maidenjedi | FIC: Watch As I Dive In (Star Wars, 1/1) (Reply)

TITLE: Watch As I Dive In
FANDOM: Star Wars (Prequel Trilogy)
RATING: PG
PAIRING: Padmé Amidala/Obi-Wan Kenobi
SUMMARY: Five times Obi-Wan and Padmé have a conversation, and one more that might have changed it all. AU

Written for

space_swap 2022.

AO3 link

The queen was a nuisance.

They were on a small spacecraft, smaller still because of the number of passengers alone, and the largest storage bunker was being used to house the queen’s clothing.

He frowned at the door to the space, not aware that he was being observed.

“She has to maintain her status, Master Jedi.”

The queen had insisted on bringing a handmaiden - Padmé, she was called.

“I’m not a master. You may call me Obi-Wan.”

She smiled slightly, and he was struck by it. It wasn't the first time since meeting her he'd felt it: a pull in the Force, a suggestion that there was more to her than what she appeared, and that ultimately, he and she would have much to do with one another. He tamped down the feeling, kindling instead his annoyance at their situation.

“Status or no, she is on the run from the Trade Federation’s thugs. Surely no one in the Galactic Senate would hold it against her if she arrived looking like the refugee she is.”

It was more than he had said to any female in the galaxy outside the Jedi Temple, ever. It came out in a tone more antagonistic than a Jedi, especially a padawan on the verge of testing for rank, would ever consider using.

He was disturbed in mind. This assignment had been more complicated than he expected. Qui-Gon was upset and worried, and Obi-Wan was reacting to it in the Force. It was hot on this blasted planet and he was tired of being cooped up on the ship.

So many reasons for his behavior and none satisfactory.

Anything at all could cause this, this agitation, inside him. It didn’t have to be this girl. Couldn’t be.

She smiled again.

“Do you not think it wiser that she should come prepared for diplomacy with all that she has in her arsenal? A queen, however powerful, is still a woman. She will be judged for that, coming arrayed in her finest or in rags. She’ll need her confidence.”

She was bold, and Obi-Wan could appreciate it. He knew something of what she meant – a Jedi, for example, was identified as much by his or her appearance as skill. Especially a padawan.

“I’m afraid I didn’t think of it that way. Of course, you are right. And right to defend your mistress.”

Padmé's smile faltered a little, and Obi-Wan felt a tightening in his gut.

“I wonder how far I shall have to defend her.”

Obi-Wan sighed. He knew how that felt, too.

“Quite far, in the end, I’m sure.”

Qui-Gon was dead.

There had been a celebration of victory, a parade and banquets and so much music. Obi-Wan knew there was mourning, somewhere, for those fallen in battle, under the trappings of pomp. There would even be a memorial, Senator Palpatine had promised, on the morrow.

But Qui-Gon was dead.

The boy had been taken to sleeping quarters, somewhere guarded but warm and safe. Possibly the safest he'd been in his life. Obi-Wan rather wondered, would he eventually miss home, cry for his mother, desire a return, even to his previous life?

There were not many older padawan learners, it was true, but those there were struggled mightily with homesickness. It was their trial, overcoming it. Qui-Gon himself had struggled, and would have been able to at least empathize with the boy.

But Qui-Gon was dead.

Obi-Wan stared at his hands and replayed his fight with the Sith over and over again. He didn't hear the queen approach.

"Padmé!" Her face was clean and she wore a simple robe, but her hair was still pulled back tight, and the amused look in her eyes reminded him. He blushed. "That is, I'm sorry, your majesty. I didn't realize you were nearby."

She held up a hand. "I come here often. Don't upset yourself. I'm sure you needed the quiet, too."

The sunset on Naboo, from just about any place one could stand, was spectacular on clear evenings. This was no exception. The day had been beautiful, and joyous.

Obi-Wan felt the joy envelop him, even as the dark sorrow in his heart attempted to burrow deeper. But in the Force, he felt a cold resignation. A hesitation and a sense of inadequacy.

It was familiar to him. It haunted his sleep, even before he'd been promoted to padawan and sent to work alongside Qui-Gon. And Qui-Gon's expectations were high, which would needle Obi-Wan. He often thought it motivating. Today he felt it like a noose.

And apparently, so did Padmé. A young queen, not yet a grown woman yet making decisions like one. And decisions many if not most rulers would never have to make. Sending their young people to fight in wars. Choosing to stand against oppressors.

It had been a joyful day. Padmé and Obi-Wan, in their own ways and yet so alike, saw the future beyond the blue sky.

They stood on opposite sides of the terrace, each lost in thought, but over an hour, they drifted closer. By the time the sun had truly set and twilight had passed, they were brushing up against one another as they leaned over the balcony railing.

