#draped behind obi-wan's chair during council meetings

[tennessoui]

1 - Soulmate AU - Soulamtes share dreams to learn more about each other and to teach each other their local traditions if necessary. Obi-Wan learns the hardship his mate faces in slavery, their secret language, and how to help free slaves. Anakin gets taught about the Jedi, reading, writing, and how amazing his mate is.

ahhhh ok i really don't want to share this under this prompt because i wrote the ask down wrong in my notes so the prompt i wrote follows my poor notes that just say - 'soulmate sharing/learn about them before they meet' but this is amazing prompt wise and it would clear up a ton of misconceptions in the prequels obviously if they both got dreams of the other's early lives but this is.... not that but i hope you enjoy anyway <3 <3

1. Soulmates (and daemons) (2.0 k)

Obi-Wan doesn’t have a soulmate for sixteen years.

It’s just him and the animal representation of his own soul that had traveled to the Temple with him as a babe, a Vulptex kit. She’s named herself now and grown larger and stronger through the years, her coat growing out to perfect crystalline ends. From a distance, they look like razor-sharp spikes of ice. Or so other people have said.

Obi-Wan knows that’s not true. He knows that his soul isn’t cold or untouchable or unreachable. But he’s had no luck telling anyone else that, not when Avarie snaps at everyone who tries to touch her in a manner that’s quite un-Jedi like. She’s prickly and quick to bristle. He’s emotional and angry, even before he’s ten years old.

Look, it’s not easy living around people who all know they have soulmates, either because they’ve met them or because they’ve woken up to find that their own animal has disappeared only to be replaced with their mate’s soul representation.

Most of the time, that sort of switch happens when a person’s still a youngling. A very young youngling. Sometimes babies are taken to the Temple with their soulmate’s animal tucked between tiny arms. Those, in Obi-Wan’s opinion, are the luckiest ones. They never have to wonder if they even have a soulmate at all.

They just grow up knowing that they’ll be loved one day.

Obi-Wan grows up thinking maybe it’s just going to be him and his vulptex until the day he dies. It makes him angry at the injustice of it all.

He knows his own emotions probably keep him from a Padawanship, but he can’t help but think that Avarie’s own appearance and attitude certainly don’t help. They’re at odds with one another for two years, bound together but each ignoring the other. Obi-Wan’s never heard of this before, of fighting with your own soul’s animal.

But, he thinks, most people don’t spend as long with theirs as he has with Avarie.

Perhaps she is everything unlikable about himself, made apparent to everyone else. No one, master or soulmate, would ever want him. Not when everything about his soul screams keep your distance.

Master Jinn taking him as his Padawan is a surprise then, one that soothes over some of Obi-Wan’s soul-deep aches. The night he gets his padawan braid is the first night in years that Avarie curls up against him to sleep.

When he is sixteen and a few standard months old, he wakes up alone in his bed, Avarie nowhere in sight.

Well. Not alone, actually.

A ball of fur that he had originally thought to be a wrinkle in his bedspread whines pitifully and moves to follow him when he sits up.

He stares dumbly down at the strange little muzzle and unopen eyes. Half of its face is a pure white, and the other half a solid black, as if someone has taken it and held it against a fire until its fur was stained with smoke.

“Uh,” he says to his soulmate’s animal. The creature, some sort of canid, perks up at his voice and snuffles closer to him eagerly. “Yes, hello,” Obi-Wan grins, petting its tiny head with the tip of his thumb. It tries to prolong the touch by lifting its muzzle up and whining.

It’s so small.

His soulmate must be...must be just as young.

Obi-Wan is sixteen and a few months and his soulmate has just been born, most likely. But.

But he has a soulmate.

-----

Odyna grows fast, much faster than Obi-Wan had thought possible. It feels like he blinks once on the morning he wakes to see her, and then suddenly she’s at his knees. Her paws and ears are huge still, and Obi-Wan knows she’ll grow much, much bigger.

His master in particular is very interested in trying to figure out what species his soulmate’s animal is.

