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He woke up with his face pressed into grated metal flooring, slightly hot. Everything was aching but nothing in particular seemed to be wrong.
Except, he realized, he had no idea who ‘he’ was. That was mildly alarming.
He opened his eyes. Wall, floor, part of the wall ripped off, revealing greenery outside. A spaceship, then, and a recently crashed one. It wouldn’t be flying any time soon.
There was an alarmed yelp beside him. He sat up quickly, his head rushing, and made eye contact with a surprised young man, dressed in black, with a scar bisecting his eye, sitting on the ground like he was.
A thud called both their attention to the front of the ship, where a girl was falling out of the pilot’s chair. She was non-human, a Togruta, his memory told him even if it wasn’t being particularly helpful anywhere else.
“Um,” the girl said, blinking around at them.
All three of them turned to the final occupants of the space, two beings in white armor, still strapped into their own chairs. It was impossible to know if the armor-clad people were awake, because their helmets covered their faces. One was decorated in orange, one in blue decals.
“Hello there,” he said, brushing off his pants. They were sturdy, tan fabric. He approved, which he supposed was probably a good thing because they were his pants. “This is a little embarrassing. But I don’t suppose any of you could tell me who I am?”
The soldier with the blue helmet reached up and cracked the seal on his bucket, revealing blonde hair and a friendly face. “Uh-oh,” he said.
“I was gonna ask the same question,” said Scar Man.
“Me too,” said the girl.
“Me three,” said the orange helmet, who took it off to reveal the same face as the other man, just with darker hair and a scar.
“Well,” said Scar Man, “Kriff.”
“Maybe we all hit our heads in the crash,” Scar Man said.
“Amnesia doesn’t work like that,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Oh, how do you know? You don’t even know your own name,” Scar Man said, pouting.
“What, so someone did this to us?” the girl asked. “Creepy.” She couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen; younger, he judged, than the rest of them, and wearing different clothes. Upon examination he and Scar Man were wearing very similar clothes, just in different shades, and they both sported long brown robes.
“No one remembers anything?” Blue asked.
“Not me,” Scar Man said.
“Or me,” Orange said.
“You don’t remember your twin?” asked the girl. “That’s sad.”
Blue and Orange looked at each other and shrugged. They were all milling around, steady enough on their feet if all still a little woozy. But no one seemed to be hurt.
“Everyone empty your pockets,” he said, clapping his hands. “Maybe we can find some clues there.”
Scar Man rummaged around first. “Okay, here we go,” he said. “A ration bar, nice, chocolate flavored, a ball of— I guess that’s wire— some credits, a flashlight, some washers, and, hey!” He pulled out a little piece of flimsi.
The girl was standing at his shoulder— she stood on her tiptoes to look at the paper over his back. “An-eye-kin,” she read, “Council meeting today— DON’T FORGET!!! There’s three exclamation points. That’s a lot.”
“I think it says Anakin,” Scar Man, now named, said, and elbowed her away. “Get out of my personal space.” She elbowed him back.
“All right, Anakin, let’s see what I have,” the girl said. “Aww. I don’t even have pockets. What kind of outfit is this? Oh, but I’ve got these cylinder things.” They were clipped to her belt, shiny and clearly made of metal.
“Me too!” Anakin said. “Just one though.” He plucked it off his belt and peered into the tube. “No idea what it is, though.”
“I saw another one on the floor over there,” Blue said, and retreated to grab it.
“That must be mine!” Orange said. “Look, I have a clip for it.” They all looked. He did. His brother gave it to him and he hooked it on.
“What do you have?” the girl asked.
Orange had a lot of utility packs on his belt. “Grappling hook, couple’a rations, don’t know what that is, bacta patches, two blasters, some credits, busted comm unit…”
“Anything with your name on it?” he asked.
“Uh…” Orange examined the helmet, which he’d dropped on the floor earlier. “Hey, here it is— Property of Cody.”
Blue took his off too. “Rex,” he declared. “Nice to meet you, vod.” And the two bumped hands.
“Me next, I suppose.” A search of the pockets of his robe and tunics revealed similar contents to his companions. “Nothing to enlighten me about who I am,” he sighed.
“Hang on,” Anakin said. “Let me look.” Without asking, he stuck his hand down the collar of his shirt and flipped the edge of the robe outwards. “Yeah, here it is. If lost, return to Obi-Wan Kenobi. He probably threw it off a cliff again."
