Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan Kenobi threw back a handful of painkillers, swallowed the pills dry, and went back to reviewing the list of official documents the Republic required a youngling to have upon being transferred from a planet outside Republic jurisdiction to the care of the Jedi Order. It was a very long list. Obi-Wan could feel the little line between his brows deepening with every line of text he read. Sometimes he felt he could name that line “Qui-Gon Jinn.”

Did his master have any idea the kind of work taking Anakin Skywalker from a planet in Hutt Space would entail? The boy needed everything: documentation of citizenship, transfer of guardianship. They would have to draw up something approximating a birth certificate, do the calculations to translate Tatooine’s cycles to Coruscant’s with whatever the boy could remember to hazard a guess at Anakin’s age. He would require vaccination upon vaccination, quarantine for at least two weeks while his body processed them all and they got rid of whatever diseases or parasites he’d picked up on Tatooine. The last thing the Jedi needed was an outbreak of some desert virus inside the Core worlds because Master Qui-Gon hadn’t thought things through.

He never did. At least three times a Coruscanti revolution, Master Qui-Gon took a fancy to some strange, sad, dangerous thing or creature. Exotic carnivorous plants. The pet monsters of unfortunate crime lords. Pathologically clumsy blights upon existence like Jar Jar Binks. Nearly every time—Obi-Wan refused in the case of Binks—Obi-Wan was the one who ended up dealing with the ramifications. Obi-Wan sorted out what this new thing could eat—or kept it from eating younglings in the Temple. Obi-Wan trekked the thing to a physician—or veterinarian or botanist—to have its hurts all healed. Obi-Wan arranged for the thing to be moved to a sanctuary or nature preserve or adopted into a loving forever home. Qui-Gon moved on blithely complacent in having done a good deed, and Obi-Wan sometimes spent weeks recovering from the experience. Until the next time.

It wasn’t all bad. Obi-Wan was fairly sure he’d earned his honors in diplomacy cleaning up Master Qui-Gon’s messes. He’d made quite a lot of friends, and he knew he’d mastered Beast Control and learned to mimic a krayt in endeavors for Master Qui-Gon’s various foundlings. But sometimes he didn’t know what Master Qui-Gon had done before he had Obi-Wan. Sometimes he suspected it was the reason Master Dooku was so sour and the Council as a whole disapproved of Master Qui-Gon.

But Qui-Gon had outdone himself on this mission. Jar Jar alone would have been more than enough. (That Gungun was going back to his people after this, banishment be damned.) But then Qui-Gon had come up with this boy who was a headache just to look at.

Oh, Obi-Wan knew why Qui-Gon had taken Anakin Skywalker. Prophecy or no prophecy, a boy of Anakin’s strength within the Force could not be left to his own devices, particularly where they’d found him. It was a Dark Side disaster waiting to happen, even if there weren’t suddenly actual Sith around the corner just waiting to come across the boy themselves. If, more than being left to his slavery, anger, and despair, someone like Anakin Skywalker was actually captured by the forces of evil? It didn’t bear thinking about.

But taking Anakin would have consequences. He hadn’t grown up with the Jedi. He was ignorant of the tenets, bylaws, and culture and by now had missed out upon years of basic instruction in the Force. His shields were nonexistent; the psychic battery he cast out with his mere presence in the Force was . . . extreme. He was sad and fearful now; he had been ripped away from his mother after knowing her nearly a decade, by Obi-Wan’s judgment, and Anakin was old and clever enough to know they had not left Shmi Skywalker in the best of circumstances. On the contrary, the way circumstances had unfolded on Tatooine, it would be unsurprising if Watto now resented the comparatively unskilled mother to the podracer and mechanical prodigy he had actually wished to keep. In addition, Watto’s losing bets on Sebulba in the Boonta Eve Classic might have left him in dire enough financial straits to consider selling Shmi as well. According to Master Qui-Gon, the Skywalkers had had little respect for their Toydarian master, but it had not seemed as though Watto actually mistreated them. Anakin, at least, seemed healthy and relatively well adjusted, considering. Shmi Skywalker might not do so well with a different master.

Obi-Wan downloaded the last document of the several they would need and stood up in his boot box of a quarters. Queen Amidala treated her protectors well. Her ship was the height of luxury, but space was still at a premium. Obi-Wan didn’t have to bunk with the men or the handmaidens, who each shared a single-room barracks. But he could still step off his bunk, turn around, and find himself in the corridor.

He stooped to open the compartment under his bed and pulled out the spare tunic one of the queen’s soldiers had found for him after their escape from Naboo. He tossed it onto his bed. One of the people aboard the ship was bound to have an emergency sewing kit. He could cut down and take in the shirt for Anakin. Clothing on Tatooine kept the skin covered from the suns but didn’t offer sufficient warmth for deep space. Last Obi-Wan had seen Anakin, he’d been shivering in two or three extra blankets on the seat in the living area nook they had repurposed to be his bed. Surely they could do a little better than that.

He found the boy with the so-called handmaiden, Padmé. Surprisingly headstrong for a servant, that one, and always seemed to speak out when Queen Amidala was dithering over a decision. Although Qui-Gon had indicated the girl had not approved of his actions on Tatooine, she had struck up a firm friendship with Anakin himself. In turn, Anakin clearly worshipped her.

“Have you thawed out yet?” Obi-Wan asked the boy. Anakin looked up at him with those enormous blue eyes, his face thin and paler than usual inside his swathe of blankets. He said nothing, but his fear and accusation stabbed at Obi-Wan like a knife behind the eyes, despite the pain medication. Obi-Wan only just avoided wincing. “My apologies. The joke was in poor taste. Tatooine is in fact one of the most intolerably hot planets human beings can exist on. But human beings are also one of the more adaptable sapient species. It’s what you’re used to, and space is cold for everyone. I imagine it must be quite painful for you.”

“I always wanted to fly on a starship,” Anakin said. His voice was small. “I want to go talk to the engineers and the pilot. I want to see how she works, but every time I try—” he shrugged out of his blankets and immediately started shivering again. Not little shivers, either. Enormous, debilitating ones which shook his limbs so badly he must find it difficult to walk. “I hate it,” Anakin concluded, pulling his blanket back around himself and scowling. “It’s dumb that you’re all fine and I’m stuck here, like a baby, almost.”

“You will adjust in time,” Obi-Wan promised. “I know a girl not too much older than you back at the temple on Coruscant, the apprentice of my friend, Quinlan. Aayla is from a desert world too. When she first came to the Jedi Order, many years ago, she could hardly walk anywhere without shivering. Now, she’s as bold as they come, and not usually bothered with wearing heavy clothes even aboard starships.”

Anakin frowned. “She didn’t take years to get that way, though, did she? I don’t wanna spend years like this.”

“You won’t,” Padmé promised in her turn. “Padawan Kenobi is right: human beings are adaptable. It usually only takes a few weeks to adjust to a new planet.”

“How many planets have you gone to?” Anakin asked the girl.

“Not as many as the Jedi,” she answered. “A few. In company with the queen on diplomatic visits.”

“Dip-lo-mat-ic?” Anakin asked, sounding out the word and frowning again.

“Diplomatic,” Obi-Wan repeated. “Trips where the queen was being friendly to other planets, usually to make a treaty, take part in a formal celebration, or improve trade.” He would have to watch his words with Anakin, he saw. Although Anakin was passably fluent in Basic, Obi-Wan did not think it was the child’s first language. On Tatooine, Huttese would be far more prevalent. “Actually, I was wondering if I could speak with the two of you,” he said. “I was hoping to get a better understanding of the way you left. Given the person we saw toward the end of our visit to Tatooine, the Council will want my report of what happened as well as Master Qui-Gon’s. I’ve seen his reports, and spoken with him briefly, but sometimes it helps to get another point of view. After all, for most of our time on Tatooine, I was on the ship.”

“You mean the Council will be worried about that guy who almost ran me over,” Anakin said. “He was wild! I thought only Jedi carried those laser swords, but I guess Mister Qui-Gon was right and other people can have them after all. What do you want to know? I didn’t see him much either. Mister Qui-Gon had me and Padmé run away as fast as we could. I’m pretty fast, but I’ve never run like that. That guy was scary.”

“Yes, he was,” Obi-Wan agreed. “But I was hoping you could tell me more about what happened before that, when Qui-Gon found you at Watto’s, and afterward.”

Anakin and Padmé didn’t have much to say that Obi-Wan hadn’t extrapolated from Master Qui-Gon’s calls during their trip, from their short debriefing afterward, and from his own personal observation. That wasn’t the point. Anakin gave him a lurid blow-by-blow account of the Boonta Eve Classic, the superiority of his own podracer, and the dirty tricks of one Sebulba, and as he did so, his presence relaxed and brightened within the Force. His eyes lit up; a glow of health and excitement returned to his small, pale face; and his blanket cocoon even loosened around him. Padmé inserted the occasional remark about Anakin or Qui-Gon’s recklessness; the queen’s displeasure at Master Qui-Gon having, at one point, put their entire ship up as collateral for the entrance fee; and her own amazement when Anakin had managed to repair his damaged pod not once but twice at crisis points during the race.

“Impressive,” Obi-Wan said as they finished the account of the big pod race. “From what I understand, the winner of the Boonta Eve Classic comes in for some substantial winnings. Yet Master Qui-Gon’s half and your racing pod could not win both you and your mother from Watto?”

Padmé frowned, and Anakin’s face fell. Misery climbed in the Force again, and Obi-Wan did his best to wall his mind against it. “I’m worth a lot,” Anakin said. “I tried to be, so Watto wouldn’t sell us back to the Hutts or something. He’s a grumpy cheat, and he gambles too much, but he didn’t hit us or anything, and it was better business to keep us fed and healthy and doing all the work he didn’t wanna than to sell us. A lot of that junk he sold was worth more when I was done with it. He coulda been rich, if he didn’t gamble everything away as soon as he got it, and he always thought the next time he would win.” Anakin shrugged. “Mister Qui-Gon coulda got Mom real easy with just some of those winnings, even after going back to pay the entrance fee. He couldn’t’ve got me too.” After a moment, Anakin said, “Mom’s nice. Well behaved. Really smart, and not half as much trouble as me. But she’s not as skilled, you know? And she’s getting kind of old. For Tatooine.”

For a female human slave on Tatooine, he meant. The suns tended to age humans prematurely. The warning docs the Jedi had on Tatooine said humans on the planet often didn’t live to half of their potential lifespan. Cancers were common. Female slaves were often more valued for their beauty or fertility than their ability for hard labor. Shmi Skywalker’s value would be decreasing every revolution, and could never have been worth much to a junker like Watto in the first place. He had probably only taken her to care for Anakin; the boy would have been too young to care for himself all the time when Watto had first obtained him.

“I wonder,” Obi-Wan mused aloud. “The Jedi don’t go in much for wealth or possessions, but for the mother of the boy whose death-defying heroics won her an escape in a time of crisis—”

Padmé understood. “I will speak with the queen,” she said. She turned to Anakin. She reached out to grip his forearm. “Anakin, I make no promises. We used all of the resources we had to repair the ship and free you from Watto. My planet is under blockade by the Trade Federation. The queen’s life is in danger, and even if she escapes, she may not be queen for much longer. But if she is, if the Senate steps in to help, we may be able to return to Tatooine someday, with more money. We could buy your mother too. I’m sure the queen would want this.”

