Chapter Text
“Y/N, when I said, let’s meditate together, I didn’t mean ‘let’s pretend to meditate while you actually think about everything you’d rather be doing.”
Your eyes snapped open, giving Obi-Wan a look of annoyance. Breaking your meditation form, you leaned back, still keeping your legs crossed, but putting your weight on your arms, hands resting on the smooth stone floor. This room, filled with various types of hanging plants, was Obi-Wan’s favorite place to meditate. Most of the plants in this room were used to make various types of tea, a hobby several dozen Jedi had. One you were sure Obi-Wan was going to fall into. Meditation wasn’t your favorite way to spend your time, but you tended to humor Obi-Wan’s whims. However, once he was fully indoctrinated in the group of Padawans, Jedi Knights, and Masters you secretly called, “The Tea Snobs” you would hurl yourself off the nearest ledge the second Obi tried to ask you to come garden with him.
The image of Obi wearing big, awkward gardening gloves and one of those straw hats with the wide rim entered your mind. You had seen a Jedi Master who tended those plants wear a simpler one she had tucked a large blue flower into, just last week. The flower was quickly added to your imagined Obi, along with his stupidly wide grin and cheery voice.
“You’re just being mean, now.” Obi-Wan said, making you realize that you had neglected to guard your mind from Obi, and he had definitely seen your thoughts. Especially with the force bond between you two, Obi could usually sense you and your feelings easily.
While attachments were forbidden to the Jedi, force bonds like the one you and Obi had were common. Padawan’s usually had force bonds with their masters and a few agemates.
“Don’t get all pissy with me.” You huffed. “I wanted to spar. You practically dragged me here kicking and screaming.”
“Silently pouting, more like it.” Obi teased, letting himself sink down to the floor next to you.
“That’s the Jedi version of kicking and screaming.” You said, chuckling at your own joke.
“You’ve been troubled lately, I thought meditation would help.” Obi admitted.
You were quiet for a moment, wanting to deny that you had been anything other than fine, but it would be pointless. Obi-Wan was your oldest friend, and saw through you like transparisteel. You could hide nothing from him, though you were able to hide it from your Master quite well. Master Windu was not a Jedi easy to fool, but since the two of you had never developed a force bond, it was much easier to hide something from him than from Obi.
Master Windu had taken a… distant approach to training you. Seeing to it personally that you and he would not develop a force bond, as he believed that it was unnecessary to bond with a padawan you were training.
When you first became a padawan, you spent about two years thinking that the way Master Windu was training you was normal. Until you started going on missions with Master Qui-Gon and his Padawan, and saw what a relationship between a Master and Padawan was supposed to be. Master Windu had allowed you to accompany Master Qui-Gon on a few missions to let you get more experience, seeing as being on the council did not afford him many opportunities to take you on any real missions. Master Qui-Gon, to your relief, had been so much different from Master Windu. He had been open, caring, and involved in both Obi-Wan’s training, and yours. At times, you had felt that Master Qui-Gon was more your Master than Master Windu.
Although your relationship to Obi-Wan and Master Qui-Gon had been strained at first, the years spent more or less together had smoothed the rough edges over. It was a very poorly hidden secret that Master Windu didn’t trust Master Qui-Gon in the slightest, and sticking you on as many missions with him as possible was his way of trying to keep an eye on Master Qui-Gon.
“I found out what that mark means.” You said quietly.
Obi-Wan was quiet for a moment, recalling the day you had shown him your soulmate marks. He hadn’t paid much attention to the small cluster of various gears, bolts, and other mechanical parts on the right side of your neck that traveled down over your right collar bone. He also hadn’t paid too much attention to the fish with yellow eyes on your left hip, or the black silhouette of a bane back spider on your left wrist. He was only focused on the odd word on your right forearm. It was in a language neither of you knew, with odd letters with long stems, sharp angles, and squiggly lines.
“I was in the library, and I just kind of… saw an old holocron talking about the wars with the Sith, and one part of it showed a banner the Sith had made.” You whispered.
Obi-Wan leaned back, eyes widening despite his urges to repress an emotional reaction. “That… that language is the language of the Sith?”
You nodded, regretfully. “It means vengeance.”
Obi-Wan took a breath, wishing he had some kind of advice. “I mean… it’s best if you never meet them anyways.”
