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Anakin had Artoo sitting nicely on his lap, acting as if he were a perfect angel who had never misbehaved a day in his life, his white fur smoothed down by his MSD vest, the red and blue a glaring warning—which most people ignored, because, oh, what a cute puppy— to not pet him.
Fools. As far as Anakin was concerned, the vest wasn’t there to keep Artoo from being distracted on the job; it was to warn them of five pounds of overprotective Pomeranian fury.
Though it didn’t need fixing, Anakin adjusted the lay of Artoo’s vest again. It was just something to do. The physical therapist kept reminding him to use the prosthetic and not let it hang limp at his side. Whatever. Anakin hated it. Eighteen months hadn’t done shit to get him used to it.
It was never going to be his real arm. Period. God knew that he’d dug into it—against all warnings that he was invalidating the warrant—adjusting the pressure sensors, adding a little more flexibility to the joints, rearranging the wires for less wear and tear…
And it still wasn’t good enough.
Artoo preened. Then he turned his beady eyes to squint at the other passengers as they trickled in, journeying past business to economy. Not that long ago, Anakin would have been back there himself, but the payout from the accident had been more than generous.
Blood money. But it wasn’t like the Palpatine family couldn’t afford it. Anakin was more than happy (actually, he felt like shit every time) to see his bank account jump up a disgusting amount every month.
Artoo’s nails scrabbled excitedly against the armrest, throwing his entire body to sniff at a woman loudly talking on her phone as she boarded. His ploy at innocence hadn’t lasted long.
“Why are you like this?” Anakin clicked his tongue. Don’t get the pissy Pomeranian with the attitude problem, he’ll always be trouble, they’d told him, but he’d liked Artoo’s vibe. Barely leashed rage was comfortingly familiar to him.
Artoo turned his head to look at him. Sneezed. Huffed dismissively. Then went back to staring down the shuffling passengers trying to avoid bumping against each other.
“Don’t ruin your No Bites record. I mean it. You’d look ridiculous with a muzzle on, and they’ll take your license away. No more cushy lap rides. No more pupachinos.”
Another huff. Brat. Anakin hooked the leash onto his vest and made sure it didn’t have the give to let Artoo have a go at anyone.
Then, inevitably, his eyes drifted toward the oval window. The sun wouldn’t be up for another hour, and the airport was a harsh, dazzling streak of light against the dark mountains. Ground crews swarmed the tarmac, men and women in safety gear and overalls. The real lifeblood of travel, making sure planes didn’t drop out of the sky on the daily.
Anakin swallowed down his bitterness. That wasn’t his world anymore.
He let his shoulders slump against the seat and accepted that these days he was no longer part of the magic and the grit and the oil and the excitement.
“Excuse me. May I?”
Anakin instantly gripped Artoo’s vest with stiff prosthetic fingers. The man standing in the aisle was—fuck.
Yeah. That about sums it up, Anakin thought, resigned. He slouched further, vaguely self-aware in that biting way that sometimes hit him out of nowhere, that impostor syndrome existentialist despair.
Usually when he met an actual adult. Someone who had their shit together in the way he wished he did.
Like now.
“Sorry?” he said, rewinding the conversation. “Oh. Yeah. Go ahead.” He poked Artoo. “He doesn’t bite, contrary to the attitude.”
The man smiled thinly in reply, a bit dubious. He was trim for his age, though Anakin wasn’t sure what that age was. Early forties? Mid-forties? There was a lot of gray interwoven through his beard and hair.
He wore a suit, a dark gray jacket folded neatly over one arm, revealing a simple white dress shirt underneath—rolled at the sleeves, cuffs sharp against forearms that strangely looked like they didn’t just come from a gym membership.
“Wonderful to hear,” the man said, vaguely conspiratorial as he gestured to the aisle seat. “As I hadn’t come prepared for a siege. With your permission…”
The man promptly set down a bag, the sort that smelled nice, like leather—because it was leather—and cologne—
Ah. No, that was the man’s aftershave. Oaky and clean. Anakin wrapped a whole arm around Artoo, firmly caging him.
“Right,” he said. His voice cracked. Oh, fuck him sideways. “You would’ve brought armor if you knew.”
Artoo growled. In Pomeranian, that was armor will spare no one from my wrath.
He shifted the dog further into his lap. “Sorry, it’s his first time flying.”
The stranger settled in. “Fret not. I wasn’t any better on my first flight, and it was considerably less tolerable from me than it is from this fine fellow.” He flashed another quick smile, wider, highlighting the boyish gap between his teeth.
