Chapter Text
Anakin limped onto the bridge, carrying the scents of plasma and smoke on his tunics, and the deeper bight of omega pain beneath it. The recycled air of the ship, which always smelled a little stale, a little clinical, carried the stench of battle. His men reeked of bitter sweat, the kind from adrenaline that might have smelled animal on anyone else but for clones smelled like phenol, sharp as ink cartridges.
The carnage on the bridge hung in the air as a memory of the day’s pain, a scent trail of smoke and salt, fetid fear, and the copper of blood. The oily miasma of melted plastoid armor and ion followed him through the doors, a circling chokehold ‘round and ‘round—
“Master!” Ahsoka gasped against his chest, montrals shoved under his chin and arms squeezing his throbbing ribs.
Pain blossomed in his scent and the force with the heated ache of his bones that pulsed hot as a burn, a sure sign a few were cracked. Ahsoka cringed away from him, her own scent of dry mesquite slanting bitter with worry.
“Master you’re hurt!”
“Just my ribs,” he admitted, his attempt at a grin folding into a grimace, “what are the casualties?”
Rex appeared by Ahsoka’s side, helmet shoved under his arm and a long line of grease smeared down the side of his face. Under his armor and soaked through his blacks was the scent of beta exhaustion and the chemical sting of his sweat, a tangle of salted citrus and sparked wires.
“Infirmary hasn’t sent up specs yet, general. Outed readings on helmets with no response stands at three hundred but we’ve a lot of unconscious MIAs in the docking bays we’re still accounting for.”
Three hundred.
His face spasmed and he clutched at his side, digging pointed fingertips to aching bone, a reminder, a lifeline. Don’t panic here, don’t let the grief or the clawing desperation of your own instincts distract from—his duty, his purpose, the very reason he drew breath on this bridge.
Rex flexed forward and righted himself with a lurch. “You should see medical, sir.”
Jango Fett, Obi-Wan told him, had been all alpha, his son the first clone too. But an army millions strong needed to function seamlessly, without the snap of instinct that overrode training and rationality. Contrary to what traditionalists touted, alphas weren’t inherently stronger or more suited for war. So all his men were betas and synthed up to their eyeballs, as if you could breed human instinct out of them by pure will.
It didn’t stop them from keeping nonregulation skin mags in their bunks, or from slicing their pads to access parts of the holonet their creators never intended them to know. He pretended not to notice just like he pretended he did not see them shutter away instincts they didn’t quite understand to protect him beyond ‘general’ and ‘Jedi.’
“I’m alright. I need gold squadron readied as we prepare for launch. Direct order is to shoot anything that kriffing moves.”
The fact of the matter was, omegas made damn good soldiers. Traditionalists would rather jetson themselves into the unknown than ever acknowledge it, the senate too because it looked bad on the net and polls showed Republic citizens found omegas in war zones “upsetting.” But just like a mother rancor over her brood, omegas protected their own. Defend the weak and helpless, stand between the innocent and the rest of the galaxy, on flimsi he was made to be a Jedi just by instincts alone. Reality proved a little more complicated.
But he stood in command of nine thousand men, nine thousand of his men he would rip the galaxy apart to protect. The Council did not like the brutality he implemented in keeping his men safe, the scorched earth approach he often took because those men were Anakin Skywalker’s and force save anyone who touched them. The senate liked it even less, said his bloodthirstiness looked bad for Republic metrics on the net, looked bad an omega war general notched the Separatists’ greatest and grisliest losses.
“We thought something had happened to you,” Ahoska bit out, scent and force light sharp with young alpha ire. “Master Kenobi has been trying to comm you for hours.”
He lifted his gloved hand to show off the busted face of the comm on his wrist. “Took a stunner to the hand.”
Togruta and clone trooper alike leveled him the same flat expression, despite they reeked of worry. They always did after battle, when he wore the sour of omega sweat, laced with adrenaline hormones and stress in his linens and the hollow of his throat.
Ahsoka hesitated, “he said it’s urgent, master.”
He groaned and squeezed her shoulder. “You have the helm; I’ll talk to him. Rex, keep me posted on what those scrounger droids turn up, and tell Kix to push the casualties’ list straight to me.”
Rex snapped a smart salute, fingers pressed to his blonde hairline. “Yessir.”
