Archive of Our Own

The funny thing about culture is that the people who are in the middle of it, raised in it, seldom see their own. Culture can be defined as art, language, clothing and food. However, culture also resides in social mores, specific moral and ethical values and traditional nonverbal communication. For someone wholly immersed and raised in a particular culture those mores, values and non-linguistic forms of communication are not 'culture' but just how you act around other people.

If you were to speak to the Jedi on Coruscant, they would tell you that they do not have a culture unless you were talking about something bearing resemblance to corporate culture. After all, the Jedi do not make art, music or dance. They celebrate those arts of course, make certain that every Jedi has the opportunity to learn of the arts of their homeworlds, species and peoples, but there is no Jedi art.

What is the Code but poetry, and a kata but dance?

While the Jedi do have distinctive robes, those are not mandated and a Togruta may dress in their native styles of Shili and a Twi'lek in those of Ryloth. With the variety of species, varied numbers of arms, physical requirements and differing body shapes it it virtually impossible to demand that a Jedi's robes be uniform.

And thus the one thing that denotes a Jedi, the lightsabre, is an inalienable part of their uniforms and the one thing that denotes a Jedi to everyone. It is a Mandalorian's armour or a Naboo senator's ballooning silken dress.

The Jedi are not a religion. They call themselves an order of course, but that is a convenience to assist in the understanding of outsiders.

They may not pray, but they speak to their Force for guidance, meditate upon it and thank it.

There is no Jedi language. The Jedi are educated in the various languages of the Republic starting with the lingua franca of the Republic, Basic. From there, most Jedi are trained in the language of the individual's species' planet of origin, and if they are from another planet, the language of their physical planet of origin.

Thus the language of the Jedi is Galactic Basic, or the language of the Republic, wielded with consummate skill.

There is no Jedi food. A Jedi may eat whatever is on tap in the communal commissary, may cook whatever they desire in the kitchens of their quarters or eat outside the Temple using the stipend granted to every member of the Temple for use for small personal desires.

There is no food which is definably 'Jedi' but the food in the Temple has been carefully calculated to, in each instance, offer the greatest nutrition and appeal to the greatest number of species.

It is food and language that takes the first step into understanding the perplexity of Jedi culture. It is chosen for the widest appeal to the widest number of species.

The Jedi are an interstellar organisation that must appear neutral to all comers, offend as few as possible and communicate easily with any and all who ask their help.

Early on, the Jedi determined that the inoffensive body language of one species was positively obscene by the standards of another. Study was done to find the collective physical motions that were the most universal, were the least likely to cause offence and were the easiest to translate across the board for all members of the Jedi Order.

What it led to was a shockingly artificial body language that matched no other culture in the galaxy. Calculated head tilts that were unnatural in angle for all who used them, careful hand gestures that matched the body language of no species known, bows made with remarkably specific details to each movement that gave them the look of a choreographed movement on the stage.

Likewise, tone of voice was to be carefully modulated to cause the least offence.

With time, every child in the creche was raised to move in this way, to act in this way until the origins were lost. No one recalled why, and the Jedi never questioned because it simply was.

The Jedi learned to rely on words instead of facial expression, body movements and wordless vocalisations. They spoke and every word was weighted to mean something, to have meaning. Often triple-layered meanings hid behind simple phrases, shorthand for the years of dedicated study from toddlerhood onward, "There is no emotion, there is peace" was a phrase weighted with hours of dedicated explanations of every nuance of the words and every nuance of the words behind the words.

The Jedi were people of words. Even those who spoke few of them weighted those words to reference and cross-reference to words of others both ancient and recent.

There are more ways to communicate than words.

The Jedi did know this, as they also communicated with the Force. Every Jedi carefully broadcast light into the Force to their fellows. There was no greater joy among the Jedi than the unsullied light of the children in the creche, and in order to preserve the calm and joy of the Temple, the Jedi were always careful not to allow any hint of darkness spoil that light. All Jedi learned how to keep a glow of light in the Force as part of their personal shielding. It was seen as a basic politeness as anything else was tantamount to wearing muddy clothing in public. Not necessarily indecent per se, but certainly Not Done.

Into this milieu came Anakin Skywalker.

As a slave he would have said he did not have a culture. Slaves do not create art because they have no supplies with which to paint or sculpt, they are not granted the space or time to create complex songs or write books. There is no slave culture because slaves on Tatooine are from many cultures and species, plucked from across the galaxy.

Work songs may not be the symphonies of the educated, but they are music and words, creating rhythm and pulling strength from nothing. The fables and tales of the elders to teach the young how to survive and how to cling to some sort of moral structure hold all the truths of a densely written novel.

Slaves do not have a style of dress that could be called uniting, they wear what they are given, perhaps uniform under one master, but not uniform with each other.

The sameness of the slaves is in their circumstances, reflected in the way those clothes are to a master's advantage and never a slave's. Lack of choice and limitation forms the uniform of the slave.

Slaves do not have a unified religion. They pray to the gods of their ancestors or parents - if they still remember them - if they do not they will pray to those they see around them.

While there is no union in the trappings used or the powers called upon, the religion of a slave is always the cry for deliverance. It is pragmatism and hope. Survival and freedom.

There is no slave language, for slaves are many and in many places. They speak Ryl and Huttese, Shyriwook and Togrutan. They speak what their masters speak and what they need to communicate with their fellows. A slave might have a few key phrases that had been coded to have a specific double meaning, but words were mostly not taken beyond the literal.

What you had to read were a master's body language and tone of voice. That told you if the words were a trap, told you how important something was, told you what you could let go and when a beating was coming. You learned the body language of a Twi'lek's lekku, of a Togruta's lekku. You learned to read the flare of a Mon Cala's gills or the angry tilt of a human's head. Those told you more than all the words ever could. To communicate with a fellow slave in ways that avoided the notice of masters you learned facial expressions, physical gestures and those things to be done in silence before and behind a master, layering meaning behind a word with the visual component of meaningful looks and head tilts.

