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Obi-Wan opened one eye, casting his gaze over at his beeping comm. It was steady, he could almost fade it into the background while he meditated… He considered it. Closed his eye again, began to let the alert go…
The Force drew him back.
And he sighed, unfolding his legs, and gathering the little disk, activating it.
“Knight Kenobi.”
It was an unfamiliar face on the comm, but he knew the tone of urgency well.
“Anakin?”
“On the fifth level, in the level three training hall.”
Obi-Wan was already tugging his boots on, and heading for the door. “I’ll be right there.”
He half-ran through the Temple, silently cursing that Anakin had been this far awaywhen he became an issue, and distantly wondering about asking for a copy of the youngling’s schedule so he could stay closer at hand.
When he reached the training hall, he found a gaggle of startled young padawans clustered outside the door. Several raised anxious faces to him, others had begun to distract themselves from whatever chaos Anakin was wreaking inside.
“It will be alright,” he assured quickly, patting the head of one oh Force, so stablechild.
The door opened for him, and there was Anakin.
Clearly struggling to manage an enormous training weight, which hung over his head.
The Jedi Master who had called Obi-Wan hurried over to him.
“He won’t let it go. Whenever someone tries to help, we’re thrown off.”
Obi-Wan nodded sharply, marching towards the determined form of his future-padawan.
“Anakin.”
“I can do this!” Anakin answered, and the words had a quality as if it was not the first time he had attempted to use them to ward someone off.
“Anakin, this is a training exercise. You don’t have to succeed on your first attempt.”
“I have it!”
Obi-Wan was grasping his shoulder, and reached out in the Force as well, touching Anakin’s presence first, assuring him of his identity, before surrounding the child’s trembling presence with his own. The weight was designed not to hit the floor, it would merely bounce away on repulsorlifts, but Obi-Wan tied his power with Anakin’s, strengthening him, and steadying his grasp.
“I can do it alone,” Anakin complained, trying to shrug Obi-Wan off.
“That is not the question, Anakin. Your classmates need their turns.”
“I have it!”Anakin shouted again, trying to wrest the weight from Obi-Wan, tearing at the weave of their powers, the weight jostling through the air. Around them, several of the other training weights shot away, as if they had been squeezed out by a massive pressure from above.
Obi-Wan released him, and took a step back, only to catch the next pulse of Anakin’s will, and fall back.
The Master helped him back to his feet. “That’s why I evacuated the others.”
Obi-Wan sighed, looking at Anakin, whose attention was focused again on his burden.
“You’d better leave too, I think I may have to get somewhat unconventional here.”
The other Jedi cast another uncertain look at Anakin, before stepping from the room, leaving Obi-Wan and Anakin alone together.
“Anakin!” Obi-Wan called again, but the boy just gave a little, twitchy shake of his head.
“Anakin, your class is over, it’s time to go to your meal!”
Food seemed like a decent bribe, but Anakin only shook his head again, his attention still locked on his work.
“Come on, Anakin,” he said, stepping nearer, lowering his voice again. “You’ve held it long enough, your classmates are impressed, and they’re not here to see you put it back down, now.”
Anakin just shook his head again.
“Honestly,” Obi-Wan said, letting a little irritation into his voice.
He loved the boy, of course he did. Anakin had been beloved to Qui-Gon, and Anakin had wormed his way into Obi-Wan’s heart as well. But he was still irritating. He was still the reason Obi-Wan hadn’t been able to finish his meditation session, and he was the reason that neither of them were eating their lunch at that moment.
“Put that down, you should never have been placed in this class,” he said, drawing nearer again, taking Anakin’s shoulder, and attempting to draw him away from the weight.
“I can do it!”Anakin spat again, but the motion jolted all his attention on the weight, which jostled after them. “I’m ready for this class, I’m ready to come join you!”
“You are not ready for the field, Anakin.”
Obi-Wan steeled himself, then launched one of the smaller weights at Anakin, shooting across the floor towards the student.
“Hey!” Anakin squeaked, and one hand lowered from his weight to stop the new one, just a few feet from himself.
“You have tenuous control of oneweight,” Obi-Wan said, sliding another at the boy.
They would not hurt him, but launching any attack on the child felt… wrong.