In his bunk he folded in front of a table and private holo puck, groaning through the hot lance of pain down his side.
Obi-Wan flickered into view, relief written in his eyes even through the bad connection and blue light. “I’m glad to see you’re in one piece.”
Anakin fluttered his fingers in view and grinned crooked. “Couldn’t take your call.”
Arms crossed against a broad chest, vambraces pressed to plastoid cuirass. “You look terrible.”
He barked out a helpless laugh at that. Obi-Wan grinned a little, a small tick of pleasure that revealed a constant for his master, the endless pursuit to make him smile in war.
“I feel just as bad, but you weren’t hounding Ahsoka to check on me. What’s wrong?”
Obi-Wan stroked his beard, another tell of his; casual movement to buy time, a feint at deep thought when he very well knew his mental tactic, merely needed to shuffle the verbal attack in precise order. He had hated to be on the receiving end of it as a padawan, it meant a devastating dressing down, or worse, being told Obi-Wan was disappointed. As a knight he found it amusing, found it a second to think, here we kriffing go.
“The Council have received worrying intelligence regarding Republic financers funneling credits to the Separatists. Quinlan and his shadow agents have identified what we thought to be an untraceable investment of fifty billion credits to Count Dooku and the Separatist forces. You were the first to notice—on the campaign in Affadar, that their secondary legions have somehow acquired new droid technology, expensive investments in weaponry.”
He stifled a wince as he leaned back in his chair and cupped the pulsing ache of his ribs. “Dooku is already swimming in near limitless credits, you think other backers are something to worry about?”
Obi-Wan stroked his beard again and hesitated. “Sereno is rich but even Dooku’s vaults are finite, rumors are the Separatists are looking to outside investors to supplement the Count’s dwindling resources. Fifty billion is nothing to scoff at, especially because Quinlan believes it came from one source.”
“And I’m assuming we’ve pinpointed the source?”
“Of a sort,” Obi-Wan flashed his charming smile and Anakin narrowed his eyes. “There is a group who calls themselves the Brotherhood, young alphas from the wealthiest families of the core worlds. Most of them went to academies together, you know the sort, neolithic elitists with archaic ideals. Most of the matriarchs or patriarchs of the core families are too involved with the senate or the bank of the core to be suspect of funneling credits to the Separatists, but the young and stupid ones are usually hungry for power.”
Of course it would be a bunch of rich core world knotheads, how disappointingly typical. “And Quin thinks it’s someone from the Brotherhood? This sounds like it requires reconnaissance, master,” he sniped, “not really my forte.”
Obi-Wan sighed. “The Council disagrees with you, they think you’re just the man for the job—well, that we are the men for the job.”
He straightened, despite the jagged throb of pain around his lungs from the jerk. “Why?”
Another pause, another stroke of the beard. Anakin raised his eyebrows at the unusual sign of hesitance. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re nervous, master.”
“The Brotherhood are rarely all on the same planet at the same time, but they’ve called for a convergence for a galactic gala on Cantonica. We’ve been missioned to infiltrate the Brotherhood and ascertain what family is responsible and how they are funneling credits to the Separatists.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Again, why me? This sounds like a job for Quin, maybe you—definitely not me, master.”
Obi-Wan’s face went odd, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, a sure sign he was truly stressed. If he were here, he would smell, despite his uncanny self-control, of alpha agitation. It rarely occurred and thank the stars for it, it always made Anakin’s skin crawl, the shuddering of instincts he held at the bit. Alpha scents never particularly affected him before puberty, but when Obi-Wan’s washed frustrated and stern, even young he had found it difficult to grit his teeth against and push past.
“The Brotherhood is notoriously difficult to gain an invitation into, they are impossibly strict on their vetting process. Even more, outsiders know little of how they operate, only that they are traditionalist zealots, the worst kind of alpha supremacists. The Council believe our only viable option of gaining entrance or trust within the Brotherhood is by us posing as a bonded pair.”
Anakin’s face twitched and he clutched at his side, hissing a breath through his bared teeth. “The Council wants to send me in to pose as a traditionalist omega? Have they lost their karking minds?”
