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The child is terrifyingly small, and Obi-Wan wonders who had decided that he was capable of caring for it.
Him, he should probably say. Not it.
Anakin Skywalker bares his teeth in a gummy smile, one that has been appearing more and more often. That must mean that Obi-Wan is doing something right.
“Did you see, Obi?”
Obi-Wan feels something warm in his chest stir at the horrible nickname, even though he knows he should probably chide the boy for it. But he never does.
“Yes, Padawan. Well done,” he says instead.
Anakin lights up, as he is wont to do whenever he receives praise. His face gleams red, sweat darkening his hair. He has completed the obstacle course with ease, and Obi-Wan is proud.
He never thought he would be proud of something as silly as a child jumping over a few beams and swinging over an imaginary lava pool with all the grace of a baby monkey, yet here he is.
“I think I was really fast. Do you think I was the fastest, Obi?” Anakin asks, his tiny fist clenching into Obi-Wan’s robes to gain his attention.
“We will see when everyone is finished, young one.”
Anakin doesn’t look pleased, but says nothing of it. He turns back to the tournament instead, watching a Twi’lek padawan finish the course. She stumbles at the balancing beam and needs to redo it.
“Are Twi’lo’s bad at balancing, Master?”
“Twi’leks,” Obi-Wan corrects. “And no. Such qualities are never representative of a whole species."
“But you said that all Nautolans are good at swimming.” Anakin looks up at him with wide, questioning eyes, genuinely confused.
Obi-Wan blinks. He is a little surprised that the boy has remembered that—with the amount of questions he asks daily, it doesn’t seem possible for him to remember all the answers.
“Well, yes. That is a trait common for that species, because they are an aquatic species.”
“So there are no species that are good at balancing?”
“Perhaps there are,” Obi-Wan admits.
“So can’t all Twi’leks be bad at balancing too, then?”
Obi-Wan thinks for a moment. A new participant had already begun the course, the Twi’lek girl having finished.
“Well, being good at something can be a hereditary trait, because a species may need that trait to survive,” he eventually explains, a little unsure of how to. “The Nautolans, for example, are native to an aquatic planet. If they were bad at swimming, they would not survive and reproduce. So that trait gets passed down. But being bad at something is never something that a whole species needs to survive, so it is not something passed down to all offspring.”
Anakin hums as he processes this information. His hand has not left Obi-Wan’s robes yet, but he doesn’t remind the boy of it.
“So how does a good trait get passed down?”
“Well, that has to do with DNA and evolution. You will learn about these subjects in your later biology courses.”
“What’s DNA?”
Obi-Wan sighs. “That is a complicated biological term. Like Midi-chlorians.”
“Okay,” Anakin says, and for a moment the child seems satisfied. But then he feels his hand tug at his robes again, and big blue eyes meet his when he looks down. “What’s evolution?”
“It is a natural process in which a species changes its traits and appearance to adapt to its environment. It happens very slowly, over a long stretch of time.” He explains it in a way that he hopes causes no further questions. He is fond of Anakin’s lasting curiosity, sure, but it does get tiring at times.
“So I will look different after living on Coruscant?”
Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow. “Why would you say that?”
“Because I lived on Tatooine, and now my envi… environment has changed. So will I change my appearance to adept?”
“No, Padawan,” Obi-Wan answers, stifling a smile. “You don’t have to adapt,” he corrects in what he hopes is a subtle manner. “With a long stretch of time, I meant thousands of years.”
“Oh,” Anakin says. “So what happens if a species doesn’t adapt?”
Obi-Wan closes his eyes.
“Anakin, shall we just focus on the tournament?” he suggests, not entirely sure how they’d gotten here from a girl falling off a beam.
“Okay, Obi.”
For a few minutes, it is silent as they watch. Anakin’s face gradually turns less heated after he sips from his water as though it is something precious. A few masters cheer for their apprentices from the sidelines.
But it becomes clear that his padawan has not been paying attention when he looks up again and asks, “Do they die?”