“It does not say that,” Apparently-Obi-Wan said, spinning around to try to look.
“It does,” Anakin said, grinning. “Sounds like you’re a troublemaker.”
“I am not,” Obi-Wan said, indignantly, without any real basis in fact.
“I want a name too,” the girl complained. “It’s not fair that you guys all get one.”
“I’m not checking your shirt,” Anakin said. “We can just call you Snips. Y’know, because you’re snippy.”
“That’s dumb,” she said.
“If you don’t want it…”
“I didn’t say that,” she said. “I just said it was dumb. You can call me Snips. I guess.”
“What do you think happened to us?” Rex asked. “I hate to say it, but I don’t think this is a normal situation.”
They frowned, looking around at each other.
“We… crashed?” Obi-Wan guessed. “Maybe we should figure out how that happened.”
“I was in the pilot’s seat,” Snips said. “So I must have been flying. Co-pilot’s was empty.” She got up onto her original seat and poked at the console. “Dead.”
“Let me see,” Anakin said. He flipped a few switches, and managed to get the ship to light up for a moment, before sparking spectacularly and going dark again. “Yeah. It’s dead.”
Snips glared at him.
“I think it was shot down,” Cody said, examining the broken part of the wall. “This was seared off— and I can’t tell you how I know, but I’d say pretty certainly that it was done with some kind of ship-to-ship weapon.”
“It’s interesting that we keep the rest of our knowledge but not specific memories of ourselves or the others,” Obi-Wan observed, bringing a hand up to his chin. He had a beard, apparently. It was soft.
“Oh, is it interesting?” Anakin said. “I was gonna use the word weird.”
“It suggests this was targeted,” Obi-Wan shot back, annoyed. “That someone really did do this to us on purpose.”
“Why?” Rex asked. “What did we ever do?”
“That’s a good question,” Anakin said.
“Maybe we’re escaped criminals,” Snips said direly. She was, if nothing else, definitely a teenager.
“If Snips was the pilot, the rest of us must have been passengers,” Obi-Wan said.
“Maybe the armor means me and my brother are bodyguards,” Cody said. “Maybe guarding the two of you.”
Obi-Wan and Anakin looked at each other.
“That would explain why we’re not armed, if we’re not expected to defend ourselves,” Obi-Wan said.
“But then why are we together?” Anakin added.
Snips found a scrap of flimsi and stuck it under Anakin’s nose. “Here,” she said. “Write each other’s names.”
They did, confused.
“Ah-hah,” Snips said. “Your handwritings match— Anakin wrote on your robe, and you wrote the note to Anakin. You must know each other pretty well.”
Anakin eyed Obi-Wan consideringly, his scar scrunching. Obi-Wan wondered how he’d gotten that. “Father and son?”
“No!” Obi-Wan said. “I’m not old enough to be your father!”
“Just thinking out loud,” Anakin asked, with a sidelong little grin that suggested he knew he was being annoying. “Brothers, then?”
“Perhaps,” Obi-Wan said. He considered how much giving Anakin a wet willie felt like a good idea. “Very probably.”
Anakin grinned and bumped shoulders with him. Obi-Wan rolled his eyes, but Anakin was bringing about an instinctive, if exasperated, smile.
“So brothers, brothers, pilot,” Rex said. “Wonder why we were transporting you. And to where.”
Snips put her hands on her hips and gave them a once-over. “Obi-Wan looks like a librarian,” she declared. “I bet they’re librarians.”
“Oh, man, I hope not,” Anakin said. “That sounds so boring.”
“Hey!” Obi-Wan said, offended. “That’s our livelihood!”
“Maybe we’re like, cool librarians,” Anakin said, disconsolate. “Maybe we recover cool old artifacts or something. Maybe I find the cool stuff and you document them. Hey, maybe I’m a Dark Librarian and that’s why I wear black, and I like find hidden treasures.”
“What’s a Dark Librarian?” Rex said, sounding like he was about to laugh.
“I don’t know, but it sounds cool, right?” Anakin said. “I’m a stealth librarian.”
“If that makes you feel better,” Obi-Wan said. “That said, all this isn’t terribly helpful— we still don’t know how we lost our memories or how to get them back.”