Again, Anakin managed to stop it before it could impact him, and as he reasserted his control over his own weight, the two spares were blasted back again. This time, though, Obi-Wan retained his footing.
“In battle, on missions, your opponent would not be trying to gently wrest control.” He slid two more weights at Anakin, from differing directions, and one of them ran into his leg, nearly unbalancing him.
“You’re not playing fair!” Anakin cried desperately.
“The galaxy is not fair,” Obi-Wan said, remembering too clearly the sight of a red blade plunging into his master’s stomach, half trembling with the idea of Anakin witnessing the same. He tried to silence the thought, threw a couple of smaller items, abandoned by Anakin’s class, in his direction.
“Master!” Anakin said, his voice rising, “Don’t, I can’t-.”
“What was that?” Obi-Wan asked, feeling a hint of mirth at Anakin’s worry. The boy was reasonable, somewhere under his pride, and Obi-Wan loved him for that, too. He lifted a few more small items, and pelted them at Anakin.
“I said I can’t!” Anakin protested, but in spite of his protests, none of the items connected with him, falling before him as if stopped by an invisible wall, “Stop it!”
Obi-Wan launched a couple more things, and Anakin’s concentration was broken, the enormous weight bearing down on him. And for all Obi-Wan knew it wouldn’t hitthe boy, he deflected it away anyway.
“You’re ready for missions, are you?” he teased, tossing something else at Anakin, who deflected it with a hesitant smile. “All set to leave the Temple and your training behind you?”
A discarded tech case made contact, and Anakin caught it, rolling his eyes, but looking rather glad to be free of the training weight.
Obi-Wan continued, tossing light, harmless objects, and approaching the little boy, until he could kneel before him.
“Come on, Anakin. What was this about.”
Anakin wiped an arm across his face, and Obi-Wan saw anxious tears there.
“I’ve been useless for too long.”
Slowly, Anakin placed his captured tech case back on the floor.
“I’m not earning my keep, and I wanted to… I wanted to prove I could, again.”
“Oh,” Obi-Wan sighed, unable to do much more.
“I’ve been here for two years today, and I haven’t done anythingfor you! I want to be a padawan already, so I can start earningmy place!”
“Alright, Anakin,” he said, standing up, and taking the boy’s shoulder in his hand, as Qui-Gon had done. “Why don’t you come back to the quarters we’ll share -.”
Anakin looked up at him hopefully, “You’ll take me? Even though I couldn’t keep up?”
“Not yet,” he said, gathering Anakin’s daypack as well. “You’re still just a child, youngling. But you know that you will have a place at my side, and it seems that some time together might help.”
“I’m not a child anymore,” Anakin mumbled, even as he gripped Obi-Wan’s hand like a much younger one. “You’re not a child after you’re sold away from your parents.”
Obi-Wan looked down at him in surprise. “I am here, you are more than welcome to think of me as -,”
“Mom’s alive,” Anakin answered flatly, his hand shaking in Obi-Wan’s, “She’s alive and she’s out there, and even if she wasn’t, I’m old enough to manage, now. I’m old enoughto help you, Master, I am!”
They hadn’t even reached the door yet, but Obi-Wan drew him in, gripping his shoulder reassuringly.
“Is it this hard for you, to be separated from her?”
“It’s not hard,” Anakin insisted stubbornly, setting his jaw, even as the tears stained his cheeks, and he leaned closer to his soon-to-be master. “I can do it, I’m ready to be a padawan!”
“Anakin, you’re pushing yourself too hard,” Obi-Wan sighed, kneeling, and embracing the boy, carefully stroking the little curl of blonde hair that would one day be a padawan braid. “You have to take your time and learn your exercises right.”
“I have to help,” Anakin begged, accepting Obi-Wan’s arms, “If Master Qui-Gon was right, and I was made to help, then I have to help.”
“Not when you’re so young,” Obi-Wan murmured, carefully gathering the boy in his arms, instinctively supporting his head, as if he had not yet the strength to do it himself. “Anakin, we are not your slavers…”
Anakin’s arms had slipped around Obi-Wan, his body shaking with his tears, “I want you to be! I don’t want to belong to anyone else, ever again!”
He wished that there wasn’t a distance to his quarters. He wished there was a way to ward off concerned and curious Jedi. He wished he could fold Anakin safely in his cloak and hide him, knowing the boy would be embarrassed by his tears, later.
