance on pacifism eased to acknowledge that burying their violent history or condemning all those who felt that sometimes violence was the only answer (if there were days Obi-Wan took a deep breath and rested a hand on the other side of his chest, like he was counting out a second heartbeat to calm the bloodlust the Darker sides of him advocated, or days when Satine lost her temper and the world seemed to tremble beneath her fury, eyes almost glittering gold and voice snapping like a storm on the horizon about to break) … well.
-Those who were observant enough to notice were also smart enough to never comment.
-Obi-Wan didn’t notice his own effect on Mandalorian politics until well after the fact, when he stepped back and realized that the pretty heiress he defensively kidnapped never would have created the Heritage Corps, a military force comprised of Mandalorian Clans with the express purpose of teaching and preserving their history and using the tools once created solely for war in defense of Mandalore as a whole (a place where the past, no matter how she detested it, would always be remembered, both for its dread warnings and its age-old triumphs). That Satine had created it only a few months after Obi-Wan had come to her in a fury, ranting and snarling with golden starfire in his normally blue eyes about Jedi Councils who burned the pieces of history they did not approve of and buried secrets that might possibly pose a danger to their authority and way of life (“History is meant to be learned from ‘Tine! That means the Dark and the Light, the good and the bad! How can anyone be expected to understand why something is done if they never get the chance to learn how it came about and what some of the fallouts in its creation were? That’s like isolating a patient in a sterile ward all their life and expecting them to be immune to the disease!”).
-He only noticed Satine’s influence on him well after that, when he met Qui-Gon Jinn for the second time in his life, decades after the first, and realized his first impulse wasn’t to scream or shout or threaten (this man who rejected him, this man who was the last straw Obi-Wan could not bear, this living catalyst that made Obi-Wan run from the Order and never look back), but instead offer the man a place at the table and a fresh cup of tea (“Violence for violence and hurt for hurt just makes the whole galaxy a cripple, ‘Wan. I do not want to stand by and watch injustice prevail, but I will not be part of the cycle that destroyed my homeworld. I wish people would see that. Just because I do not like or approve something does not mean I have the perfect excuse to strike it down, or act in the same way violent ways I claim to despise. I wish more people would just … sit down and have tea when they’re angry, instead of immediately reaching for their blasters.”).
-It was to Satine that Obi-Wan turned when it became clear that Anakin and Padme were not just crushing on each other and were in fact in love. It was Satine who laughed and kissed Obi-Wan on the cheek, her heartbeat in his ribcage pounding a steady, contented rhythm as she offered to officiate the wedding as both Duchess of Mandalore and Queen of the Kenobi Collection of Planets (the fact that someone had officially put that title on any paperwork involving his unintentional conglomeration of worlds was still exasperating in every situation) so that Obi-Wan could walk Padme down the isle at her request. It was Satine who then, with mischief in her eyes, convinced Anakin and Padme to hold a reception in her biggest ball room and broadcast it on the holonet for everyone else in the Collection to celebrate over (and for the Republic and Jedi Council to hold a collective heart attack over because this meant Naboo was officially joining the Kenobi Collection of Planets).
-It is, ironically, the wedding that heralds Qui-Gon Jinn’s reappearance in Obi-Wan’s life. For a nosy Jedi, the man had done a remarkable job of staying away from Obi-Wan’s business even as more and more Jedi fell under Obi-Wan’s sway (he still isn’t sure why everyone insists on calling him and his followers Sith, because they act nothing like it really, but that’s the effect of burying history for you).
-From Qui-Gon Jinn’s perspective, he doesn’t actually realize who the mysterious Sith Lord Kenobi is (who he used to be) at first. He just knows that the Council has been growing more and more alarmed as the years go by, rumbling about wars and attacks that never come while Jedi he knows randomly disappear while on missions and never come back to the Temple but aren’t dead. He knows they aren’t dead because he’s seen them from afar on other worlds, usually accompanied by either other Fallen or teams of identical physical men who the Council touts as proof of Kenobi’s Darkness (for what man would be cruel enough to create thousands of men for the sole purpose of using them as soldiers but a Sith?). Qui-Gon spots the men and women he once called comrades and now knows are supposed to be Dark and realizes that while they do not feel Light anymore … they don’t feel Dark either. They feel … in-between and content. When he dares get close enough to feel them in the Force they feel less like Jedi or Sith and more like oceans and storms and nature. Wild and destructive perhaps, dangerous certainly, but not evil. Not any more evil than the thunderstorm that simultaneously struck down trees and watered parched ground. No more Dark than the wild things that killed and maimed to protect their own.