When faced with the Jedi, Anakin didn't understand. He never listened to all the words because other than orders and directions, words never said anything important. Once you knew the facts, once you knew the orders, once you knew the point, the important things were conveyed in body language and tone. What the Jedi said in their body language though, it was confused. The Togruta and Twi'leks' lekku never moved right, lying unnaturally still save for the occasional stilted twitch. It reminded Anakin of slave girls who had learned how to be so still because movement was seen as resistance and invited beatings.

The humans all tilted their heads strangely, as though they were angry Rodians.

But then, all the Jedi moved the same. It gave them a creepy doll-like appearance, as though someone were controlling them behind the scenes. They all sounded the same using the same tone of voice in all things, a bland tone of voice that held no emotion, or at least none that felt genuine because it never matched the species Anakin was presented with. All these species with body language that was the same, and how was Anakin to read that?

He had one other trick, using what he now knew was the Force to look at a person's aura. He could use that to see through people who knew how to lie with body language and tone of voice.

But he couldn't do that with the Jedi.

Anakin was a former slave. Everyone around him, from the eldest to the youngest was always a mixture of light and dark save the very youngest of babies. Suffering had a way of etching itself in early, and Anakin knew that all people were some mixture of light and dark. It was the way of things. Padme had had so much more light than most that Anakin had known she was good. Qui-Gon Jinn, however, had been well-nigh hypnotic with the swirly light aura he had around him.

The boy had learned quickly on arriving at Coruscant that Jinn was an exception to the rule of the Jedi. Because where Qui-Gon's Force aura had moved about him naturally, light yet reactive to Jinn's emotional state and the situation, most Jedi held their light like some sort of unmoving wall around them. It was weird and fake. It was like they were lying, like that Dug who had come around from time to time that all the slave mothers warned about, friendly arm movements and candy hiding blackness within.

What were the Jedi hiding that they needed to broadcast light like that?

So, when Anakin was invited to the Senate to spend time with Chancellor Palpatine, he came to like it there. Not that the politicians were kind or good or anything like that, but none of them looked like puppets on strings and Anakin could read the faces and body language and know what they were carefully not-saying. He could look at auras that were natural and normal, that moved around like an aura was supposed to and were a normal mix of light and dark showing these were people who sometimes thought good things and sometime bad like normal people.

Obi-Wan was trying to teach Anakin, but both of them always felt like there was some communication that lay just beyond the reach of both. Obi-Wan talked until he went hoarse trying to explain, little realising that Anakin was only taking in half the words because the padawan was trying to read a subtext that wasn't there. He also didn't realise just how many holes there were in terms of the basic concepts as he was teaching them. That is, with all the paragraphs of meaning and study behind the words, there is no emotion, there is peace, in order to understand those words one had to discuss all those paragraphs. But those meanings had sunk into Obi-Wan's understanding so deeply and so early that he didn't even realise what he wasn't explaining.

At the same time, when it came to either learning or doing, Anakin was used to being able to simplify his instructions down to a few simple sentences. "Clean this, but never use that particular cleanser," or if it was something more complex, like fixing a speeder, it was many steps, but they were all concrete. He had no mental framework for something like the ethics of Force use. "Using a mind trick is appropriate here and not there. Convincing someone to believe a lie is good here and bad there. Using the Force to pick up an object to bring it to you is appropriate here but not there." His efforts to distill it down to a single, simple set of rules removed all context and left his teachers frustrated and the other children laughing at him. In another life he missed the subtleties, searching as he was for a straight answer - another reason to like Palpatine, who always managed to distill Jedi teachings into easy-to-digest sentences.

Anakin tried to make himself understood, but he was used to an audience that could read the subtext in the tilt of a head and the sliding scale of vocal tone. He was direct, but within the context of a culture where one was never explicit on personal matters or those that could be seen as weakness. Obi-Wan did not understand the implied questions, expecting them to appear in the form of explicit words instead of dangled sentences with Anakin's expectation of understanding of the meaning. In another life Anakin would say he'd been dreaming of his mother, the urgency and concern conveyed by tone and body language rather than words. In that life Obi-Wan would assume that if it had been a prescient dream of import, Anakin would explicitly ask in words.

Obi-Wan was so distracted by the mixture of light and dark Anakin had in his aura (Anakin was honest, basically, and he would not lie as the Jedi did, he had nothing to hide) and chided Anakin about it in fear of the darkness that many Jedi thought was just the result of evil bleeding into everything because it was considered so fundamental to shield yourself in light. It was assumed that if you could not shield in light it was because you were dark, not because you saw no need to present an image of uncorrupted good.

More than that, the gap between Anakin and children in the Temple was not considered. Where the innocent babies and younglings of the Temple grew up in comfortable sheltered surroundings, never suffering deprivation or more than the occasional harsh word from a tired crechemaster, as said before the slaves of Tatooine were treated harshly from the outset and even the youngest had the marks of fear, anger and deprivation. It did not occur to the Jedi that the experience of such harshness could be etched permanently into one so young.

Most of the Jedi never learned body language, relying on the Force to act in that capacity. Frequently Obi-Wan tried to get Anakin to move 'normally' for a Jedi. It never quite took, unsettling the Temple-raised without them ever understanding why. It is to be noted that the Jedi never knew that their own artificial body language was just as unsettling to non-Jedi. There were some few Jedi who learned body language, those were the Shadows. Those Jedi who walked into dark places pretending not to be Jedi, having to learn to counterfeit normal body language and how to read it in others when the Force failed you because you had to hide from a darksider.

In one universe, Kenobi dove one way, avoided injury and Quinlan Vos met Anakin after hearing Obi-Wan's despairing rant about his padawan. That rant affected Vos' view of the boy and he met Anakin ready to take that arrogance down a peg or two.

In this universe, Kenobi zigged instead of zagged, took the brunt of a hit and Anakin was packed off to spend time with Vos and his padawan Aayla Secura while Obi-Wan was recovering and couldn't look after him.

So, Anakin arrived with no particular preconceptions on Quinlan's part and Anakin, who was behind on enough aspects of his education to have had no chance to meet Aayla before, got to meet a peer without the weight of classes and having to prove himself being the first thing on his mind.

