Chapter Text
Savareen gives Obi-Wan a new appreciation for Tatooine.
The sand, he would almost bet, is more coarse, and it has rubbed his skin raw where the sun has not already burned him. The oceans are little reprieve as cold wind whips off the waves strong enough to knock him down. He reaches out an arm, protectively attempting to shield Padmé. It feels futile when it could surely knock him off his feet.
“General Kenobi,” the Weequay translator calls to him. “If you would take your position for the ceremony.”
As polite as it sounds, it’s more of a command.
“Patience, please,” Obi-Wan says. He knows he’s pushing his luck - this fractured group of mercenaries, pirates, and former members of the Crimson Dawn who surround them have grown visibly tired of his stalling tactics.
Obi-Wan does as requested, turning his back to the wind. It nearly bowls him over and he has to spend a moment shaking out the long sleeves of the ceremonial tunic. His hair is a lost cause, and his mustache is waving in the breeze when he crosses his eyes. “Whoever had the brilliant idea of trekking across the desert to have this ceremony on the beach?” he asks.
Padmé - who has stepped back, out of arm’s reach and doesn’t that stir unexpected anxiety in Obi-Wan? - lifts her hand in a gesture of imitation. She runs her fingers across her top lip and down below her chin in a clear gesture of imitation of Obi-Wan’s gesture of concentration.
“Well, my dear,” she says with emphasis. “I do believe that genius was yours.”
She covers a smile with her hand. Long sleeves of her own costume slip past her wrist to fold at the crease of her elbow. After 10 years of friendship, it’s surprising to be enamored by the sudden view of that wrist. As if he had never seen it before, but maybe it’s the heat, the exhaustion of two standard weeks captured and negotiating their release.
Maybe it’s the prospect of the marriage ceremony before them, but he suddenly imagines kissing that wrist.
“Jedi Kenobi,” the leader of their captors, speaks Basic in a guttural voice. He’s learned their names, but he turns to the Weequay again for translation.
Obi-Wan is pulled, stumbling in the sand to clasp hands with Padmé. Their arms are bound together as the rites are spoken in Huttese. Their translator repeats the words in Basic, creating an echo. It’s to the book, which Obi-Wan finds peculiar. The entire purpose of the marriage is, in the minds of their captors, to make the bounty of their kidnapping more profitable. But it has been an invention of Padmé’s - they had wanted to kill Obi-Wan and hold the Senator alone for ransom. They hadn’t believed the Republic would pay for his return, and he was admittedly a known liability - he and Anakin had escaped their fair number of would-be pirates and assassins - rumors of his adventures unfortunately has preceded him.
Then Padmé had lied - one that had led them directly here.
“ You wouldn’t kill my husband and expect my help afterward, would you? ”
They hadn’t believed her - not without further lies and their commitment to them. Padmé had met Obi-Wan’s stories, spinning her own details beautifully with calm commitment. Except for their half-glances and smiles, they presented the story as an undeniable truth.
Unfortunately, the group had agreed that they would only believe it if a wedding was conducted on Savareen, before their eyes.
“Jedi Kenobi - do you pledge yourself to Senator Padmé Amidala, your life to be entwined with hers until you are both but stardust?”
“Lovely ceremony considering the circumstance,” Obi-Wan said sarcastically. Then, presented with the number of blasters pointed at him, he focused his attention on Padmé.
Someone had made her up in the guise of her Queen Amidala style and make-up. It was hard to look at her, something Obi-Wan had never thought before. He felt young, as if he was still a Padawan meeting Naboo’s Queen for the first time. His stomach drops, and he squeezes her hand gently where it is bound in his. He feels all the adoration that he has for her bloom inside of him. She's grown in her time in the Senate, stronger and there is a steel to her voice that Obi-Wan admires. He finds himself more often seeking her counsel than the other way around now. When she is on Coruscant, they always find each other as if Force-bound to do so. He cherishes their afternoons at Dex's between Senate sessions and Obi-Wan has snuck away from the temple. The anxiety and weight of his growing duties as Force trembles with an oncoming darkness - these are easier to bear when she is sat across from him, smiling. Looking at her, Padmé's eyes are so bright, and she smiles at him as she squeezes his clasped hand in hers. The feeling in Obi-Wan's chest, looking at her, is familiar and dangerous, and a lot like love.