“She feels incredibly strong in the Force,” Qui-Gon says on more than one occasion. “And her markings--”

Odyna growls from where she’s laying splayed out in Obi-Wan’s lap as he brushes over her furry back. She instantly preens when he taps her gently on the nose.

Some days he thinks she’s the exact opposite of Avarie in every way possible, and has to wonder how his soulmate--who would be six now--is faring with Avarie. He hopes she’s at least letting them pet her.

Odyna relishes Obi-Wan’s attention always, though she scorns anyone else’s hands or affections in a way that reminds him of his own Vulptex.

The Jedi Council was unimpressed with Avarie’s aversion to touch and seems even more skeptical at Odyna’s. “A dangerous, possessive attachment, it will be,” Yoda has told Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan more than once.

Soulmate relationships in the Order are common and practically encouraged, seen as the will of the Force. But even then, possessive attachment is heavily forbidden. The Force animals of the Jedi will often allow other Jedi to touch them and greet them. It’s unbecoming of a Jedi’s soul, to close itself off from the touch of others.

And yet a part of Obi-Wan can’t stop himself from feeling smug about how overt Odyna’s claim over him is. She’s clingy, incredibly needy, and overprotective at turns.

A Jedi’s mission to Lothal brings back a trade deal and a name for Obi-Wan’s soulmate’s Force animal. “It looks just like a Loth-wolf,” she tells him. “But the ones on Lothal I saw were huge. Taller than a Wookie.”

Obi-Wan groans at this. His master is already so much taller than him. Now Odyna too? If his soulmate grows to tower over him as well, he’s going to have some choice words for the Force upon his death.

“You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?” He asks Odyna that night as she flops down onto his bed in her customary position of splayed everywhere. “My room is only so big.”

She grins at him and licks his face.

“Force, that’s so uncivilized,” Obi-Wan grouses, getting up out of bed again to go wash his face.

----

Surprisingly, Tatooine’s heat is not the first thing Obi-Wan notices about the planet. No, what he notices first and foremost is the way that Odyna, until this point relatively satisfied to lay curled around his chair (at nine, she’s big enough to come up to his shoulders when standing), seems to lose her damned mind as soon as the door is open and the hot air permeates the ship.

He was just going to look at the damage, but his soulmate’s Force animal seems to have other plans. Odyna bounds out onto the sand and nudges Obi-Wan forward, hard enough that he loses his balance.

She nudges him again, even as he tries to bat her away. “Odyna, stop it,” he demands, scrambling to his feet.

“Are they...alright?” One of Queen Amidala’s handmaidens asks.

Qui-Gon at least tries to hide his amusement, but Obi-Wan shoots him a dirty look anyway because he can hear the smile in his master’s voice when he says, “Oh yes. This is quite normal.”

It is not normal, thanks.

Odyna howls in agreement.

When Qui-Gon tells them that they’ll have to go into the nearest town to barter or buy the parts needed to fix the ship, Obi-Wan volunteers first. Maybe if he can let Odyna stretch her legs, she’ll calm down.

Instead, the closer they get to Mos Espa proper, the more antsy she becomes until, quite suddenly, she bolts through the streets. Obi-Wan has little choice but to take off after her. It’s almost impossible, of course, to lose a Loth-wolf when they’re that huge, but there’s a sort of strange tight pressure in his chest at having her out of his sight.

He leaves his master and the handmaiden behind without a second thought, but at least he doesn’t have to run far.

Outside a shop that looks as rundown as the other ones, Odyna has stopped and sat down, her tail wagging furiously behind her.

Obi-Wan has a fair few things in mind to yell at her, but all of that gets knocked out of his head when he sees the crystalline figure of a very familiar vulptex standing in the shadow of the loth-wolf.

His breath catches in his throat and he almost loses his balance again when Avarie turns to look at him with those intelligent black eyes, head cocked.

If she’s--if she’s here, then that means--that means--

He stumbles forward until he can kneel in front of his Force animal, hand outstretched.

Suddenly there’s commotion inside the shop and a little boy tears outside holding some sort of rusted pipe over his shoulder threateningly. “Don’t touch her!” the boy yells, brandishing the pipe. “She doesn’t like it, get gone or I’ll make you get gone!”