-It made Qui-Gon curious (and curiosity has always been one of his most dangerous flaws according to the Council). He wonders how, exactly, this Dark Lord Kenobi sways so many Jedi (good people, strong people, people Qui-Gon would have assumed would be Jedi all their lives) to his cause. How he brings so many worlds to heel yet has never waged a war longer for than two months at a time. After watching the live holo-broadcast for the wedding of Naboo’s former Senator to the Prince of the Collection and seeing Lord Kenobi in the background, grinning like any proud father instead of the monster the Council murmurs about, his curiosity finally gets the better of him. So, in a move that his old Padawan Feanor would have yelled at him for, one day Qui-Gon spots one of the Fallen and instead of sneaking off the other direction to avoid conflict, instead dares to approach. Quinlan Vos, a former Jedi Padawan that had always been lectured for his violent, rebellious ways, looks up at his approach and smiles, lazy and dangerous like an apex predator in his native territory, “We were wondering when you were gonna approach one of us, Jinn,” the man says and his five identical comrades (Clones, all wearing the face of the infamous bounty hunter Jango Fett) all eye Qui-Gon in wary curiosity, like all it would take is a single wrong move for them to turn on him as a threat.
-Qui-Gon keeps his hands visible and away from his lightsaber, smiles back an Quinlan like they are just old friends rather than a Jedi and a Sith, “I suppose you know why I’m here then.”
-Quinlan laughs, because of course he knows. Qui-Gon wants the same thing countless other Jedi have wanted for decade or so. To meet the Dark Lord Kenobi for himself. Quinlan and his Pack (Quinlan’s words, not Qui-Gon’s, though he found the choice of terminology interesting) take Qui-Gon onto their ship and fly him into the heart of the Kenobi Collection of Planets (arrogant choice of name, though also interesting, most Sith would just choose Empire and have done, surely). They take him to Mandalore, the Collection’s crown jewel alongside Dantooine and Lothal, the two worlds said to be where the new Sith Enclaves were set up. Quinlan drops him off in the care of more identical men and a spitfire ex-Padawan Qui-Gon dimly recalls seeing around the Temple up until a few months ago, and his new escort take him to a very airy, well lit room that was some kind of strange mix between a training room and a tea room. The tea room section was on a raised dais overlooking the training field, and Qui-Gon knew a subtle power play when he saw one in being “allowed” to sit next to the low table and wait for the Dark Lord to be finished with his katas.
-He would never admit to having his breath stolen by the sheer power thrumming through the room as the man below finished his acrobatic katas (there were traces of Ataru in there, the basic forms of it that all Initiates learned, but there were also Mandalorian fighting styles and something that looked more like street dancing than combat forms all mixed in) and sheathed his lightsaber. The man paused there in the center of the room, just breathing, the Living Force in the room breathing with him in an unconscious show of strength and control far more impressive than any threat or combat form could have been. Qui-Gon can feel the way the Force swirls around them both, Qui-Gon a still anchor of Light, but the rest of the room a lazily swirling collage of Light and Dark and Grey, like the push and pull of ocean tides and the rolling rumble of storms.
-Dark Lord Kenobi turns, shrugs on a silken tunic of House Kryze blues and violets, and jumps up onto the dais in one lazy movement. The man smiles, polite and confident in a knife-sharp way that makes Quinlan’s earlier predatory smugness seem like a kitten’s yowl, and past the minor heart-attack Qui-Gon is having at suddenly realizing that he knows the face before him (saw it once years and years ago as a thirteen year old boy begged to be taken on as his Padawan rather than be regulated to the service corps), he can see the lazy push and pull of the Force’s tides in the man’s eyes.
-Blue and gold and gold and blue with ripples of violet where there should have been clearcut lines. Every blink and glance and head tilt changes the color from one to another and Qui-Gon has never seen anyone so tied to the Force that it shows this way. A twisting, glittering nebula of colors and powers and alignments (in the back of his mind he wonders why anyone ever called the people who walked between alignments “grey”, because this man dances gleefully in that space between Dark and Light and Qui-Gon has never met anyone so colorful before).
-Obi-Wan Kenobi calmly pours the tea a servant has just brought in for them, passes a cup to Qui-Gon with practiced movements, and only then greets him with, “Qui-Gon Jinn. The Jedi who is too stubborn to be on the Council. What brings you to my home today?”
-The push-pull of Light and Dark in glittering eyes drags the truth from him without any of the diplomatic vagaries he had planned to use, “Curiosity.”
-Kenobi’s smile widen’s and it feels like both a welcome and a death threat somehow, “Indeed. Then let’s see where your curiosity takes you, shall we?”
-They have tea and speak on many things (philosophy, politics, lightsaber techniques, never about Kenobi’s past or Qui-Gon’s brief but critical part in it) and the entire time, despite the tea and the smiles and polite laughter, Qui-Gon feels like he is in a more life threatening battle than any lightsaber duel. Like he’s being tested and one wrong answer is all it will take for blue to spin back to deadly gold and that lightsaber to go through his heart.
