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“You aren’t supposed to be down here.”
Anakin turned from where he’d been standing and studying the large tapestry hanging on the wall of the salle. It depicted a man, a Jedi, ten feet tall, wielding a blue-bladed lightsaber in one hand, his other hand raised. There were six other tapestries on the wall, each with a similar figure with a lightsaber. He’d been looking at them for the past few minutes while the students from the next class trickled in, going through their warmups.
The boy who’d spoken was three or four years older than Anakin, tall and agile looking, his arms folded like a stern grownup.
“My Master said I could go anywhere I wanted,” Anakin told him. It was true enough, Anakin supposed. Obi-Wan had encouraged him to explore the Temple, hadn’t told him any of it was off limits. So Anakin supposed that meant he could go where he liked.
This is your home now, Obi-Wan had said, after all
Home. When Anakin thought about or heard that word it felt as if something caught his throat and like something was squeezing his chest, and all he could think about was Mom.
The Jedi Temple was something else. Something decidedly not home. It was good to Anakin precisely because it made him not think about home so much. It was vast; in some places full of winding, dim, narrow corridors that led to odd little rooms that might contain only a single fountain or a curious puzzle, in some places the rooms opened up like the halls of the kings of old stories, golden light spilling in from huge windows far above. And he had only begun to explore it.
“You can’t be on the floor, you don’t even have a lightsaber yet.” The other boy tilted his chin up toward the balcony at the other end of the training hall. “Go up there. Class is about to start and you might get hurt.”
Anakin wouldn’t get hurt, he knew. He was fast. But the instructor for the class, a tall woman with serious dark eyes, had started frowning his direction, and that was the signal to get moving.
He started to walk toward the balcony stairs that led up to the observation platform.
Someday I’ll be better than you, he thought as he passed the boy. He didn’t know why he thought it, but he knew in his heart it was true.
He’d only watched the littler kids’ lightsaber classes so far. Obi-Wan had taken him to watch the first day. The second day he’d gone on his own. What he really wanted to do was watch the grownups, the Knights and older padawans, but those classes were usually in the evenings, and in the evenings Obi-Wan had been reading with him. Obi-Wan did not think Anakin could read very well.
He leaned over the rail watching intently as the class commenced, the observation balcony all to himself. These were kids, but they were still Jedi. And they’d been studying all their lives.
The air filled with the sound of whirring and humming and crashing of their blades. It looked so easy, Anakin thought, the way they twirled their ‘sabers and ducked out of the way of fierce attacks. That would be him, soon. Maybe.
His first day at the Temple, he had begged Obi-Wan to let him use a lightsaber - he had to know what it was like. Obi-Wan had acquiesced and put a training ‘saber in his hands, had covered his eyes and made him block the blaster bolts fired by a hovering droid. For the first time Anakin had not only felt the Force, but had commanded it. Had linked its will with his own. For a few minutes, the ache in his spirit and his chest had dissolved.
The class ended and the students slowly filed out of the hall until Anakin was alone and the room was quiet again. Anakin remained where he was, hanging slightly over the balcony’s guardrail and looking down onto the floor below. He thought about how he had seen Jedi the other day in another training gym practicing leaping from platforms higher than this one, landing softly on their feet. A thrill fluttered through him. Why couldn’t he do the same? He was a Jedi now. He felt the Force.
He took a deep breath and reached out, centering himself as Obi-Wan had shown him. Then he climbed up on top of the rail, which was flat and wide enough to stand on. Now that he was looking down from here, the ground seemed much, much further away than it had before. But he couldn’t be afraid. Hadn’t that strange little person called Master Yoda reproved him for his fear that evening he had stood alone in the high spire of the Temple? How could a Jedi be afraid?
Concentrate, he told himself. He took another deep breath, and breathed it out. Then he closed his eyes and jumped.
The shock when he landed rocked his whole body and in an instant he had fallen forward, his hands slapping against the hard polished floor. There was a sharp, screaming pain in his ankle and a wave of nausea followed shortly after, enveloping him in a dizzy haze. He was hurt. He dashed angrily at his watering eyes with his sleeve. The Force had betrayed him. Maybe it knew that he wasn;t a Jedi after all, just a scared, stupid little boy from nowhere who didn’t know anything.