Obi-Wan blinks. His very first interaction with his soulmate after waiting twenty-five years, and the boy is threatening him.

“You’re mine,” he says dumbly, brain trying to process these impossible events.

It is, of course, the wrong thing to say. If anything, the boy puffs himself up even more. “I’m no one’s!” He yells indignantly. “I’m a person. My name is Anakin Skywalker!”

Obi-Wan holds up his hands in apology. “Ah, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean--I meant that she’s mine. Avarie. She’s my soul.”

Anakin lowers his pipe with narrowed eyes. “How’d you know her name?” he asks suspiciously.

Obi-Wan fights the urge to roll his eyes. He’d never considered that he’d have to win over the trust of his soulmate. “She’s my soul,” he says again slowly, before gesturing to the black and white loth-wolf behind them, who has laid down in the dust, tongue hanging out in response to the heat. “As she is yours.”

“You’re my...soulmate?” Anakin drops the pipe as he looks over Obi-Wan in frank disbelief. “But you’re so….”

Obi-Wan raises a wry eyebrow and grins. He braces himself to hear old, or maybe even male.

But instead his soulmate shocks him again by saying, “....pretty! Are you sure you’re not an angel instead?”

Which, of course, corresponds to his master’s arrival. The maiden with him at least has the decency to cover her smile with her hand. Meanwhile, his master’s smirk is probably going to be burned into his memory forever.

“Yes, Anakin,” Obi-Wan responds. “I promise, I’m your soulmate.”

“Mine,” Anakin says in a wondrous tone. And then, a grin steals across his face and he grabs Obi-Wan's hand. “My soulmate.”

Obi-Wan hopes this isn’t the beginning of that dangerous possessiveness Yoda has spent years lecturing him about.

-----

“I’m going with him,” Anakin argues, stomping his foot in the Council chambers. Obi-Wan hides his face in his hand. “He’s my master.”

“Anakin, we’ve been over this. You’re much too young for this mission,” Obi-Wan explains gently, as if they don’t have a dozen interested eyes on them.

“I’m twelve!” Anakin will not be deterred. “That’s plenty old!”

“It’s too dangerous,” he tries instead.

“Then you shouldn’t go!”

Obi-Wan wonders if he should try arguing that he’s a twenty-eight year old Jedi Knight, who may go where he pleases. He doesn’t think that’ll go over well with his padawan.

Anakin, he says through their training bond. Do not do this in front of the Council.

Anakin turns to stare mulishly up at him. I want you to be safe.

I will have Odyna with me, Obi-Wan points out, tilting his head in reference to the loth-wolf spread out on the Council Chamber’s floor. And you will have Avarie with you. You will know I am safe. And I will know she is making you sleep and eat and bathe.

Anakin seems to consider this and then crosses his arms, but eventually nods. I don’t like it when she bites me until I go to bed, he grumbles, kicking his feet and glaring over at Avarie, who is dozing between Odyna’s paws.

Obi-Wan fights the urge to chuckle out loud. In truth, he’s a bit jealous that Avarie has figured out a way to get obedience from their soulmate. Half the time, Obi-Wan is still floundering to get simple acknowledgement of a command.

-----

Many years later, of course, when Anakin is a knight and Obi-Wan a master, he figures out the thing that never fails to get Anakin soft and pliant and relaxed.

It’s kisses.

More specifically, kisses from his soulmate while they’re lying in bed together, sheets tangled around their feet and both of their Force animals in the other room, keeping watch at the door.

[the-last-kenobi]

Hi, how are you? Hope all is well) Can you please write "Where have you been" with Anakin and a very very depressed and sad Obi?

Of course!

From this various prompts list.

I admit I wasn’t sure exactly which angle you were hoping for, but this is the one my brain liked, so here we are.