It made a difference, though not entirely right away. At first they were like everyone else in the Temple, weird puppet behaviour that Anakin was trying to figure out, with the super-solid, super-still Force presence and expecting Anakin to guess what they really meant under the words which he couldn't do because of all the puppet stuff and Force stuff.

Then Vos brought them along on his mission. He and Aayla explained that Master Vos was supposed to go into the podrace on the lower levels and get some information from someone about a crime ring. Anakin and Aayla were just there to go for help if something went wrong and to get used to going into places that weren't the Temple.

Aayla had heard things about Anakin Skywalker, not least of which was that he didn't know anything. The younger padawans had told her that he didn't seem to know even the most basic history or literature. They also said he acted strangely. She could see the second. He was louder than anyone and his Force presence was different from any Jedi she'd ever seen. It was like there was all this feeling that he was just letting everyone see. He never bowed or stood at the proper distance and he was always looking weirdly at her lekku.

She was all prepared to explain to Anakin about how her master had to act differently when they were on one of these missions when something about her master's swagger made him relax. When they reached the underground race, Anakin looked around and seemed to change how he acted sort of just like her master changed. "Uncle Daren, can Sinta and I watch from the stands by the flag?"

Master Vos looked up and Aayla felt his warm approval. "That looks like a good spot, yeah. As soon as I've talked to Vesta I'll join you both," he said as he walked with them to the seats, then left again. Aayla anxiously watched Master Vos as he went to talk to his contact, but Anakin didn't seem to be watching him at all.

"We're supposed to help Master Vos," she hissed in his ear.

He hissed quietly back, "And we're watching everyone else," he said. "See that Wookie? Down by the blue pillar, watching him."

Aayla looked and saw that the Wookie was indeed watching her master. Anakin 'doesn't know anything' Skywalker easily pointed out everyone who was watching Master Vos. Then he pointed out which of them was in charge, and it wasn't the contact. Aayla was very impressed with his use of the Force and said so in a whisper. She couldn't pick up that many details.

He blinked at her, apparently confused. "You can tell the Rodian is concentrating hard because of how the arms are held," Anakin said. "Rodians stand like that when they're concentrating hard. The entire time M-" he glanced at the people around them briefly before going on, "Uncle Daren was walking over I could see the eye focus shift, the part that's like a human iris and pupil is dull."

"Dull?"

"I mean, not shiny like the rest of the eye."

"Matte," Aayla informed him. "That's the word for something that's sort of supposed to be not-shiny."

Anakin sighed.

"What is it?" she asked.

He shrugged, his aura feeling a little miserable. "It's just . . . there's all these words I don't know and people keep using them and expecting me to know them and when I don't understand something they just explain with more words I don't know. And then M-" he glanced around. "My dad," his hand lightly tapped at where his padawan braid was hidden under a cap and Aayla understood him to mean Master Kenobi. "Explains everything in words I understand and I don't know why they can't just use those words. It doesn't help when I'm actually in class."

Aayla thought about that. If he didn't know enough words it would make it harder for him to understand. "But you know other stuff," she said. "Were you able to tell other things about other people?"

He seemed happy enough to talk to her, explaining about how he could tell things about Twi'leks, Mon Cala, Pantorans and the scary-looking Cerean that he thought was in charge.

When Master Vos joined them Anakin switched over to talking about the podrace. He might not have known anything about history, but he knew everything about podracers and pod racing. He was even able to predict a lot of the winners and losers. Sometimes he could even pick out a favourite that was going to lose before the race even started. Aayla decided that she needed to find out why he knew all this other stuff, but not the stuff they learned in classes. Also, she wondered why they didn't know that other stuff. It sounded more useful than pre-Ruusan Reformation poetry.

Once they were in the speeder heading back to the Temple, Aayla told Master Vos everything Anakin had figured out. "And he did it without the Force too!"

"Really?" Her master flashed a grin at Anakin. "That's impressive."

Anakin shrugged, diffident. "It's not hard," he said. "I mean, that's how you tell when people are dangerous and stuff." There was a pause, then he added, "When they're not Jedi."

They had pulled into to the Temple's parking bay, and Master Vos was out of the speeder and looking at Anakin confusion coming down their bond. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Nothing," Anakin said, half mumbling. His arms were wrapped around himself and Aayla could feel that he was suddenly defensive and worried. There were also all these emotions floating around that were kind of overwhelmingly not-good.

"Let's get back to our apartment," Master Vos said after a moment.

As they started back, Aayla tried to smile encouragingly at Anakin, but something made his lips press together and he practically flinched away from her. Confused and a little hurt, Aayla pulled away and tried to walk with silent dignity the way a Jedi was supposed to. She also carefully tried to release the hurt feelings into the Force so that she could approach the situation with equanimity.

When they were seated, Anakin perched nervously on a chair, Master Vos said, "Now, what did you mean about not being able to tell when they're Jedi?"

Anakin felt stricken, that much Aayla could tell with the Force. Something bubbled over then. "I can't tell, okay? No one acts normally! No one! Aayla's lekku hardly ever move. And you're a Kiffar, but you don't smile like a Kiffar, you keep moving your head like a human and your arm movements are almost Kel Dor, except when they're Tholothian. Everyone here moves the same. I can't tell when anyone's angry or lying or anything!"

"You could listen to what they're saying and-"

Anakin's hands flailed. "Words don't mean anything," he snapped. Aayla blinked in surprise at the vehemence and felt Master Vos was just as puzzled. "You don't tell a liar from their words. You get what you need to know about what you have to do. The rest is just tricks. Who cares?" That . . . didn't make sense, Aayla thought, but her master seemed to feel like there was something to what Anakin was saying. "But I can't tell here!" He glared at Master Vos, "And you can act like normal, I saw you at the racecourse."

Master Vos seemed poleaxed. He fixed Anakin with a considering look and said, "Would you say it's . . . I don't know, 'creepy'?"

People sometimes said Jedi were creepy. Aayla didn't understand why, they were friendly and nice and didn't say or do mean things. They were always careful to not offend anyone. What about that was creepy?

