Kidnapped Obi-Wan AU
Obi-Wan doesn’t know where he is.
He groans softly. He feels like he’s in vacuum, floating aimlessly, with no sense of direction or purpose. In the distance there’s something singing indistinctly, high and sharp and distressed. He wants it to stop. He wants it to come closer.
“Shh, you’re all right,” someone says softly, brushing a bare hand over his skull. It drags strangely against the skin there--stubble? He shouldn’t...
Hardeen. He’s Rako Hardeen. He’s in prison.
Right?
“Wha’ ‘appen?” he slurs, jaw too slack to fully close his mouth. He has to work hard to maintain Hardeen’s lower, raspier tones; they don’t come as easily as they should. “Who...”
“None of that, now, Kenobi,” the person chuckles, fingers tracing over one heavy eyelid. “Hardeen’s tats didn’t suit you, and neither did his voice.”
Obi-Wan’s stomach turns to lead. He knows he should be reacting, denying, but he feels too foggy to work up anything other than dread.
“You look younger without the beard. Kind of miss the hair, though.”
What did every Mandalorian he knows have against beards?
Ah. He recognizes this person, after all. Even if his eyes won’t open, he hears his husky voice every day, even if his signature is as wholly unique as each one of his clones. Deeper in a way that only comes with age.
Obi-Wan is excruciatingly aware that Melida/Daan was not his only time leading an army of children.
“Fett...?”
“Got it in one,” Fett confirms smugly. He’s still touching his face. Obi-Wan wishes he still had a beard to hide behind; no one’s touched him like this since he last saw Satine, and that skin to skin contact is overwhelming.
“Thought you defected from the Separatists,” he mumbles, trying to turn his face away from that warm, broad hand. It just falls to the side of his neck.
Obi-Wan had told Fett to leave Geonosis, to take his child and run from whatever Dooku had planned for them. He could sense Dooku’s intentions for the boy were nothing good. Fett hadn’t listened until the battle in the arena, when Obi-Wan found the boy hidden on the sidelines and watching, and yelled for him to leave before he got hurt. Fett had been fighting Windu, and turned when he heard Boba’s name; Obi-Wan managed to deflect the master of Vaapad’s saber right before it went through his neck. He couldn’t let a child witness their father’s death. The family of two vanished, and Obi-Wan figured that was the last he’d see of Jango Fett.
He was wrong. He seemed to encounter Fett everywhere; on the battlefield, on diplomatic visits, with kriffing Hondo Ohnaka. The worst time was when he’d had to deal with Fett and Quinlan Vos on the same horrible mission. It was uncanny. Anakin sometimes joked that Fett was following him.
He has the sinking suspicion that Anakin’s jokes might not be far off the mark.
“Heard you died,” Fett says, as if that answers his question. He presses his fingers a little more firmly into Obi-Wan’s throat, as if to feel his pulse. “Wasn’t happy about it.”
“Why?” he asks, unthinkingly. Fett loathes Jedi; he killed six of them with his bare hands. He could so easily make that number seven.
Fett’s grip on his throat gets just a little tighter, then relaxes and moves to curl around the hinge of his jaw. He stays silent.
Obi-Wan wets his dry lips with his tongue, and tries again. “How did you find me?” His eyes finally manage to crack open, though his vision is hazy and unfocused. He can’t make out Fett’s facial features.
“Broke into the temple for a souvenir. Overheard you calling Windu.” Fett sets a thumb into the cleft of Obi-Wan’s chin, tilts his head up just a little bit. “You gotta stop using the same name when you’re undercover, Ben.”
Obi-Wan’s pulse jumps against Fett’s fingers, and he laughs almost fondly. “Don’t worry, I didn’t break your cover. It worked too well for me. I just broke you out of prison and let everyone else think you’re still dead. Fixed your face while you were out, too. Hardeen’s a rough looking ge’hutuun, ‘specially compared to you.”
Obi-Wan takes a breath to respond and Fett’s thumb moves to his bottom lip, stroking it just a little. His voice catches in his throat.
“Got the souvenir anyway, just in case. Had to keep Boba from chopping a leg off. Maybe you can teach us how to use it; Vizsla’s getting a little too comfortable with my Darksaber.” He sets a heavy, familiar hilt on Obi-Wan’s chest, keeps it from rolling off when Obi-Wan’s limbs refuse to cooperate.
The kyber crystal sings shrilly, urging him to run, but he can barely make sense of the song, can barely sense anything at all in the Force that isn't Fett, warm and immediate and overwhelming.
“We’re gonna land soon,” Fett says, his other hand still splayed on Obi-Wan’s chest, over his saber. Over his heart. “Gonna put you back under till I can get you fitted for a collar. Boba’s excited to see you again; I don’t let him around spice, so he’ll have to wait. You’ll be shaky for a while, but you’ll get clean easy.” His voice darkened with rage and old hurt. “I know plenty about spice, thanks to Kyr’tsad and Dooku. You’ll be fine with me.
I’ll make sure of it.”