Anakin regarded Padmé. “I know you’re all in trouble,” he said. “Mom knew Mister Qui-Gon couldn’t get both of us out. She wanted me to go with you. She wanted me free, even if she had to stay with Watto. And she knew I might not be able to come back.” His lip trembled, and his eyes shone. He swallowed. “I’ll be okay, Padmé, Mister Obi-Wan. She told me I would be. You don’t have to go back and get her. I know it’d be really hard.”

“It will be hard,” Padmé agreed. “But doing the right thing is never easy. We try to do it anyway, when we can.” She squeezed Anakin’s arm. “If we can, Ani. We will come back for your mother.”

“Thank you,” Anakin said in a small voice. His eyes overflowed then. He bowed his head, muttered a curse in Huttese, and dashed his arm across his eyes. Padmé gave his arm another squeeze, got up from her place beside him, and walked away, tucking a small, white ornament into a pocket as she did so.

Obi-Wan sat quietly on the seat opposite the boy’s until he’d finished crying. That had been a good day’s work. Padmé Naberrie was kind and compassionate, and she was the type to keep her word. Anakin had helped them. She would remember it, and if she was in a position to do so, when the war on her planet was over, she would leverage any royal resources she needed to free Shmi Skywalker. Knowing she would do so would put Anakin’s mind at ease, and if she actually managed it, the boy could go into a life with the Jedi without the drawback of knowing his mother still suffered. Alternatively, he could return to her to a new life in freedom.

“‘m sorry,” Anakin muttered, rubbing his eyes.

“For what?” Obi-Wan asked. “You have done and seen a great deal in a very short period of time, Anakin. You should give yourself some time to rest and recover. I’m not certain I would not be a similar disaster if I had nearly died in a podrace, left my home, nearly been run over by an assassin, then left my entire planet with a ship full of strangers, and all within the last standard rotation.”

“Been pretty intense,” Anakin agreed.

“When I’ve gone through a lot in the past few days, I usually look for something to eat,” Obi-Wan suggested. “That can help things feel a bit more normal.”

“Qui-Gon showed me the mess over there when I came aboard,” Anakin said, wrinkling his nose and jerking his head at the community table and the window into the galley. “Nothing there looked or smelled much like food.”

“Military rations,” Obi-Wan said. “And deep space supplies. Let’s see if we can’t whip something up with them anyway.” He rose and called back over his shoulder. “Bring the blankets, if you like.”

He probably cooked more of the supplies than he should, trying to figure out what Anakin would (or could) eat. Obi-Wan’s first instinct was to offer Anakin dehydrated fruit—fruits were good for humans, and all children loved sugar—except Anakin did not love sugar, and the sweetness of the fruit Obi-Wan offered him nearly set him vomiting. He was very nervous about boiling anything, and it wasn’t until Obi-Wan persuaded Anakin to try and clean himself (after a final meal of seared protein blocks and hardtack, with far more spices than Obi-Wan would have thought to add initially), that Obi-Wan realized why. Then, he wanted to kick himself.

Any water on Tatooine had to be farmed in a high-labor, highly tech-intensive process. Even then, water was reserved first for drinking and then for coolant to keep the machines working. Using it to bathe or cook was an unthinkable luxury for someone of Anakin’s class. They went dirty, or took the odd communal shower beneath sonic heads that were faulty as often as not.

Anakin, who had relaxed still more over dinner and cooking dinner, had a panic attack when he saw Obi-Wan was asking him to take an actual water shower.

“Nu-uh! What will we drink?! It could be a whole week to Coruscant, Mister Qui-Gon said, and I—I’m not worth it, Mister Obi-Wan. Just hand me a damp cloth or something, I’ll be fine—”

“Anakin!” Obi-Wan broke in with effort. He went down on his knees in front of the boy, which actually left him several centimeters shorter. He grasped Anakin by the shoulders—the boy had finally left his blankets in the mess, although he still shivered intermittently. “The water doesn’t vanish, Anakin,” he said, once he was certain the child was listening. “It goes to tanks beneath the floor of this level. Then pumps carry it to a purification chamber within the inner workings of the ship. The water is recycled, and we can use it again.”

Anakin’s eyes were wide and frightened. He gripped Obi-Wan’s arms right back, and his fingers held with impressive strength. He was silent for a moment, and Obi-Wan pushed his pain aside, waiting. “That—that makes sense,” Anakin said finally. “Yeah, that makes sense. Sorry, I—that was dumb, I—”

“Naboo, where this ship is from, actually has very large oceans and a semi-aquatic native species,” Obi-Wan told Anakin. “All their ships come well equipped with water to spare. Some Gungun vessels even have entire rooms for swimming.”

“I’d like to see that!” Anakin said. “Have you seen a lot of starships, Mister Obi-Wan?”

“A fair few,” Obi-Wan admitted. “We can talk about it after you shower, perhaps. You smell like sweat and engine oil.”

“It’s not that bad,” Anakin said defensively. “I’ve been dirtier!” Obi-Wan looked at him, and Anakin shrank. “What if I drown, though?” he asked in a smaller voice.

“I’d advise not breathing in the water,” Obi-Wan said. “It should be easy enough to avoid. Showers usually rain down enough water to get you clean, without making it difficult for you to access air.”

“Can you—” Anakin started. He stopped and looked down at his feet.

“Can I what?” Obi-Wan asked.

“Can you wait for me here?” Anakin asked finally, gesturing around at the fresher’s antechamber where they stood, by the ship’s three community sinks. “Can you listen? Just—just in case?”

Obi-Wan counted to five inside his head. This should be Qui-Gon’s job, he thought. His master was most likely with the queen’s security team or with the queen and her handmaidens, planning their next moves when they returned to Coruscant, which was all very well and good, as their actual mission now was defending the queen. But Qui-Gon had picked this child up off his homeworld, and Qui-Gon should be the one making certain the boy didn’t implode in a chaos of fear and anxiety in the aftermath. Instead, he had simply left Anakin to his own devices. The boy was free! He had been rescued from a dire predicament, and, as usual, Qui-Gon had assumed that was enough.

There were docs to prepare, that soldier’s shirt to cut and size down for Anakin back in his quarters. And Obi-Wan really did need to write that secondary report for the Council, even if the Council would only truly care about Obi-Wan’s impressions of the last five minutes of their detour to Tatooine. He really did not want to spend the rest of his evening holding Anakin Skywalker’s hand—metaphorically—through his first water shower and, likely, through his first whole night off his homeworld at this rate. The boy had raced the Boonta Eve Classic. Surely he could handle a bit of water falling from the ceiling.

But . . . it was Anakin’s first water shower. And if Qui-Gon wasn’t going to hold his hand, someone had to do it.

“I’ll stay,” Obi-Wan promised.

Forty-five seconds into his shower, Anakin Skywalker stopped yelling about drowning and started to enjoy himself. From the other side of the privacy wall, seated on a maintenance stool, Obi-Wan talked Anakin through the intricacies of using soap, and by the time Anakin swore he was cleaner than he’d ever been in his life, he sounded as disgusted with the whole process as Obi-Wan would have expected from any other boy his age.

Obi-Wan tossed a towel around the privacy wall for Anakin. The boy grumbled about how much easier things were in a sonic, and came out fully dressed, albeit with small wet spots spreading on his dirty clothes. He held the towel, which was, naturally, completely dry.

“You use that to dry off,” Obi-Wan told him, nodding at the towel.

Anakin shook his head. “I didn’t want the water to get trapped,” he explained. “If it doesn’t go down the drain, how can it be recycled in that tank thing you talked about? Hey, can you take me to see that?”

“The towels are washed too, eventually, just like you are,” Obi-Wan said. “Your clothes as well, for that matter. The water from that wash goes back in the tanks. And aren’t you wasting water now? The water that is seeping into your dirty clothes?”

“I stamped as much as I could off,” Anakin said. “I told you the sonic was easier. There’s so much left over in that shower. And what about the tanks?”

“I don’t know where they are on this class of starship,” Obi-Wan said. “Only that they exist. We could go speak to the engineer tomorrow, perhaps.”

“Like I wanted before,” Anakin agreed. “It should be easier, now I’m ad-just-ing to the c-c-c—” he broke off, shivering again, harder than he had since supper.

“Another thing that towel does is keep the water from cooling down your body temperature too much,” Obi-Wan observed. He snatched it from Anakin’s hand and draped it over the boy’s head and shoulders. “Rub your hair with it,” he instructed. “It takes longer to dry than the rest of you. Let’s head back to where you left your blankets.”

“Sure,” Anakin said, wringing out handfuls of his hair into the towel with one hand. His other reached out to take Obi-Wan’s hand. Obi-Wan tensed for a moment and missed half a beat on his next step. He hadn’t been expecting the easy affection from a boy of Anakin’s age. Younglings in the creche often craved, even needed physical contact. On volunteer shifts there, the crechemasters had taught Obi-Wan to give it to them. By Anakin’s age, they had learned a measure of propriety with older Jedi. Looking forward to their own future apprenticeships, they sought to present an image of duty and self-control to anyone who might be looking for a Padawan or know someone who was. Their affection was kept to their own peer group.

Anakin didn’t know. He was ignorant of Temple etiquette and mannerisms. Until yesterday, he had been an ordinary little boy living with his mother, unbothered with the necessity of keeping to his place within the Order hierarchy.

And within the Force . . .

Obi-Wan swallowed. Within the Force, at the moment, Anakin was a beacon of peace and contentment. At the moment, his fears and sadness and anxieties were forgotten. He blazed with trust and courage, with hope for the future. With Light. Obi-Wan’s headache had gone. His spirit eased, curled up within his chest, and sighed—both with a surge of his own satisfaction and contentment and a small, farther-off part of him that noted he had a lot of work ahead.

He wrapped his fingers around Anakin’s hand, and the two of them walked on.

Chapter Text

By the fifth day of the voyage to Coruscant, Obi-Wan didn’t know if he wanted to hit Master Qui-Gon or thank him. Naturally, Jar Jar was still an irritation. They couldn’t very well space him simply for being annoying, so he continued to fumble around the ship breaking things and getting in everyone’s way. But you eventually learned to ignore Jar Jar Binks, except when some of his quieter remarks alerted you that he had broken something particularly crucial and was truly concerned, rather than screaming in a silly bout of panic or surprise as usual.

Anakin . . . would not be ignored. He was useful in fixing the things Jar Jar broke. In that way, Qui-Gon’s two new foundlings canceled one another out. In others, Anakin was by far the more troublesome of their guests.

By the third day, Anakin had adjusted to the temperature aboard the queen’s ship. He still complained, but he no longer needed to be cocooned at all hours except when he had recently had a hot meal. He regained his mobility and subsequently showed himself to be possessed of even more than the usual reserves of energy available to a small boy. He was in constant motion, particularly his mouth, which never ceased asking questions.