Normally, Anakin didn’t introduce himself to strangers. It just didn’t even occur to him. (That was maybe one of the reasons why people thought he was something of an asshole.) But as they were about to be within inches of each other for the next seven to eight hours, he said, “Anakin,” like that meant anything.
The man buckled himself in. Who put their seatbelt on before the warning light? “A pleasure to meet you, Anakin. Obi-Wan Kenobi. And your bodyguard?”
Anakin scratched Artoo’s ear. Those beady eyes were fixed on Obi-Wan, but at least he’d sat back down on his haunches. “Bodyguard? That’s a new one. He’s Artoo. And no, you can’t—”
“Pet him? I’m aware. The vest does sort of give away the game.”
“You’d think it does.”
Obi-Wan slanted a sympathetic glance but said nothing. He spread his jacket over his legs like a blanket and pulled out a book and reading glasses from his bag, movements neat and precise, a polite indicator that the conversation was, at least for the time being, over.
Yeah, fair. Anakin wasn’t the greatest conversational partner. He hadn’t been before the accident, and even less so afterward. So all in all, he’d be nice to himself for once and deem that a 7/10 interaction. No insults, no weird silences? His therapist—the one for the broken bits in his head rattling around, not the PT—would be so proud.
His forehead thumped gently against the ABS molding panel. Activity had picked up on the ground, and the swarming had reignited in earnest. Another plane must be ready to taxi in soon; he spied a truck hauling an LD4 in the distance, ready to start the BHS process.
He never did find out just how baggage could get lost in transit between the belly and the conveyor belt. Mostly because the ramp agents had refused to let him near their precious sorting machines. As if he could possibly make that whole archaic system worse.
The temptation to doze while the passengers settled was strong enough that his eyelids fluttered shut without his permission. On his current prescriptions he was on a strict restriction of caffeine and hadn’t seen the point of blowing it on this when he’d be napping for most of the journey. All he had to do was get on the plane and be awake through liftoff—his favorite part of the whole process—
Artoo tapped his knee. Anakin opened his eyes, miffed that he’d come that close to falling asleep. He put on his seatbelt just in case he did doze off. In his periphery he could see Obi-Wan’s profile, his elbow on the armrest to support his open book. The Zen Guide to Gardening sounded like a total snoozefest, so Anakin checked his ring hand.
No wedding band. No pale skin there that indicated he wore one, either. Not that this meant anything. Or that Anakin cared. He was just figuring out who he was stuck with for the next few hours. No harm in that.
Who carried physical books around these days, anyway? Weird. Anakin rested his cheek on his good hand, glancing again out the window. His prosthetic lay lax on his own armrest, a dead, sluggish thing that felt as much a part of him as Artoo’s leash did.
To his credit, Artoo wasn’t barking or growling despite restlessly walking back and forth on Anakin’s lap, sometimes standing up on his chest to peer out the double-sided glass windows as if he could see anything more distinct than glittering blurs out there. And he wasn’t alerting on Anakin, so good job, the both of them.
Anakin’s eyelashes fluttered shut again. The noise in the cabin was smoothing out into a drone, people having found their seats and put away their carry-ons, children soothed and stressed adults taking a breather, pre-flight jittery nerves tangible in the air.
Some people just weren’t good flyers. Anakin couldn’t wrap his head around that, had wanted nothing more than to be up in the sky from as far as early memory stretched. A kid like him from Tatooine only had one option if he wanted to fly, though—and since that involved the army, his mother had put her foot down and asked him instead to put his other skills to work.
That hadn’t worked out that well for him, had it?
The flight attendants kicked off their routine. Anakin tuned them out. They were just as bored giving it as he was hearing it, though they didn’t get to drift off, the poor bastards. They had to raise their arms, smiling like they were posing for one of those old extinct clothing catalogues, going over the oxygen masks, seatbelts, the exits—they could probably do it blindfolded and drunk.
He yawned.
Eventually the spiel was over, and the seatbelt lights came on. The thrum of the engines was a comforting, soothing purr vibrating his bones. Anakin resumed scratching behind Artoo’s perked-up ear. He’d gone into full hyper-focus mode, his whole fuzzy body alert and taut. Clearly, he didn’t enjoy the engines as much as Anakin did.
Wait, he’s not looking to the sides…
Anakin followed the line of his gaze and—ah.
Obi-Wan hadn’t moved in a while. Not really. Still perfectly still. Which was the problem. Because no one was that still during takeoff, not unless they were either knocked out cold or absolutely white-knuckling it through sheer force of will.
Artoo let out a low, huffing whine. Not full volume—he knew better—but precisely loud enough to get attention.
