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Obi-Wan remembers a mission from when he was only two years younger than Anakin is now. A particularly tricky little treaty mission, safe but challenging, but mostly Obi-Wan remembers it because of how he had to dress. The local culture demanded that all children under 18 be veiled in public, because of a frankly fascinating piece of local religion about a mourning Mother-god forever looking for replacements for her fallen offspring. The situation was delicate enough and the custom sacred enough that Obi-Wan, 16 at the time, needed to comply with it.
He remembers that mission, not only because of how he had needed to dress, but because of how Qui-Gon helped him dress. The veils had been tricky to fold and secure, particularly with unpracticed hands, and Obi-Wan had been about to throw them on the floor out of frustration when his master walked in, smiling. He’d stood behind him in the mirror and folded the fabric around him, covering all of his face and head but his eyes.
This moment holds itself in Obi-Wan’s heart as the first time he looked at his master and felt no tension between them. The moment when the pain of their first years of their partnership began to ease, and they began to grow into what their relationship would be by the end of it.
He holds that moment close to his heart. One loving, shining moment, when the Jedi’s situation was a fact but not a fact that determined reality, before things got really bad, before he’d been Requested for the first time or anyone really knew such a thing could be demanded, his Master smiling at him. He lets it fall over him like a blanket, or those veils, which had protected him from eyes all those years ago, that he wishes he could pull over his Padawan now.
Instead, Obi-Wan is doing the opposite. He is pulling things away from his Padawan, his young Padawan, only 18 which is still a child in every way that matters and every way that was torn away from them both too many years ago, and he is uncovering him, and he will smear garbage on his face to entice. He doesn’t have a choice.
And this is not for some foreign power’s religion, not a gesture taken gladly out of respect. This is a reminder of domestic savagery. Obi-Wan could weep.
Instead, he takes Anakin’s cheek in his hand. He tilts it carefully up to the light, and so they’re looking at each other.
“Eyes closed, my dear,” he says, and pretends his voice doesn’t stick in his throat. He wants to expand that request to be about everything in this situation; ‘close your eyes, my child, don’t look, don’t look, I won’t let it hurt you.’
That, of course, would be a lie. So he doesn’t say it.
Anakin complies, leaning his cheek a bit heavier into Obi-Wan’s hand than he has to, nuzzling slightly. His mouth twists bitterly, a sharp contrast to the sweet, young gesture. His eyelashes kiss his cheeks.
Obi-Wan brought the black eyeliner pencil to the edge of Anakin’s eye. He presses down lightly and carefully curves the pencil against the lid. Draws from one end to the other, then switches to the left one.
Anakin takes an unspoken cue and opens his eyes, looks up so that Obi-Wan can move the pencil under them as well. A full ring. His eyes look enormous.
Eyeliner makes Anakin look doe-eyed. Pooling blue and innocent. Obi-Wan wants to throw up.
He forces himself to place the pencil down gently, rather than throw it onto the table. It will do no good. There is no point. His control is more important than the momentary satisfaction it would bring.
Obi-Wan picks up another tube. Near-translucent, light-pink gloss. Just a touch of glitter to catch the light.
A special formula that would ensure it stayed on and kept the lips looking wet and shiny and pink for hours after it was applied. It is, from what Obi-Wan understands, obscenely expensive for such a thing. Ironic, with how funding is being held over their heads for this.
Anakin is also looking at the tube with disgust. Something borderling on hatred. And Obi-Wan understands, but he mustn't let it fester, not when it feels like all they have left in these moments is their Light.
So Obi-Wan wraps the Force around his Padawan and uses the edges to make his hair twist, as if in a gentle summer breeze. This is not frivolous, how could it be, when there is nothing the Force itself seems to love more than joy? Anyway, Obi-Wan is rewarded with a lightening in Anakin’s eyes. So it’s well worth it.
He unscrews the cap and pulls out the little coated wand. He pulls it over his Padawan’s lips, traces the cupid’s bow of them. Anakin grinds his lips together to smooth it out, the way he wants to grind his teeth. The way he wants to grind these people under his heels so they can never touch either of them again.
Obi-Wan moves his hands so his fingers rest on the hinge of Anakin’s jawbone. He rubs gently there, to ease the tension.
“I am here,” he says in an undertone, “I am with you.” And that was as much a curse as a comfort, in this situation. But they would take comfort where they could find it.
Obi-Wan feels Anakin push the tension out of his joints.
There is a reason they do this for each other, rather than split up into separate rooms and fall apart on their own.
There’s one last pot on the table, small and filled with a fine, shimmering silver glitter. Obi-Wan dabs it onto his fingertips, and carefully traces the fine uptick of Anakin’s cheekbones, the hollows under his eyes, the line of his jaw. Subtle and shining and effervescent. He could be something out of an old story.