"Yes," Anakin said. The Force said he was feeling relieved. "No one moves like they're supposed to. It's like . . . like a non-Kiffar got control of a Kiffar and is trying to move them but doesn't know how a Kiffar moves and is guessing. It's like that with all the Jedi, but like the same person is doing it for everyone." He frowned. "Except Master Windu. He's just mad all the time."

Master Vos' concentration sharpened. "Because angry Haruun Kal act like he does?"

"Yes," Anakin said with certainty. "He's always leaning forward and craning his neck just a little, and even more when he's talking to me about what I'm doing wrong." He felt miserable and lonely and Aayla thought it was pretty clear that someone needed to explain something to him, although she wasn't sure what needed explaining because Anakin was only sort-of making sense.

She asked though, "But can't you tell how they're feeling through the Force?"

Anakin stared at her. "What? From this?" Suddenly a wall of pure light surrounded him. It was normal shielding like everyone had in the Force. It radiated serenity and calm and light. Just as suddenly it was gone. "If you all actually feel like that all the time then that's just weird."

Master Vos felt strange down the bond, and Aayla thought it was the same sort of strange she was feeling. Because Anakin had been able to show the normal light that everyone at the Temple had. She'd thought he couldn't, that he was maybe too angry or sad or something, but he'd effortlessly brought up shielding that was like everyone else, even a little better, possibly. But he'd dropped it right after and said it was a lie. Maybe, she thought, it was a little. Because it was like telling everyone that she was calm and serene and everything when maybe she wasn't.

Their guest hadn't finished. It was like he was finally saying things that had been waiting to be said. "And it's not just that it's like everyone is all light and stuff all the time, which is weird because I know Master Windu's mad but he doesn't feel mad, he just feels all," the shield was back up, thrumming in point-perfect imitation of Master Windu's formidable presence. Then it dropped again. "It's also that everything is so . . . still. Auras aren't supposed to be still like that. Master Jinn's wasn't like that, it moved like normal but . . . I don't know except that it's just . . . I don't know what everyone's hiding!"

Master Vos seemed to be trying to figure something out. "It's not lying or hiding, exactly," he said. "We want to make sure that the Temple is a refuge for us, for the Jedi. We want it to be light."

"But it's weird ," Anakin said, and for the first time Aayla realised something she'd never really paid attention to. The shields of nearly all Jedi were totally static, carefully communicating extant feelings through the shielding, while the feelings she got from people outside the Temple were constantly in motion, reflecting their personalities and feelings in a big tangled mess. "Everyone's a mix. Some people are more one than the other, but everyone gets angry and hurt and stuff. And I know we're supposed to release our feelings into the Force or whatever, but the still light stuff is . . . scary. Like you're not actually feeling anything at all." He suddenly seemed scared. "Is that it? Are you just not feeling anything anymore?"

"You should be able to tell that we're feeling things," Master Vos said, concerned. For the first time Aayla looked at his facial expression and wondered what a non-Force sensitive would think looking at him. She could feel his feelings in the Force, but what about people who couldn't? Could they tell? And what if everyone was all mixed behind their shields like Anakin was? She'd thought it meant the Jedi were more . . . good than everyone else, but if Master Vos was all mixed like Anakin was, and like she privately admitted she was, just hiding it, then maybe it was the same for other people.

Anakin looked away, his lips pressing together and for the first time Aayla also wondered if maybe the Jedi were acting weird and not Anakin. They were different from other people and maybe, since Anakin had only just got there, he was acting normal for non-Jedi with all the head movements and facial expressions and things. "O- Master Kenobi said I was pushing too hard. But I didn't mean to! I just . . . I'unno."

In another universe Anakin learns that he's pushing too hard and deals with the problem by pulling all his power inside his skin as much as possible, handicapping himself in the Force to avoid accidentally insulting people or being too intrusive, relying on instinct and learned body language to read people. It works to a point, just not with Jedi. It means that currents of power he might have read go unnoticed because he's so desperately trying to keep himself pulled into his skin, skills with the Force he might have learned are never in his skillset because he doesn't dare to reach out and friends he might have had go unknown because he's always trying too hard to see with the wrong senses, and trying so hard to not see with the other ones.

"Show me what you were doing," Master Vos told him, kindly, and Aayla suddenly felt a weight of power as Anakin used the Force to look at them.

She took a step back and suddenly her sense of Anakin was reduced to what it was before. He had his eyes and fists clenched shut and he seemed to be wrestling with the Force. Just as Master Vos was about to speak, Aayla had an idea. "D'you think it's because you're so much stronger that you just need to be more careful than the rest of us?"

Master Vos was intrigued. "What do you mean, Aayla?"

"Well, I remember when Renwukka used to play with us in the creche, he had trouble because he's a Wookie and so much stronger. He had to learn how to be more careful than anyone else because he could break things more easily. I mean, if he picked something up using the same amount of effort as I would, he'd break it. But he had to learn how to calibrate for that. Anakin's supposed to be really strong in the Force, right? So maybe he's like a Wookie and Master Kenobi didn't realise that yet." Aayla knew Anakin was a Wookie in the Force because one of her friends had heard from his older brother padawan that one of the Council's padawans heard that Anakin had a twenty-something-thousand midichlorian count. "I mean, if he's doing it exactly how Master Kenobi would-"

Master Vos picked up the thought and continued it, turning to Anakin, "-then you'd be using the same amount of effort at your end, but leading to far greater force. Like sticking a speeder engine in a mouse droid." He sighed. "I'll have to talk to Obi-Wan," he said. "This is exactly why a brand new knight isn't supposed to take on a padawan."

"What do you mean, Master?" Aayla asked.

"I mean that if Obi-Wan were a little more experienced, or even a little less upset by losing Master Jinn he would have realised that Anakin needs to be taught a little differently because he's so strong in the Force," Master Vos explained. "I think we also need to go back to something Anakin said earlier about words."

It was about then that the door notification bleeped. When Master Vos opened the door, Master Kenobi was on the other side. "Why didn't you say it was Master Kenobi?" Aayla asked Anakin curiously.