_

Anakin’s hand shook slightly as he ran the cloth over the glass mug, turning it in his hands. Water beaded up in the wake of his first attempt, so he went back again a little slower, making sure he left no smudges behind. Then he carefully placed it in the cabinet where it belonged, each shelf lined with different mugs, most of them glass, a few of them seemingly random — porcelain, wood, something that looked like clay, a deep red crystalline substance.

Anakin knew that the ones that weren’t glass had all, once, belonged to Qui-Gon.

They were used rarely. Carefully. Cherished like treasures.

The rest, the glass, those were Obi-Wan’s.

He liked the perfection of glass, its transparency, the way he could watch the teas he brewed and steeped changing, colors swirling and fading beneath his fingers.

Anakin found them difficult to maintain and hard to clean.

His hand shook again, and he quickly put down the towel and set aside the next mug, turning away from the still untidy kitchen.

His gloved metal hand raked through his hair.

It was late.

It was very late.

He walked to the window and brushed aside the curtain with one hand, confronted first with his own ghostly reflection, and then focusing on the view outside. It was pouring down rain. A rare enough occurrence here on Coruscant, and tonight, of all nights, when Obi-Wan could be out there.

He could be anywhere.

Anakin didn’t know.

Obi-Wan had been missing for twenty-nine hours.

He had walked out of their shared quarters while Anakin was visiting Padmé, sometime in the early evening yesterday, leaving his cloak behind, leaving his lightsaber behind.

And then he was gone.

Anakin had searched all the usual places. He’d reached out to Dex, and alerted Mace Windu and Healer Che, and sent Ahsoka to check with the crèche and Initiates dorm in case he was there playing with and teaching the little ones. He’d contacted Bail and Padmé, and gained permission after the twelve hour mark to examine the security holos.

There was nothing.

It was as if Obi-Wan Kenobi had stepped over the threshold of their door and just fallen out of existence.

Anakin watched rain lash against the window, scattering his pale reflection into twisted fragments, and tried to remind himself that he had already been searching for twenty-five hours straight. That he hadn’t slept or eaten. That Master Koon had forbidden him from going out into the storm to search, when they already had rested and armored troopers doing a steady sweep of the Temple perimeter, even when they didn’t know if Obi-Wan had actually left the grounds.

The Temple was massive.

He could be hiding in an unused wing, or in the depths of the dustiest levels, or in the back of the Archives, or the towers.

No, not the Archives. Master Nu had already searched there and that woman would never miss so much as a hair out of place in her domain, much less a High Councilor.

Anakin had heard Master Mundi making noises about a possible trap or an abduction.

And while that was bad — nightmarish — to contemplate, Anakin had his own fears, and they felt much more realistic, much too close for comfort.

Anakin flung himself down on the sofa with his head in his hands and tried not to admit that he was frightened.

He had seen Obi-Wan like this before. Back when they were a new partnership and Qui-Gon was dead but there was still so much of him living in the Temple, like the mugs, one still the on the countertop with a faint imprint of his lips staining the rim, or his spare cloaks and boots, and the trinkets and potted plants that filled every available space. And Obi-Wan had...

Well. Whenever he thought Anakin wasn’t paying attention, he was so quiet. He barely slept for days and then slept too much. He hardly ate and then ate random things at random times. He hardly smiled.

He wandered off.

Alone.

The worst time had been when Anakin was six months in to his apprenticeship. He had woken up with a terribly bad feeling to find his Master missing from his bed, and with the unerring instinct of a worried child, he had shot off in search of Master Yoda, who had quietly raised the alarm amongst the older Masters. It was Master Windu who had found Obi-Wan, quiet and shrunken and apathetic, concealed in one of the many gardens, letting the life of the garden conceal his dimming force signature from view.

Anakin had clung to him like he was about to disappear, and Obi-Wan hadn’t seemed to really process that he was there...

Eventually he had pulled out of it. Anakin didn’t know how.

But this...

Anakin had been worried since Geonosis that he would lose his Master to death on the battlefield. Then there had been Ventress and Jabiim and Grievous and Dooku and Maul — Maul — and suddenly it felt like Obi-Wan was never safe. The war and his enemies chased him everywhere.