Qui-Gon sometimes answered them. He would take half an hour each around breakfast and supper to check in on Anakin. He would tell him things about the Jedi Order or answer Anakin’s questions about their journey so far. Ask what Anakin had found out each day or what he thought of it. Sometimes he would recommend an instructional holo or find some instructional diagrams of starship interiors for the boy, if he felt like putting in extra effort to keep Anakin entertained. But usually, Master Qui-Gon proceeded to his private quarters to read or meditate, or to the queen’s chambers to confer with her and with her security team on their procedure moving forward. Anakin would be left to his own devices for the rest of the day. And Anakin, left to his own devices, would quickly put aside the holo Qui-Gon had set in front of him or the plans he had procured in favor of going to examine the actual engine and systems of their ship—or tagging along with Obi-Wan. Sometimes it was tantamount to having a second, very inquisitive shadow.

How did the pilot navigate the hyperspace routes between Tatooine and Coruscant? How did they avoid crashing into other ships along the lanes and exploding with enough force to split the galaxy? (Anakin, like many imaginative small children, could get particularly gruesome in his imaginings at times.) How did the water recycling system work? Would another class ship get from Tatooine to Coruscant any faster? Could the Sith trace them? If so, how did Obi-Wan think he would be doing it? What would the queen do when they got to Coruscant? What did Obi-Wan think Qui-Gon would do when they got to Coruscant? What was it like in the Jedi Temple?

Obi-Wan was flattered, even honored at how Anakin seemed to trust and even like and admire him. He had never been a hit in his rotations to the Temple creche. He wasn’t fun. He wasn’t strong enough with the Force to be particularly impressive, nor was his master one of the more popular among the Temple set. His adventures had not usually been the sort that were appropriate to share with the youngest of the Order, so they naturally assumed he had not had any. Younglings in general thought Obi-Wan boring, followed his instructions when it was his turn to instruct them, and perked up much more when their next instructors and minders came in.

Anakin, on the contrary, had difficulty following Obi-Wan’s instructions, not usually out of any innate unwillingness but more often because he got excited about investigating something and forgot. And on only five days’ acquaintance, with no foundation in experience or reality, he seemed to have developed the most exaggerated ideas of Obi-Wan’s capabilities as a Jedi purely because he, Anakin, happened to know and like Obi-Wan. He seemed certain Obi-Wan was incredible with a lightsaber and was always pestering to hear more about Obi-Wan’s travels and adventures. After his morning or evening sessions with Qui-Gon, Anakin would cross-reference what Qui-Gon had told him about the Jedi with Obi-Wan, directing his follow-up questions to Obi-Wan instead of his master.

“Why don’t you ask Master Qui-Gon some of these things you’re so curious about?” Obi-Wan laughed one evening, half-amused and half-despairing. “He is my master, after all, and I am just the apprentice.” One of the first things he had explained to Anakin was that “master” meant “teacher” to the Jedi and not “owner” or “overlord.” Anakin had accepted the definition without difficulty but still seemed to prefer the still courteous but more informal degradation of “Mister” for Qui-Gon, and often applied it to Obi-Wan as well.

“Yeah, but you already know a lot,” Anakin replied blithely. He threw a small ball Padmé had found for him somewhere up at the ceiling and caught it again as it came down. “Anyway, an apprentice helps the master, right? You’re Mister Qui-Gon’s helper. He’s like the captain or designer of a ship. You’re like its engineer. Mister Qui-Gon decides where to go and what to do. You make sure everything works. Anyway, you don’t mind answering, do you?”

He asked it like a question but was so confident in Obi-Wan’s answer that Obi-Wan almost bristled. “Sometimes I don’t know the things you want me to tell you, Anakin,” he explained.

Anakin shrugged. “Then you find out,” he said. “Or I ask Mister Qui-Gon the next day, or we don’t know.” Obi-Wan had indeed done more than a few late-night holonet archives searches in the past few days to answer some of Anakin’s more arcane questions. “It’s okay when you don’t know stuff. I don’t know lots of stuff. I just ask more questions, or play around until I find out what I don’t know. That’s what an apprentice is supposed to do, right? And I’m gonna be a Jedi apprentice. Like you!” He tossed the ball to Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan caught it and tossed it back. Anakin grinned.

“I suppose you have me there,” Obi-Wan admitted.

“Then I’ll just keep asking you more stuff,” Anakin said. “Anyway, you like it when you do know. I can tell. You even like finding out when you don’t know.” He stressed the last sentence and rolled his eyes. Despite his casual manner, Anakin was not particularly enjoying his position of near-total ignorance about the Jedi, Obi-Wan knew. He was much more comfortable explaining to the mechanics and engineers aboard the ship how he had done things differently when he built his pod. Everyone enjoyed ruling over their own spheres of competence. Study and research was not one of the more popular ones. But it was interesting Anakin had noticed that Obi-Wan did enjoy it. Obi-Wan smiled. Sometimes, Anakin was nearly charming enough to make up for all the questions.

He was able to arrange a few hours a day for himself to work on other matters by persuading the pilot and engineer aboard the queen’s vessel to let Anakin spend time poking around the systems. He talked Padmé into “persuading the queen” to allow Anakin to share Padmé’s maintenance duties on the R2-D2 astromech as well. The droid needed some care after its exposure to the sands on Tatooine, and both Anakin and Padmé enjoyed this time. For Padmé, it was an hour of escape each day, where she didn’t have to concern herself with what was happening to her home planet or what she or anyone else would need to do about it, where she didn’t have to do or be anything but a girl, a girl barely into her teens. As for Anakin, he adored the droid almost as much as he adored Padmé and always came back to Obi-Wan full of praise for both. Padmé was nice, Padmé was smart, Padmé wasn’t boring at all like some girls could be. Padmé smelled nice, and Padmé liked him. She said he was the smartest, bravest boy she knew. And did Obi-Wan know R2-D2 had magna-locks on his legs and multidirectional rockets? Had Obi-Wan seen the logic programs on that droid? Padmé said the queen wouldn’t even mind if Anakin adapted them, so Artoo could solve problems when a starship wasn’t even in a battle. Anakin could make him into a real war droid, probably. Upgrade his laser and some other stuff, and no one would even know all the stuff Artoo could do because he would still look like just an astromech. Artoo could be like a secret agent droid for Padmé and the queen, and if he got hurt, they could just fix him again, or Anakin could do it for them.

Sometimes Obi-Wan thought Anakin would be much better suited for one of the Jedi assistance corps than he was for the Order itself, despite his strength in the Force. The boy truly was a genius with ships and machines. He had expected the pilot and the engineer to complain about all the questions Anakin asked, the systems he wanted to dismantle and analyze while their ship was still in flight. Instead, Varel, the ship’s engineer, expressed considerable regret that Anakin would be leaving them when the ship docked on Coruscant. “If he were six years older, I’d hire him in a heartbeat,” he told Obi-Wan. “Kid’d probably work me out of my job in two months, though, even working part-time after academy or something. D’you think he talks to them? The engines? The machines? That something you can do with the Force?”

“He is almost certainly using the Force to augment his understanding of where the pieces of the whole are and how they work together,” Obi-Wan said, “but the desire to do so, the love of the machines, the work—that’s all Anakin, from what I can tell.”

Varel was silent a moment, regarding the boy where he crouched over the open casing of the ship’s hyperdrive. “Yeah, love, Kenobi, you said it. Of the machines, the work. That’s just it. I’ve seen captains love ships like that kid does. Mechanics who’ve been in the job for fifty years. Ships and droids’ll sometimes respond to them like they do to that kid—they’ll say the machines tell them what’s wrong. But Skywalker knows at his age, about everything. Stuff he doesn’t own, systems he’s never even seen or heard of before.” He shook his head. “Damn, if he was six years older, or even the queen’s age, maybe. He could make so many credits.”

Anakin was with Varel the morning they were scheduled to land on Coruscant. He had expressed interest in what would happen to the ship as they came out of hyperspace, navigated into orbit around the planet, and began the landing sequence at the docks between the Senate building and the Temple. Obi-Wan was using the time to finish adding the details on Anakin’s application for a Republic citizenship and birth certificate when Qui-Gon knocked upon the open door frame.

“Always busy, aren’t you, Obi-Wan?” he said.

“Did you need me for something, Master?”

“Not as such, though it feels as though I’ve seen little enough of you this journey. I expected you would have more interest in Queen Amidala’s plans for her address to the Senate.”

“Whatever plan survives contact with the enemy,” Obi-Wan replied. “The Trade Federation’s grip upon its allies in the Senate will make response to her pleas difficult. I imagine the Senate will be more concerned with the economies of the systems the corporation serves than the lives of a few billion Naboo and Gunguns, particularly as the Gunguns do not yet have their own representative. Besides, if there were anything I needed to know, I expected you would tell me. Or Padmé Naberrie might.”

Qui-Gon’s mouth twitched within his beard at Obi-Wan’s tone on that last sentence. “You’ve picked up on their subterfuge, have you? Sabé, a rather terrifyingly competent bodyguard with a superficial resemblance to Padmé, is the name of the handmaiden sitting the throne when Padmé feels she is most useful elsewhere. Or in danger. Or simply cannot stand the ceremony any longer. You and Anakin have been kind to her these past few days, offering her some measure of distraction.”

“Anakin doesn’t know,” Obi-Wan said. “And I’m certain he would endeavor to persuade Queen Amidala to abandon her royal duties for an hour each day to tinker with that pampered astromech even if he did. Most likely, he would succeed.”

“Yes, she has a fondness for droids, and developed one for Anakin back on Tatooine. I wasn’t initially happy she insisted on joining us for our excursion to Mos Espa—she would have been safer on the ship. But in retrospect, it probably helped Anakin to find a friend closer to his own age when we met. I believe he has found you easy to relate with as well.”

Obi-Wan frowned. “If I’ve overstepped, Master—”

“No, Obi-Wan, I’ve been grateful,” Qui-Gon assured him. “It’s been many years since I’ve been around a child Anakin’s age. You were older when you came to me . . . and rather different.”

“That’s one way of putting it.” Obi-Wan’s apprenticeship to Qui-Gon had not had the most auspicious beginning, nor had Obi-Wan himself been in the best frame of mind to begin, the first or second times. It had taken years for the two of them to grow into a working partnership. Things generally worked well now. Obi-Wan had learned a great deal from Master Qui-Gon, and he believed he was useful to his master more often than not. But he knew he had not been the easiest apprentice to train. Sullen, angry, untrusting, stubborn. The master who trained Anakin would deal with a whole other set of challenges.

Qui-Gon raised his eyebrows—“You, for example, had much greater focus and respect for tradition than I believe Anakin will,” he said lightly. He had sensed the train of Obi-Wan’s thoughts.

“No, Anakin comes wholly ignorant of traditions most masters don’t even consider their students will have to know,” Obi-Wan said. “I’ve been wondering whether he might be better off in basic lessons with the initiates or privately tutored until he’s up to speed. There are benefits and drawbacks to either scenario. The one might help him gain more rapid acceptance and assimilation into the wider Order, but, on the other hand he is rather—” Obi-Wan hesitated.