The boy flushed and half mumbled. "I didn't know."

Master Kenobi was all fond exasperation as he said. "Of course not. Anakin, you really need to pay more attention-"

"Two things, Obi," Master Vos began.

"It's Obi- Wan , Quin. The least you could do is use my proper name," said the redheaded human with a similar fond exasperation to before, but this time aimed at Master Vos.

Anakin felt ashamed and squirmy in the Force and Aayla wondered what he was thinking, especially since he was all pulled in again, probably not able to sense anything from anyone beyond the most basic exterior things.

Master Vos just sped right past the other's objection. "When you started teaching Anakin about using the Force did you calibrate for the fact that he's three times stronger than most of us?"

"Why would. . ." Master Kenobi stopped and seemed shaken. He abruptly sat down on the couch. "I knew I would fail at this," he said, sighing. "But I gave my word to Qui-Gon and the Council wouldn't have let Anakin be trained at all if I did not insist."

Aayla was startled when aggravation snapped from her master for a moment before being released into the Force. "The most powerful Force sensitive on record and they wanted to leave him to get picked up by any random dark passer-by?" he asked.

"I knew, at least once I started thinking again, that Qui-Gon had insisted upon Anakin being his padawan solely because of the Council's refusal to train him," Master Kenobi said, "And prophecy or not, the Zabrak on Tatooine, that later killed Qui-Gon, could have chosen to take Anakin, and what then?"

Master Vos suddenly sent a thought to Aayla that this was a thing he needed to talk to Master Kenobi about alone, and would she take Anakin into her room to do something distracting?

"C'mon," she whispered to the boy. "Master Vos wants to talk to Master Kenobi alone about something. Why don't we see if I can't help you with some of those words you don't know?"

The two children vanished into her bedroom. There followed some minor emotional fireworks as Anakin had a few things explained to him in the simplified language of the creche (something Obi-Wan simply had not thought of because Anakin's mechanical and engineering-based vocabulary was so extensive and precise that it never occurred to the man that there might be gaps in other parts of general education) which made him delighted and relieved as he understood what 'attachment' and 'peace' were supposed to mean as well as a few more abstruse words like 'abstruse'. Aayla also was indignant and angry on Anakin's behalf when she realised how little anyone had bothered to explain to him.

In another life the Jedi definition of attachment is never fully explained to Anakin as he falls through the cracks of Obi-Wan's blind spot, other people's misunderstandings of what Anakin knows, wants and means, and the elder masters' tendency to push Obi-Wan into never asking for the help he needs. Working from the way many people define attachment as being love ("How's the new baby?" "I'm definitely getting attached."), he determines the Jedi to be either self-deceptive in the extreme or lying and can never trust them, a lack of trust reflected back at him by an organization that never understands why he does not trust them.

Meanwhile, Quinlan made some tea, half-shoved his friend onto the couch with a hot cup in hand and then settled in to hash everything out with Obi-Wan. "Firstly, you should know that I'm not blaming you, Obi-Wan, you've been trying to move a mountain without any help or hydraulics." Quin told his fellow Jedi. The situation was a little too serious for his usual prodding. "But I think there's a really serious communication gap between us and Anakin. Although he also just brought to light a serious cultural gap between the Jedi and everyone else."

"What do you mean?" Obi-Wan inquired.

"He complained that the Jedi don't have normal body language," Quin told him. "He's been trying to read our body language for the cues he would normally get from everyone's species, but we don't use that. He described it as being like a non-Kiffar who doesn't know how a Kiffar moves and is just guessing, but since we all use the same body language it's even worse."

Obi-Wan could be very quick on the uptake when he needed to be. "You mean, to Anakin it's as though he were watching a human use their tongue like a Falleen," his eyes widened. "You think that the Order as a whole is creating a cognitive dissonance when working with people and that is part of why they find us off-putting."

"Yeah," Quin said. "It makes too much sense. If we're acting in a way that's so completely different from other members of our various species it makes people wary. But it's also made Anakin wary because no one is acting in a way that he can understand. Aayla was trying to be friendly to him and he seemed to feel slightly nauseated and worried when she did."

"But he should have been able to read her in the Force," Obi-Wan objected.

"Should have," Quin said, "But you kriffed up the calibration thing. He's pulled himself so far into his skin that I'm amazed he can see anything with the Force at all."

Obi-Wan groaned, dropping his face into his hands a moment. "I can't believe it didn't occur to me. He was just so . . . loud over the training bond. But I should have realised it."

Quin sat down next to him. "You didn't feel you could ask the more experienced masters for help, did you?"

"How can I ask?" Obi-Wan looked at his friend, clearly tired. "I'm going against them just to train him. I asked Bant to watch him one day when I just wanted an hour to meditate and Master Mundi showed up twenty minutes later making insinuations that if I couldn't handle him, either I was unready or Anakin was unable, but either way it was clear he thought I should send Anakin back to his mother."

The Kiffar was also clever and made a logical leap. "That's why you've let him spend all that time with the Chancellor even though you don't trust politicians."

The redhead looked at his friend, feeling a little despairing. "I can't . . . sometimes I just need some time to myself," he said. "When Master Tiin tries to be snide there's nothing to be said because Anakin is with the most influential politician on Coruscant."

"Well fine then," Quin told his friend. "But you're going to ignore any master who comes to you saying that you shouldn't need help. Every master with a younger padawan needs to sometimes leave them with someone, that's just life. Anyhow, you're taking Anakin on as much because if you don't then he won't get trained, and with how strong he is, he needs to be." He wrapped an arm around the human and felt the moment all the excess tension Obi-Wan had been carrying with him eased. "I'll help, Bant and Garen and Reeft will help, and I'll talk to Master Tholme and Plo Koon for you."

"Thank you," Obi-Wan said. For the first time in so long he felt he could relax. His friends would help, it would be okay. They both rested, Obi-Wan leaning on his friend and absorbing the support being gently pushed to him in the Force.

