Two Halfs of One Warrior • Obikin/Vaderwan One-Shots

Keep a Stern Hand

• Summary: “Captain Kenobi,” Prince Anakin breathed, his eyes still wide and blown black in the candlelight.

A memory came to him of the first time he’d caught the prince in the act. Anakin had only been sixteen years old at the time, but the stable boy whose hand was moving in the front of his trousers was equally as youthful, and it was that tiny detail that kept Obi-Wan from promptly putting his sword through his gut. He’d said the same thing back then, and his title upon the prince’s lips had sounded like an apology; as time passed, it morphed the syllables into an expression of insolence.

Now, it sounded like a plea.

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Or: Obi-Wan is a little too good at being the head of the crown prince's guard.

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Obi-Wan was Crown Prince Anakin’s protector, sworn to live as his blade until he drew his final breath.

He was thorough and precise in his charge, as he was with all duties bestowed upon him, and the only threat that ever seemed to elude him was the very one that he had no control over, and no way of anticipating.

The prince was barely more than a boy, now the same age as Obi-Wan himself was when High King Jinn had looked at him and said those fated words:

He is old enough to walk, now, which means he is old enough to get himself into trouble. There is no one I trust more to protect him, Knight Kenobi. Will you accept this honor and bind your life with his?

Obi-Wan had been old enough to take the vow, but just young enough not to understand fully what it meant to be another’s shadow.

And trouble, was, perhaps, the understatement of the millennia.

Sixteen years and a boundless amount of patience later, Obi-Wan could still feel the remnants of the headache he’d developed during the opulent festivities that had marked the prince’s nineteenth birthday, a week of debauchery that had left the halls of Castle Coruscant littered with empty decanters and shed clothing, especially concentrated at his station outside of the prince’s chambers. The subsequent rumors that passed between the servants and nobles alike had spread so far that it bled into Obi-Wan’s very, very limited time away from the castle.

Prince Anakin was a calamity.

“Oh, woe is me! C’mon, it can’t be all that bad, being the captain of the Prince’s Guard,” Knight Vos’s ale splashed across the wooden bar top as he shoulder-checked Obi-Wan clumsily. He wasn’t nearly drunk enough for this. “I mean, for God’s sake, look at him.”

Obi-Wan sincerely preferred not to do that.

“All the beauty in the world could not belie that degree of impertinence.” He murmured into his cup, keeping his voice low, all too aware of the patrons of the inn and their inclination to try and gain the favor of the royal family. As much as he despised playing the babysitter, it was an honor to have a position within the castle at all, and he would never risk it for a few words that could be slanted as treasonous.

Besides, Prince Anakin’s attractiveness had always felt more like a burden than anything else; his smooth skin and his guileless, sparkling eyes painted him as a desirable target for nearly every courtesan—or any human with a pulse, for that matter—that crossed paths with him. Which, of course, was exacerbated by the prince’s own naivete and predisposition for mischief. It made Obi-Wan’s life unnecessarily more difficult.