“Right.” You said quietly. “I just… the Sith have been extinct for so long… why would my soulmate even know the language? And for the one word to be vengeance? It just seems a little on the nose to me, I guess.”
“Have you told-”
“No.” You said firmly. “And if you tell anyone, I will consider it a personal betrayal.”
Obi-Wan held his hands up in surrender. “I wouldn’t. It’s not necessary, regardless. The sith are extinct. Even if this was an issue, meeting your soulmate shouldn’t change anything.”
You snorted, “If my soulmate was Sith- Maker, just saying that outloud is disgusting… I can’t imagine how easy that would make keeping my vows.”
Obi-Wan smiled at the joke, “What, bottomless rage doesn’t appeal to omegas?”
You actually laughed at that remark. “No, I can’t say it does. Neither does being chained up in a Sith’s basement.”
Obi-Wan laughed as well, but the reality of what Sith did to their omegas in legends hung over you both. Sometimes, their masters forced their apprentices to hunt down and kill their soulmates. Other times, the omegas were captured and used for breeding if they were force sensitive so the alpha could secure their sith lineage. There were very few stories of Sith alphas having any good relationship with their omegas. Or, at least, a relationship where it didn’t seem the omega was miserable. You supposed, it made sense, if Sith truly thrived off of anger and fear, to force the omega they were connected to by the will of the force to be a constant supply of such feelings.
You rolled back onto your shoulders, pushed off with your hands, and thrashed your legs upwards, flipping from your sitting position onto your feet. You looked down at your closest friend, “Alright, Obi. We meditated for three hours-”
“I meditated. You sat here and thought about dueling.”
“Now, can we please spar?” You stressed.
He rolled his eyes, standing slowly. “Fine.”
You threw your hands up, balled into fists, “Whoo!”
Obi couldn’t help but smile at the quiet, happy chirp that left you. Platonic affection between alphas and omegas was normal, even amongst the Jedi. Being a young alpha, Obi-Wan had always felt a bit more protective over you than the other Padawans his age. His Master assured him that was normal, and fine, as long as it stayed on the level of friendship.
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“Why do you enjoy beating me like a rented Bantha?” Obi panted, keeping his lightsaber up in defense as you circled him, both of your twin lightsabers ignited. Their dark purple glow reflecting off your skin in the low light of the room.
“Because, you forced me to meditate for three hours.” You said bitterly. “How do you even manage that?”
Obi-Wan turned his lightsaber off, and you followed suit. “How do you manage to fight for such long periods of time?”
“Energy conservation.” You said simply. “You put too much strength into your movements. You gotta, kinda-”
You reignited your lightsabers, going through some basic movements you had learned long ago. “Flooooowwww. Imagine, at first, a very slow moving stream. Peaceful, very slow, and then-”
You leaped forward, crashing your sabers against one of the many training droids in the room. “Pick up the pace-” You twirled back and forth, focusing on your footwork as you spun and darted to and fro, even as the droids around you started to attack back. Your sabers clashed against their metal. Even with the intensity turned down for a combat situation, the damage the droids eventually took had them shutting down to simulate beating sliced in half. You had to admire their programming.
“Like a rushing river, then a raging ocean, maybe even a whirlpool.” You said, your voice getting quieter as you closed your eyes, letting the force guide your movement and telling you when to strike.
You stopped once all the droids were on the floor, opening your eyes to see Obi leaning against the wall, watching you with a passively interested expression. “Your style makes things seem… effortless.”
You grinned, feeling the burn in your calves. “Trust me, it’s not effortless. You just have to keep breathing, keep moving, and let things build up or wear down slowly. No sudden changes in the energy you put out.”
“And don’t engage directly.” Obi-Wan noted. “You don’t have to move as much if you force your opponent to do the majority of the striking.”
“Exhausting my opponent is how I win all my duels.” You admitted. “Get someone tired enough, they’ll slip up, and then I can strike.”
“Doesn’t work very well against droids.” Obi-Wan said, playfully messing up your hair.
You grunted, shoving his hand away and fixing your hair as best you could. “That’s what ‘whirl pool’ mode is for.”
Obi-Wan grimaced at the little name you had given your fastest version of your style. “You’ve got to find a better name. Besides, you can’t maintain that form for longer than a few seconds.”
You grinned up at him, “That’s all I need.”