The thought had a shadow of feeling like a good idea, so he lifted his robe and laid it over Anakin, though it only made him into a misshapen and shaking lump. Still, he ignored the other Jedi, and by the time he reached his quarters, Anakin was limp, wiping his tears, his pride only keeping him from looking Obi-Wan in the eye.
Obi-Wan laid him safely on the sofa, shrugged off his robe and left it wrapped around the little boy, as he locked the door, and set his commlink to Busy.
“Anakin,” he asked, caressing the boy’s cheek again, building him a little shelter of pillows. “I need you to tell me about having a mother.”
Anakin sniffled, opened his mouth, and made a pathetic sound instead of words. He coughed, shaking his head, pushing Obi-Wan away as best he could, and Obi-Wan understood his need for privacy.
“I’ll make some tea,” he said, stroking Anakin’s head once more, before turning his back on the trembling youngling, and busying himself with his kettle. He felt Anakin’s upset, felt the way the powerful child’s emotions swayed his own heart, and felt the boy coming long before there was a hand on his sleeve.
“I need some water, please,” Anakin said, and Obi-Wan humoured him, fetching him the glass of water, although the child could easily have done it himself.
Anakin accepted it, nodding quietly, before heading back to his safe nest on the sofa.
A few minutes later, Obi-Wan followed him with a pot of tea, and a pair of cups. He seated himself at the opposite end of the couch, allowing Anakin whatever space he needed.
“It’s not that you’re a bad father,” Anakin began, his gaze still on his half-drunk water. “A lot of having a mother is like having you, but… but it’s different.” He sniffled again, and wiped more tears away on his sleeve, “Because she was always there. I… I don’t think the other kids canget it, ‘cause it’s just not how you’re raised here but… I feel like I’m missing part of myself. Like fingers, except not…” he waved his fingers slowly out from the glass. “Like missing my shoulder, but still having the whole rest of my arm to manage.”
“I felt similarly, when I lost Qui-Gon,” Obi-Wan said, trying to empathize.
“No,” Anakin said sharply, “You didn’t. You felt awful,I’m not saying you didn’t, it took away just as much of you, but… Qui-Gon was newer. You didn’t always have him, you grew up with teachers, like all the other younglings. He wasn’t alwaysthere for you.”
That was certainly true.
“It’s like missing Qui-Gon, but if he’d been there even before you were. I mean, if he had loved you, before you could love anything.If he taught you how to love, and cry, and feel things.”
Obi-Wan nodded slowly, trying to categorize the boy’s words, and fold them into a perfect definition.
“You’d be a great father,” Anakin said, “If Mom was gone, I’d want you to be, to hold me together, but right now… it’s like my shoulder is out there,” he gestured widely to the sky, “Withoutme.”
“And if your shoulder were to return to you, would it fit back into place?” Obi-Wan asked. It felt strange to try to ascertain this information from the little boy, and he knew that Anakin would quickly come to understand what he was really asking.
“I think so. I mean, I know it won’t if I can’t get it back.”
Anakin was looking up at him with shyness the boy usually couldn’t be bullied into expressing.
“I’d like to try, even if it doesn’t work.”
“And if it does, do you think you could wait a little longer at the Temple, before joining me in the field?”
Anakin’s hope seemed to visibly bubble in his eyes, and Obi-Wan had to supress a smile.
“I could!”
“And you would know that here, you do not have to earn your keep? That you’re wanted, regardless of what work you’re doing?”
Anakin scooted closer to him, “I… guess I could trust you on that…”
“Would you like to stay with me, until your mother arrives?” he asked, giving up on subtlety in favour of seeing Anakin’s anxiety resolve into joy.
“What if the Council won’t let her?” Anakin asked, gripping Obi-Wan’s sleeve, his hope and fear so present that Obi-Wan felt them in his own stomach.
“Then, we’ll just have to keep quiet that we have her.”
“But it would be against the rules,”Anakin said, and Obi-Wan wanted to laugh at the child’s sudden respect for tradition.
“I like to think I learned something from Master Qui-Gon,” he answered, scooping Anakin onto his lap, and giving him a tight squeeze before setting him back on his feet. “You go pack an overnight bag, and I’ll see you soon.”