-Then the children come in without warning, pushing open the door without fear, trundling and tumbling their way over to Kenobi like he is a cherished friend (parent) and not the most dangerous Sith Lord the galaxy has seen in a millennia. Qui-Gon spots the slenderness of their limbs, signs of recently-corrected starvation, the scars on their wrists where manacles once rested.
-He sees Kenobi’s smiles go from polite and deadly to warm and gentle in a heartbeat, ignoring him entirely in favor of the little ones babbling to him in the coded nonsense language the Collection favors. It’s like watching a completely different person, even if the push-pull of Dark and Light and Light and Dark is still the same. Kenobi’s words (not that Qui-Gon can understand them) are gentle and kind and his touch soothing as he pats heads and kisses bruises and knits together scratches with gentle tugs of the Force. Qui-Gon startles out of his observations when he feels the lightest tug on his sleeve, looks down and blinks down at what has to be the smallest Wookie he’s ever seen. The little one (girl, he thinks, but he isn’t entirely certain) blinks back at him and then warbles a tentative question in Shyriiwook that Qui-Gon only catches because of his dedicated practice in the language.
-He smiles at her, keeps his hands loose and relaxed and not at all threatening as he lets her curiously pat his beard and silvering hair with little claws, inwardly marvels at the little heartbeat of power he can feel inside her, already reaching out to him in a silent greeting that most Jedi have to work on for years before being able to do, “That’s right little one,” he murmurs, “I am a Force-sensitive, just like you. My name is Qui-Gon Jinn. Would you like to tell me your name?”
-She blinks at him, dewy eyes in a face of black fur, and he can see the moment she decides she isn’t afraid of him. A moment later he has a lapful of babbling, too-small Wookie child (she can’t be more than a few years old, where did Kenobi find her?) and all he can do is politely nod along to her chatter as she picks at his robe sleeves and gurgles about his aura, and Storm-Pater (whoever that is), and how this place is much nicer than the hold of the ship that she’d been in before she was rescued. Qui-Gon listens attentively, answers a few of the questions that he can catch amid the babble, and somehow ends up with an entire collection of children all chattering quietly in different languages, fearlessly climbing all over him to get closer to his aura or look at his lightsaber or put braids in his hair. He lets them do so without complaint, only resists when one of them tug too hard or try to touch his lightsaber or almost climb on something sensitive. Somehow, in the middle of having tea with the Dark Lord of the Sith, he forgets that the man is there in favor of the little ones he has always had a soft spot for (he would work in the Creches were it not for his wanderlust and the Council’s worry of what strange ideas he’ll put in their young heads).
-He remembers, sharp and sudden, when he hears the soft laughter. He looks up, wary and startled, then freezes again in surprise at the sight of blue-blue-blue eyes watching him be buried in little ones. Kenobi blinks and his eyes swirl gold for just a moment, but the threat of the color is gone. When he smiles, it is a real one, not the polite, dagger-sharp threat they were before, and Qui-Gon realizes with a jolt that the push-pull of the Force around them has settled into a much gentler, lazier thing. Much less threatening and … defensive. He realizes that Kenobi had thought of him as a threat, a danger to these little ones Qui-Gon hadn’t even known were in the building and that by being patient and kind to them he has passed some kind of test.
-He wonders what kind of Sith would accept kindness toward children.
-He begins to wonder if Kenobi is really a Sith at all.
-“Welcome to Mandalore and the Collection, Qui-Gon Jinn,” Kenobi says and this time the welcome is genuine and not a veiled taunt, “I think you’ll fit in just fine.”
-And “oh” Qui-Gon thinks a mere three days later when he looks up from his enthusiastic discussion of rare wildlife with one of the identical men who aren’t really identical at all (each one unique, each one as different as any other being in the galaxy and how had he missed that at first, even from afar), spots Kenobi drifting by with his wife and queen, and realizes that somehow the deep swirling push-pull of Light and Dark that signals Kenobi’s presence (and his Prince’s presence to an even greater degree) has already become a comfort to feel “this is how he has swayed so many other Jedi”. He thinks, dimly, that he should be terrified at how easily he has come under Kenobi’s influence. How quickly he has fallen except … this doesn’t feel like Falling. This doesn’t feel like the descent into Dark that he’s fought before, where the blackest parts of his soul rise up to consume him and all that matters is his own greed and violence. This feels like stepped out of the too-bright, sterile light of an hospital room and standing in the wilderness, a colorful place of light and shadow. Qui-Gon is still himself, still following the same moral code that has gotten him in trouble with the Council all his life, still attuned to the twists and turns of the Living Force. Kenobi senses his gaze and looks over at him, his Force presence reaching out to twist around Qui-Gon’s in silent greeting before he resumes his conversation with his wife and … Qui-Gon thinks that this doesn’t feel like Falling at all.
-It feels like being Free.