Obi-Wan looked as if he smelled something foul. “Their original intention was to send you in alone. Do not look at me like that—I would truly have failed you as a master to willingly send you into a den of alpha zealouts alone—oh stop it. The Council specifically think you are ideal. We will have no backup, no support, you have ample experience with the mentality of slavers and their operations, you are anything but squeamish—and,” –Obi-Wan trailed off.
“And?” He asked archly.
“And,” Obi-Wan answered stiffly, “you look the part.”
“I look the part? Obi-Wan the net says I look like I want to rip alphas’ throats out with my teeth filed down. Have you seen the articles where they call me feral eyed?”
Obi-Wan grinned a little, the indulgent, soft-eyed one he had favored Anakin with since boyhood. “See, just the man for the job.”
He groaned and lulled his head back to stare blankly at his bunkhead. “I think everyone’s lost their kriffing minds. When’s this gala then?”
“It starts in four rotations, but the gala is only the beginning, what we need is to gain entrance to the private retreat the Brotherhood will take in Canto Bight afterwards.”
“What is happening in Canto Bight, besides being hatecrimed?”
Even with his chin raised to the ceiling he could see Obi-Wan roll his eyes. “Other than time and access with all the members of the Brotherhood? Quin heard rumors of some movement of credits, a hundred billion, he just doesn’t know for what.”
“A hundred billion?”
“So you see the severity of the situation,” Obi-Wan said wryly.
He lulled his head back to level Obi-Wan a dull glance. “What if they recognize us?”
“They won’t.”
“You sound very sure.”
“Trust me, Anakin. And go to medical, you need your ribs looked at.”
Anakin grinned, baring all of his teeth at the holopuck. “Yes, master.”
A blast of air washed over Obi-Wan, heat exhaust from Anakin and Ahsoka’s docking cruiser in the temple hangar. He stood with his boots braced apart on the duracreet and his hands clasped at the small of his back, both a measure to keep his instincts under control. He had thought once, that repeated exposure to things that went directly against the instinctual would desensitize him. Reality proved the opposite, merely that his self-control—his coping mechanisms saw refinement.
Knowing Anakin was in danger-wounded-in a war zone, never grew easier. He knew Anakin to be more than competent, a brilliant warrior, a renowned general, the best starfighter in the entire galaxy, one of the best saber duelists to ever walk the halls of the Jedi temple. It was a universal acceptance within the order that omegas made some of the best Jedi. It was in their dna, the need to protect, the ferocity invoked when what was perceived as theirs became threatened. For a Jedi, any innocent within the Republic was by definition theirs to protect. Anakin made an astoundingly ferocious Jedi, his boyhood as a slave only further honing what some called feral protectiveness.
His padawan treaded a fine line, to not fall into the dangers of attachment. His need to protect, his all-consuming and sometimes terrifying instincts to rend his enemies to dust, often fed from fear. But Obi-Wan taught him, watched him grow, tasted the changing of his scent through puberty, fought side by side with him. He trusted him, more than anyone. He trusted him to lead a legion of nearly ten thousand men, trusted him with his life.
That trusting, that knowledge, it still did not appease the deeply staunched, though ever present alpha instincts to take him by the scruff and keep him safe, hold him close. It was for this precise reason alpha and omega master and apprenticeships came rarely within the order. Not from any archaic or antiquated ideologies of presentations, the kind only found amongst slavers or zealots, but because instinct was a difficult thing to overcome, even with the tender light of the force.
“You want to send Anakin in alone,” he had seethed to Mace, choking down a snarl, “undercover and with no aid—surrounded by the worst kind of villainous scum—”
“Obi-Wan,” he had said, stern faced though with the clean taste of alpha understanding in his scent. “Be mindful of your instincts. Skywalker is more than capable, rather he is precisely the knight we need to infiltrate the Brotherhood.”
“I should go with him,” he had finally said after a steadying breath and smoothing away his ruffled edges in the force. “As an omega he will not have access to the members like we need. If we both—we will have a far greater chance of earning the Brotherhood’s trust and garnering close contact with members as a “bonded” pair.”
Master Ti had nodded, her great horned montrals swaying. “Master Kenobi is right, Skywalker will have a near impossible task alone, quite dangerous for someone who does not accept impossible odds. His safety would be at great risk. Kenobi and Skywalker are one of our few alpha and omega apprenticeships, there are none other more close or trusting to be placed in such a precarious mission.”