"What do I call you now?" she said.

He started. "I...well, I am still Obi-Wan. I'm not a master, I haven't faced the trials. But...."

"Obi-Wan, then."

"And you are 'your majesty,'" he said, wryly.

She shook her head. "Padmé. I won't be queen forever. I'm still Padmé underneath."

They continued to stand, and eventually, she held his hand gently, and they wept for their lost comrades.

And parted ways, not to meet again for more years than either would care to count.

Tasked with something as simple as guarding a Senator, escorting her to her apartments, assuring she was not followed, Obi-Wan might have felt nothing whatsoever but gratitude the assignment was not particularly dangerous. Possibly a twinge of annoyance if the Senator, like the one from Corellia a year past, was merely interested in whether she could successfully seduce a Jedi (on a bet from her colleagues, no less). But it was not a hard assignment and one many Jedi would prefer in these increasingly uncertain times.

But she was not just another Senator paranoid about the ruffians in Coruscant’s skies, answering bets from colleagues about a Jedi’s prowess in the sheets.

Obi-Wan hated how cynical he could be, and knew that for all that, he was still green in so many ways. Not so much as his overeager padawan, who was fairly coming out of his skin at the idea of seeing Padmé Amidala again.

Obi-Wan couldn’t fully blame Anakin in this moment, for he was also eager to see their old friend. Obi-Wan thought too often of that moment in the woods on Naboo when she had revealed herself as the queen, then later, after it was over, all the conflict within her mirroring his own. Reconciling the handmaiden who’d sparred with him, and possibly shared too much, with the Queen of Naboo hadn’t taken much effort, but it was still a moment imprinted in his mind.

Anakin spoke anxiously and almost forcefully to her now, and Obi-Wan’s wandering thoughts were brought back to sharp focus as he saw the danger here. So he took over the conversation, letting Anakin be frustrated with his master and turn his energies elsewhere (no less dangerous, really, but something Obi-Wan knew how to handle).

Later, Obi-Wan took up his post outside the apartment where Padmé was to sleep. Anakin was sent to patrol the Coruscant sky lanes nearby (not without grumbling). Obi-Wan wondered, not for the first or last time, whether Anakin could honestly face the trials when he was finally allowed. If denied anything he deemed his right, he still, despite nearly a decade of training and tutelage, fought to be master of his own feelings.

Padmé broke in on Obi-Wan’s musings. “I shall retire for the night. Surely you may go, Master Jedi? I am hardly in danger in my own lodgings.”

“We thought you safe in your own ship, my lady.”

She nodded, suddenly sorrowful. “And Cordé paid for our mistake. I see your point.”

“I did not mean to…”

“But it is true,” she sighed, and sat down on a luxuriously padded bench. “I don’t know how long I can keep fighting, you know. My entire reign was defined by others’ antagonism. My time here in the Senate has been no different. Perhaps it is I who am the problem.”

He watched her. She was the same Padmé, then, as she had been on Tatooine and Naboo. The handmaiden, the queen, the senator.

“I don’t know why you speak so openly to me, but,” and he clenched his hands into fists, to control his own feelings now, “I am glad you do. You are not the problem." He softened his voice, aware he had been all but lecturing her. "Tyranny, undemocratic rule, those are the problem. You should keep fighting, Senator.”

She looked at him, eyes searching him, and he felt the Force around her warm.

"You are not the problem," he repeated, almost whispering it.

She moved closer to him, putting a hand on his arm, and looked up at him.

"Perhaps not," she said, matching his tone. "But I am so tired, Obi-Wan. Tired and sad, and..."

Whatever she might have said, it was swallowed by the sound of a droid nearby.

She broke away first, and he was left standing, watching her walk away, and feeling very much that he should have said more.

It was far from the last time.

They worked together well, Obi-Wan realized. The war had forged strange partnerships, and Padmé so often had need of an escort, or more specifically an escort skilled with a lightsaber.

He worked with her so closely they could finish each other’s sentences, anticipate each other’s needs. And yet he missed the biggest secret of all, and felt so shattered by the knowledge. Not betrayal. No, he felt that he had failed.

Every connection they'd had over the years, it seemed he might have said something, done something. But perhaps it had been too late almost from the very beginning.

She sat before him, tears threatening. She knew everything he told her about Anakin, about his fall, about what was happening was true. He could feel her desire to flee, to find Anakin and see for herself. He wanted so badly to tell her he needed her to lead him to wherever Anakin was - but it couldn't happen that way. It wouldn't.

Th heartbeats were loud. Obi-Wan thought of the younglings in the temple and nearly choked on his next words.