Then Quin sat back. "There's another thing we need to talk to Anakin about," he said, "But before we go into that, there's something I think you need to work through with him once he's got a better handle on sensing in the Force without overdoing it to everyone else." There was a strange feeling of trepidation mixed with relief and the tiniest hint of amusement.

"What would that be?" Obi-Wan asked, feeling rather tired. He thought there were a lot of things he'd have to go through with Anakin, possibly starting right at the earliest creche lessons, just to figure out what else he might have missed.

"While we were talking, Anakin said that he feels like the regular shielding we use is lies," the Kiffar explained. "That is, I assume it's partly because he's so pulled in he can't feel what we push through the shielding, but he clearly finds it comfortable and easy to read auras and the fact that Jedi do not present auras that are the normal mix of light and dark you see in a non-shielded sentient but just light feels fundamentally dishonest to him." He paused as Obi-Wan absorbed this perspective. "That's when he raised shielding that was just as serene and light and perfectly formed as I've ever seen. More than that, a minute later he perfectly mimicked Windu's shields."

Quinlan was amused at the thought that Anakin would be able to counterfeit just about anyone he wanted, possibly up to and including Yoda, which would be very funny if the kid did it right for practical jokes, not to mention a big 'so there!' to every conservative master in the Temple who was insisting Skywalker was incipiently dark just because he refused to pretend to be a bastion of purity like the rest of the Temple (Quinlan may have sometimes found the constant insistence on projecting light to be slightly hypocritical himself, even as he basked in the warmth and peace it created). Counter to the Kiffar's amusement, Obi-Wan just half-collapsed back into the sofa in relief. He wasn't wrong, Anakin wasn't half dark, he was just being painfully and totally honest. Obi-Wan could work with that.

In another life Obi-Wan never finds out this is a function of Anakin's basic honesty and breaks some of that same honesty by accidentally teaching him that concealment of inner darkness is the most important way to fit in with the Jedi as they are not to feel anything like a 'negative' emotion. Anakin thus learned that Obi-Wan would never understand his struggles with anger and fear, something he carried forward as fundamental through years of personal turmoil without realising how very hard Obi-Wan worked to hide everything so that he could always maintain that Perfect Jedi reputation.

In this life Obi-Wan promises himself that he will put up with the headaches and washes of unbearable power until he's managed to teach Anakin how to handle things properly. Then he recalled, "What is it that we need to speak of with Anakin?" he asked. Might as well add one more thing to the list.

A quick thought from Quinlan called the children out of Aayla's room. Anakin seemed remarkably settled, while Aayla is deeply concerned. "Master?" she addressed Vos before anything else could be said, "Anakin said the Chancellor told him that . . . which systems was it?" she turned to Anakin.

"The lower levels of Coruscant, as well as Carida, Chandrila and Glee Anselm made it illegal to not tell the Jedi to take Force sensitive children," Anakin said. "Chancellor Palpatine said that the laws make the families give up their children whether or not they want to."

Obi-Wan exchanged disturbed looks with Quin. If this was true then it was a problem because the Jedi did not take children whose parents were not wholly willing. It was also a concern, because if true it should have been brought to the attention of the Jedi, not just spoken of to a boy who didn't know all that much about politics. If untrue . . . then why would the man lie to Anakin?

"When we're done we can look it up," Quin reassured Aayla. "If it's true, we'll raise it with the High Council." He gestured the children to the couch. "But we need to talk about something else that Anakin said earlier."

"What did I say?" Anakin asked. In sharp contrast to his previous reactions to any questioning by an adult, Anakin wasn't half-sick with nerves. He was slightly concerned, that much was apparent in the Force, but something about his experiences that day had settled him tremendously. As the clear sense of his failure set in, Obi-Wan was shocked out of his ruminations on how Qui-Gon would have been better by a sharp elbow to the ribs from Quin.

The Kiffar looked at Anakin and then, with a thoughtful look on his face, lowered his shields. Anakin relaxed further as the usually concerning swirl of dark and light that comprised a Jedi Shadow made the tension in the padawan ease. Obi-Wan just felt puzzled. How seeing how close Quin ran to the edge could make someone more relaxed, he didn't know. Then he thought about Anakin feeling that their shields were lies and realised Anakin was probably appreciating being able to see that Quin had feelings like anyone else. "You said that words don't mean anything. Now, that's not true, but you must have meant something when you said it."

Anakin frowned, fidgeting a moment, clearly thinking very hard. "Well, okay, when Gardulla or Watto would give us orders, they'd say a lot of stuff. Stuff about respect, or whether they were gonna sell me to the child brothel or what they'd do to Mom if we didn't do what they wanted. It didn't matter. A master's gonna do whatever they're gonna do. If you listen it just makes you too scared or angry to work. So, you have to listen to what you have to do and the rest doesn't matter. What matters is whether they're mad, trying to trick you because they think it's funny to beat you when you mess up or whatever. That's why you have to know to watch how they move. That's how you know what's important."

Aayla's shock and horror were palpable in the Force and Obi-Wan wasn't much better though he hoped he wasn't broadcasting. Quinlan however was focused, calm and Obi-Wan knew he'd be tackling his friend later about how he was so calm.

Anakin was eyeing Aayla curiously, as though her shock was puzzling to him. He continued. "So, it's sort of the same here, except I can't read people to tell when they're saying something important or just talking. Jedi talk a lot and I can't tell what doesn't matter."

Obi-Wan felt the floor drop out from underneath him. He had been aware that there was a gap in Anakin's understanding, but the notion that sometimes words didn't matter was . . . baffling. He looked at Anakin who seemed tremendously anxious. "Anakin, when I'm trying to explain things like the Code, are you . . . have you been trying to . . ." he trailed off, uncertain of even the way to describe what Anakin indicated he was doing.

"You talk a lot," Anakin said frankly. "And I know you feel like all the stuff is important, but Senator Ponghus thinks everything he says is important too, but every time he starts waving his hands he's just repeating stuff, and when he wobbles his head," Anakin paused to demonstrate, "He's talking about his feelings. When he leans forward and moves his hands like this, he's trying to make people agree with him 'cause of their feelings and stuff."