Cody had been playing with his cylinder— now he yelped and dropped it. It was emitting a beam of pure blue light, and, upon a moment of horrified staring, they watched it start to melt the floor.
“Cool,” Anakin and Snips chorused.
“Vwoom vwoom,” Anakin said, waving his own light sword back and forth, held carefully far away from his body. “Oh, man, this is so wizard.”
“Who says wizard?” Obi-Wan said.
“You’re just jealous because you didn’t get a light sword.”
Obi-Wan and Rex exchanged a glance. In that glance they both agreed that it was very unfair that they didn’t get a light sword, and that they were never going to mention that to the others.
“They look dangerous,” Obi-Wan sniffed, looking away disdainfully.
“Mine are different colors!” Snips said cheerfully, holding hers as far away as her arms would go. “What do you think that means?”
“Why do you get two?” Rex complained. “You could share one with one of us.”
“They’re mine,” Snips said. “There’s got to be a reason you don’t have one. Maybe you failed the test.”
“Hey, look, it’s cutting right through the seat!” Anakin said. “Like butter!”
The top half of the co-pilot’s seat toppled to the ground.
“That could be your own ship you’re destroying,” Obi-Wan said disapprovingly.
“Hee-yah!” Snips said, and the pilot’s seat clattered to the floor loudly.
“What kind of test could there even be?” Rex grumbled. “Seems simple enough to me. Point. Stab.”
A third seat, severed in half, fell to the floor. They all looked at Cody. “Well, I couldn’t not try,” he said.
A check of the ship revealed nothing helpful. It didn’t seem like the ship was kitted out for any kind of long journey, which either meant they’d come from someplace close or they’d had to leave in a hurry. Most of them had comm units, but there was some kind of atmospheric disturbance— they wouldn’t transmit or receive anything.
After some debate, they decided to go outside.
It was a surprisingly nice planet, when Obi-Wan stepped outside. Sunshine above, native birds twittering somewhere out of sight. There were thick green and purple trees as far as the eye could see; the clearing they were in was only one because it had been flattened by the arrival of their ship.
“Hey, you did a pretty good job landing, Snips,” Anakin said. “Must have taken a good pilot to make sure we didn’t crash a lot harder.”
Snips beamed.
From the outside, it was indeed clear that they had encountered some kind of space battle, with blaster scoring on the hull and various metal pieces scraped off.
“Now what?” Snips asked, shading her eyes with a hand as she surveyed the forest.
“Find civilization, I guess,” Rex said. “Maybe if we do they’ll have some idea what happened to us. Or at least how to find someone who does know.”
“But which way?” Cody said.
“That way,” Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Snips said at the same time, and pointed.
“Um, I mean,” Snips said.
“It just feels right?” Anakin said. “That’s weird.”
“We don’t have any better leads,” Obi-Wan said. But it was true, he somehow knew that there were people that direction; like little points of light against the hum of the rest of the planet— and he could feel the trees, too, distantly.
“Fine by me, I suppose,” Cody said, a little uncertainly. “Maybe you’re all just remembering where it should be.”
Obi-Wan exchanged a look with Anakin. “Maybe,” Anakin said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
“We’ll get going then,” Rex said. “Cody can go in front with his light sword, and I’ll keep an eye on our backs.”
“I’m the only one without a weapon,” Obi-Wan complained.
“Here, take one of my blasters,” Cody said, and passed one over. “I have, like… a lot of weaponry on me. A concerning amount of weaponry.”
“Thank you,” Obi-Wan said, giving the others a smug look. “At least someone’s generous.” The blaster was designed to be easily worn on any sort of gear, and it clipped onto his belt easily. The weight on his side was almost but not quite familiar, and he figured he must wear a similar weapon usually.
“I’m your brother,” Anakin said, slinging an arm around his shoulders. “I don’t have to be nice to you.”
Obi-Wan tried to trip him.
Cody took the front, nominally so he could cut the branches out of their way when they got too thick to traverse, but Snips and Anakin also spent a fair time cutting branches if they were even slightly in their way.
“Maybe we found a cursed book,” Anakin suggested, hopping deftly over a fallen log then spinning back around to split it in half. “And when we touched the book, it erased our memories.”
“Wow, I never knew the job of a librarian could be so dangerous,” Snips said approvingly.