Obi-Wan runs a tired hand across his face. “We all do eventually, Anakin.”
“No, but if the species doesn’t adapt in time?”
“Not necessarily,” he replies in what he knows is a vague manner.
Anakin is silent again, but the next question is expected by now; Obi-Wan has learned to accept that his little Padawan is full of them. “Obi? What if some don’t adapt and some do? What if they don’t fit? Do they die?” His hand tightens around Obi-Wan’s robes.
“No,” Obi-Wan says gently, sensing that the boy is taking this rather seriously. “The others will help.”
The boy frowns, pursing his lips. Obi-Wan has the feeling that the conversation isn’t merely about a hypothetical population anymore.
“Promise?”
Obi-Wan nods. “Promise.”
Anakin’s grip loosens and he turns back to the tournament as if nothing had happened.
Obi-Wan looks down at the blonde crown of his Padawan’s head and wonders what the hell he’s doing.
But he intends to keep his promise. That much he knows.
-
[7 years later]
The water thunders in his ears and Obi-Wan gasps for breath. The brutal current slams him into the rocky riverbed and his visions whites out as a sharp pain tears across his shoulderblade.
The icy water pours down his throat when he opens his mouth too soon and he chokes, trying to come up for air, but the rapid stream keeps him unable to do much but flounder for footing.
Anakin, he thinks wildly, even as he himself is smashed into an obstacle that groans underneath his weight. His ribs scream, but he uses the object to pull himself up. It is a tree trunk, he discovers when he finally emerges his head above the churning surface of the river.
Slimy moss glides away underneath his fingers, but instead of climbing onto the trunk and searching for a way to the riverbank, he frantically turns his head to look for his Padawan’s form. Their bond is flickering rapidly, both of them in too much of a panic to utilize the Force properly.
But he finds nothing across the entire area of the wide river, nor on the grassy banks or between the trees in the distance.
His grip slips and he is pulled under again, but not before bonking his head on the trunk. He refrains from opening his mouth underwater to groan.
But after a few more minutes—or was it only seconds?—of his chest constricting with the lack of air, he is finally able to place his feet down and propel himself toward the riverbank, where he desperately climbs onto the muddy land.
He coughs into the dirt, his soaked robes pulling him to the ground as he collapses there.
It isn’t long before he pulls himself up, though.
Padawan, he cries into the Force, deeply regretting bringing Anakin along to this mission.
But there is no answer. There is nothing.
Obi-Wan stumbles up, nearly falling over as he walks down the side of the river, scanning the surface for Anakin’s dark robes. Their bond is entirely silent and Obi-Wan doesn’t know what that means.
Acute fears tugs at his heart as he staggers even further, following the river upstream. The boy had been behind him, so he must still be somewhere there. Maybe he’d already gotten stranded somewhere.
He can’t swim, Obi-Wan repeats in his head, over and over. Why haven’t I taught him how to swim already?
Anakin is sixteen years old. There had been enough time.
And now it might be too late.
He searches for hours. Ignores his injuries, which are re-soaking his robes a deep red, and wanders the banks of the river like a mad man. He turns around, follows the river for miles downstream and finds nothing.
It is beginning to turn dark when he collapses against a tree and stares at the flowing water angrily.
Anakin, he tries again, but the Force is eerily quiet.
Anakin is never quiet. He is a storm of movement and laughter and snark. Obi-Wan does not recall a moment in the last few years where he has experienced silence such as this.
It scares him so deeply, he finds himself unable to keep from crying.
What kind of a master is he, to lose his young Padawan like this?
His comm is fried, but he is not worried about frivolous matters such as getting back to Coruscant. How can he worry about that when he doesn't know whether his Padawan is alive or not?
No, he thinks, and stands again. He isn't dead. He can’t be.
And Obi-Wan walks even further down as the sun sets, refusing to rest even as his body aches.
And it is not for naught.