Qui-Gon nodded. “Yes. Off Tatooine, his presence is even more overwhelming than before. Coruscant, the Temple, the other Force adepts there will camouflage him somewhat, but the Force adepts there are also more likely to be sensitive to his broadcasts. Baji, the queen’s medic, mentioned he’s had to give you several painkillers.”

“Have you not had to take any?” Obi-Wan asked. “Anakin is—he’s—”

“Quite,” Qui-Gon concurred. “And yes, a few. I have not been spending the time with him that you have, however. One of the first lessons Anakin will need is how to shield himself from other Force sensitive beings.”

“He’ll need more than that,” Obi-Wan said. “I suspect he’ll need an entirely custom curriculum. You can’t plop him in the basic classes across the board: He’s so advanced in maths, mechanics, and robotics he could contribute to the corps as is or make a fortune in new patents, and he’s already thinking on a level with children several years his senior. He will be bored and miserable if he is entirely relegated to an education with our five- and six-year-old comparable initiates, and the questions he is certain to ask may harm them. On the other hand, I’m not entirely sure he’s even literate. He knows next to nothing about the Jedi ways or a being’s rights under Republic law. History, diplomacy, etiquette—by his age, an initiate in the Temple would have been well on in the first lightsaber form and begun on one or two others that interested him. Anakin hasn’t started learning even the earliest katas. If you place him with a master immediately and send him out to learn things in the field, he is bound to misrepresent Republic law, Jedi culture, or both, and do more harm than good.”

Obi-Wan picked up a second datapad he had been working with the past few days. “I’ve written out some ideas, places the Council or a master could start with Anakin. Along with the vaccinations and medical treatments he is likely to need—we’ll want the surgery to completely remove his detonation chip, certainly. It’s deactivated now, but explosives within his body could be hazardous on a mission, and it would certainly be beneficial to Anakin’s state of mind to have them out. If you could take a look—”

Qui-Gon did take the datapad. He looked it over, and his eyebrows rose as he did. Then he looked back over at Obi-Wan. “This is substantial work, Padawan. You truly have bonded with him, haven’t you?”

Obi-Wan could feel himself start to flush. He released his embarrassment into the Force. Qui-Gon wasn’t accusing him of an inappropriate attachment as he sometimes had done in the past. His master’s tone was complimentary. Pleased. “Someone had to handle the details of taking Anakin from Tatooine, Master. I suppose I’m just used to feeding the foundlings you bring into our lives.”

“Padawan—” Qui-Gon started, then broke off, looking back at the list Obi-Wan had made. “Obi-Wan, what would you say if I put you forward for your trials upon our return to Coruscant?”

Obi-Wan blinked, confused. “I didn’t believe you thought I was ready,” he answered. “You’re always telling me how much more I have to learn.”

Qui-Gon smiled. “No master ever truly believes his student ready to leave his tutelage. There is always more to learn. But we learn as knights and masters too. Master Windu is still developing his personal form of lightsaber fighting. Master Yoda spends so much time among the younglings because he says they see things in fresh new ways. So you, too, will learn, even apart from me. It might be good for you, to have to figure things out for yourself. Work with other Jedi.”

“Are you dissatisfied with the work we do together?” Obi-Wan asked.

“Not at all,” Qui-Gon assured him. “I have been, at times far in the past, when you needed to grow more than I felt I could teach you at the moment or were otherwise unreceptive to my teachings. Or, perhaps, when I failed you. But for several years now you’ve been a great help to me. We are very different Jedi, but I am proud of the person you have become and honored, I hope, to call you friend.”

“Of course, Master,” Obi-Wan said hastily, embarrassed once again. “But you’re right that I have much to learn—I cannot connect with the Living Force as you do—”

“Your strengths may lie in other areas,” Qui-Gon said. “Obi-Wan, you are capable. Never think you are not. You have grown wise, insightful, and compassionate. You’re a gifted swordsman, diplomat, and tactician who knows more of war than most. If the Sith have truly returned, the Jedi at large will need you more than I will. And perhaps someone else as well.” He tapped Obi-Wan’s datapad and handed it back.

Obi-Wan stared as he realized what Qui-Gon was implying. “You mean Anakin?” he asked, horror struck. “Master, it wasn’t my idea to remove Anakin from his planet and his mother. You did right, yet—I foresee great difficulties in ever training Anakin to be a Jedi Knight. He is a wonderful being who risked his life to do us all a great service. He deserves a future free of poverty and slavery and abuse. A future where he can achieve all the great heights of which he is capable. But training that—that’s for you and the Council to figure out.”

“And yet, it seems you’ve already put quite a lot of work into the problem,” Qui-Gon pointed out, gesturing toward the datapad.

“Only because someone had to, and in the middle of all that is happening with the blockade, I judged you were too busy!” Obi-Wan protested. “I never attempted to—I wasn’t trying to be his master, or tell his masters what they should do, I—”

Realizing he had, in fact, laid out a plan doing exactly that, Obi-Wan fell silent.

Qui-Gon put a hand upon his shoulder. “Calm yourself, Padawan. You’ve done well with this, with him. Anakin obviously trusts and admires you. He is comfortable and content within your company, and everything written here—and I suspect over there—” he indicated the other datapads on Obi-Wan’s rumpled comforter. Obi-Wan suppressed a wild urge to hide them. “It did need to be done,” Qui-Gon finished. “As I’ve said, I’m grateful, but I suggest we meditate together on why you felt the urge to do it.”

“I just—” Obi-Wan growled and turned away. “You bring something home. I take care of it. It’s how it works! I never meant to—”

“Padawan,” Qui-Gon rebuked him.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan acknowledged. He fell into an easy breathing pattern and released his confusion, irritation, and sudden sense of panic into the Force. His master was right: they needed to meditate together on this, though Obi-Wan was more interested in examining the roots of his own feelings of anxiety upon being told he might be ready for his trials. He was older than several of his peers for knighthood. He should be happy Qui-Gon finally seemed ready to let go.

And maybe he would be, if the reason Qui-Gon Jinn finally seemed to think he had grown up wasn't he’d gone and made some lists on how to handle Anakin Skywalker and now Qui-Gon was under the impression that Obi-Wan might be able to do the handling, he thought, with a sudden desire to cry and laugh at once. There was a reason Obi-Wan was old for the trials!

“To my quarters, I think,” Qui-Gon said, eyeing Obi-Wan’s closet beyond the pair of them. “I doubt there’s room for you to sit on the floor beside your bed, let alone the both of us.”

“As you wish, Master.” Obi-Wan fell into step beside Qui-Gon, and the two walked the five paces down the corridor to Qui-Gon’s larger room, a decent guest cabin with a single bed and its own private half fresher and clothing cabinet. Qui-Gon folded himself down into a meditation position, and Obi-Wan sat opposite his old master.

“If you’re going to put me forward for the trials anyway, you should take him,” Obi-Wan said quietly. “I agree he won’t be one for tradition. That should be just your style. Anyway, you’re the one who thinks he might be the Chosen One of the prophecy.”

“You don’t?” Qui-Gon asked, eyebrows raised.

Obi-Wan looked down at the ground between them, half searching his feelings and half wishing to bury them. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Anakin is . . . something. Something I’ve never seen or felt before. But the prophecies have always been uncertain. All I know is that he needs and deserves to have our help.”

He felt Qui-Gon’s pleasure and gratitude at the statement ring and echo in the Force, like the tolling of a bell. “And suddenly, I wonder if that’s not all Anakin really needs,” he replied. “Someone who sees that in him, without all of the additional expectations. Come. Let us meditate. We will search our feelings and ask the Force for guidance on what must be done for Anakin.”

It was good to find some quiet beside his master again, Obi-Wan thought. It had been a long, difficult week. He fell into an appropriate breathing pattern, focused on the feeling of the floor beneath him, the hum of the ship’s engines, and the feeling of being together with Master Qui-Gon, focused on a single objective. He felt the ship’s drive to move within the Force, the worries and concerns of the beings aboard her. He connected with the crystal inside his lightsaber and touched the crystal inside of Qui-Gon’s. He felt his lungs fill with air and release it and his heart beating inside his rib cage and let his mind drift away, and as it did, the Force unfolded before him.

Qui-Gon made a noise of discomfort then, and Obi-Wan winced. Both of them opened their eyes and turned their heads to look at the small boy standing in the open doorway, the hot, blazing curiosity that had only just come into their orbit. As ever, Anakin was comparable to a nova or some other great celestial event within the Living Force. At the moment, there was also a tangle of loneliness and envy at his center as he looked at them, mingled with hints of anxiety and fear.

“Something was happening,” he explained. “I . . . I felt it, across the ship. What are you guys doing?”

“We were reaching out to the Force together, Anakin,” Qui-Gon explained. “Quieting our minds and finding a sense of calm, then stretching out with our feelings to determine our next steps regarding you when we return to the Temple.”

Anakin’s anxiety spiked within the Force. The emotions around him whipped and swirled. “What do you mean, next steps? I’m gonna be a Jedi, right? You told me I was gonna be a Jedi.”

“Certainly you will join our Order in some capacity,” Obi-Wan told him, “but there are still many questions as to how, Anakin. Will you become an initiate or a Padawan Learner? Who will be your teacher, or teachers, and how should we prepare them to best help you? Will you be happiest as a Jedi Knight, like Master Qui-Gon, or perhaps in one of our service corps as a pilot or an engineer? You have many skills, Anakin, but also many needs that are unique to you. We want to be sure we can recommend to the Jedi Council the best way they can help you. Know that, whatever happens, you are free now. You will be cared for, educated, and provided for. And none of the friends you have made on this ship will forget you or what you have done. I am certain all of us will be happy to know you far into the future.”

Anakin walked into the room. He sat between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, though turned mostly toward Obi-Wan. “You guys have pilots and engineers in the Jedi? Do they fight with lightsabers and help free planets like Naboo too?”

“Sometimes,” Qui-Gon answered. “Some of the corps specialize in piloting or mechanical support, as Obi-Wan has said. Some Jedi Knights and masters choose to develop other talents and interests as well. We are a diverse order, Anakin. There are diplomats and covert agents among us, warriors as well as scholars. There are Jedi who spend their entire careers in a single system, and Jedi who never stay on any planet for more than two months together. Jedi who fight with one blade, or two, or eschew a lightsaber altogether in favor of a staff or some other weapon. We have Jedi who enjoy cooking, Jedi who paint, and Jedi who fly and fix starships. You could find a place among us. You are bright and gifted within the Force. You just as easily could determine, when you learn more, that the tenets, or rules of our Order are not for you, and you would prefer to join one of the corps, who live honorable and often exciting lives but are not bound to as strict a code of behavior as we are.”

“So, I could be a Jedi and a pilot too, and go to all kinds of worlds someday,” Anakin summarized, “but you’re saying there’s a lot of rules. And these corps maybe don’t have so many, but they aren’t Jedi Knights like you and Obi-Wan either.”

“I’m not a knight, Anakin,” Obi-Wan corrected him. “I have yet to pass my trials to earn a knighthood.”

“I do think he is ready, however,” Qui-Gon put in. “That is another thing upon which we were about to meditate.”