“Then how come we got shot down?” Rex asked.
Anakin considered this. “A cult of cursed book worshippers,” he decided. “They didn’t like that we were trying to recover it for the Dark Library.”
“Aw, and we lost it anyway?” Obi-Wan said. “That’s sad. We went through all that effort and now the cultists still have it.”
“The life of a Dark Librarian is a hard and unrewarding one, but we live it anyway,” Anakin said.
“Very noble,” said Cody dryly.
They walked a while longer without finding anything besides more and more trees.
“Maybe we were wrong,” Snips said. “Maybe there aren’t people here at all.” She squinted up at a tree and nodded decisively. “I’m gonna climb this tree and see what I can see.”
“You could fall,” Obi-Wan protested.
“It’s a Captain’s duty to protect the people of her ship,” Snips said. She started clambering up the tree.
“So you’re a captain now?” Anakin called up at her, and she took a hand off the tree to flip him off.
She climbed up, and up, surprisingly limber and fleet. They waited in silence for a while.
“Do you think she got eaten by a giant bird?” Rex asked, just as Snips’ head appeared, upside-down. She was wearing a beaded decoration thing around her montrals, and it was swinging down cheerfully.
“There so is a civilization that way,” she said. “So either we’re geniuses or we’re psychic.”
Anakin snorted.
“Please get down from there,” Obi-Wan said, covering his eyes.
“Yeah, okay,” Snips said, then, worryingly, “Oops.”
Obi-Wan opened his eyes just in time to see one of her deactivated light swords fall off her belt and hurtle towards the ground. Obi-Wan stepped back a few steps, because he had seen what those swords could do and didn’t really fancy having one drop on his head.
“Aww, my thingy!” Snips said, and reached out an instinctive hand to catch it.
Which she did. In midair.
“What!” Cody yelped.
It just kind of floated there, rotating gently.
“Whoa!” Anakin said, all too gleefully if you asked Obi-Wan. “Wizard!”
“Hrghhhhh,” Rex said, scrunching up his face as he concentrated on a rock a few feet away.
Snips, boots back on the ground, was still playing with her light sword, making it spin this way and that. Anakin had succeeded after some time, and now he was making all the contents of his pocket float around his head. Every once in a while, one of them would float over to poke Obi-Wan in the head.
Obi-Wan would have liked to believe he was beyond such childishness but somehow still found himself making Cody float, only a few feet off the ground but holding steadily.
“I don’t think we can do it,” Cody called down to his brother.
“No, I’m gonna do it,” Rex said. “Why do the librarians get to be magic and we don’t?”
“Do you want to go upside-down?” Obi-Wan asked Cody, and started rotating him that way anyway.
“I’m unsure if I like this,” Cody said, but he didn’t wriggle at all as he rotated in a slow circle.
“This is awesome,” Anakin said. “Did the book give us magic powers?”
“Do you guys think I can turn the light sword on in midair?” Snips asked.
“Put me down first!” Cody said. Obi-Wan did. Gently.
Snips reached out a hand toward her light sword, and they all took a collective step back. “I’m stunned by your faith in me,” she said. She concentrated, squinting her eyes hard, and the light sword ignited midair.
“I’m unstoppable!” she said, and rocketed the sword into a tree.
Obi-Wan, despite himself, let out an impressed clap.
Snips had been able to confirm that they were going in the right direction— or at least towards a collection of buildings she’d spotted in the distance— so for lack of better ideas, that was what they did.
Rex was occupied with a little rock in his hand. “So what did it feel like when you did it?” he asked. “Like, did you think a magic word?”
“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan said. “I just kind of reached out, and felt it in my head, and what I wanted to happen, happened.”
“Aw, osik,” Rex said. “Maybe I’m not magic.”
“That’s all right,” Obi-Wan said, patting him on the shoulder. “I’m sure you’re special in other ways.”
“Thanks,” Rex said, brightening.
“If you two are brothers,” Cody said, from the front where he was waving his light sword around, for no apparent reason, “How come you have different accents?”
“Huh,” said Snips. “Didn’t think about that.”
“Maybe I grew up somewhere different,” Obi-Wan said.
“Obi-Wan probably went to a fancy boarding school,” Snips decided.
“Or their parents decided to send Anakin to the boarding school because he was too annoying,” Cody conjectured.