But Obi-Wan had lost friends and peers and younglings he had once taught or cradled in his arms when they were so very small, and his Master’s murderer had come back like a resurrected demon to plague him, to threaten his life and sanity and everyone he loved — and Satine had already paid with her life.

Others might.

And when Anakin had come racing back home from 500 Republica when he’d heard the news, it was already too late, and Obi-Wan had gone off all alone stars knew where.

That was enough.

Anakin leapt to his feet, his body trembling with fear and nausea, determined to ignore orders.

Damn their kindness and responsibility, damn the fact that he’d probably only get soaked and miserable, he was going out searching again.

Anakin strode towards the door on shaking legs.

It swung open before he neared it, and there was Obi-Wan.

Anakin gaped at him.

Obi-Wan stared blankly back. “...Anakin?”

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin breathed, staring at him, taking him in. He was without his cloak and lightsaber, as he had known he would be, and was soaking wet — completely sopping, as if he had swum in a lake rather than wandered about in a rainstorm.

“Obi-Wan,” he said again, his voice strained. “Where have you been?”

His Master continued to look blank. “I went out.”

“You went out? You’ve been gone for well over a day!” Anakin cried out. “Where have you been?”

Obi-Wan shrank away from the shouting. His blue eyes flickered around the room as if looking for an answer, or perhaps an escape, and still his expression was utterly detached. “I... I don’t know, really. Here and there.”

A pause.

“Was I really gone for so long?” he asked. He sounded distantly, disinterestedly bewildered, and Anakin broke.

“Yes!” he shouted, his face screwed up in anger, in an attempt to hold back childish tears. “Yes you have! You disappeared! There are people looking for you, and the Council was worried you’d been taken, and I was so— I was — so — I— you can’t do that to me, Obi-Wan, please, I was losing my mind!”

Obi-Wan’s blank expression finally shifted.

A look of confusion and worry built behind the vague blue eyes, and Anakin launched himself at his friend like he had all those years ago, locking his limbs around him in a fierce hug.

For a long moment it was like hugging a statue. A very cold, very wet statue that shivered ever so slightly.

But Anakin held on, determined to keep Obi-Wan right here, to keep him safe and warm, to make him understand that he was needed, that he could also rest, that it would all be okay if he just stayed. Stayed like he had before. His tunics began to absorb some of the icy moisture coming off his Master but he kept holding on, his face buried in Obi-Wan’s shoulder.

And slowly, Obi-Wan came to life.

His hands inched upwards to rest against his Padawan’s back, and he tilted his head so that he was leaning against Anakin’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice muffled. “I had no idea you’d be so concerned.”

“I wasn’t concerned, you absolute idiot, I was scared,” Anakin hissed, the confession both bitter and relieving on his lips. “How would you feel if I vanished with no word? For thirty hours?”

A long silence.

“Well,” Obi-Wan said thoughtfully, “I would be impressed with Padmé for not getting bored of you long before that.”

There was a dead silence.

Then a spluttered, incredulous laugh, and it took Anakin a moment to realize it was he who was laughing. His shoulders shook with it, with shock at the revelation of what Obi-Wan knew, that he wasn’t angry about it, that he was cracking stupid, mean, dumb jokes about it when Anakin was trying to be mad at him.

Obi-Wan chuckled quietly, and Anakin laughed harder, delighted that his friend was smiling, if only a little.

“You’re not off the hook you know,” he mumbled, guiding Obi-Wan to his rooms, planning on forcing him to take a hot shower and drink warm tea and maybe pull out one of Qui-Gon’s old cloaks, because that always helped.

“Neither are you,” Obi-Wan mumbled back, and squeezed his hand every so briefly.

~

When Plo Koon dropped by to check on Anakin, very early the next morning, he found him sleeping soundly on a chair, snoring quietly, his feet propped on the arm of the sofa, where Obi-Wan was fast asleep with an old cloak that was far too large for him draped over his body.

It was easy to forgive them to forgetting to inform the Guard to call off the search.

Mace could pretend to yell at them during their next Council meeting, during which, he was sure, the two friends would stand side by side, mischief in their eyes.

~