“Could I do it too?” Anakin asked. “Meditate, or reach out to the Force, or whatever? It’s something I’ll need to know if I join the Jedi, right? And since you’re asking what to do with me and all—”

“Certainly you may join us, Anakin,” Qui-Gon said.

“Wizard! Thanks! I don’t know how, though,” Anakin admitted, looking to Obi-Wan. The question was implicit. Obi-Wan wanted to answer, but he’d no sooner opened his mouth before he shut it again with a snap. He looked over at his master. To answer Anakin’s questions when Qui-Gon was busy was one thing, but it would be a poor example to set of the Order hierarchy if he did so when his master was right there. Obi-Wan knew his place and his capabilities. He did what was necessary. He didn’t have ambitions or designs on Anakin, and the boy was just going to have to learn to look to masters who could do him some actual good.

Unfortunately, Qui-Gon Jinn had his own ideas about Obi-Wan’s capabilities, or else this was some sort of pretrials test, because Qui-Gon simply said, “Why don’t you tell him, Padawan?”

Obi-Wan shot his master a look, then turned back to Anakin, breathing in and shoving his annoyance out into the Force. “Sit straight, Anakin, with your hands in your lap or on your knees, but relax your body. Close your eyes and focus in on the sound of my voice. Then move past that and focus on how I feel to you. Can you sense me and Master Qui-Gon with you? In the room, but also our emotions, our essences—our selves within the currents of energy aboard the ship?”

The sensation was rather like being pawed over by an enormous psychic hand. Obi-Wan grit his teeth against it and tried to leave himself open to Anakin. He extended a tendril of thought toward Anakin, a much smaller, subtler psychic hand, and felt Anakin take hold. “Hey, is that you?” he asked, his excitement and eagerness filling the Force with Light. “This is weird! Wizard, but weird!”

“Can you feel me breathing, Anakin? Can you breathe in the same pattern?”

“No problem!” Anakin promised.

Immediately, Anakin slowed his breaths. “Good,” Obi-Wan started, then he frowned as he noticed other changes in the boy across from him. “Anakin, are you trying to match my heart rate as well?” he asked.

“What?” Anakin asked, surprised. “Oh,” he realized. “I didn’t know I could do that. I was just trying to do what you were doing, Mister Obi-Wan. Hey, you think I could speed it up, like if I knew I had to move real fast in a hurry and wanted to be ready?”

“I wouldn’t advise playing with the rate at which your heart beats until a much later stage in your training,” Obi-Wan told him, trying to keep both the awe and concern out of his voice and his mind. Anakin was very close to him at the moment. It wouldn’t do either to alarm the boy with what he could do to himself with this newly discovered talent, nor to let him know how extraordinary his intuition was. “It’s a useful ability, particularly when you are learning to add to your physical capabilities within the Force. It’s good that you can do it. But it can be very easy to make dangerous mistakes, and after all, there are many reasons your heart works just the way it does. For now, breathing in the same pattern as me and Master Qui-Gon is enough.”

It was harder for Anakin to loosen his focus on Obi-Wan enough to let his heart resume its normal pattern now that he had inadvertently instructed it to slow, but eventually he managed it.

Obi-Wan walked him through exercises to relax his body, to attune his senses to his surroundings and use his senses of them to clear his mind. Despite how easily Anakin had been able to sense Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon within the Force, he seemed to find the stillness and focus meditation required much more difficult. His body wanted to be in motion. So did his mind. His knees jostled, his thoughts stewed and meandered and came back around again, and as Obi-Wan repeatedly urged him through the same relaxation exercises, his frustration mounted.

“Do not be discouraged if you can’t get there today,” Obi-Wan told him. “It takes many initiates months to learn to reach a satisfactory meditative state. Several continue to struggle to hold one for more than a few minutes for years into their apprenticeships. You’re doing well.”

“I want to meditate with you guys,” Anakin complained. “So I can ask the Force what I should do too. I’ve been able to do everything else! Why can’t I get this?”

 “You’ve hardly been at it for ten minutes,” Master Qui-Gon pointed out. “Meditation is a difficult discipline for many of the Jedi to learn. You need to forgive yourself, Anakin. Allow yourself time and grace to learn.” He spoke calmly, but there was an undercurrent of pain in his voice. Obi-Wan understood. To him, Anakin’s frustration was hot and abrasive, like a sandstorm on his homeworld of Tatooine. Through the Living Force, the sensation would be even worse. From where their minds connected across the training bond, Obi-Wan could sense the ache building in Qui-Gon’s temples, the pain he felt experiencing Anakin’s pain.

“With me, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, extending Anakin another tendril of thought. At the same time, he projected a sense of encouragement, optimism, and peace toward the boy. You’re doing fine. Anakin breathed in deep, outside of the pattern, but a tangle of frustration and fear inside him came unknotted—the fear of rejection, of failure. In its place, gratitude and relief blossomed into being. The boy’s muscles relaxed, and as they did, so did his mind.

“Good,” Obi-Wan said. “Now, I want you to concentrate on what you feel between us—between you and I and Master Qui-Gon. Focus on the energy that binds and flows between us and—” he broke off. Anakin had found it, or it had found him.

“Oh, dear,” Obi-Wan murmured.

Anakin Skywalker pulsed within the Force. He expanded and took off like a Corellian luxury jet. Power gathered around him in a swirling, roiling cloud of energy and emotion. At first, there was a sense of elated discovery from Anakin, and then a growing fear: Anakin was close to being lost, buried beneath the storm of the power he had to call upon.

Across the circle, Obi-Wan felt Master Qui-Gon reaching out for the boy, felt his master’s mind swept aside by the Force winds around Anakin’s consciousness. Obi-Wan felt his master’s own growing anxiety. Master Qui-Gon had suggested Anakin might be the Chosen One of prophecy. They had both felt the boy’s strength within the Force. But neither of them had been prepared for this.

A tiny extension of thought from Anakin, a cry for help: Obi-Wan! He was too far away now to form it into actual words.

Obi-Wan took hold of the tiny piece of Anakin caught up in all that mess and sat. Gritting his teeth against the howl of the Living Force, the tossing, turning currents of raw power and possibility around Anakin Skywalker, he pushed his own shields out. It was like lifting the largest boulder he had ever attempted lifting in the meditation gardens and worse. But Obi-Wan withstood it. He pushed back against the current, beating it back with his defenses and taking them with him, down the line to Anakin Skywalker. He imagined the boy he knew, not the Child of the Force but the grease-stained, overly energetic, overly inquisitive towheaded scrap from Tatooine who had fallen into their laps. Obligate carnivore who enjoyed his meat spicy enough to burn a hole through the tongues of lesser creatures. No longer convinced he would drown in the shower yet still allergic to soap and water waste. Always in motion, always curious. Kind and brave and full of enthusiasm, with a handful of tools and parts and a headful of ideas on how to use them to fix first the machines and then the entire galaxy. Anakin.

Obi-Wan?

He reached the core of the maelstrom of power that had collected around the boy and held tight, wrapping his own shields around the boy’s mind, spinning the power away at one remove. A moment later, he’d found Master Qui-Gon. He started to do the same, but felt Qui-Gon’s disagreement in his head.

Obi-Wan. Thank you. Just keep shielding Anakin, please. Keep the power at a distance.

Under the instruction were faint currents of awe—Master Qui-Gon had not expected this, and guilt—he felt as though he should have. It occurred to Obi-Wan he might have expected it too, but even as he had the thought, the power around Anakin shifted, and he had to refocus on the boy, on holding his sense of Anakin’s identity in his mind and his own shields around the pair of them. In doing so, he realized Qui-Gon would be shielded from the worst of Anakin’s emotions but retain access to the power Anakin had summoned through their joint meditation.

He heard Qui-Gon and Anakin saying something but couldn’t make sense of it. Instead, he simply held. Held onto Anakin, held onto his shields. Obi-Wan felt a sweat break out all over his body. He began to tremble.

Obi-Wan felt and knew that his own power was a guttering candle beside Anakin Skywalker’s active volcano within the Force. But, the thing was, the Force was as much the energy binding all things within the universe as it was the energy each particular object in space had to give. A Jedi, open to that energy, did not have to rely upon his own abilities. He was not so much a vessel as a conduit. Obi-Wan was not limited by his midi-chlorian count as compared to Anakin Skywalker’s. He did not have to yield. And he would not.

He held.

He held until a shout from both Master Qui-Gon and Anakin broke through the pounding in his head.

“Obi-Wan!”

Obi-Wan opened his eyes. The storm had passed. Master Qui-Gon and Anakin sat across from him, watching him. He felt gentle concern from Qui-Gon, something like awe from Anakin. Anakin was back in possession of himself, and the sense of the Force around him was no worse than usual.

“Well,” Obi-Wan said, managing a laugh, and managing not to fall back on his back in exhaustion, both with difficulty. “That was a disaster.”

“It was?” Anakin asked.

“Forgive us, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said. “We should have made sure you were prepared for the power of the Force, shielded to access it without being overcome by it, before we embarked—started upon a meditation. I’m afraid with all that happened just now, we didn’t get any answers.”

“On the contrary,” Qui-Gon said. He exchanged a glance with Anakin, and both of them looked back to Obi-Wan. “I believe we did. Very much so.”

Chapter Text

3

“You gotta help me, Obi-Wan,” Anakin told him, as though it was an understood fact. “If I’m going to be a Jedi someday, you gotta help me get there.” His small face was very serious.

“Anakin, I think I’ve told you,” Obi-Wan protested, “I’m an apprentice, a Padawan learner. I’m not qualified to help anyone become a Jedi Knight. Not yet.”

“So you pass your trials or whatever, like Mister Qui-Gon said you should. That’ll qualify you, right?” Anakin insisted. “Anyway, I don’t know why you’re so bothered about qualifications anyway. You’re plenty good already. Man, I was toast a second ago! But you found me! You got me out of that.”

“The Force speaks in many ways, Padawan,” Qui-Gon interjected. “You clearly feel a calling to help Anakin. Just now when he was nearly overwhelmed within the Force, and in smaller ways, every day of our journey so far.”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “You would have done it, Master. You tried to help him just now.”

“Tried and did not succeed,” Qui-Gon pointed out. “You did, Obi-Wan. Whether your particular abilities within the Force made you more suited to the task or whether you were merely more motivated to do so, you got through to Anakin when I could not. As you held us all apart from the power Anakin had gathered, I felt the Force sing around you. There was a sense of balance, of fitness to the pair of you. I had begun to feel it as soon as I introduced you two last week, and more and more each day since. Now I am certain: your destinies are entwined. In the end, Anakin may or may not be a Jedi Knight. I got no clear sense of his fate on that point. But Obi-Wan, you must train him.”

Obi-Wan looked from his master’s grave face to the boy’s sagacious little nod. He felt Anakin’s peace and satisfaction within the Force, Qui-Gon’s quiet certainty—the stubborn surety he had held onto every time he’d defied the Jedi Council over the course of his long career. That stubbornness had pulled Obi-Wan up from near-failure and a quiet exile to something almost resembling a Jedi Knight. If Obi-Wan even approached acceptability now, it was because of Qui-Gon Jinn, yet now Qui-Gon was insisting he must take on this inferno in the Force and attempt to teach it how to keep from burning itself out. As if Obi-Wan could even begin to understand how to do it. And if he failed—

No. The cost could be too high.

