Chapter Text
Anakin stormed into the room in a whirlwind of emotion, tossing his traitorous saber on the floor and throwing himself face down onto his threadbare cot. His short ponytail quivered in the air as he fought back tears, attempting to smother his hiccups in the crook of his elbow.
Today’s lightsaber training had not gone well.
The hovering ball droids that the Jedi used for training younglings fired weak shots that merely stung, but Anakin felt as though he had been swarmed by insects. His body burned with a combination of angry red marks and shame.
The training droid leading the class had instructed them to sense and anticipate, to block the shots with their sabers before they were struck. But with each miss, each fresh zap reminding him that every other Padawan his age had mastered this years ago, Anakin’s frustration built. And in the gap below his blinding mask, Anakin had watched the glow of his saber darken to a muddy amber.
“Your frustration limits you,” the training droid had commented. “It distracts you, breaks your focus.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d heard that. Anakin knew it was supposed to be a gentle correction, a guide to help him refocus, but it only made him feel clumsy and inadequate. His classmates, watching from the edges of the room, were younglings half his age, and they could block those stupid ball droids with ease! He should be able to do it! Back home on Tatooine he had been the only human podracer, his superhuman reflexes allowing him to compete with professionals when he was only a slow human, and a child at that. He had won the Boonta Eve Classic! What was a stupid training droid next to that!
The doors to the quarters he shared with his Master suddenly slid open behind him, startling an undignified noise from Anakin as he quickly tried to erase the evidence of his tears. He roughly scrubbed his face on the thin sheet and bolted upright, crossing his legs beneath him and trying, knowing it was fruitless, to look as though he’d been meditating.
Obi-Wan Kenobi was young to have a Padawan, only 26 years old and with a vigour that Anakin hadn’t encountered in any of the old Masters he’d met in the Jedi Temple. He strode into the room with his ever present confidence and stood across from Anakin, tall and noble, a Jedi newly knighted and the embodiment of everything Anakin dreamed to be one day.
Anakin watched his Master with red-rimmed eyes and a wet nose, determined to prevent any more tears from escaping and to accept the incoming lecture with grace and dignity. He had already disappointed enough people today, the thought of adding his Master to the list was something he could not bear.
Obi-Wan observed him quietly for a few moments, arms folded into his sleeves, and Anakin forced down the urge to wriggle under the scrutiny.
“Training did not go well?” Obi-Wan asked, his tone light, as though he was asking if Anakin wanted lunch.
Anakin couldn’t help his gaze darting to his lightsaber lying discarded on the floor a short distance away. He tucked his own hands up into his sleeves, unconsciously trying to hide the telltale red marks of his failures.
“It’s hard.” Anakin said softly. “Back home, I never thought about anticipating. I guess… I just did it, even though I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. But here, I can’t sense the shots before they come. And then I get hit, and I get annoyed at myself, and my saber goes orange, and everyone can see because I can’t control that either! Everyone else can do it but me.”
He hadn’t meant to say that last part, but it slipped out quietly in a wave of frustration. He hated how sulky and childish it made him sound.
Obi-Wan stroked his beard for a moment before moving to crouch before Anakin, waiting with impossible patience for Anakin’s eyes to stop darting around the room and meet his gaze.
“On Tatooine, you were acting on instincts. Instincts that you still have, and that will be honed with training.” He held up two fingers to forestall Anakin’s impending interruption. “You have started formal training later than the other younglings, Anakin. That is all. It has not been long since you arrived, and believe me, many of those same younglings had just as much trouble when they first started.” The young knight waggled his eyebrows at the boy, shifting to a conspiratorial whisper. “Some even more so, but you would be wise not to repeat it.”
An uncertain smile quirked the corner of Anakin’s mouth. He scrutinized his Master from beneath furrowed brows, trying to determine whether Obi-Wan was telling the truth, but hungry enough for the reassurance to consider believing him anyway.
Robes swishing softly around him, Obi-Wan stood and strode across the room, fetching something from the footlocker at the base of his cot. Anakin’s stomach lurched when his Master turned around and showed him a blinding mask like the one he wore in training, but settled as he noted there were no ball droids in sight.
“Shall we try something different?” Obi-Wan asked. Anakin knew an order when he heard one, and this was no order. He was being given an option.
Still eying the mask warily, Anakin got to his feet and fetched his abandoned saber, tears forgotten as his eagerness to learn, to prove himself, was rekindled. “Yes, Master.” He said firmly, renewed determination flowing through him.
“Very well.” Obi-Wan replied, meeting Anakin in the center of the room. “You won’t be needing your saber for now, only this.” He handed Anakin the mask, retreating a few steps. Anakin clipped his saber to his belt and stood in the center of the room as directed, blinding mask in place and feeling vulnerable without his weapon in hand.