“And you believe this will not put undue strain on you both?” Master Windu asked, eyebrows arched. “The requirement to mimic a bonded pair will be a great toll on your instincts.”
“Anakin is more than—”
“Look, Obi-Wan,” Mace sighed and leaned forward in his council seat. “This type of mission would be agonizing for any alpha within the order, sent into a hostile environment with an omega under your care at the center of risk.”
“You think I should not go?”
“I think you should be careful.”
He was right of course, Mace always seemed to be so. He apologized to him at the end of the council meeting, embarrassed to have snapped at him in the middle of a council meeting. Even more embarrassed to have let himself become so riled at the thought of protecting his once padawan, a grown man, Jedi knight, and war general.
He merely squeezed a warm hand against Obi-Wan’s shoulder. “I understand the internal burden of an omega apprentice, Obi-Wan. It would be hypocritical to expect you to be faultless of instinct, especially in war. But you of anyone know the greater burden of duty.”
Duty indeed. Once, after he held his master’s cooling body in his arms and made a promise, he thought of it as such. The blonde boy brought to the temple, who smelled of prepubescent omega, the remnants of baby musk and creamy iris, had felt like a duty. Though there was fire in him, a crackling passion even slavery could not smother, he often crept his way into Obi-Wan’s room at night, at his core a little boy who missed his mother. It had felt like duty then, holding his baby amber scent to his chest and soothing his broad palm against his small shoulders and thinking force how am I going to do this?
It felt even more like duty when Anakin grew, and the flame of his personality fanned to a hissing wildfire. Spirited, many of the masters in the temple laughed, not without sympathy. Anakin never liked being told what to do, took criticism badly and direction even worse. He bristled at Obi-Wan’s attempts at alpha firmness, snapped his teeth, and reeked of pubescent contention, all brimstone and unbridled anger without direction. Obi-Wan constantly feared overstepping, pressing alpha instincts upon a young omega under his authority. Really, he should never have worried, Anakin cowed before no one, least of all alphas, and as such Obi-Wan was too lax, too hesitant.
Perhaps it felt most like duty when the temple healers notified him Anakin had checked himself in from the padawan barracks. Contrary to everything else about Anakin Skywalker, a first heat at sixteen was utterly within the norm. Three days later he breezed into Obi-Wan’s rooms, dark under the eyes and smelling of candied ginger and cloves, sweet and rich as frankincense post heat. It felt a staggering duty to thread fingers into the bloodied meat of his alpha nature and pull it tight, to not order or bare his teeth or growl commands as he itched to do.
Duty came in other forms with the war, intrinsically woven with his men and his ships and his armies. The years passed one by one, marked by missions and battles and the spill of copper between comrades. Anakin grew, taller-broader-harder in spirit and in the planes of his face, the curve of gold-plated fingers. His scent stayed the same, sweet ginger and cloves, spiced dark and earthy with the woody amber of underlying frankincense.
Shoulder to shoulder, saber blades branded as two stars in the black, Anakin ceased to be anything like duty. Jedi bonds transcended familial, they often fit a nebulous and less defined role to one another, father-mother-brother-sister-friend. He felt no true blood relation to him, it was something deeper, forged of force light and blood and love deeper than the oceans of Corellia. Anakin was his best friend, but that seemed such a poor definition for the other half of him.
Through the steaming ship exhaust candy swirl blue and white stripes flashed, a moment’s warning before he oomphed against an armful of bony Togruta. Montrals butted against his jaw with the scent of dry mesquite.
“Hello Master Kenobi!” Ahsoka chirped.
He squeezed her shoulders and cuffed the ridge of her montral with his chin, a light scent marking he would never have dared with anyone else’s padawan.
“Hello padawan.”
He felt the glimmer of Anakin’s force light before he stomped down the docking ramp and caught the scent of spices before he stepped through the steam. Dark bruises stained the hollows under his eyes and a snarl of hair at his ear looked singed. He wore the scent of exhaustion in his tunics, omega adrenaline and sweat and the bitter underbite of pain. Obi-Wan bristled, a snarl tangled in the hinge of his jaw and caught behind his molars before he shuddered a breath and opened himself to the sweetness of the force in the hangar.
Their reunions now were always a relief of pain, a tapestry of their worn hurts and bruises. It never became easier, fighting apart-leaving-coming back to Anakin smelling of war.
