Chapter Text
Obi-wan wakes with a jolt and barely muffles the strangled sound of waking from his nightmare. He looks around and sinks in relief when he remembers where he is.
He’s out, he’s free from that house, and he’s never going back.
Obi-Wan sinks into the slightly hard seat of the passenger transport ready to succumb to exhaustion until he jolts up once again, scrambling for his datapad to check the time.
The screen lights up the numbers 02:17 and Obi-Wan bites his lip as he looks around at the other sleeping passengers.
For the life of him, he can’t remember where he booked his to ticket to. The past 24 hours are covered in a haze of stress and all Obi-wan can remember is that he asked the ticket master for the soonest, furthest and cheapest flight possible. When he got on the ship, the relief hit him like a tidal wave and he passed out (for apparently 5 hours?!) and now he can’t find his ticket.
After a brief silent panic session, Obi-Wan unearths his ticket from his pack and uses the bright glow of the datapad to read his destination.
Mandalore
Huh, he’s never heard of it. He hopes it’s as far from republic space as possible.
Obi-Wan's tempted to search it up but with how bright his datapad is and how many passengers are currently sleeping, he’s just about to turn it off and hold off his research until the morning when a voice startles him. So badly that he turns off and drops his datapad anyways.
“Hey, kid, whatcha- you ok?” A gentle voice asks. It’s smooth and feminine. The opposite of Jinn’s deep rough demands.
You’re ok, you’re not in trouble, you can’t be in trouble anymore, not with him at least.
Obi-wan quickly turns around to face the voice, a thin hand pressed over his rabbiting heart, “Yeah, sorry, you scared me is all, I didn’t expect anyone to be awake”
“Hah, neither, jet lag will do that to ya.”
As she talks, obi-wan takes in her appearance. She’s, oddly enough, in full armour, minus the helmet in her lap. It’s painted in bright lines of colour visible even in the dim light of the transport and Obi-Wan is tempted to trace them with his finger. A voice eerily similar to Jinn’s reminds him he’s not a child.
“-ou from kid?”
Obi-Wan snaps to attention and his cheeks burn as he realises she’s been talking this whole time while he’s been distracted by some pretty colours like a toddler.
“S-sorry, uh, could you repeat that?” Obi-Wan asks sheepishly, waiting for an annoyed scoff or to be ignored.
“I asked where you’re from? You don’t seem to be familiar with where you’re going, and you’re alone.”
Obi-Wan peers up into the strangers eyes at her kind tone of voice and is surprised to find genuine worry and care in her eyes. Not a hint of annoyance or reprimand for not listening.
The relief and realisation that he’s actually away from Him is so much that it almost brings tears to Obi-Wan’s eyes.
Almost
Because with Jinn or not, he’s not a baby and he won’t embarrass himself like that.
Obi-Wan plasters on his most fool-proof smile…
“Oh, I’m from some backwater republic planet, you’ve probably not heard of it. My parents sent me ahead, my doctor said the air isn’t good for young lungs. They’re on the next transport in because when we bought the tickets these were the earliest and they wanted me off the planet as soon as possible.”
…and lies through his teeth.
He can see the cogs turning in the nice woman’s head and as kind as she is, Obi-Wan can’t have her being suspicious of him and finding out he’s a runaway. Then she might report him, and then he might have to go back, and as bad as it was before, Obi-Wan knows it can get a whole lot worse.
“I’m Ben! What’s your name?” Obi-wan immediately blurts when it looks like she’s about to ask for more detail.
He holds out his hand and the stranger (he should probably also stop calling her the nice stranger or the woman) looks down at it with faint amusement. Though Obi-wan can see there are still questions in her eyes, she seems to accept that he doesn’t want to talk about them for now.
“I’m Arla, It’s nice too meet you, Ben.” Arla grasps Obi-Wan’s hand in a firm shake,
“You know on Mandalore, we greet each other like this instead”
Arla releases his hand and gently but firmly grasps Obi-Wan’s forearm instead and guides Obi-Wan’s hand to do the same. Her eyes flicker down briefly to where she grasps his forearm and a slight furrow appears in her brow but Obi-Wan is too excited to notice.
“You know about Mandalore? Do you live there? I wanted to do some research before I-my parents get there so we’re not so lost but I didn’t want the light from my datapad to disturb people.”
Arla is silent for a moment and Obi-Wan wills his face to remain in its eager expression, praying she didn’t pick up on his slip
.
“…you don’t recognise my armour? Mandalorians are pretty distinct I thought?”
