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It was on the shuttle nearing Naboo that Anakin first saw what would later become his favourite thing to do for the first time. Two handmaidens of the queen sat in complete silence concentrating deeply on the game in front of them. Anakin had sneaked up beside them after he became bored of all the political talking Master Jinn and his Padawan Obi-Wan did with the queen. So he had crawled up beside a small group of the handmaidens. (A protector, Padmé had told him when he was still home, that was what she was.)
They sat still only moving on turn and only speaking words Anakin did not understand.
“Eschécs.” One of the handmaidens spoke in victory and raised her hands over her head. “Told you, I could beat you in under ten minutes!”
The other handmaiden exhaled loudly. “Yeah, and when was that, twelve plays ago?”'
“You’re no fun,” The winning Handmaiden whined. “If I want to win the tournament I have to practise, you know that, Yané.”
Yané sniffed gracefully. “If you always beat me then how are you ever going to learn?”
“Oh, but it’s about the best opening,” The handmaiden lectured. “And reading the opponent's next move.”
“So you say, yet you always start with the same move.”
“That’s because I know that’s your least favourite, Yané, and you're so predictable.”
Yané huffed and folded her arms. “Play with Sabé then, she at least knows how to beat you.”
“She’s the quintuple gagnant’s grandchild of course she does.” She shifted a bit, finally noticing Anakin sitting on the ground close to them. “Oh, hello,”
Yané turned to look at him too. “You’re Ani, right?”
Anakin nodded.
They waited for him to say more and when he didn’t the other handmaiden introduced herself. “Well, I’m Ellé and the sore loser over there,” She pointed to Yané who rolled her eyes. “Is Yané.”
“I am not a sore loser!” She argued.
“Yes, you are!”
Anakin giggled. The sound obviously surprised the girls but they just smiled at him.
“Hey, Ani, have you ever played eschécs?” Ellé asked.
Anakin shook his head.
“Don’t lure the innocent into your scheming Ellé.” Yané admonished.
“Oh, it’ll be fun, come here and I’ll teach you.” She patted the ground beside her and Anakin obeyed. She then explained what eschécs was, slowly pronouncing the words and showing him how to play, softly telling him what each piece was called and how they moved, until they were through with the basics and Anakin could try and play against Ellé.
He lost, but he hadn’t expected anything else. Ellé switched places with Yané so she could play against him and they spent the rest of the journey playing against each other until they reached Naboo and Anakin had to go with Master Jinn.
Anakin thought that would be the last he saw of them, but barely a day after he was once again sitting in front of Ellé with an eschécs board between them, this one made of wood instead of the holo one, playing.
“You’re not too shabby at this, you know.” Ellé commented. Yané and a handmaiden named Rabé nodded in agreement.
“Thank you.” Anakin said, his face scrunched in concentration.
“But,” Ellé smirked. “You still can’t beat me. Eschécs.” She moved her piece in front of Anakin’s king before slowly knocking it over.
Anakin groaned and tilted his head backwards.
“Better luck next time, kid.” Rabé said, patting him on the shoulder.
“The Jedi better teach you to play better,” Ellé packed the game back into its carved wooden box. “Then maybe next time you’ll win.”
Anakin grinned. “I will try.” Out of the corner of his vision he saw Obi-Wan walk towards them.
Yané followed his eyes and hummed. “You’re leaving for Coruscant soon?”
“Yeah,” Anakin eyed Obi-Wan. “The shuttle is leaving in an hour.”
Rabé and Yané stood up and Yané walked over to him and gave him a hug. “Keep practising Ani!” Yané waved and went after Rabé who was walking back to the palace.
Ellé picked up the box with the board and nodded to him. “You have been a good opponent, may our next game be as satisfying.”
“For me it will be.” Anakin said snarky.
Ellé let out a laugh. “Oh, we’ll see about that. So long!” She turned and ran after her friends leaving Anakin sitting on the bench, Obi-Wan's steps growing closer.
Anakin stood up and met Obi-Wan in the middle. “Are we leaving now?”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan looked at the bench Anakin had just been sitting at. “What were you playing back there?”
“Eschécs!” Anakin answered cheerfully. “Ellé and Yané taught me to play on the way here.”
“Ah,” Obi-Wan nodded. “I believe there’s a club of sorts that meets and plays it at the temple.”
Anakin made an interested noise.
Obi-Wan looked down at him. “If that is something you are interested in, I could sign you up?” He asked. At Anakin’s unsure look he redacted. “But we can decide all of that when we arrive, there isn’t a hurry.”
Anakin smiled up at him and nodded, skipping towards the ship. “Do you play?”
“I’m afraid not,” Obi-Wan said. “But we have a long flight ahead of us, I’m sure I could learn if you’re willing to teach me?”
“Only if you’re ready to lose!”
Obi-Wan was right, there was a eschécs club at the temple and after three months of living there Obi-Wan signed him up for it, only one day, and if he didn’t like it he didn’t have to go back.
Obi-Wan guided him to the room in which they were gathered. Anakin shyly peeked from behind Obi-Wan’s robe as he introduced them to the five members of the club.
Anakin only recognized one of them, a human who wore coloured robes, an oddity in the temple. Obi-Wan finished with the introductions and gave Anakin a slight push towards the table on which the boards were laid out.
Obi-Wan sat down beside him and gave him an assuring look.
“So Padawan Skywalker,” Vella, an older twi’lek woman, started the game by placing her springer out. “Everytime someone new enters we always ask them one question. Where did you learn to play?”
Anakin looked up into Vella’s sparkling eyes and answered: “On a shuttle to Naboo, by one of the royal handmaidens.” He moved his piece and the game began.