Obi-Wan shook his head. “I—Anakin, I don’t know if I can do what I just did ever again,” he said, “and your master will have to do it. Your master must be powerful and experienced enough to help you harness the Force within you, to learn to shield yourself from the power you cannot control and tame and direct the rest. I am—so much less than you are within the Force. I cannot hope to help you on any permanent basis.”

Anakin frowned. He thought for a long moment, regarding Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan felt him reaching out—to Qui-Gon, to Obi-Wan himself, to the Force. Obi-Wan breathed deep and moved his shields outward once again, ready to act again if Anakin lost himself. Anakin’s expression cleared. “No, that’s wrong,” he said at last, firmly. “You’re ready to do it again right now if you need to. If me or Mister Qui-Gon or anybody needs you to. You’re tired, and I’m sorry about that. I didn’t know. But it’s not that you can’t help me. You just think you can’t, right? But look, Mister Obi-Wan, I know you can. I felt it. Here and here.” He gestured to his forehead then to his chest.

As Anakin’s fingers moved, Obi-Wan felt a corresponding tug in his own head and chest, a physical manifestation of a psychic demand the boy was making of him. He looked inward, alarmed, and felt Master Qui-Gon do the same.

“Well. That settles it,” his master murmured. “I said that you had bonded with him, didn’t I, Obi-Wan? Though I believed I was speaking metaphorically at the time.”

There, beside Obi-Wan’s training bond with Qui-Gon, was a brand-new bond to Anakin Skywalker. Bright and shining and full of enough power to light the capital district on Coruscant. Obi-Wan tugged on it experimentally. Anakin’s gaze, which had been wandering back to Qui-Gon for a moment, snapped to his, and Obi-Wan felt him come to attention within the Force. Anakin’s blue eyes narrowed. “Hey, there you are again, inside,” he said. “What’s—”

“You have formed a bond with Obi-Wan, Anakin,” Qui-Gon repeated, directly to the boy this time. “He has the same kind of bond with me as his master. It helps us to stay connected, to keep an awareness of where we each are and how we feel within the Force. I have used it to teach him over the years, and he has used it to learn from me. We have both used it to help each other when we need it.”

Anakin’s joy and delight were radiant. He turned on Obi-Wan in triumph. “See!”

“Usually, a training bond is deliberately created by a master at the start of a new apprentice’s education as a Padawan learner,” Obi-Wan said, not so much releasing his mounting worry and concern into the Force as he was conveying it. Every instant there was more. “This one, I sense is different.”

For one thing, to his mind, this new bond with Anakin seemed much larger and more definite than the training bond Qui-Gon had established twelve years ago. It was the difference between a vine and a wroshyr tree root. The boy didn’t do things by halves. And there he was—every overwhelming centimeter of him, right at the other end of a palatial hallway he’d installed in Obi-Wan’s head without so much as a by-your-leave. Not that Anakin had probably known the first thing about what he was doing, and that was a whole other section in the Temple Archives Obi-Wan would have to study and worry over: Force intuitives and the chaos they could create.

Obi-Wan fell into a breathing pattern to maintain his calm. With difficulty, he kept the strain out of his voice. “Anakin, you are untrained, and powerful. In a moment of crisis within the Force, you turned to someone who has been giving you help and instruction. But this is not my place. I’ve done too much for you since you came onboard the ship. I wanted to help and thought you needed it, but Qui-Gon could have helped you, or you could have managed alone. I think you are confused. With a little research, and Master Qui-Gon’s help, I can dissolve this bond between us and—”

“No!” The cry rang out in the air between them and through the Force, vehement and desperate. Obi-Wan flinched back from the violence of Anakin’s response. Shields, clumsily erected and uneven but radiating power, had sprung to life around Anakin’s mind. Physically, the boy had leapt to his feet and now he crouched by the door, half a meter further from where he had been just a moment ago. He trembled.

Obi-Wan stared at him, nonplussed. Then, hesitantly, he extended a thread of calm toward Anakin. “Anakin, it’s alright,” he said. “I cannot do anything now. I don’t know how. Dissolving a bond is not meant to hurt, and this one should never have existed in the first place—”

“You’re not supposed to!” Anakin shouted. The boy was close to tears, Obi-Wan realized, and decided that perhaps, shutting up and listening might be the wiser course of action. He considered what that last meditation must have felt like to Anakin, what it must be like to consciously experience the Force for the first time with Anakin’s kind of access to it, then to disagree with a man much older and larger than he was, a mentor and a friend in a galaxy where many of those had suddenly disappeared. To ask for help, to need it, and then be told that it wasn’t on offer.

Alright, Anakin, I’m listening.

He didn’t say the words so much as send the sense of them down the new bond, but he felt the effect upon Anakin.

“This—” Anakin tugged on the bond for emphasis, “It’s gotta stay. We’re supposed to be together. I—I think Mister Qui-Gon found me so he could bring me to you. Or it was one of the reasons, anyway. But if you don’t want me—”

Obi-Wan hesitated. Helpless, he looked to Qui-Gon for aid, but the telltale expression on his master’s face—blank obstinance—told him that none would be forthcoming. Qui-Gon might have brought Anakin into their lives, but he was formally resigning all rights now. He was Obi-Wan’s problem to deal with, for better or for worse, and whether he was prepared and competent or not.

Anakin was reducing his master—a man who could be on the Jedi Council if it weren’t for the merest stubbornness—Anakin was reducing Qui-Gon Jinn to a mere vehicle, and Obi-Wan’s master didn’t seem to care. If anything, he seemed to agree! The notion was incredulous. Obi-Wan reflected that maybe he should have told Anakin more of his own history when he’d asked, even the youngling-inappropriate bits. If Anakin knew, surely he would understand.

But even as the silence stretched, Anakin’s face was closing. Waves of agony, loneliness, fear—what’ll I do what’ll I do—were leaking out around the gaps in his inexpert shielding. Right now, Anakin was in no state of mind to listen to reason. He was hurting. He felt rejected. He would not hear how Obi-Wan wanted to pass him over for his own sake. He believed Obi-Wan disliked him.

Yet, when Obi-Wan considered his own feelings about Anakin Skywalker, he was somewhat surprised to find there was no dislike, that even the annoyance and weariness he had often felt this week about the inconveniences presented by Anakin was largely superficial. He . . . enjoyed Anakin’s energy. He valued Anakin’s trust and confidence. He believed the boy dangerous, yes, like a lightsaber or a laser cannon was dangerous. He felt himself unequipped to temper or direct that danger. But the need Anakin presented—he wanted to meet it. He had helped Anakin again and again because he wanted to.

Obi-Wan leaned back in his position, giving Anakin space rather than pursuing him, but he dropped his shields, leaving himself open to all of Anakin’s pain and hurt, all his need and accusation. Letting Anakin see his own fear and trepidation and see him release it into the Force. “Anakin, I don’t want to commit to training you because I think you can do better,” he murmured. “Because I want to help you, for you to have the best help possible. Even aside from the matter of the trials to raise me to the level where the Jedi would permit me to take on my own student—and I assure you, passing them is no triv—” he broke off. “It is not easy,” he said instead. “The kind of master-apprentice bond that Qui-Gon and I have is—it’s one-to-one. It is a rule in our Jedi Code. I would have no objection to being your friend, to telling you the kinds of things I have this week, to supporting you within our Order. Indeed, I look forward to it. But if we decide here and now that I should be your master, you could miss out on opportunities to learn from someone better.”

Anakin frowned, but he had relaxed within the Force. Obi-Wan felt sadness, frustration in him, but Anakin’s immediate agony and terror had faded away. Obi-Wan dared to raise his arms, to beckon. “Will you come back and sit down?”

Slowly, Anakin unwound. He scooted back over and folded back into a cross-legged position between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. “You Jedi are supposed to trust it when the Force tells you stuff, right?” he asked.

Obi-Wan knew where Anakin was going, and he opened his mouth to argue, but his master answered first. “Correct.”

“So why is Obi-Wan being dumb?” Anakin demanded. He turned back to Obi-Wan, challenging. “Look, I know you didn’t hear what Mister Qui-Gon and I did just now. You were busy, keeping all of us safe from whatever it was I did. But because you did that, we’re telling you we did hear from the Force, if that’s what that was. I don’t lie, and I don’t think Mister Qui-Gon does. So you should listen, especially since he’s your master and all. It’s supposed to be you. You’re supposed to teach me.”

Qui-Gon laughed, low and rich. “I think you must surrender, Obi-Wan,” he advised.

“You aren’t going to give up on this, are you?” Obi-Wan asked Anakin.

Anakin shook his head. “Nu-uh. But you don’t give up either, Obi-Wan. We’re sim-i-li-ar that way.”

Obi-Wan smiled. “Similar, Anakin.”

“Right, that,” Anakin agreed. “Just now, it was like the Force or whatever I did was gonna carry you away too, right with me! Qui-Gon tried to get me but he couldn’t, but you just kept trying, even though it was really hard and made you really tired. You don’t give up. Like me. And you help people. Like I do. Whatever you think, I’m pretty sure you’ll be a good teacher.”

“And you should see his organizational skills,” Qui-Gon murmured, eyes dancing.

Anakin gave Qui-Gon a flat stare, as though he couldn’t believe the man was making jokes at a time like this. That was one sentiment they had in common. Then Anakin turned back to Obi-Wan.

“Look, you’re worried. You think you’re gonna mess it up, right? But you help Qui-Gon now, right? You look out for him, right? That’s what a Jedi apprentice does for his master. So if you become a Jedi Knight, and I become your apprentice, I’ll look out for you. So you’ll be fine.” Anakin shrugged. “Ask Mister Qui-Gon: I can be pretty handy.”

Anakin looked to Qui-Gon for corroboration. Master Qui-Gon’s mouth twitched. “He is right, he can be pretty handy,” he answered dutifully.

“Oh, you’re useless,” Obi-Wan complained. “Very well, Anakin, Master Qui-Gon. We’ll confer with the Council upon our arrival. They’ll want to know about the Sith we encountered on Tatooine at any rate. If you’re dead set on it, Master Qui-Gon will submit me for my trials. Provided I pass, and provided the Council is amenable to your training to be a knight instead of serving as your guardian through an apprenticeship to one of our service corps, we will discuss my submitting a declaration of intent to train you.”

Typical negotiator’s promises. He’d been careful with the wording and left too many provisions for it to be considered any true commitment. But Anakin didn’t know that. He whooped, and jumped up, saying he was going to go back up to the cockpit to watch the pilot bring the ship in to port. Master Qui-Gon, however, had been there for every step of Obi-Wan’s training. He fixed Obi-Wan with a hard stare, but followed the script anyway with a reassurance Obi-Wan would indeed pass his trials. But as Anakin ran away and Obi-Wan himself rose, Obi-Wan felt a admonition across the smaller, weaker, but much older and more official of the two bonds now in his head.

Do not ignore the will of the Force, Padawan. Your insecurities blind you. Go. Spend some time listening to your heart.