Obi-Wan felt poleaxed. He'd always heard people speak of reading someone through body language, but he'd never realised it was quite so . . . possible. He was also concerned because looking back, Anakin had clearly been spending too much time at the senate if he had developed that fine a sense of even one senator's body language. "I'm sorry," he heard himself blurt out. "I've been letting the Chancellor monopolise your time when I should have been teaching you."

"It's okay," Anakin said easily. "I like it there."

"What?" the two adult Jedi chorused. "Why?" Obi-Wan asked, wholly perplexed.

"They're normal," Anakin said. "People aren't all," he waved his hands, raising a beautiful wall of pure light that sang of serenity and the light of the Force. It dropped a moment later. "They're like Master Vos is right now. When I'm at the senate the Twi'leks act like Twi'leks and the humans act like humans. It's not that they're nice or funny, but it's not creepy like here. Especially the creche," Anakin said, grimacing. "I mean, it's like they've never been yelled at or hit or scared or anything. It's not normal."

At that Aayla seemed to lose any sense of calm. "What do you mean normal?" she demanded. "Of course they don't get yelled at or hit. Why would anyone do that?" Before Anakin could say anything she kept on going. "And why would anyone say they were gonna send you to a child brothel? Why would there be brothels for children?"

"Because some people like to have sex with children?" Anakin said, sounding utterly confused at her ignorance of what he treated as a basic fact of life. "If Gardulla thought she'd get more out of me by just selling me to a brothel she would have. Luckily I wasn't worth more for sale like that."

"But slavery is illegal!" Aayla said.

The boy shrugged. "There's ten senators who bring their slaves with them all the time," he said. "Everyone said I can't help them, but I'm gonna, just as soon as I'm a knight."

Aayla's mouth hung open and she made some squeaking sounds. She sounded a little like a mouse droid with a processor overload. Quinlan was emitting a sense of a last piece falling into place along with deep sense of the calculating Shadow he was. Obi-Wan was just exhausted, and knew he was bleeding aggravation with Qui-Gon into the air around him. "Damnit, Qui-Gon," he muttered into his hands.

"Next time you're at the Senate," Quin said to Anakin, "I'm going to drop by and ask you to point them out. Some of them may not be slaves in literal terms but may be in somewhat untenable situations that would make them read as such to you. But while Tatooine may be mostly outside of Republic purview, Coruscant absolutely is and we should be able to free them, at least."

Anakin brightened, both externally and in the Force. "Really?" he said. "Master Lurchak said that the Jedi couldn't help slaves because we had to protect ourselves first." His smile dimmed. "I don't really know what she means."

"That is not the way I would put it," Obi-Wan heard himself say dryly. "But I suppose protecting ourselves from Senate accusations of attempting to revive the pre-Reformation days is some small part of it." Then he shook himself. "But that is something we can discuss later. Anakin, I need you to answer a couple questions for me, because I feel as though Master Jinn may have omitted some important information." Obi-Wan took a deep breath. "Anakin, were you a slave before Qui-Gon brought you with us to Coruscant?"

"Yeah," Anakin said.

"How did you wind up being freed?" Obi-Wan asked. He recalled Qui-Gon saying something about pod-racing and betting, but given that he had not told Obi-Wan that Anakin had been a slave, only that he was a local, there was every possibility his former master had left out more.

"Well, in order to get the ship parts Master Jinn had to make a bet on me winning the Boonta Eve Classic to get them. He just also bet for money for my freedom." Anakin glanced away. "He didn't manage enough to free my mom, though. He left the rest of the money with her and my friend Kitster, but she's still with Watto." He sighed. "I just hope he doesn't need to sell her. He gambles a lot, but he's way better than the Hutts."

Obi-Wan frowned. "But why didn't Qui-Gon just bring her along?” It was unlike him to do such a thing as leave someone in that situation.”I understand that she might have nowhere to run, but the queen's ship would have allowed her off-planet easily."

"Subcutaneous explosive tracker," Anakin explained with a sort of cold-bloodedness that came from being used to the idea. "If you get too far from the controller it automatically explodes."

"Explodes!" Aayla said, her fear and anxiety overwhelming her shielding. "You didn't have one, right? Or it got taken out?"

Anakin nodded, smiling at her, relaxing even further in the face of Aayla's distress and the proof that here was another Jedi who felt things like normal. "I'm fine. Padme - I mean, the queen on Naboo made sure to have the palace healers take it out."

Aayla and Obi-Wan both sagged in relief, though Obi-Wan made a mental note to take Anakin in to the Halls to have him looked over with a fine-toothed comb for anything else that might be a problem medically, now that he knew how concerning Anakin's background really was.

"Right. What exactly is the Boonta Eve Classic?" Obi-Wan said, determined now to reconstruct how Anakin had come to be taken with them back to Coruscant.

What followed was a very excited, highly gesticulated blow-by-blow description of a pod race. In light of Anakin's earlier comments regarding body language, Obi-Wan paid attention to the way Anakin's arms shaped the course, the way his hand gestures clarified the speed of one thing as compared to another, the tilting of his body back and forth added emphasis and the way his tone of voice rose and fell added richness and drama to the retelling.

If he had only paid attention to the words, as was his wont, it would have been a dull, unprepossessing story. Anakin's movements and the pitch and tone of the words made it interesting. It wasn't subtle, not in the least, but if one were hyperfocused on words alone, it could be missed.

In another life Obi-Wan never learns this and the Jedi as a whole never see the depth of Anakin's regard for Padme. Oh, none could help seeing something there, but hyperfocused on words and Force presence alone, they missed the bulk of the relationship, while their soldiers assumed the Jedi were simply being polite. Anakin thought he was being subtle because the Jedi had blinded themselves and the Vod'e were too kind to raise the issue.

It was easy to see Aayla had taken in Anakin's gestures similarly to Obi-Wan, as though seeing the communication for the first time. "It's sort of like lekku movements," Aayla said, fascinated.

Anakin eyed her, a slight sense of nausea permeating his aura.

"What?" Aayla asked. "You feel like that when you're looking at my lekku. What is it?"