He means it when he begins his pledge, “I pledge to keep you safe - “
“Until you are stardust.” He’s interrupted by the prompting. They have delayed enough for their keepers. And there is more than one danger present.
“Yes, yes, until I am stardust,” Obi-Wan agrees. “Awfully keen on having me pledge to the death if you’re not planning on killing me.”
Hands are reaching toward blasters, and there is a glint in the leadership’s eyes that Obi-Wan knows bodes ill-will.
“And I pledge to protect you,” Padmé says. Drawing him back to her gaze. Then she looks up. There’s the thundering of a craft exiting hyperspace into the atmosphere above them. And the chaos of Padmé removing her robes to reveal her travel gear below it. She has a blaster in hand, and as planned, tosses Obi-Wan his lightsaber.
Their positions are reversed as Padmé puts her body between his and the raised blasters of their captors. He puts his back to hers, trusting her aim as he hails the craft and cuts their binds.
It’s not until they're on the shuttle, rattling in hyperspace that he forgets the warmth of her hand in his. And it’s only because a Naboo royal cruiser is not the sort of ship you take to the Outer Rim and race back to Coruscant with pirates at its heels.
When the shuttle leaves hyperdrive again, it is with a loud bang from below their boots. There is a sharp hiss of warning before the passenger cabin begins to fill with mist and Obi-Wan closes his eyes and begins to recite the Jedi code under his breath as if it is the only Force-saved thing that will keep their little ship in the air.
“It would be fairly unfortunate if after all that, and the Bounty Hunters and Assassins that started it all - if a Naboo shuttle is what kills me,” Padmé says with a darkly humorous edge.
“It was kind of Queen Apailana to send it to rescue us, but perhaps we picked the wrong getaway vehicle,” she says in jest as there’s a crash from the front and the pilot curses and then squeals in a foreboding high pitch.
Obi–Wan clenches his eyes tighter, unwilling or unable to humor her.
For a moment, there is an awkward pause left by Obi-Wan’s unwillingness to engage. He can feel her watching him, and wills himself to engage. He’s a Jedi Master, not a youngling. His anxiety over the flight should not freeze him this way. He takes a breath, his recitation of Jedi words stopping to allow the exhalation of a shaky breath.
Then, “Kriff!” bursts out of him, startling a laugh from her.
“This pilot is almost as bad as Anakin!,” Obi-wan exclaims, seething despite the trembling of his lips as the shuttle shakes and tips sideways around them before a grinding of mechanics precedes the pilot finding his equilibrium. Obi-wan curses again. And then almost flinches with the force of his politeness. He looks at her sheepishly - the heat of something other than the sunburn bringing out a high flush of red on his cheeks.
“Apologies, Senator. I should not bad-mouth your pilot.”
“No need for formality,” she says. “I did not appoint the pilot.” She shrugs and there’s a shuddering within the ship unlike any they have heard so far that interrupts her.
“And calling me by my title, after everything,” she says with emphasis, “Is a bit much, dearest friend. Now that we’re married”
She squeezes his hand in hers.
“Padmé - “ he starts to say, the immensity of what he can’t express. The warmth in his chest and how, not since Satine, has he wondered about another way of living. Because two weeks in the desert with only each other to trust and talked to was easier than he expected. Padmé is looking at him with a twinkle in her eye, and Obi-Wan parts his parched lips. But the shuttle hits landing with all the grace of a Loth-cat hitting water, and Obi-wan and Padmé are thrown together by the impact.