“Anakin’s the father, isn’t he?”

Her sobs confirmed every fear, every nightmare, and would echo in his heart for years.

He remembered her.

Every soft remonstrance of his stern countenance. Every small touch of her hand – that once, on his face, and how close she’d come to him, how he’d fought harder to keep from leaning in than he did on the battlefield day after day. Those first days, on Tatooine so long before he ever considered he may call it home, when she wasn’t a queen and he was only a padawan, both young, idealistic. Every turning point, when he might have forsaken his vows and she hers. He knew, Anakin or no, that it might have gone a different way for them all.

He remembered, and he mourned, for Padmé, yes, and for all that he might have done to prevent what happened.

Even if it had simply been to kiss her, once, of the many times he’d been tempted to do so.

In Tatooine’s impossibly cool nights, he would conjure her in dreams, and never know if it was her speaking or his own conscience, and not really caring if there was a difference.

“You couldn’t have stopped it, Obi-Wan.”

“I might have.”

“No,” she said, voice soft. “If it hadn’t been me, it would have been something else Palpatine used to twist his mind. Anakin was vulnerable. We should have both done better.”

“I think I loved you.”

“You did.”

“Should I have said anything?”

“Yes. Every day.”

Or perhaps, she didn't leave, that first night after their reunion on Coruscant.

Perhaps the strange attraction she felt for young Anakin never materialized. Perhaps the handmaiden recalled the irritable, handsome padawan from their time on Tatooine, the queen recalling the fighter who lost so much in her defense and held her hand on Naboo.

Padmé knew she should go to bed. She was exhausted, sad, and terrified, and she had to awaken the next day and hide all of that so carefully to be the diplomat and politician.

But something kept her there, standing with her hand on Obi-Wan Kenobi's arm. She felt something. Was this the Force the Jedi spoke of, this swirling mass of feeling?

"Explain it to me."

"I'm sorry? Explain?:

"The Force."

He looked taken aback, and then his face settled into a thoughtful mien. "I'm not sure where I could begin. What do you wish to know?"

She knew better. There was a child's explanation he could recite. Another, more mature answer about what binds the universe together.

He stalled because he felt it, too. Maybe it wasn't the Force, but something between them, felt through it.

"I wish to know, what it is - "

Padmé was cut off by the sound of glass breaking, a screech and whine of a vehicle in the lanes outside. Obi-Wan reached for his lightsaber and dashed around her for the bedroom, where the sounds were coming from.

In the room, an assassin's spear pierced and waved precariously from her unused mattress. The roar of engines in the city lanes came through the broken window.

Anakin, in the modest speeder loaned from somewhere to serve as a disguise, pulled up to the frame dripping with shards of glass and yelled for Obi-Wan, who had anticipated him and jumped through to sit behind Anakin on the bike. There was time for the briefest of glances between Obi-Wan and Padmé before the Jedi sped away.

Padmé was left to stare in wonder, her horror at what might have been allowed to grow and fester while she waited for word. Her double, Dormé, ran in to comfort her and help pick up the glass.

It was hours, though, before a knock came at the apartment door.

Disheveled, robes torn, and blood on his cheek, Obi-Wan stood there alone.

"You..." She breathed slowly, trying not to be so visibly relieved. "You came back."

"We caught the would-be assassin, my lady. That is, Senator."

"Padmé. You've more than earned it. And we are old friends." She smiled and moved aside to let him in.

"Padmé," he repeated, with a smile of his own.

"Where's Anakin?"

"Back at the temple. I sent him to analyze evidence, things we found that might lead us to whomever it is that is trying to have you killed." He walked past her, not asking to see the bedroom but making plain he needed access.

Once inside, he frowned at the spear, which Padmé did not dare touch.

"Padmé..."

He turned. She felt that...that disturbance again, as he looked at her now with relief. Fear, perhaps.

Awe.

She could not have him look at her like that and yet.

He was a Jedi. But he was also a man. And she had not….

"Master Kenobi?" She reverted to formality, scared suddenly that all propriety should be dropped and they left with no protection from whatever it was she felt when he looked at her.

"Senator. I should...I need to go."

He broke their shared glance and went to push past her, but he brushed up against her as he did.

It was electric.

She felt so much just then, her feelings, but also his, heightened by the night's adventure. Fear, exhilaration of a chase. Relief, and attraction.

Most certainly that.

"Stay," she said. "Stay."

She reached up and wiped his brow, and let her hand rest on his cheek.

"Padmé...I...whatever this is..."

"Shh. For now, just...we are not Jedi and Senator. We just are."

The kiss was tentative, shy. But true.

And the galaxy never knew what small decisions had dictated its very different fate.

end