Thoroughly distracted from your previous worries, you and Obi-Wan wander off to find dinner, leaving the droids to clean up the training room. He chats about a new kind of tea one of the Masters introduced him to, and you brace yourself for the umpteenth time to lose Obi-Wan to the hot leaf water club.
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Months pass. The temple changes little by little, pressure from current politics affecting everyone. You bury yourself in combat training and (to Master Windu’s barely hidden glee) meditation. You grapple with your uncertainty about your upcoming trials, jealousy that Obi-Wan and Master Qui-Gon got to leave on a very exciting mission on Nabu (and then Tatooine, according to Master Windu) while you were stuck at the temple, and your increasingly dark visions.
Ah, yes, the whole reason you had begun slacking on meditation in the first place.
That room, that horrible, accursed room that you kept seeing in your meditations. It was so dark in that room you could barely see anything, but through the force, you could feel the presence of someone else in that room.
Young, always so young. Sometimes curled up in the corner, sniffling back tears. Sometimes in so much pain, you felt phantom waves of it through the force as the child tried to drag themself across the ground to the threadbare blanket they slept on. Always in such loneliness you couldn’t help but wake up shaking with sobs.
The worst one, by far, you had barely been able to make out the outline of a child, dipping their fingers into a wound on their arm, and using the blood to draw a landscape scene on the wall, like a window. You had woken up with such horrible sobs, you had to bury your face in your pillows, hoping against hope your crying would wake no one.
You thought you had imagined it, at first. The gentle, far too timid touch to your mind. Some nearly foreign (but not quite so) entity trying to comfort you in a very awkward, but seemingly well meaning way. A voice, dark and growling, but somehow not frightening. Not at the moment. It spoke slowly. “Do not fret, little one.”
You went from sobbing to purring, softly, barely, at the nickname. You hadn’t been called that since you were a youngling. The voice spoke again. “What’s done is done. Sleep, now.”
After that night, you had elected to sleep as little as possible. It wasn’t going very well, and the amount of caf you were ingesting was really messing up your stomach and mind. Master Windu had noticed, undoubtedly, but other than offering to meditate with you in the rare moments he was free from his responsibilities as a council member, he did nothing.
What else could he do? Teach you to not sleep?
All you could do was bear with the nightmares, meditate away all the emotions you could, and wait patiently for the only Master you trusted to return so you could speak with him.
Seeing you approach them in the hangar wasn’t a shock to either Obi-Wan or Master Qui-Gon. They had felt your approach likely since you had left your room. You hadn’t counted on the blonde youngling clinging to Master Qui-Gon’s robes. “Master Qui-Gon, you found a womp-rat?”
The child gave you a displeased look, even as Obi-Wan chuckled.
“My name is Anakin.” The youngling said firmly.
“Mine is Y/N.” You said, “Pleased to meet you.”
“Are you a Jedi too?” He asked curiously.
You nodded, and Obi-Wan gave you a look of warning. The boy walked forward, “How come you have two lightsabers?”
Ah, he was one of those younglings. The questions would never end, most likely.
“Observant little womp rat.” You teased. “I have two because I was taught a different form of combat, one that requires two lightsabers.”
“Can I learn that one too?” Anakin asked, excitedly.
You frowned, looking up at Master Qui-Gon with a very prominent question on your tongue.
“We have to speak to the council.” Master Qui-Gon said quickly. “Y/N, why don’t you accompany us?”
Confused, you followed Master Master Qui-Gon, falling into step alongside Obi-Wan. You leaned closer to Obi-Wan, speaking lowly so Anakin would not hear. “Answers?”
“Master Qui-Gon is intent on training him.” Obi-Wan said, clearly exhausted with whatever shenanigans he’s had to put up with from Qui-Gon.
“He’s so old?” You whispered back.
“I know.” That was that most tired voice you had ever heard from Obi. You let out a small purr, trying to offer comfort, and Obi chuckled. “Want to carry me back to my bed? Tuck me in, and give me some warm milk?”
“Keep talking like that, and I’ll have to give you a bath as well.” You teased.
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You almost felt bad for Anakin, standing before the council, listening to their endless questions and judgments as he passed their tests, showing his force sensitivity. But your thoughts couldn’t dwell on Anakin for long, not as you followed Obi-Wan and Master Qui-gon.
“The boy will not pass the council’s test, Master. He’s too old.”
“Anakin will become a Jedi, I promise you.” Qui-Gon said, waving off Obi’s concerns.