Yeah. Fuck. Artoo was alerting. On Obi-Wan.
Anakin averted his face for a split second, unsure if he should say something. What the hell was he supposed to say, anyway? It wasn’t like fears, rational or irrational, could be shaken off by logic or a few paltry words of comfort. And he’d always sucked at talking to people. He was more likely to piss someone off than to make them feel better.
His own pulse went up a notch. If he wasn’t careful, he’d spiral too, and there were few things he hated more than breaking down in public.
Anakin let out a breath through his nose. Dragged a hand down his face. Blurted out the first thing that popped into his head. “I’m missing an arm.”
Obi-Wan blinked. He turned toward Anakin, just slightly, like he wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly—a familiar expression that Anakin had seen on too many doctors, that wary flicker of what the fuck is wrong with this kid, right before they remembered their professionalism.
“Pardon?” Obi-Wan said, startled.
Embracing his new role in life as a lunatic, Anakin repeated himself. “Arm. Missing one.” He lifted the prosthetic, removing the glove that always made him feel like some washed-up pop star, uncovering the synthetic thin coating of plastic in dull black. The plane was making a turn, heading to the takeoff. Anakin flexed his forearm, causing the rudimentary finger mechanism to kick in. He could grip things pretty well, though he had a 50/50 average on breaking glass. “Imagine seeing this creeping out from underneath your bed.”
Obi-Wan didn’t respond immediately. His eyes dropped to the arm—then rose, quick and deliberate. It wasn’t the worst reaction Anakin had ever gotten. “Ah. Is that why…?”
Across Anakin’s lap, Artoo sneezed. He’d folded himself half over Anakin’s thigh, huddling against the movement of the plane. No more alerting.
“No.” Anakin shook his head. “He’s an alert dog. For anxiety. So you want to, like… touch my freaky arm until we’re up in the air? It feels even weirder than it looks.”
Obi-Wan’s eyes narrowed, his face still pale. He shut his book and set it on his lap, spine up, one finger holding his page. “Was I so obvious?”
“Not to me. But Artoo? Yeah.” Pomeranians were a slightly unusual choice for service dogs to begin with, but the little dog was great at sniffing out when Anakin’s mind started falling apart. And other people too, apparently.
“That’s... a little mortifying.”
Anakin wanted to be smart and witty and quip that open membership to the loser’s club included a bonus lack of social awareness and a weekly mental breakdown.
Instead, he shrugged. “Lots of people are afraid of flying. It’s whatever. You got on the plane, didn’t you?”
Obi-Wan’s tone was dry. “One can be irrational and functional at the same time.”
Good for you, because I can’t.
Obi-Wan was studying him. Not the way people usually did—not with that half-curious, half-guarded wariness like they were waiting for him to cry or flip out. Just… looking.
“You know,” Obi-Wan said, “you’re quite good at distracting me. Most aren’t.”
“Well, I have a hell of an icebreaker. Can’t take credit for that.”
Obi-Wan’s smile then was more of a grimace, but it was something. The plane was by then picking up speed. Anakin made sure Artoo was secured, no chance of him getting jerked off his lap.
He figured, in for a penny, in for a pound. “You want to hold my freaky fake hand and see how hard you can squeeze?”
Obi-Wan swallowed. His spine had fused with the chair, shoulders flat. “No, really, that’s too much, I couldn’t,” he murmured tightly, polite even as he seemed to be making peace with his maker.
Stubborn. Anakin sympathized. Sometimes he didn’t know when to quit, either.
Most times.
Without another word, he stretched his prosthetic across the space between them. It was an awkward angle, since his right side was beside the window, meaning he had to reach over, above Artoo’s head, to offer up his black, objectively terrifying-looking hand to the man sitting in the aisle seat.
There was a beat where it could have gone either way, and Anakin was stubborn, sure, but not so stubborn or selfless enough to keep extending a literal helping hand forever if it wasn’t going to be accepted. The vibrations from the engines were stronger, the sense of moving at great speed obvious when their wheels were still on the ground, even though neither of them were looking out the window.
“Now,” Anakin said.
And Obi-Wan took his hand with a few seconds to spare for liftoff, that bump-and-hiccup that was losing contact with terra firma and defying gravity. It was like a hand being against the middle of his chest, shoving him back, before all trapped air in his lungs whistled free.
He wasn’t sure it was quite so poetic for Obi-Wan. Not with that literal white-knuckled grip he had on Anakin’s play-pretend hand. If it had been his real one, his joints would have been creaking from the pressure, and there might have even been fingerprint bruises left behind as a reminder to be amazed by for days to come. Someone that refined and composed was, beneath the veneer, just as much an animal driven by fears and impulses as anyone else; just very good at controlling them.