Obi-Wan pulls his hand away. Anakin meets his eyes, nods once.
“That done?” Anakin asks.
“That’s done,” Obi-Wan agrees, and pulls Anakin to his feet. He lets Anakin maneuver him so that he’s sitting in the chair, and his apprentice is standing over him.
Anakin picks up the eyeliner pencil himself. He twists it over his fingers like a wand.
“You’re going to need foundation first,” Obi-Wan says, because he looked in the mirror today and had been horrified at the depths of the dark circles around his eyes. “It won’t do for me to look tired.”
Anakin snorts. “Right,” he mutters, and Obi-Wan allows himself an exhale in reply.
Anakin picks up a bottle of foundation instead, shakes it to mix it, blots it out onto a square of soft gauze. He carefully applies a thin layer from Obi-Wan’s temples and hairline, around his beard, to the dip of his throat. Smoothing out the marks of a warrior’s life, of stress and, around the eyes, of sleep deprivation. Turning him into a blank canvas.
Anakin’s hands are unshaking and sure. He makes the layer even, coats it thicker under Obi-Wan’s eyes. He leans back, examines his work, and then goes back to the eyeliner pencil.
Where Anakin got a full, dark ring around his eyes, Obi-Wan gets heavy lines under them only. Anakin draws sharp-angled lines away from the corner, up towards his temples. Dark and cutting.
He doesn’t get the gloss, or the glitter, no. He’s supposed to look older. More aggressive. Larger, more used to eyes on him, more skilled.
Obi-Wan wouldn’t mind that, if it meant that they would be looking at his Padawan less. Instead, the contrast would make him more appealing.
Anakin uses his thumb to clean up one of the lines, then steps back. “You’re set,” he says.
Obi-Wan stands. They’ve both been avoiding looking at the garment bags hanging on the door. They were sent over, special order from the Senator and the Chancellor, who they were meant to be ‘protecting’ this evening. But there’s no more avoiding it now. Obi-Wan takes the initiative, as he knows Anakin would prefer to sit there and stare at them all night, never moving towards them at all.
And, first and foremost, Obi-Wan needs to keep him safe, in whatever small and inconsequential way he can. The sitting here and staring will not do that.
The thing revealed in Anakin’s garment bag is so repulsive that Obi-Wan doesn’t want to touch it. A bastardization of Padawan robes — an insult to them and everything they stand for.
This one is sheer and light and made of near-translucent white fabric. There are no tabards, no other layers. The robe will leave the collarbone and a rectangle of the chest exposed. The leggings are tight and so thin they may as well not be there.
All done up in pure, blinding white. Not the warm cream they should be, the heavy material they should be, the layers and layers they should be. It’s meant to protect, and all this does is expose. It’s sacrilegious. It is the highest kind of disrespect.
Obi-Wan hands it to Anakin, instead of burning it down to ash like it deserves. Obi-Wan takes his own bag off the hanger.
Again, a bastardization. A top-robe only, the color only slightly too dark but the wrong material entierally, with a plunging neckline that no traditional Jedi robe would sport. Open, nothing under it— of course not. Too-sheer, low-slung leggings.
Obi-Wan’s skin itches as he shugs into this desecration. He can hear Anakin doing the same behind him. Both of them are moving stiffly, robotically, trying not to think about it more than they have to.
Obi-Wan knows the picture they will paint. He knows the fantasy they’re being made to embody, and it makes him ill. It makes him want to grab his own skin by the handfuls and tear it off like wrapping paper. It makes him want to grab bolts of fabric and cut them into veils, and wrap them around Anakin so he’s hidden from every eye.
They want the image . Of the strong and experienced master, the pure and untouched Padawan, like in the strange and alien porn parodies that pop up on the holonet and make Obi-Wan nauseous.
They want to see the unflappable Jedi brought low. They want to see both halves viciously controlled. Obi-Wan can see the smirking faces of the Chancellor and this particular Senator in his mind. He’s been Requested by the Senator before, and Force knows he is far too familiar with the Chancellor’s appetites for Anakin. They just want them to dress up for a party.
This relationship was sacred. A fundamental of their way of life, something that nearly every Jedi held above all. And here it is, being used as a prop in some kind of fetish game.
Obi-Wan wants to scream.
Instead, he turns around, faces Anakin, who is dressed and exposed and standing stock still. The robes look even worse on his body than Obi-Wan feared. He’s pulled his hair down from the Padawan-style ponytail in the back, and it curls around his ears, young and soft, drawing more attention to his braid. The sharp, vulnerable dip of his clavicle, far too open, far too exposed.
Then, Obi-Wan thinks, looking down at his own neckline, which plunges to his waist, he doesn’t suppose that he looks much better.