“The goal,” came Obi-Wan’s voice, drifting softly through the blackness of Anakin’s blindness. “Is to keep your body oriented towards me. You cannot see me, but you have other senses. Feel the air stir as I move. Hear my footsteps, the fabric of my garb rustling. Smell how long it has been since it was laundered.”
Anakin stifled a giggle at that, trying to remain focused on his task. As Obi-Wan spoke, he was moving in a slow circled around the edge of the room, and Anakin rotated in place to face the sound of his voice.
“Listen to my breathing.”
A long pause, and Anakin stayed oriented on where he could hear Obi-Wan’s measured breaths.
“Listen to my footsteps.”
A longer pause, and Anakin could hear his Master walking irregularly. His footsteps were fast then slow, heavy then light, brushing against the hard floor then padding across his cot. Anakin heard him change directions suddenly, then a quick but regular beat that, if Anakin didn’t know better, he would have sworn was dancing.
“Feel the air shift as my body moves through it.”
Obi-Wan was moving a lot quieter now, and Anakin strained to hear anything, feel anything. He focused his attention on his senses, rolling up his sleeves to expose his arms to the air around him. Something that could have been the flutter of a robe, or the gentle flow of air caused by it’s movement, brushed past his ear, and he reoriented towards it.
“Good. Reach into the room. Reach out with the senses of your body and your mind.”
Anakin had reoriented to face the sound of Obi-Wan’s voice, but a feather-light touch of air on the back of his neck told him that Obi-Wan was behind him and he spun around, realising Obi-Wan had thrown his voice in deception. A light rush of air as his Master dashed away carried the mead-and-undergrowth scent of Obi-Wan across Anakin’s face, along with faint lavender soap. He couldn’t stop a grin from quirking his lips, pleased that he’d uncovered the misdirection.
“Well done. Your senses are sharp.” Came Obi-Wan’s approval, and this time Anakin gave less thought to the direction it seemed to come from. “Now, try to extend beyond yourself. Remember, the Force surrounds us, it connects us. There is more it can tell you, if you let it.”
Silence permeated the room as Obi-Wan slipped through the shadows, encouraging his Padawan to build on his success. Anakin extended his senses to the tips of his fingers, the crown of his head, the very edges of his being.
When he had first arrived at the Jedi Temple, Anakin had sometimes found the silence so suffocating that he would sing quietly to himself. Simple melodies, lullabies that his mother had soothed him with as a child, that made him feel less alone in this strange place. Now, with his senses wide open, he could hear what he hadn’t noticed before, what his physical ears lacked the ability to tell him.
The pulse of his heart in his chest set a regular drumbeat, accompanied by the gentle rushes of breath in and out of his lungs. The sleeves of his robes, rolled up around his elbows, added a soft rustle as they rubbed against fabric at his waist.
Beyond himself, he could sense the slower beat of his Master’s heart, hear the stealthy footsteps that had seemed absolutely silent moments before. Even further, he could sense, somehow, a glowing point of light at the spot he knew Obi-Wan occupied.
There was a melody here all along, right under the surface. He simply hadn’t known how to listen.
The sudden understanding that he’d uncovered a sensational world of beauty and insight sent Anakin crashing back into his body, startled and tearing at his blinding mask. His wide blue eyes found Obi-Wan’s with not a moment of hesitation, so certain he was of his Master’s location.
“What was that?” he asked breathlessly. “I’ve never done that before. I mean, back home when I was racing, sometimes I thought that the podracers had a sort of music to them, but I never… was that the same? Was I doing… this? Without meaning to?”
The words rushed out of Anakin. He felt the giddy elation that he remembered feeling during a podrace, when he was soaring across the track with only his preternatural reflexes and the fierce joy of freedom. He was reluctant to come back down to a reality where everything felt dull by comparison.
Obi-Wan watched Anakin’s reaction with a beaming smile. He closed the distance between them to place a proud hand on the boys shoulder, and crouched down in front of him.
“Well done, Anakin. Yes, this is what you were doing subconsciously, this is what enabled you to race. You were tuning in to the Force, listening to it, sensing what was about to happen before it happened. Your instincts took over for you during those periods of high pressure. Listening with your conscious mind, opening your senses with purpose, is harder to begin with. But with practice, you’ll be able to reach out at will, and it will become second nature.”
Anakin’s eyes were intensely bright with focus and excitement.
“I could see you.” He said with wonder. “Well, not your body, but I could see… you. You were glowing.”
Obi-Wan was taken aback. He had not expected Anakin to be able to sense him so clearly, so quickly.