“Oh, well, backwater planet and all that.” Obi-wan says, cheeks burning once again. He can see her gearing up to ask another question. Likely about his home planet seeing as he just mentioned it, so Obi-wan scrambles to beat her with the first thing he can come up with.
“So you’re a Mandalorian? Can you tell me about where we’re headed?” Obi-wan asks, relieved his brain thought up a question that would require little talking on his part.
“Sure kid. This ships headed for Keldabe, the capital of Mandalore. Keldabe used to be the stronghold of the Mand’alor, when Mandalore was at war. Now it’s mostly living quarters and for diplomatic events and all that boring ruling a planet stuff,” Arla says will a roll of her eyes. “You and your family will be able to find decent accommodations in one of the residential districts, we’re used to foreigners coming and going and Mandalore is already quite diverse because of our ancestors’ conquering ways, as jas’buir would say. Anyways there’s lots of districts in Keldabe, it being the capital and all, the most important ones to know…”
Arla lists out good places to buy, stay and work, as well as working in bits of history she clearly hears a lot of from someone named jas’buir.
Obi-wan diligently notes everything down once Arla has shown him how to dim the brightness on his datapad, and before he knows it, the lights have begun to turn on around the ship. The time on his datapad reads 05:57.
Obi-Wan immediately begins thanking and apologising to Arla for bothering her for so long but Arla just brushes him off and says she’s happy to help. Something about it being ‘ the way’ ? Perhaps a culture thing.
Speaking of which, he’s going to have to learn a lot about Mandalore. It seems rich with culture and history and language and Obi-Wan almost vibrated with excitement when Arla handed him a data chip that she called a ‘foundling guide to Mandalore’. It included a language module too!
Gosh, he can hear Quin calling him a nerd in the back of his mind.
The thought brings a wave of sorrow over his mind as he realises he doesn’t know if he will ever see or talk to Quin again. The galaxy is wide and Obi-Wan was only able to keep in touch with Quin through Jinn since he deemed Obi-Wan too irresponsible to have his own comm.
I’m a horrible brother friend.
Obi-wan worries his bottom lip between his teeth. What if he worries? What will Jinn tell him? He never wants him to worry about-
“Ben?”
Obi-wan snaps out of his worrying and looks into Arla’s eyes, flashing her a quick smile and releasing his lip and the death grip he didn’t know he had on his datapad.
“You ok?”
“Oh yeah, just, uh, thinking about a friend I had to leave behind. He couldn’t come with, and my-our moving was kinda sudden.”
Arla looks at him with a sympathetic expression and squeezes his shoulder, glancing down at it before quickly looking back to Obi-Wan.
“That sucks. I’m sorry you had to leave him, but I’m sure you or your parents will be able to keep you guys in touch.”
Obi-wan bites the inside of his cheek to stifle the rising wave of tears and tries to put on his most reassuring smile.
“Yeah”
Obi-Wan hopes the shine in his eyes isn’t as noticeable as it feels.
———————————
The transport touches down as Obi-Wan haphazardly stuffs his datapad back in his pack and pulls on his jacket. He’s always run cold and despises the feel of it. Despite Arla’s assurance that it’s warm on Mandalore, he doesn’t want to risk it.
She walks him off the transport and they make small talk as we weave through the space hub and out of checkout.
“So kid, whatcha gonna do while you wait for your parents?”
Shoot.
He shouldn't have talked to her. Now she’ll be worried and feel obligated to stay with him or something since he’s a child alone on a new planet.
“Oh I’ll just wait around until my parents arrive, should only be pretty soon with how long checkout took, pretty busy here. Thank you for everything, I appreciate it more than you know”
Obi-Wan scrambles out, already walking backwards. As he gets his last words out his back is turned to her and he’s nearly speed-walking away.
A hand grips the back of his jacket, not roughly, but Obi-Wan jerks anyways, panic rising. Don’t let him catch you, he’ll take you back.
Nononono
He can distantly hear yells of Ben in the crowd by a familiar feminine voice, but panic overrides the rational part of Obi-Wan’s brain and soon he’s ducking and weaving between armoured and unarmoured beings until his panic subsides and he feels less hunted.
Obi-Wan is small and the travellers in the space port are big, so it’s easy for him to lose his tail.
When he’s sure he’s alone, he runs for the nearest bathroom and locks the door.
Sitting on the toilet lid and drawing his knees to his chest, Obi-Wan allows his first tears to fall as relief and grief swirl uncomfortably in his chest.