“Do not defy the council, Master, not again.” Obi pleaded.
“I shall do what I must, Obi-Wan.” Qui-Gon said coyly. You couldn’t help but smirk at that. Qui-Gon’s routine disregard for the council’s decisions was legendary.
“If you would just follow the code, you would be on the council.” Obi-Wan chided. “They will not go along with you, not this time.”
“Being on the council isn’t as glamorous as you might think.” You chimed in.
Master Qui-Gon quirked an eyebrow at you, then turned back to Obi-Wan. “You still have much to learn, my young apprentice.”
Master Qui-GOn turned back to you, “Now, Y/N, let’s see that mark.”
You frowned, glaring at Obi-Wan who quickly held up his hands in surrender. “I said nothing.”
“So, you knew.” Master Qui-Gon said, surprised.
“How did you know?” You questioned. “Not ever Master Windu has seen it.”
“If I asked Master Windu what color your hair was, he would have to get back to me with his answer.” Master Qui-Gon mocked. “Now, come, the mark.”
You slowly pulled up the sleeves of your robe, revealing your right forearm and the horrible language. “How did you know?” You asked again.
“We encountered someone on Tatooine.” Master Qui-Gon explained, tracing his fingers over the letters. “I believe they were a Sith Lord, and during our… confrontation, he might have mentioned it.”
You pulled your arm back, your sleeve covering the mark immediately. An idea swirled in your head, a horrible one that was becoming more and more likely every day. “That’s impossible. Even if… they have different marks. The marks aren’t the same-”
“How have you been sleeping?” Master Qui-Gon probed.
You were silent then. If the being you were having visions about was your soulmate, could he not also be having ones of you?
“It doesn’t matter.” You said firmly, refusing to let the childish, fearful chirp leave your throat. “Soulmates are forbidden, and any Sith I see is dead on sight.”
Master Qui-Gon regarded you for a moment, taking in the swirling emotions he no doubt sensed through your bond. “I’m not surprised at your intentions. I just wish that…”
You were both quiet then. You knew what he wished. You had felt it from him many times before. He wished you hadn’t become Master Windu’s Padawan. He wished he could have taken both you and Obi-Wan under his wing. He wished the council was different, wished the Jedi Order wasn’t so rigid in all it’s teachings, wished the dark side wasn’t as taboo as it was right now.
You shrugged, “I wish the cafeteria had cake more often. Anakin’s test should be over by now.”
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The flight to Naboo was awkward. Anakin was in a state of fear, not knowing what was to become of him, Obi-Wan was caught up in the excitement of his trials being discussed, Master Qui-Gon was… being Master Qui-Gon, and you were hopelessly trying to meditate.
“Are you trying to block him?”
You looked up, seeing Master Qui-Gon sit down across from you. “Block him?”
Master Qui-Gon nodded, “You soulmate.”
“I don’t have a bond with him to block?” You questioned.
“If you are both having visions of each other, then a bond has been formed, somehow.” Master Qui-Gon explained.
“But- I’ve never even met him.” You protested.
“Calm yourself.” Master Qui-Gon instructed. “Fear, anger, these things will fuel him through your bond. You must learn to project calmness to him.”
“Shouldn’t I block him instead?” You asked.
Master Qui-Gon looked at you with regret filled eyes. “I fear you may be past the point of being able to block him. If you had reached out sooner…”
You lowered your head in shame. You had allowed your fear of being looked at as the soulmate of a Sith, of being ostracized, kicked out of the Jedi Order to fuel your silence. If you had simply reached out to your own master, perhaps you could have destroyed this horrible bond before it took root.
“I can feel him as well.” Qui-Gon admitted. “Through my bond with you, I can feel him somewhat. He… he has felt great pain.”
“I know.” You whispered. “Are they all like that? All the Sith?”
“No.” Master Qui-Gon said. “Some fall to the dark side by their own decisions. Some are pushed by the wicked will of others.”
There was the truth of it, you realized now. Your soulmate, all the visions of him you had seen had all been practically hand feeding you the truth. Your soulmate was not Sith due to his own ambitions and actions. Horrible atrocities had been enacted on him since early childhood, undoubtedly far out of his control. What child had any say in how they were treated?
“I can’t break the bond, can I?” You asked desperately.
“Not without risking your death.” Master Qui-Gon warned. “What might be best, is learning to project only what you wish over the bond, and preventing him from projecting anything back.”