“Hey!” Anakin said. “That seems unnecessarily mean.”
“Maybe we were long-lost brothers,” Obi-Wan said.
Anakin gasped, so loudly that Cody dropped his light sword. “Wait,” he said. “What if we’re not brothers, we’re married?”
“No!” Obi-Wan said.
“We could be,” Anakin insisted. “You would never know!”
“I would certainly hope I have better taste than to marry you,” Obi-Wan said. “Right?”
“Anakin and Obi-Wan, sitting in a tree,” Snips sing-songed.
“Why can’t I be married to one of the twins instead?” Obi-Wan asked desperately. “What about Cody? Cody seems sensible.”
“Aww,” said Cody, apparently genuinely touched. “Thanks, Obi-Wan.”
“You can’t say that in front of your husband,” Anakin said. “That’s grounds for divorce.”
“I certainly hope so,” Obi-Wan said.
Anakin scowled at him. “Maybe I divorced you for being mean. Maybe we were on our way to divorce court.”
“We were definitely never married,” Obi-Wan said.
“Can you be sure?” Anakin said.
“… kriff,” Obi-Wan said.
Anakin yelped some time later, startling everyone.
“What?” Obi-Wan asked.
“You’re never gonna believe this,” Anakin said. “Here, Rex, hold this.”
Automatically, Rex reached a hand out. Anakin dropped his full arm into it.
Rex, startled and apparently on instinct, dropped the arm and kicked it as far out into the forest as it would go. He watched it go with something like regret.
“Oh, man,” Anakin said. He gave Rex an accusing look, who shrugged. Anakin waggled the fingers of his remaining hand, invisibly calling the metal one out of the forest to slap into his palm.
“That’s been fake the whole time?” Snips asked, coming over to poke it. “Whoa!”
“How did you not feel that?” Obi-Wan asked.
“I was distracted,” Anakin said, with a pout. “And it felt pretty much like a normal hand.” He made it wave at Obi-Wan, still unattached. “Hiiii!”
“I regret the day we met,” Obi-Wan said.
“Which was only a couple hours ago,” Cody said. He also poked the hand. “How do you think you lost a whole entire arm?”
“Cooking accident,” Obi-Wan guessed.
“Giant bird,” Rex said.
“Librarian dangers,” Cody offered.
Snips laughed.
“What?” Anakin said.
“No, I was just thinking,” she said. “I mean, Obi-Wan doesn’t have a light sword, you don’t have an arm…”
“You don’t think…” Anakin said.
“Hey, no,” Obi-Wan said.
“Your own husband?” Cody asked. “You cut off your own husband’s arm!”
“He’s not my husband,” Obi-Wan said.
“I’m sure it was an accident,” Rex said reassuringly. “That’s probably why you lost your light sword license.”
“I can’t believe you chopped off my arm,” Anakin said. “Maybe that’s why we were getting divorced.”
“I feel,” Obi-Wan said, “fairly certain that I have never chopped off anyone’s arm in my life.”
A little flicker of warning, like the one that had drawn them towards the civilization, flashed in Obi-Wan’s head. He turned just in time to see a pale, thin woman emerging from the treeline.
“Kennnn-obiii,” she hissed. “There you are. And all your little pets too.”
Kenobi. Right. That was him. Or maybe she was talking to Anakin— brothers sometimes had the same last name, and spouses too.
“Um,” Obi-Wan asked, and looked at the others, who shrugged. He tried for a charming smile. “Hello.”
“Are you talking to him or me?” Anakin asked. He was still holding his loose arm. “I’m trying to prove a theory.”
“Shut up,” the woman said. She had tattoos on her mouth and bald head. “You escaped my clutches for only a moment, but you must have known I’d catch up eventually.” She was very good at doing the sinister voice.
Snips inhaled a breath of impressed air. “The book cultists,” she murmured. “It’s their leader.”
“Maybe she was holding him captive and declared herself his fiancee,” Rex whispered. “But he escaped to go elope with Anakin, and she erased our memories in revenge.”
“Aww, romantic,” Snips said.
“She must be a witch,” Cody said. “We should see if she can float a rock.”
“Stop whispering!” the woman said. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I will destroy you.”
“All right,” Obi-Wan said, placatingly. “The thing is, we’re not actually sure who—”
She took two of the little cylinders off her belt, and ignited them.