His chest seizes with hope when he spots a lump on a sandy patch beside the river. He runs over, nearly falling over when he reaches it.
Sure enough, it's him.
“Anakin,” he gasps, relief and adrenaline causing his hands to shake as he taps his fingers against the boy’s cheek. He doesn’t stir.
He is cold. His face is bruised and scraped, padawan braid unraveled at his ear. His robes are torn and plastered to his body.
Obi-Wan hooks his hands beneath Anakin’s arms and drags him further onto the shore, since his lower legs had still been submerged in the water.
He pulls off his own cloak and wraps it around his apprentice’s body, brushing the sand off his forehead when he kneels down again. It is not necessary, but his hands stay there. On Anakin’s face, in his hair, at the pulse point in his neck.
He just needs to feel Anakin.
“Dear one, please,” he breathes when he finds Anakin’s heartbeat to be barely there. “Wake up for your old Master, would you? You know my heart doesn’t handle the stress well.”
When the boy still doesn’t move, Obi-Wan bows over his body and pressed his forehead against Anakin’s chest. He prays silently to the Force.
“Anakin.” He sucks in a shuddering breath, and then freezes when he feels the cold body beneath him twitch.
And Anakin coughs.
“Anakin!” Obi-Wan straightens and encases the boy’s head between his hands, smiling when his eyes finally open.
“Obi?” he murmurs, then coughs again. It is a harsh, painful sound.
The nickname, which Anakin had stopped calling him many years ago, causes a feeling of something equally painful as loving to pang in his heart.
“You’re okay, dear one.” He turns the boy to his side and thumps his fists against his back firmly as Anakin coughs up the remaining water in his lungs.
After, Anakin lays on his back again and stares up at Obi-Wan groggily. “You ‘kay?” he slurs, and his hand reaches up as if to touch the scrape on Obi-Wan’s cheek. But the limb falters and his grip falls into Obi-Wan’s robes instead.
Anakin’s hand stays there, fingers clenching into the cloth.
“I didn’t just cough up a whole ocean out of my lungs,” Obi-Wan says, swallowing back his emotion when he looks at the boy’s hand, entangled in his robes just like in the past.
Anakin hums a flat tone. “You look awful.”
Obi-Wan laughs fondly. Unable to help himself, he leans forward and presses his lips against Anakin’s forehead. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “We need to get you some help.” He pulls back, ignoring his Padawan’s astonished look.
“Master.”
“Yes, Padawan?” Obi-Wan responds, instantly worried that something is wrong. His gaze turns sharp as he looks the boy over again.
But Anakin merely seems stuck on his display of affection. “Did you j’st kiss me?”
“You almost died,” he defends, cheeks warming. Had it truly been that weird? He just… he doesn’t know what he would have done, had Anakin died.
“You kissed me.”
“It was only a peck on your forehead, Anakin. Don’t be dramatic.”
“You haven’t done that since I was a child.”
“You’re still a child,” he says, because he knows it annoys Anakin.
Surely enough, the boy frowns petulantly. “I’m sixteen.”
“Barely.”
He ignores Anakin’s grumbles, instead helping him up and throwing his arm around his shoulder. Supporting the younger’s frame, Obi-Wan walks them over to the grass farther from the river.
There, they follow a narrow path through the woods.
“Where are we going, Master?” Anakin eventually whines.
“North. Most of the planet’s civilizations here lie north because of the vegetational distribution.”
“How’d you know what’s north?”
Obi-Wan points to the sky with the hand that isn’t holding Anakin up. “There. The planet’s very own northern flare.”
Anakin stares up at the streaks of purple in the dark sky with wide eyes. “Woah.”
It’s another while later when the purple in the sky gets blocked by wisps of smoke. He quickly realizes that smoke means fire, which means sentients. “Almost there, Padawan,” he assures, feeling the boy’s weight growing heavier as he grows more tired.
Anakin only manages a hum, so Obi-Wan is extra glad when he spots a scattering of houses.
They are going to be alright.