Chapter Text

To Obi-Wan’s surprise, Padmé Naberrie offered to watch Anakin while he and Master Qui-Gon made their report on the Sith to the assembled Council. “Your people meet more quickly than ours,” she said, with some bitterness. “It will be some time before the senate is conveyed to hear our pleas. There will be rest and refreshment available in the queen’s rooms near the senate. R2-D2 will be with us. Ani will be no trouble, and I—he is welcome with us. With me. No doubt he will find it more amusing than a formal report to the Jedi Council.”

There was a wistfulness in the girl’s face beneath her handmaiden’s cowl, a wish, he thought, that she need not prepare for her own formal report, for a request she knew would likely be futile. Too many senators had investments bound up within the Trade Federation. The senate’s own policies were not typically consistent with what Naboo truly needed: immediate military aid against occupation by a hostile power. Obi-Wan recalled the last sight he had had of the people of Theed, rounded up by droids with rifles in preparation for transport.

“I’ll come for him when the Council is ready for him,” Obi-Wan promised. “Or else we will send a messenger. May the Force be with you, my lady.”

“And with you as well, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

After the landing, Anakin walked away in esteemed company: not only the young queen of Naboo and the bodyguard pretending to be her, but the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic and the Senator of Naboo, along with the entire Naboo contingent. A long way for a small former slave boy from a waste planet along the Outer Rim. Yet Obi-Wan felt no awe from Anakin for his illustrious company, though he could feel the boy rubbernecking at the skyscrapers long after he passed out of visual range.

“He will be alright, Obi-Wan,” Master Qui-Gon told him. “Padmé and the other handmaidens will look after him.”

“I know. They are formidable women. I think the youngest among them is a deadly shot and a master of two types of unarmed combat.” He made no move to leave the landing pad, however.

Qui-Gon gestured for them to move ahead. “Come. The Council will be expecting our report.”

Their report on the assassin who had attempted to run Anakin over and engaged Master Qui-Gon on the dunes of Tatooine was received with all the concern Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan had predicted. There had been no verified reports of Dark-Sided Force wielders for nearly as long as Master Yoda had been alive. But whenever the Sith arose, they inevitably came for the Jedi Order. It always meant war. At times, it had almost meant extinction on both sides of the conflict.

“We will use all our resources to unravel this mystery,” Master Windu declared at the end of their report. “We will discover the identity of your attacker. May the Force be with you.”

It would normally be a dismissal. The instinct to bow and quit the room was hard to deny. But . . . it would be hard to convene the Council again when they had just sprung the possible reemergence of the Sith on them, yet Obi-Wan’s trials and Anakin’s potential training at his age were both matters the Council should hear. So Obi-Wan understood when Qui-Gon remained, and, awkward as he felt, he remained at his master’s side.

“Master Qui-Gon. More to say have you?” Yoda asked, nodding to his master.

Qui-Gon bowed. “With your permission, my master. We have encountered a vergence in the Force.”

The attention of the Council had begun to move ahead and afield, toward the possible identity of the Dark assassin after the queen of the Naboo. Now, Obi-Wan sensed it return with a sharp intensity. Vergences, or loci within the Force were powerful and dangerous. The Jedi Temple on Coruscant was built on one such, but there were other places in the galaxy where the Dark Side dominated, where the will was tested and could be warped if one allowed it. Around a person, a vergence in the Force often indicated a walking, talking hand of fate. Obi-Wan could not honestly argue that Anakin represented one such, yet it might have been the last way he would have described Anakin to the Jedi Council.

“A vergence, you say?” Master Yoda repeated.

“Located around a person?”

“A boy,” Qui-Gon confirmed. “His cells have the highest concentration of midi-chlorians I have seen in a lifeform. It is possible he was conceived by the midi-chlorians.”

“You refer to the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the Force,” Master Windu recollected. His eyes narrowed. “You believe it’s this boy?”

Qui-Gon hesitated. “I relay only what our medical tests confirm and his mother told to me. I sensed no lie in her,” he said. “The Force was with this boy in our time on Tatooine, and through his bravery and skill, he won our passage from the planet and his freedom into the bargain.”

“His freedom?” Yoda repeated.

“He was a slave,” Qui-Gon confirmed. “I took custody of the boy, and my Padawan and I have begun transferring his citizenship to the Republic and his guardianship to the Jedi Order. Whether he is trained or not, he will not be returned to his home planet. Finding him was the will of the Force. I have no doubt of that. Furthermore, it has subsequently become clear to me that his destiny is bound to that of my padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Obi-Wan shifted as the attention of the Council shifted to him.

“He has bonded with the boy, inside and outside the Force,” Qui-Gon continued. “He shows a concern for Anakin consistent with one who feels a calling and a responsibility for his welfare. He is ready for his trials. There is little more he can learn from me. I respectfully submit him for the trials to knighthood.”

“Ready you feel he is, hmm?” Yoda tapped his gimer stick on the floor in front of him thoughtfully. “And what say you, Padawan?”

“I am ready for the trials, masters,” Obi-Wan answered, keeping his eyes low. “For more than that, I cannot say.”

“This destiny that Qui-Gon says you have, to this vergence within the Force. You don’t feel it too?” Master Windu’s stare seemed to be directed more at the space around Obi-Wan than at him directly, and Obi-Wan wondered what the man was seeing. Everyone knew Master Windu discerned the cruxes and turning points of fate, though he often didn’t understand them until they had come to pass.

“Not as such, masters. The bond exists. I did not make it. It may be Anakin’s spontaneous creation: He is very strong within the Force. Stronger than I, or any Jedi I have met.” He met Master Yoda’s eyes as he said this, nodding his head respectfully. He felt the Grandmaster’s interest, but no sense of threat, no offense. “He will be dangerous left untrained. He could be more dangerous with training, and the Jedi ways will not come naturally to him. He is already nine years old.”

Qui-Gon had not mentioned this. Likely, he had deliberately left it out, but since he had mentioned Anakin’s power and possible conception, the best strategy was probably complete honesty, so the Council did not feel blindsided later on.

“There is much the initiates of his comparable maturity know that Anakin has yet to be taught. Yet, he is an instinctive learner. A prodigy within the Force. He is also very good with machines, and a gifted pilot. If he is not trained as a Jedi Knight, he will still have much to offer our order from within the service corps.”

“You speak of him with pride,” Master Windu noted.

Obi-Wan bowed. “With respect, stating facts is not an expression of pride. The gifts I speak of are Anakin’s own. I have little to do with them.”

“Yet I perceive this boy has impacted you, Padawan Kenobi,” Master Windu challenged.

“I request you meet him, masters. You may find that you are similarly affected.”

“You are bold, Kenobi, for someone ostensibly treating for the trials,” Master Mundi observed.

Master Yoda interjected. “No. Padawan Kenobi speaks the truth. Judge this boy we cannot, before we have seen him. And irrelevant to the padawan’s readiness for the trials, this vergence is. Master Qui-Gon, ready for knighthood, you believe your padawan is?”

Master Qui-Gon bowed. “In truth, Obi-Wan has probably been ready for some time. I perhaps have enjoyed him overlong. He is headstrong and has much to learn of the Living Force, but he is wise, as well as a gifted swordsman and tactician. I foresee the Order making great use of his talents.”

“High praise,” Master Windu remarked. There was a moment when the Council conferred within the Force. Obi-Wan waited, unsure really, whether he wanted them to commence him to his trials or give him a metaphorical box around the ears for speaking out on Anakin and send him on another two-years’ tour with Master Qui-Gon. It wasn’t likely to teach him to hold his tongue and mind his place, but it might at least keep him safe from Anakin Skywalker’s expectations. Or expectations regarding the training of Anakin Skywalker.

“Very well,” Master Windu said. “Padawan Kenobi, we will discuss the scheduling of your trials soon. Be ready for our call.”

Obi-Wan bowed consent. He released the anxiety and excitement he felt at the announcement into the Force. If he was not ready to leave Master Qui-Gon, it was a function of his fear and not of his preparedness. Overcoming that fear would be the first step on his larger journey.

“And Padawan?” Master Windu added.

Obi-Wan turned at the door.

“The boy. Anakin—”

“Skywalker,” Master Qui-Gon murmured.

Master Windu nodded. “Bring him before us. We should assess his suitability for training.”

ANAKIN

Everything on this planet was huge. Anakin had never seen so many people in one place before. He hadn’t known so many people existed. Or maybe he’d thought they might, but actually seeing them was . . . big. Just like all the buildings.

The queen’s apartments a couple blocks over had been big too, but not like the Jedi Council room. There’d been stuff all over the queen’s apartment that made it feel smaller, kinda cozy even if it was so big. Here there were just chairs, and a bunch of really old people looking at him. Anakin thought he knew aliens, but there were people here from species he’d never met before. Some of them were pretty wild-looking.

They didn’t feel too different from Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, though. More serious, maybe. Almost too serious. And Anakin could tell they were all thinking about him real hard. That they all thought that being a Jedi was a bigger deal than he’d thought, and it mattered a whole lot who they let in. They weren’t gonna let in just anyone.

Anakin was gonna show them he wasn’t just anyone. He could be a Jedi! The best Jedi there’d ever been. Or if he did something else, it wouldn’t be ‘cause he couldn’t be a Jedi like Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. Just ‘cause he decided maybe he didn’t want to do it after all.

The big, bald guy, human—or near-human, maybe, he didn’t feel just like a human—was holding up some kind of testing thing. He’d asked Anakin to tell him what picture it was showing, except only he could see the pictures. Anakin would have to guess, or “sense them with the Force,” they said.

The weird thing was, Anakin sort of could tell what picture the guy was looking at. Sometimes it was like the machine told him, like its screen was whispering. Sometimes it was like he could tell from the guy asking him to guess, like he was looking through the master’s eyes. Or head, maybe. Anyway, he just knew what the picture was supposed to be. And when it changed, even when the guy stopped telling him.

His mom hadn’t liked him to practice all the cool stuff he could do back home. Back on Tatooine. It was what made him so good at podracing, they knew, and fixing things too. That was okay, sort of, because it meant he made Watto so much money that Watto would never sell him and would keep his mom so Anakin would be happy, and Watto was stupid and annoying, but he was lots better than Gardulla or somebody else, and his junkyard was interesting. But his mom thought that if Anakin made stuff float like he sometimes could, or got too obvious about the stuff he sometimes knew about people, someone might actually steal him from Watto. Only she’d never thought that somebody could be a Jedi. Or that Anakin would actually end up doing most of the stealing.

Now the Jedi wanted him to do all the things that he could do. It was part of what it meant to be part of their clan. If Anakin stayed with the Jedi and learned to be one, he would probably be able to do all kinds of things.

“A speeder,” he finished. The big man shut the test machine off. He looked around at all the others, and all the others seemed to think real hard with him.

The little guy, the one in the middle who talked so funny, though not as funny as Jar Jar, looked real hard at Anakin. “Hmm. How feel you?” he asked.

“Cold, sir,” Anakin answered. “But Obi-Wan—Mister Obi-Wan, Padawan Kenobi—and Padmé, they say I’ll get used to it.”