Anakin is moving, still somewhat mechanically, to the final box on the table. He flips open the lid, stares inside. Snorts.
“They gave us jewelry, too,” he says, the twist in his voice horribly ironic.
“Of course they did,” Obi-Wan sighs, and crosses the room so he’s next to him, “how terribly kind of them.”
“Terribly.”
The box is broken up into two parts, so it’s obvious which one of them should wear what. Obi-Wan stares at the contents, and wishes he could feel anything other than run-down.
Anakin moves first, snatching up a long chain with a heavy cyan bobble at the end of it. He gestures at Obi-Wan, who lets himself feel the weight of the world as he ducks his head.
The pendant falls into the middle of the plunging neckline, drawing attention to his exposed skin, the flesh of his chest. Anakin stares at it for a long second, face so angry he appears blank and calm.
Obi-Wan reaches out and catches him under the chin with two fingers. He lifts Anakin’s eyes so they meet his own.
“They do not touch our thoughts,” he reminds, useless and gentle. “They can only touch us when they are present. You are here with me now, Padawan-mine. The dark, not the Darkness.”
Anakin breaks eye contact, looks to the side and down. “I know,” he says, and Obi-Wan aches because he knows how much he does know.
There’s a golden stud earring, just the one, which Obi-Wan slips into his pierced left ear himself. They both leave the last objects in the box, for later.
Obi-Wan reaches into the other half of the box and picks up a thin, golden chain. Anakin puffs out a breath, and then turns around so that Obi-Wan can clasp it around his neck. It sits at the base of his throat, choker-tight. Simple. Maybe even beautiful, if Obi-Wan didn’t know the context.
Anakin turns around to face him again, this perfect parody of someone’s idea of purity, and Obi-Wan thinks of what he must look like as well, older and striking and strong.
In his mind, Qui-Gon smiles and wraps the first veil around his shoulders and for the first time he feels perfectly safe in his Master’s presence.
The last thing in the box are two sets of heavy, engraved bangles, which close with a latch. One set for each of them.
Anakin picks up the darker gold ones. He snags Obi-Wan’s wrist in his fingers and pulls it close, sandwiching it between both of his palms. Anakin’s hands are too warm, but not sweating.
They stand there for a moment, Obi-Wan’s hand in Anakin’s, matching their breathing together.
Anakin carefully places Obi-Wan’s wrist into the bangle. The metal is cool against his skin. Anakin squeezes it shut.
They both pretend they don’t flinch at the click.
Anakin repeats the motion with the other hand. Another click.
Obi-Wan picks up the other pair. He lifts up Anakin’s hands — rough and calloused by lightsaber training. Nails uneven from chewing. Littered with little scars from life’s little accidents: a burn from a wire on a mouse droid, a fumble with a training ‘saber, skinned palms from a fall. Warrior’s hands, Jedi’s hands, the hands of his beloved Padawan who does not deserve this.
He bends his head and presses a kiss to the heel of one hand, with all the sorrow in him, and then the other. Holds them and delays, because he is a coward. And then he puts on the bracelets.
Click. Click.
There. They’re done.
‘It’s unfortunate,’ thinks Obi-Wan, ‘that this is the easy part.’
Anakin’s arms float back to his side and they stand, looking at each other. Costumed and twisted into a parody of what they should be. Preparing to be hurt. Voluntary sacrifices for the good of a Temple filled with children who deserve to be safe.
Qui-Gon’s fingers folding veils around his face and hair, gentle; himself, younger, suddenly realizing that the gentleness his Master gave out in spades could also be for him.
“Remember,” Obi-Wan says, here, in the present, with the reverence of prayer and the practice of repetition, “that I love you. No matter what happens tonight, I will still love you. No matter what I see or what we do. I love you now, and I will walk out of that hellhole tonight loving you still.”
Anakin’s throat bobs as he swallows, and then suddenly he is in Obi-Wan’s arms. Obi-Wan presses his lips to the crown of his head.
“I love you too. I promise. No matter what.”
And Obi-Wan doubts, oh, he doubts with the force of a blackhole in his chest, but to indulge that doubt would be to let them take away the last of this sacredness as well. So he declares that love to be untouchable, and lets it set a fire in him.
They would survive this. They always had before.
Qui-Gon had laughed at him, swathed in fabric, only his eyes and the bridge of his nose sticking out, all those years ago. He had completed the look by shaking out his own cloak, much too big for Obi-Wan, and hanging it around his shoulder, eyes shining with mirth. Qui-Gon had tapped his nose, and then swept both of them out to the treaty negotiation.
And Obi-Wan had felt warm. And safe. And protected.
The white robe droops off of Anakin’s shoulder, deliberate and artful, and Obi-Wan would do anything to wrap them both in every layer of fabric he can find.
They sync their steps and walk out of the room.