“They come in red?!” Anakin said. “I want one!”
“Prepare to die,” the woman said.
“I think I’ve decided that she’s the bad guy,” Obi-Wan said, to the group. They nodded their agreement.
She swirled her light swords around menacingly. “This will be the last time you—”
Obi-Wan shot her.
“What the kriff!” she said, holding her shoulder. It was smoking slightly, and mostly smelling like burning meat. “Did you just shoot me?”
“Um,” Obi-Wan said, looking at his companions for confirmation. “I mean, yes?”
“Why?!?” she said.
“Weren’t you going to try to kill us?” Obi-Wan asked, confused.
“Well, yeah, but—” she scowled. “I see you are trickier than I anticipated, even from you, Kenobi. This isn’t over.” Then she backflipped into the trees and disappeared.
The group digested this encounter for a moment, silently.
“The sexual tension there was unreal,” Anakin said. “I think I’m jealous.”
“Holy kark,” Snips said. “Do you think I could do a backflip?”
She could.
They finally broke out of the forest a few hours later, minus a few of the chocolate ration bars and also some of Anakin’s gear, which had been levitated out into the forest never to be found.
The little village seemed to be populated by a species of small, purple creatures, one of whom spotted them emerging, bedraggled, from the forest. The creature gasped, said, ‘Jedi!’, and ran to collect other purple creatures from around town.
“…which one of us do you think is named Jedi,” Rex said tiredly.
The little purple beings didn’t appear to speak Basic, nor any other language they may or may not have known.
“Jedi,” they insisted, “ Jedi!”
“Uh-huh, Jedi,” Cody agreed, then, out of the side of his mouth, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Agreed,” Anakin said, and started to try to walk backwards inconspicuously.
Eventually one of the purple creatures, with a look not unlike an eye roll, took Obi-Wan’s hand and dragged him, and by extension the rest of his retinue, into a little hut. There was a comm unit there.
“Thanks,” Obi-Wan said. “But we don’t have anyone to contact.”
The creature pressed some buttons on the console and left the hut. A call was loading.
“I vote Captain Snips has to answer it,” Anakin said quickly. “It was her that made us crash!”
“Seconded,” Cody said.
“Aye,” Rex said.
“Hey!” Snips said.
“Technically it was probably that pale woman that made us crash,” Obi-Wan said, then before Snips could get too smug, “But, yes, Snips has to answer.”
“I hope you are getting divorced!” Snips said indignantly, just as the call connected.
In the hologram, a girl dressed in similar robes to Anakin and Obi-Wan reared back, startled. She had a strange little braid dangling off the side of her head. Then she registered all of them, standing in frame. “Oh, it’s you! Finally! I’ll put you through.”
“No, wait—!” Rex said, but the call beeped and was transferred somewhere else.
“The Council of Dark Librarians,” Anakin guessed. “Do you think they’ll be mad we lost their book and shot the scary lady?”
“Maybe they’re connecting you to a minister and you’re about to get married right now,” Cody said.
Obi-Wan felt himself sprout a look of alarm that must have been almost identical to Anakin’s.
“We can’t get married!” Anakin said. “What if we really are brothers? And what if he cut off my arm?”
Obviously that was when the call connected to the second transfer. The black man who answered didn’t even look surprised, he just closed his eyes.
“Well, at least I know you’re alive,” he said. “We were starting to get worried when you didn’t check in after you sent that distress signal. It cut out before we could pinpoint your location.”
“Right,” Snips said. “Sorry about that. We kind of crashed a little bit.”
“Yes, all right,” the man said. “I suppose I should have expected that. What happened?”
“Well,” Snips said.
“Apologies, padawan, but can I talk to one of the masters?” the man said.
“Um, sure,” Snips said. She eyed the assembled group, quite clearly trying to guess which one of them was responsible enough to be a master of anything. “I’ll get you Master… Co-dy ?”
“I’m not sure which of these answers I’m hoping for,” the man said, tiredly, “But did you promote Cody to a Jedi Master somehow, or do you have no idea who I or any of you are?”
There was a brief conference among the group.
“The second one,” Obi-Wan said.
“One normal day,” the man said, looking up at the sky. “One normal day.”