Anakin pushed himself up painfully and sat alone in the quiet training hall. He thought about getting up. He kept thinking about it as he watched the squares of light from the tall windows above move slowly across the floor.
“Anakin?”
The boy turned at the soft voice to his left. Obi-Wan stood above him, gazing down with furrowed brows. He quickly knelt down to study Anakin more closely.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Nothing,” Anakin said, not looking at the man. It was a lie, and a bad one. Obi-Wan wasn’t stupid; he would see right through it.
“You’re hurt,” Obi-Wan said, and it was not a question.
“Not bad.”
“Can you stand?” Without waiting, Obi-Wan held out his hand. Anakin took it and soon was on his foot, hovering the hurt one over the floor. He pressed it down gingerly and gasped at the fresh wave of pain that assaulted him.
Obi-Wan squeezed his shoulder gently. “We’ll have to get you to the healers.” He knelt down again, this time in front of Anakin. “Hop on.”
Anakin complied, wrapping his arms around the Jedi’s shoulders. Obi-Wan grabbed hold of the boy’s legs and stood, then turned toward the balcony. “Did you fall from there?”
“No,” Anakin said quickly, not wanting Obi-Wan to think he was that clumsy. But maybe it was better to be thought of clumsy than foolish. At any rate, he had a feeling Obi-Wan wouldn’t rest until he knew what had happened. “I...jumped. Thought I could do it.” He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the Jedi’s inevitable laughter.
“I see,” Obi-Wan said. No laughter followed.
“Please don’t tell them I jumped,” Anakin said, feeling a little bolder now.
“Believe me, they’ve seen worse stunts than the one you pulled,” Obi-Wan said. He sounded amused, but not in a mean way. “Children raised in the Temple tend not to realize how fragile they are. At least, not until they get a sharp lesson. You’re already fitting in quite well here.”
Something unraveled inside Anakin then, a knot that had been sitting in his chest since they’d arrived here had come apart at the softness in Obi-Wan’s voice. He buried his face in the crook of his arm, not wanting the Jedi to see or hear his tears. The futility of it made him cry harder.
“It must hurt badly,” Obi-Wan said. “But the healers aren’t far away. You’ll feel better soon.”
Anakin managed to stop crying just long enough to say, “uh huh.” Better to let Obi-Wan think it was just his ankle making him cry. Better to let him know that he wasn’t also crying for his mother, and Qui-Gon, for his friends in Mos Espa who might tease him but never looked down on him. Crying even for the constant warmth of the twin suns that had been replaced with a chill that had seemed to settle into the depths of his body since he’d left. Though no one had said it outright, it seemed to him that no Jedi would cry for these things.
“You’ll be all right,” Obi-Wan said quietly as they entered the healer’s wing. He sounded so sure that Anakin almost believed him.
That evening Anakin rested in Obi-Wan’s sitting room, his ankle mostly mended. The healers had worked on it all afternoon, and had kindly explained to Anakin everything that they were doing, and patiently answered all his questions (and he’d had a lot). They’d put his lower leg inside a strange tube that had made it feel at first pleasantly warm, but then tingly, and then toward the end so unbearably itchy that his eyes had watered. Obi-Wan had sat with him the whole time and squeezed his hand and told him stories of the interesting places he’d been to and the people he’d met there, and Anakin had listened gratefully.
He’d had no idea that broken bones could be mended so quickly, but they’d said he would still need to keep his weight off his ankle for a week or so, and gave him crutches to help him walk.
Obi-Wan did not have Anakin read that night. Instead, he made tea from them and sat with Anakin and together they watched the rain pour down from the darkening sky. Anakin held his breath and waited for the streaks of lightning that appeared every so often, filling the room with the briefest but most brilliant flash of light.
“Just a routine rainstorm,” Obi-Wan said, sipping his tea. “They schedule them, you know.”
One day Anakin would not give a second thought to such weather, but as of now he had never seen anything like it.
The tea was bitter to Anakin, despite the globs of honey Obi-Wan had stirred into it. But it was hot and comforting, and soothed his chills. And Obi-Wan -his master- had made it for him.
He emptied his cup he asked for more.