Anakin watched them hug and grinned, a tender tug of lips to reveal his broad, toothy smile. Holoreporters were vultures, loved to yowl on and on how un-omega Anakin was, how blunt and brash and aggressive they found him. He was those things, Obi-Wan supposed, but in the small moments he was this, soft eyed and wide mouthed, charmingly boyish, and bashful. Even the war had not robbed Anakin of all of his youthful tenderness.
“Here I am in one piece, as promised,” Anakin said around a twisted-up smile, crooked and dimpled.
Obi-Wan pulled him into a one-armed hug and scuffed battle roughened knuckles through his curls, tangled with the scents of plasma and ion. “Your hair looks to have gotten an unexpected trim.”
Ahsoka snickered and Anakin rolled his eyes. “Oh so I take heat for a stray blaster but you faced zero consequences when you lost a whole eyebrow on Aargonar.”
“I’m not sure about zero consequences when you mocked me incessantly and have never let me forget it.”
Anakin’s grin only widened, and he crossed his arms against his chest, smelling sharp as sour candy, always a tell of a playfully teasing mood. “I always did wonder how the holos never got footage of you.”
He arched an unimpressed eyebrow, though the peaceful happiness in the force and the answering tartness of his own scent gave away his lack of true ire. “We have an appointment with wardrobe operations, before we go over the mission report.”
Anakin groaned. “The Council haven’t changed their minds? This might be the worst idea they’ve ever had.”
Ahsoka rolled her eyes at them both though she smelled of a dry wind in green leaves and mirrored the same crooked smile Anakin loved to brandish. “Master won’t tell me what mission you’ve been sent on, but he’s been complaining since the outer rim.”
“That I do not doubt,” he said dryly
Anakin complained through their fittings, arms raised while he glared himself down in the mirror and a temple droid chirruped at his feet.
He whined, “why all the high collars, I feel like I’m being choked?”
“The Brotherhood are quite adamant on the societal rules of when an omega’s mating bite can and cannot be shown in public.”
Anakin scoffed and tugged at the stiffened collar around his throat. “I want everything in black,” he told the temple seamstress.
He rolled his eyes with a holomeasure in his mouth. “As it always is, Knight Skywalker.”
Obi-Wan stroked his beard and stifled a smile, catching the sharp scent of ginger. Anakin was already sweating, flushed with annoyance and the overheating that always seemed to come with fittings.
“They won’t like that, and you know it, Anakin.”
“Well, they can suck a porg egg,” he snapped.
He continued to complain in the halls of healing with his head thrown sideways, neck stretched completely taught and tendons bouncing under Master Che’s diligent hands.
“Stop squirming,” she reprimanded through a laugh.
“It tickles, you try have an airbrush hissing in your scent glands!”
“How long will the ink last?” Obi-Wan interrupted, already worried at the thought of all those high collared jackets wearing away Anakin’s painted on mating bite.
“It is henna Master Kenobi; it should stain for a couple weeks before it fades.”
Obi-Wan watched Anakin’s throat bob with a swallow and flickered his eyes away. Submission had never been an instinct of Anakin’s, neither to the force or anyone else. In all their years together, he realized he had never seen his throat bared so. Those kinds of observations only made him worry all the more for this mission, at just how poorly Anakin was suited to play deferent and meek.
Sensing his unease in the glimmering tether of the force or in the betrayal of his scent, Anakin lulled his head even more, so that his ear pressed to the raised arch of his shoulder.
He blinked lazily and then that wide mouth tugged into something foreign and saccharine. “I can play nice, master.”
“This won’t be the time for your love of aggressive negotiations,” he warned.
“Did you think I did not pay attention to you flirting your way through every diplomatic mission?” Anakin laughed, still with that disconcerting smile tugging at his mouth.
Flirtatious, that’s what Obi-Wan realized he was doing, baring his throat with a heavy-lidded smile, and falling into a role Obi-Wan never imagined he would.
Obi-Wan laughed and combed fingers through his beard. “You have made your point.”
Anakin’s grin stretched wider, slanting all at once soft-eyed and real.