“Maybe you can settle a bet for us,” Anakin said. “Me and Obi-Wan—”
“Do not finish that sentence,” the man said. “I know you can’t answer this question, but is it possible you touched the one thing in the Force-damned karking abandoned Temple that we told you not to touch?”
“Judging by what I’ve seen so far, yes,” Obi-Wan said cheerfully. “Very possible.”
The man rubbed his forehead. “Do any of you have a small object, pyramid-shaped, maybe? It was probably under a sign that said do not touch under any circumstances.”
“Hey, I think one of the twins had something like that,” Snips said.
“Oh!” Cody said, and brought a pyramidal rock out of his utility pouches, and unwrapped it from the cloth it was in. “Right. We were trying to figure out what it was.”
And then Anakin had launched it into a tree with his magic powers, and they almost hadn’t gotten it back, but Obi-Wan thought it was probably prudent not to mention that.
“You must have taken it to prevent Ventress from finding it,” the man said, sighing. “Or, probably, Skywalker knocked it off the pedestal and you decided to take it before it could take effect.”
“Which one’s Skywalker?” Anakin asked. “Also, and I have to know, me and Obi-Wan—”
“Everyone gather around the stone and touch it,” the man said. “All at once.”
“How do we know this isn’t a trap?” Obi-Wan asked. “You could be working with the woman with the red light swords.”
“Yeah, you could be a librarian killer or something,” Anakin added.
“Or you’re trying to stop the elopement,” Snips said.
“What—” the man said. “Never mind. If any of you got married to any of each other or any librarians I don’t want to know about it. Touch the rock.”
“Yeah, okay,” Obi-Wan said.
They gathered around the rock and touched it. There was a brief flare of light.
“Better?” Mace asked.
“Better,” they all collectively mumbled. They all looked in opposite directions, avoiding eye contact. Sheepishly, Cody handed over Obi-Wan’s lightsaber.
“Can you send us a ship, please, Master Windu?” Obi-Wan asked.
“Ours crashed a little bit,” Anakin said. “And the crash destroyed the seats, too.”
“Yeah, it’s true,” Ahsoka said.
Mace pressed the button to shut down the call.
“And then you sh-shot her in the sh-sh- shoulder!” Anakin was laughing so hard he was almost weeping. “She was so surprised. She was all like, what the kriff—” Anakin devolved into incoherent wheezes.
The Council had sent a small passenger ship manned by two clones to pick them up, which meant that Anakin was forbidden from flying and they were all trapped in the galley with him.
“Who knew your sense of humor was that bad that you could make the same joke about me twice in a row?” Ahsoka asked. Her head was down on the table but her shoulders were shaking with silent laughter. “ Snips? It doesn’t even make that much sense.”
“If it fits you, it fits you,” Anakin said. “This might be the best day of my life.”
“Sir, it’s not that funny,” Cody said, which made Anakin laugh harder.
“Twins!” Anakin howled.
“Might I remind you,” Obi-Wan said sweetly, “What it was you assumed about you and me?”
Anakin blushed, which made Rex, who had been sitting quietly until now, finally let loose a giggle that sounded like it had been held in for a long time.
“It was a reasonable assumption!” Anakin said. “It was a very stressful time, and we were making sense of what we had.”
“What if we’re married?” Obi-Wan intoned, in a terrible approximation of Anakin’s Outer Rim accent. That one made Cody hold up a hand to his mouth, very obviously hiding a smile of his own. “ It just makes sense.”
“Shut up, Obi-Wan!” Anakin said, blushing and snickering. “I’m way out of your league anyway!”
“Hah!” Ahsoka said, into the table.
“I knew you had better taste than to marry Skywalker, sir,” Cody said. “I had faith in you.”
“Rex, I’m out of his league, right?” Anakin asked.
“I don’t think you want me to answer that,” Rex said, his mouth twitching.
“Hey!”
“Do you remember,” Ahsoka said, apparently starting to cry from laughter herself. “When you shot Ventress in the shoulder with a blaster?”
“Anything else to report?” Master Koon asked at the end of their Council meeting. “I understand you all had quite an adventure.”
Obi-Wan, Anakin, Ahsoka, Rex and Cody exchanged a look.
“No,” Obi-Wan said.
“We figured things out pretty quickly,” Anakin said.
“Nothing to report,” said Ahsoka.
Behind his helmet, Cody let out the tiniest of snickers.