“I was glowing?” Obi-Wan asked, overtaken by surprise and curiosity.
“Yeah, you were sort of a glowing goldy-green light. Over there.” Anakin pointed to where Obi-Wan had been lurking moments ago.
“Is that so?” Obi-Wan replied, amused. “To me, you are a point of heat, like a campfire.” Obi-Wan stood and gestured around them to indicate the rest of the Temple. “Everyone interprets Force impressions differently, and even more so between species with different physical senses.”
He turned to face his Padawan, this clever and talented boy that his own Master had believed to be the prophesied Chosen One.
“Would you like to try again?”
They repeated the exercise twice more, each time with Anakin becoming more precise in his ability to keep track of Obi-Wan. For his part, Obi-Wan kept his physical self quiet but his presence in the Force unmasked, allowing Anakin to learn his signature and practice extending his senses.
Anakin picked up the skill fast. Obi-Wan made a mental note to speak to Master Yoda about the suitability of the usual educational environment for his unusual student.
After their third repetition Obi-Wan had them sit facing each other in meditation, focusing on simply connecting with the Force and sensing mundane objects in the room as Obi-Wan named them. Finally, Obi-Wan felt they were ready to return to the original purpose of the lesson.
“You are making excellent progress, Anakin. I think you are ready to try the ball droid, if you wish.”
Anakin’s face immediately dropped, the feelings of inadequacy he felt written in his body clear as day. But to the boys credit, it only took a few moments for him to steel himself and square his shoulders.
“Okay.” He said, trying to project a self-assuredness that Obi-Wan knew was for Anakin’s own benefit as much as it was for Obi-Wan.
“Very well. Don your mask, and ready your lightsaber.” Obi-Wan said as he fetched a ball droid from the footlocker at the base of his cot.
He glanced around at the sound of Anakin’s saber igniting to see a bright yellow glow of happiness and success, only slightly muddied by anxiety.
“I am going to activate the ball droid. It will hover around you as they do in your training lessons, but I will not activate its firing lasers yet. I want you to focus on sensing it, just as you were orienting on me earlier.”
Anakin’s posture relaxed a little at the knowledge he would not be stung just yet, and he nodded firmly. “Yes, Master.”
Obi-Wan activated the droid and watched Anakin, lightsaber held tightly in front of him, try to focus on it’s position. It only took a few moments longer than it had taken him to locate a thermos when they were practicing. Once he had it, he stayed oriented towards it, his lips pressed hard together in concentration. Anakin’s saber blade had shifted through grassy green to become teal-blue as his focus deepened, his kyber crystal reflecting his state of mind.
“Very good. Feel how it moves. Feel the different parts of it sliding past each other, find where its shots will come from.”
Anakin made no outward sign that he’d heard, only continued rotating slowly in place. His grip on his saber, now a deep, cool blue, loosened slightly as his attention shifted more to his senses than on the tension in his body.
After the droid had made a few more passes, Obi-Wan reached out to activate it fully.
“I’m going to activate the lasers now. Stay focused.” Obi-Wan flicked his hand and watched Anakin intently.
Again, his Padawan did not respond, but Obi-Wan saw his grip adjust on his saber. It was only a few seconds before the droid fired it’s first shot, and Anakin blocked it perfectly. His saber absorbed the shot harmlessly, pulsing a quick silver before returning to blue, and Obi-Wan grinned in response to the satisfied smile that took up all he could see of Anakin’s face.
The droid continued to circle and fire at Anakin, and not a single laser marked his skin. By the time the droid finished it’s programmed routine and shut itself down, Anakin’s saber was gold with newfound confidence and both Master and Padawan were smiling at his success.
“Well done, Anakin.” Obi-Wan said, striding over as Anakin holstered his saber and removed his blinding mask. “Very well done indeed. Your focus and patience are commendable.” He knelt down and clapped the boy’s shoulders.
“I did it!” Anakin exclaimed, bright blue eyes brimming with happiness. “I really did it! I never understood what the training master meant but I get it now!” He reached up to place his hands on Obi-Wan’s forearms and composed himself slightly. “Thank you, Master.”
Before Obi-Wan could react Anakin had stepped forward and wrapped skinny arms around him. It was not traditionally how a Padawan thanked a Master, but then, they were not a traditional pair. Obi-Wan returned the embrace, squeezing gently in affirmation.
An unpleasant morning had turned into a productive afternoon, and as he reflected on Anakin’s vibrantly changeable saber, Obi-Wan felt confident that his young Padawan would learn to control his emotions soon enough.
Chosen One or not, Anakin was a talented apprentice, and one day he would make an extraordinary Jedi Knight.