Anakin braced his foot on the ship’s steering yoke, locked in with the automatic flight controls engaged and the stars bleeding past at lightspeed. He balanced his pad against his thigh and flicked through page after page of briefing material he never usually read. His motto of bare your teeth and blow it up worked nine times out of ten, but admittedly sling saber first and ask questions later wouldn’t exactly work in the extravagance of Cantonica.
So he bounced his foot and flipped through a docket large enough to intimidate a republic senator.
The Brotherhood subscribe to ritualistic plays of alpha domination and omega submission. What most groups in the galaxy have deemed archaic beliefs of designation outside of certain outer rim systems [1]the Brotherhood have religionized. An alpha supremacist cult at their core, members of the Brotherhood fixate on the repeated sexualization, humiliation, and supplication of omegas within their realm of control.
He tapped fingers against his scent gland, feeling for the raised edge of a mating bite not actually there. Just knowing the stain was there made him want to claw fingernails to the tender skin of his throat and rake flesh back. It did not belong there, was not by his choosing, was not given through willing submission or instinct or—
Anakin took a breath and closed his eyes, feeling the thrumming hum of the force in the ship, crashing like a wave under his feet, the air, the durasteel walls. Beyond the binding ties of the lifeforce, Obi-Wan flickered mere feet away, like the gush of a plasma blade just in his periphery.
The cockpit smelled of him, kept in such close quarters on a personal cruiser. The familiar staleness of recycled air and metal was an ever-present thing, so constant during the war, landing planetside and scenting soil and fresh air sometimes made his head spin. Here, with the staleness and black taste of the galaxy on his tongue, Obi-Wan’s scent of pine pitch and oaken honey seeped into the durasteel and his very veins.
His master’s smell of alpha soothed an instinctual ache in him, like ice to the florid burn of a muscle extended far past its capacity. It was home and light and good, reminded him of sunny days at the temple during saber practice, of emissary missions long before the war. He imagined, when the whole world smelled of smoke and ruin, that the force tasted golden as honey and of a high breeze through a forest of forever green.
The Brotherhood expect complete submission from ‘their’ omegas, in common acts of throat baring and physical prostration. It has long been suspected members of this group are averse to long upheld Republic laws of omega safety and freedom. While the Order has no current proof Brotherhood members are actively supporting Separatist forces as an extension of support to the slave guilds of the outer rims, it is strongly suspected.
Anakin clicked off the pad and tapped gold plated fingertips to its dark screen. Obi-Wan, no doubt sensing his ire, emerged from the bowels of the ship, and slid to the copilot’s seat with a cool sigh of disturbed air, soaked with amber honey and darker sap.
“What is our plan to be noticed by the Brotherhood at the gala?”
Obi-Wan grimaced. “No brilliant plans?”
“You’re the negotiator, why do I have to have the plans?”
“Well, I didn’t say it would be a good plan.”
Anakin leveled him a flat look and crossed his arms. They both smelled of stress, a light bite of bitter in the air.
“I have a bad feeling about this, master.”
“As do I.” A pause. “I’ll need to scent mark you before we land,” Obi-Wan finally said.
Anakin swallowed with a dry click and for a moment, only the sound of their breathing filled the cockpit. Finally, he swallowed again and tilted his jaw back, offering the long line of his throat, the pink stain of his artificial mating bite bared.
“Now, before I lose my nerve,” he hissed from behind his teeth.
Obi-Wan paused and grimaced deeper, paused some more to stroke his beard. After an unbearably long expanse of ragged exhales, he finally lifted his hand to his mouth and spat with a thick sound. Anakin locked himself still, and pulse beating a frantic rhythm in his tongue, made sure not to flinch at the first wet smear of his master’s fingers to the arched stretch of his scent glands.
Inhale—exhale—inhale—exhale, he focused on the twin sounds of their breath and not the feel of Obi-Wan’s thumb rubbing the went scent of alpha to his throat.
“Other side, Anakin.”
He twisted to straddle the pilot’s seat and arched back his head to bare the opposite side of his throat. He was more prepared for it this time, less shocked to watch Obi-Wan suck at his cheeks and then spit into his cupped fingers. He still locked tight at the first damp press and the stronger wash of honeyed pine in his nose. He was wearing Obi-Wan’s scent, wearing his master’s spit on his throat, in his scent glands and over the stain of a pink bite mark.
Fuck.
Fuck.