“By a professional huh.” She smirked and moved her piece. “This’ll be fun.”
The game lasted nearly an hour before Obi-Wan intertwined. “I had thought it would go a bit faster.” He muttered.
The man beside him laughed. “The game goes at the speed of the players,” He took a swig of his beverage. “And these two are patient.”
“I think this is the first time ever someone has called Anakin patient.” Obi-Wan replied.
“This game requires a certain kind of patience,” Vella cut in. “My Master used to tell me that my energy was badly disreputed and made me learn the art of eschécs. It is a form of meditation in many ways, the only kind I ever figured out how to.”
Obi-Wan looked at Anakin, who had never been able to sit still for more than a few minutes, and hummed. When Anakin jumped up and yelled “Eschécs!” A minute later he smiled and congratulated him, already writing eschécs in on his day-plan.
Anakin left the meeting feeling more at peace than he had ever before, already planning how he was going to start his next game. Obi-Wan walked with him, tried and failed to keep up with all the terms he had no idea what meant.
When the day after the first meeting a book about the history of eschécs showed up in their quarters neither of them mentioned it.
Anakin kept going to the meetings weekly and kept learning from under Vella’s watchful eyes, getting better and better.
Members of the little club came and went, but Anakin and Vella stayed playing with each other sometimes late into the night, forced apart by Obi-Wan and Vella’s old Padawan. Some games stretched over weeks and some only minutes. Obi-Wan learned slowly and quietly from the corner of the room until one day when he was called to a mission on a planet far away, a mission that would last weeks, the longest he had ever left Anakin alone since first becoming his master.
Anakin had surprisingly taken the news fine. He had assured that he would be fine and do the work Obi-Wan assigned him, and that he would do his absolute best in his classes and that he would be fine.
Obi-Wan did not take it well, even going as far as to tell the council he wouldn’t be available and that they should find someone else for the mission, but alas he was shipped off for a months long assignment, leaving his Padawan in the care with the other younglings staying at the temple.
Anakin kept on doing what he did when Obi-Wan was present. He went to his classes, ate all his meals, trained all his forms and went to the eschécs meetings and when the other younglings and Padawan’s tried to pick on him he stared and went the other way, towards Vella.
Vella had accompanied Anakin to his and Obi-Wan’s quarters before, pointing to her own on the way there. She had told Anakin that if he ever wanted to play against her, or just wanted to talk, her door would always be open for him.
So when he turned up in her quarters a clouded and confused, (Not angry or mad, a Jedi should not feel that) she opened her doors and sat him down in front of a eschécs board, letting him take out her frustrations on the game.
Later, when they had finished for the night and Anakin had gone back to his quarters, the grandmaster of the order showed up asking how she had gotten the boy to open up. She had told him the truth. She hadn’t. The boy simply played eschécs with her. How the force felt while he did so was none of her business. If playing eschécs were how he released in the force, then so be it.
Later, when Yoda had invited his great- great- grand-padawan for a cup of tea and a game of eschécs, when he learned of the past of Skywalker and not for the first time felt that maybe his time as the grandmaster of the order was coming to an end.
But now Anakin was eating delicious stew (He might be the only person in the entire temple who had tried Yoda’s stew and genuinely meant it when he said it tasted delicious) and talking about which values he was raised by, all over a long game of eschécs.
Anakin will go back to his quarters hoping his master is doing well, while the grandmaster of the order will be contemplating his entire life and the values of the order and many things he should have wondered, questioned before. Yoda will think of his old Padawan and before he could change his mind he will send him a com asking him to come by for tea and talk. This, unknown to Yoda, creates the biggest shatterpoint Master Windu has ever seen, forcing him to his knees and later the halls of healing, where he meets young Padawan Skywalker with a eschécs board under his arm and a small army of droids following him.
When Obi-Wan returns not even two months after his departure, he will come back to a padawan in harmony with the force, a great- grandmaster making him meet his grandmaster and the master of the order setting up a eschécs tournament in the temple. When he asks his padawan Anakin will only shrug and say ‘Eschécs makes great conversation starters, as Vella told me.’
He will later learn that when Anakin walked by the halls of healing with a eschécs board under his arm and droids following him, Master Windu stopped him and asked where he was going and when he told him he was simply showing the droids of to play, Master Windu asked him to do it here. Anakin complied and learned that Master Windu once had been the leader of the eschécs club here at the temple and that he had missed it greatly. Anakin then invited the club to have their meeting in the halls of healing with Master Windu and his Padawan Billaba and after Anakin and Depa got into a long discussion about the yearly Naboo tournament, Master Windu had felt it was his obligation to hold one here, at the temple, for Jedi.
He will also learn that after years of begging his master to meet his grandmaster all it took was Yoda asking if he knew how to play eschécs and making a bet that he couldn’t beat Anakin, was all it took.
And later, much later, when he is getting ready for bed Anakin will explain that Vella and him had an entire eschécs match only through the force and that Anakin didn’t notice until she told him days after. Anakin will explain that for him the force isn’t just everywhere like a buzz or the sound of rain, it’s everywhere like the yells of thousands of people, that he can feel every heartbeat in the temple, every speeder on this side of the planet, and that it’s so much that even just closing his eyes and opening his connection to the force is enough to make him sick. That imagining a game, playing a game is… easier.
Later Obi-Wan will think it's the funniest thing that his Padawan somehow turned the order upside down in just a few days. (And later Quinlas Von will disagree. The funniest thing ever was watching Obi-Wan’s face when he realised that Vella, the woman who had played eschécs with Anakin for nearly a year and showed how to connect with the force in a manageable way, is the same as VV, one of the most feared shadows the order have ever had.)