"It's just . . ." Anakin trailed off and his hands made a sort of spastic, helpless gesture. "Please don't be mad," he pleaded.

Aayla thought about it a moment, then said, "I can't promise I won't be, but I'll do my best to understand so I won't be," she offered.

There was a sense of hurt from Anakin, something that was confusing, until Quinlan spoke up. "Anakin, I know you got that Aayla said she wouldn't promise to be mad. Were you listening to the rest?"

"She said she wasn't going to promise," Anakin replied. "What else-"

Obi-Wan hastily interrupted. "She also said she'd do her best to not be mad."

"But . . . that's the same thing," Anakin objected, now confused.

"It isn't," Obi-Wan replied. "Anakin, if she doesn't know what you're going to say, how can she promise that?"

Anakin stared.

"Listen, Anakin. Promising something if you don't know what it is, is dangerous. In this case, if you say something that Aayla thinks is insulting, she can't keep her promise. All she can promise is to try."

The boy froze, as though thinking something over. "Oh," he said in a small voice. "That's why you talk so much," he said slowly. "You've got modifications on the important parts. I've been ignoring the modifications because I thought they were cosmetic, like paint, but they're actually like rust protection."

Quin shot Obi-Wan an amused look as he told Anakin, "Well, Obi speaks pretty elegantly. With him, sometimes it really is paint."

Obi-Wan would never have thought to compare language to a speeder, but perhaps he needed to show Anakin a complex treaty to show him how words always meant things. "We're off topic. Aayla has promised to try to not be mad. What is it that is concerning you about her lekku?"

"They don't move," Anakin seemed relieved to both move on into something he understood and also to say this. "It's like . . ." he looked beseechingly at Aayla. "It's like the slave girls at Gardulla's. They never move their lekku because movement is resistance. They don't want them talking with anyone in secret. Yours don't move and it's just like that," he said. "It's like you're sick or . . . or like someone's gonna beat you if you don't keep still."

Obi-Wan had been on a mission once with a Twi'lek knight and the other lekku-bearing species had been almost repulsed by the knight, and the few time his lekku had moved they had been even more overset. He had thought nothing of it, but thinking back, he began to recall more and more times when he would be speaking to a non-Jedi and a sense of deep discomfort would overcome them.

Aayla's surprise was patent in the Force. "I have learned lekku-speak, though," she said.

"But it's too precise," Anakin said. He moved his hands, suiting gesture to an approximation of lekku movement. "Lekku move smoothly," his hands made a liquid sort of movement. "But every time a Jedi does it, it isn't a greeting like this," his approximation of a Twi'lek greeting in lekku was excellent. "It's like this," and watching, Obi-Wan could see what Anakin meant. Instead of a sinuous wave, a Jedi-trained Twi'lek's movements were staccato and almost perfunctory. It was the same movement, but the overt precision was a sharp contrast to the way non-Jedi would use them. "And it's not friendly or unfriendly or anything. It's like you're a factory-new droid, just repeating something that doesn't mean anything to you beyond the programming requirements. Y'know, stimulus-response."

Quin shot Obi-Wan a significant look.

This bore some serious consideration. After some efforts, and promises on Aayla's part to spend time with Anakin to help him with some of his lessons, Obi-Wan got them out of Quinlan's quarters and back to their own. He settled in to help Anakin meditate and braced himself for the way Anakin's power slammed into him. For the first time, though, Obi-Wan pushed past his initial intention to tell Anakin to pull back and dove through the currents in the Force to see what his padawan was truly doing.

As Aayla and Quin had suggested, Anakin was putting in precisely the same degree of effort that Obi-Wan would have needed. His padawan did not have less control than the other children, he was just - as Aayla said - a Wookie in the Force.

With that in mind, as well as Anakin's tendency to search for the pithiest part of a given explanation, Obi-Wan began to reteach all his lessons, rephrasing things into smaller phrases with simpler words.

The intended lesson in complex treaties, going over it word by word, finally showed Anakin where the value in following every word might come from.

Anakin finally began to listen to supporting clauses in more complex sentences, though he still had a tendency to simplify, and began to figure out those philosophical lessons. That tendency to simplify, now supported by listening to the whole had the unfortunate side-effect of causing him to question philosophies the Jedi had expounded on so much they had lost track of the core of the point. "If you have to talk around it so much to make it mean something else, then maybe it doesn't actually mean that," Anakin said when he complained that, "There is no death, there is the Force," did not in fact accept the reality that there is death. "That's like saying that after a piece of ice has melted and evaporated that the water vapour is the same as the ice. It's not. It's a gas that doesn't make things cooler, isn't a solid and isn't slippery. You don't have ice anymore. You still have the water molecules, but that doesn't make them ice. When someone dies they may be part of the Force, but they're not a physical person who you can talk to and stuff," Anakin objected. "You've got all this stuff saying that it's about accepting death, but it's not. It's about pretending someone's not dead and they are."

Still, Anakin listening meant he understood the conceptual underpinnings of the Jedi and the reasons for the restrictions they espoused.

Obi-Wan learned to watch as much as listen. Finally understanding that Anakin communicated as much in gesture and tone of voice, he learned to read those in Anakin, wincing as he also thought of how emotionless and inhuman the Jedi must have seemed to others more used to such non-verbal communication. Watching helped him to understand when Anakin had more to say, encouraging him to put into words those things he'd previously left unsaid, only implied by gesture and implication.

Years later Obi-Wan had researched the origins of Temple body language, bringing to the attention of the Jedi Council that this cultural artifact had some side-effects they had not considered. Quin had informed the Council of those strange laws that ran directly counter to Jedi policy regarding the children they brought to the Temple. Anakin's confusions and questions caused a reconsideration of the supposed inability of older initiates to understand Jedi philosophy as a realisation was reached of how very self-referential the Jedi perspective was.

Palpatine still remained Anakin's close friend and confidant, but when the time came to hear Palpatine's words, Anakin had learned how to read the words as he read body language, and Obi-Wan had learned how to read Anakin's tone of voice and the tilt of his head to understand what lay unspoken.

It made all the difference.