Illicit Affairs | Obi-Wan Kenobi

Fourteen

Hours later we still haven't spoken, still sopping wet in my cold ship. Unlike him I have other clothes onboard I can change into since it is my ship after all but I can't bring myself to remove his wet robe from around my shoulders that he placed in such tenderness before this mess.

He is angry, disappointed. With the hours that pass I truly can appreciate how he has become a master in these last years, for only a master can so perfectly master the silent treatment. I almost pity Anakin now. But, I do know that with Anakin as his padawan Obi-Wan has by sake of necessity become one of the most patient men in the galaxy and that he will put this aside for the sake of the mission once the emotions pass.

But still I cannot bear it, I cannot bear him being angry with me when I've been betrayed so brutally. I ache for his comfort even though I don't deserve it. I lied. I lied to the one person I knew I could trust with this and he's right, I did it to save my pride, but mostly out of fear of this exact situation.

My master has betrayed me, he hired the bounty hunter to kill Padme before I overheard the conversation with his own master, he'd already given the order before his master did.

My own father could never understand for a moment why I'd made the choices I had in leaving the order and in everything that came next. But Dooku did. As a child Dooku had paid a closer eye on me in supervising my clan's training as a youngling than my parents ever did after they let them take me. The bond I'd spent years trying to repair with my father, it was one I found early with Dooku despite the strict professionalism he kept in the training.

I needed a father, some wiser being to look up to, and that was Dooku.

All that is gone now. It was all a lie.

I can bear my sisters anger at being a separatist, we're sisters we fight and we get over it.

But not this.

At the start I was operating under the assumption I could hide it until the mission was done so he would never have to know but even then I knew that there is no done. Not with Obi-Wan and I.

Half of me expects Obi-Wan to come and sort this out, or at least to break this silence, but he doesn't. He's a patient man so this silent treatment may very well last until we reach Anakin and Padme and are forced to communicate.

But I'm not that patient and so when the tension becomes unbearable I leave my ships sleeping quarters to return to the cockpit, standing in the entrance and wait until he senses me before I dare to ask "Are you still angry with me?"

He sighs heavily, and from the moment he takes to compose himself before speaking it's clear the emotions haven't yet passed. At least it's some relief to know both of us are in pain.

"You were a Siths apprentice for the better part of a decade and you hid it from me knowing how important that very fact is to this mission," he says, laying it out logically as much as passive aggressively. "So yes, I am still angry with you."

But I know him better than that, I know it's the betrayal he can't move past no matter how much he tries to rationalise it in his own mind. That it's his emotions that have been hurt rather than the mission.

Knowing it can't get much worse I say "I wanted to tell you everything that first night and I was going to before the attack happened, when you said that no matter what it was that it's us and that all would be well."

He sighs again and looks back at me, the tension unmistakable. "Yes and I do mean that but Rhea, this is madness. You went to Count Dooku for training knowing he'd turned to the darkside."

"It was him who came to me," I remind Obi-Wan and try to resist the urge to become defensive. "And tell me Obi-Wan, you knew he was one of the lost but did you ever know he'd fallen to the darkside until I'd told you? Because I certainly didn't until I learned the hard way."