Anakin almost wished he’d offered up his real hand, after all.
“See? Most dangerous part is over,” he said lightly, aware of too much all at once—the simultaneous ripple of nervous laughter and scattered applause, the still-shining seatbelt light glaring into his eyes, Artoo’s warm little body on his thigh, the oaky aftershave, the ache in the bone that had been severed at the midway point—and feeling woefully unprepared to be that attuned to the moment.
He blamed it on the endorphin rush of flying again. That was all. Nice to know it could still get to him, punching through the layers of antidepressants that muffled the world and blunted its sharp edges.
Obi-Wan had squeezed his eyes and mouth shut. He visibly had to unclench his teeth to say, “Are the flight attendants getting up yet?”
Oh. Well, that was smart. Anakin bit back a reflexive grin. “No, not yet.”
“Then I’ll pretend I’m somewhere else that isn’t in a flying death trap until they do, thank you,” Obi-Wan deadpanned, and if it weren’t for the death grip on his prosthetic, Anakin might have been offended.
Wait, did that count as holding hands? That might, legitimately, be something to report to his therapist. Windu would probably say no, that did not count as getting out there and meeting new people romantically, but Anakin disagreed. After three years of flinching away from people, this was practically second base to him.
He tactfully did not mention this to the man staving off a panic attack.
The seatbelt light went off a few seconds before the crackle of the audio system came to life, with a flight attendant pleasantly announcing they could unbuckle themselves. Anakin did, immediately, and then leaned to the side—as far as his letting-a-stranger-borrow-an-arm position allowed—to peer down at the shrinking ground. There wasn’t much traffic to speak of so early in the morning, but now they were directly over the city, a tiny diorama of Christmas lights shrinking even further as they climbed higher into the sky. Until they hit the cloud cover and all that Anakin glimpsed through the glass was lavender-gray.
Beside him, Obi-Wan released a tight, shaky breath. There was a slight tug on his arm. “I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”
“What?” Startled, Anakin flexed his metal fingers. Obi-Wan had let go. “Oh, no, not with this model. Those are expensive and I haven’t felt like jumping through the hoops to get one.” Pain receptors wouldn’t be part of the equation anyway. Even the fanciest, most custom, cutting-edge prosthetics weren’t that advanced.
Nor was he about to drop the price of a small house on something he didn’t even like looking at. At this rate, he’d be making his own prosthetic. At the very least, if it didn’t work right, he only had himself to blame.
“This is a very strange conversation I was not expecting to have.” Obi-Wan unclipped his belt and leaned over, putting his book back into his bag, along with his reading glasses. “Might it even be in too much bad taste to admit you’ve thoroughly disarmed me?”
Were this a year ago—six months, even—Anakin would have bristled and possibly swung a fist. New and improved, medicated, therapy’d Anakin, however, just choked on his spit.
“A pun? That’s what I get for lendi—” He stopped, realizing he’d been about to say lend a helping hand. “You’ve infected me.”
Obi-Wan’s little smile was almost shy, the corners of his eyes crinkling. He really had been tense as hell before liftoff, hadn’t he. “We did hold hands; I assumed we were on pun terms.”
Anakin managed to narrow down his expression to a somewhat ambiguous blink. “Would you be willing to sign an affidavit so I can prove to my therapist that this happened?”
Rather than shrinking back and getting his book out again, Obi-Wan inclined his head. “As a solicitor, I’ll even write it up.”
“What’s a solicitor?” Anakin could reach for his phone and Google it. Or he could keep looking at Obi-Wan’s pretty eyes, which were gray, or blue, or green, or possibly all three at the same time.
“What you would call a lawyer in your country,” Obi-Wan explained, and yeah, lawyers were evil, soul-sucking leeches, but maybe solicitors weren’t as bad. Maybe some of them were nice and thought walking human disasters were interesting.
At least, more interesting than The Zen Guide to Gardening.
Artoo squirmed back to his feet, sighing like his small body housed all of the world’s woes. He eyed Obi-Wan gravely and then decided he was officially off the suspect list by turning his back to him. The window was apparently more interesting now that the Bad Part was over.
“You’ve been approved by my dog, but I’m still on the fence,” Anakin told Obi-Wan. “Dunno if a lawyer who gardens is trustworthy. Seems high-risk. You probably collect stamps, too.”
“Coins, actually,” Obi-Wan corrected mildly, the crinkles at the corners of eyes deepening.
God fucking dammit.
Anakin liked him.