“Hmm. Afraid, are you?” the little guy wanted to know.

Anakin considered. He was nervous, a little. He didn’t really like the way they stared at him. Or standing in the middle of this big room. He didn’t want to get it wrong, or be wrong, maybe. But Obi-Wan had been scared before, too, after their meditation, because of whatever it was Anakin had done on accident, and because Mister Qui-Gon and Anakin had said he was supposed to help Anakin, but he hadn’t seen that, and he didn’t think he could. Anakin tried to remember what it was that Obi-Wan had done then, how it had felt. Like he’d sort of scooped up all his fear, showed it to Anakin, and then just . . . let go. And then he’d been okay, or better, anyway.

Anakin looked at the little guy in the middle. He lifted his chin, tried to be brave, really, really hoped he was right and said, “Yeah, a little. I’ve never been to a planet this big before. I don’t know any of you, sirs—m-masters—and now you’re gonna tell me if I’m good enough to be a Jedi or not. I left my mom and everything to be a Jedi. But—” he smiled and did his best to scoop up everything he was scared and nervous about—that these guys would say no, or that if they said yes, he’d be with some guy he didn’t know instead of Obi-Wan like he knew he was supposed to be. Or Obi-Wan would fail his trials like he was scared of. He tried to show it to the little guy, and then he let it go.

He felt tired, but happy then. Better. “But I know I am good enough,” he finished, “and I guess you’ll do what you have to. And if you say I can’t be a Jedi, I guess I’ll do something else for you guys. I can do a lot, you know, and I guess you need people to fly ships for the Jedi that don’t like that or people to fix stuff around the place too.”

Something changed around the big, round room then. Several of the guys staring at him sat up straighter, or else seemed to sit down more in their seats, like they were suddenly more comfortable or something. The real weird-looking guy in the mask sighed a little, and it felt like he’d really liked what Anakin had said. It almost felt like he smiled, though you couldn’t see it on his face. More in the air around him.

“Important work the Jedi service corps do,” confirmed the little guy. “Wise you are not to limit your options. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. Constricting for many our code and tenets are.”

“Yet you do have ability, young Skywalker,” the big guy said.

“You spoke of your mother, before,” one of the others said, an alien who looked mostly human, but with a huge, tall head. “Tell us, will you regret it, if you do not become a Jedi, and you left her for nothing?”

Anakin frowned at that guy. “I won’t have left her for nothing, sir. I was a slave, and now I’m not. She wanted me to go with Mister—with Master Qui-Gon because she knew it’d be better for me than staying back there with her. Whatever you tell me, I’ll be better off than I was then. Unless you send me all the way back, but Obi-Wan—Padawan Kenobi said you wouldn’t. You won’t, will you? Watto’s probably real mad I lost him all that money betting on Sebulba.”

“We will not be returning you to slavery, Skywalker,” the big man said, with a nice oomph that made Anakin sure he meant it. At first, the big man had been one of the scarier guys on the Council. Anakin smiled at him now. He didn’t smile back, but he didn’t seem so scary either. “When you passed into Republic space, all right to hold you in bondage expired. Padawan Kenobi has already begun the process of transferring your citizenship to the Republic and your guardianship to the Jedi Order.”

“It remains to be seen what will happen to you beyond that,” the tall-headed guy added.

“Master Qui-Gon tells us he feels Padawan Kenobi should train you, provided he passes his upcoming trials for knighthood,” the big guy said. He looked down his nose and over his folded hands at Anakin. “Tell us, Skywalker, do you feel that’s responsible, when Master Qui-Gon was the one who took you from your planet, and Obi-Wan is still a padawan himself?”

“Mi—Master Qui-Gon says Obi-Wan is ready for his trials, sir,” Anakin answered. “He thinks Obi-Wan—Padawan Kenobi is gonna pass. Obi-Wan maybe doesn’t want to train someone else himself yet. Or doesn’t think he can, anyway. I’m not sure Obi-Wan thinks he can do a lot of things. But Master Qui-Gon thinks he can, and so do I.”

Anakin swallowed. Now he was scared again. He was sad too, because if he was gonna be a Jedi, he really, really wanted Obi-Wan to be the one to teach him. His mom was gone, and Padmé was gonna go back to Naboo and something really bad could happen to her and to her queen. And if Obi-Wan didn’t teach him and Qui-Gon wouldn’t because he thought Obi-Wan should do it too—what’s gonna happen to me? What’ll happen?

It was dumb how you could be scared, scoop the fear out, let it go, and feel better, but it just kept coming back. Didn’t it ever leave forever? Why couldn’t he just be brave forever? Anakin breathed the way Obi-Wan had showed him back on the ship. Maybe he slowed his heart down a little too, to match the way Obi-Wan’s had seemed when they were meditating. Obi-Wan had said he shouldn’t do that, that there were lots of good reasons his heart beat the way it did. But when it beat like it was now, it meant he was scared, and he didn’t want to be. And slowing his heart down helped him concentrate on something other than being scared.

“I don’t want to be a problem, sir,” he said, looking up, when he was just a little less scared. “Maybe it’s not fair to Obi-Wan to teach me, since Master Qui-Gon was the one to pick me up and all, and since Obi-Wan will be brand new to being a knight once he passes his trials. If you think it’s wrong, or if Obi-Wan doesn’t want to—I get the feeling teaching me is gonna be kind of a big job.”

“Perhaps,” the little guy said. “Perhaps.”

Then it seemed it was over. The big guy looked at a lady, one of the only ladies in the room. She was human with dark hair up in braids. She looked a little like Padmé and a little like his mom, but it was hard to feel if she was anything like them, really. She was protecting her feelings like Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon sometimes did, and she looked like she didn’t smile much either. But she got up out of her chair and came toward Anakin. “My name is Knight Billaba,” she said. “If you’ll come with me, youngling. Padawan Kenobi has reported to us that you will be needing several vaccinations, as well as a surgery to remove your dormant detonator chip. I will take you to the med wing, and our healers can get started. You will probably be quarantined for several days there, but your friends may visit, and we will send word there regarding our decision.”

Anakin didn’t understand all this, but he understood one thing real well. “You’re taking out the detonator chip?” he repeated, feeling happy all over. “Wahoo! Just show me where to go, ma’am!”

All at once, it didn’t matter much what the Jedi Council said about his training. He knew it’d matter later again, but for now, they were taking out the detonator. He was never gonna be a slave again, and then he could do anything!

OBI-WAN KENOBI

Master Windu caught Obi-Wan in the refectory at supper. “The Council has agreed your Trial of Skill will take place in the morning,” he said. “I will test you, and we will see what you have learned.”

Obi-Wan bowed. “Thank you, master,” he said. “I hope not to disappoint.” He was a little surprised that Master Windu would be testing him himself. He wouldn’t have thought he merited that kind of attention. He had been expecting someone to set up a simulation or a gymnastic course. He had also been expecting to have a few more days to prepare himself. Somehow, he must have caught the attention of the Council. They were both fast-tracking him and subjecting him to more than the usual level of scrutiny. It was possible his career thus far had given them reason for concern or that they lacked confidence in Master Qui-Gon’s teachings. It was possible that he had offended them with the way he had spoken out this morning. But Obi-Wan thought he knew the real reason. The Council had spoken to Anakin this afternoon.

“How is Anakin?” he asked Master Windu.

“In the medical wing,” Master Windu answered. “The healers are preparing him for a surgery to remove his detonator. It’s close to the boy’s spine, from what I hear, so they’re going to put him under, and he’ll need to fast for a few hours first.”

“Is he frightened?” Obi-Wan asked, reaching out across the bond even as he asked and answering his own question. He felt Anakin on the other side—totally unafraid and brimming with barely suppressed excitement. Anakin felt Obi-Wan in his mind, and a sensation both like a greeting and an exclamation passed into Obi-Wan’s head, followed by a projection of goodwill—Anakin wishing him well, either on the trials or merely in general. Obi-Wan sent back a feeling of peace and encouragement then withdrew back behind his shields.

“I imagine you can answer that better than I,” Master Windu replied, looking hard at Obi-Wan. He had sensed the exchange; Anakin was not currently shielding, and even across the temple and amid the noise of all the other Force Sensitives within it, Anakin’s signature was distinct.

“He’s fine,” Obi-Wan confirmed. “I’m glad he’s getting the chip removed. It’ll mean so much to him. Well, how would you like having explosives in your body?” It had been bad enough having them chained outside him.

“Indeed,” Master Windu said. “You have a strong bond with Skywalker. The Council sensed your influence during his interview.”

“I have not trained the boy,” Obi-Wan said quickly. “Nor did I coach him prior to his interview. On the voyage from his homeworld, he asked to participate in a single meditation with Master Qui-Gon and I. Meditation is not exclusive to the Jedi.”

“You are defensive, Padawan Kenobi,” Master Windu observed. “What we observed was both to your credit and Skywalker’s. Several of us sensed fear within the boy, yet he identified it within himself and before the Council before sharing it with the Force. He was clumsy, as one repeating a technique he had only ever witnessed before, yet the effort spoke both to your example and to Skywalker’s ability to learn, and the honesty he displayed spoke well of his character. Master Yoda had been inclined to turn him away; he sensed a cloud over the boy’s future. Yet the action convinced him and many of us that Skywalker may be capable, despite his age.”

“So you will train him?” Obi-Wan asked. Then, realizing he’d been vague— “Excuse me. The Council will accept Anakin for training?” It would be excellent if Master Windu or another of the Council did take on Anakin personally for training, and Master Windu did not have a padawan at the moment. Yet, Obi-Wan realized he felt some regret at the idea. It was by far the better solution; if Anakin was to become a knight, it would be the course Obi-Wan would have suggested. He could continue to see the boy, to help him, but the responsibility for Anakin’s upbringing and primary teachings would not be his. Certainly the Council could amend what Anakin lacked when it came to primary education.

“Skywalker’s case is unusual,” Master Windu said, “and presents unique challenges. As is, the Council feels there is wisdom in giving Skywalker a trial period. He will join courses within the creche to learn the fundamentals of our Order. He may be given private tutoring when appropriate. When he has reached the proper age for a padawan learner, we will all reassess. It may be he is too far behind now. He was not raised to our Order; when he knows more of us, he may determine he no longer wishes to commit. But if he has caught up and still wishes to join, we will speak again of your training him.”

Master Windu bowed, and Obi-Wan returned the salute, taking his supper to a table to eat alone. On the whole, that had gone much better than he had anticipated for Anakin. He got the feeling the Council had rather liked Anakin. Unexpectedly, he also got the feeling the Council liked the idea of Obi-Wan training him. Not yet, which was a blessing, but someday.  

Well. If they didn’t want him to train Anakin yet, training Anakin wasn’t a problem for today. Today’s problem was tomorrow’s trial. A test against Master Windu!

Chapter Text

ANAKIN

Everything was a little swirly. Sounds sounded weird. Anakin’s arms and legs were way too heavy, his fingers felt fat and useless, and his head felt kind of bouncy. The inside of his mouth tasted super gross. Anakin moved his tongue around, pushing at his teeth and swallowing to see if that would help.

The sheets were soft.

There was a place on his lower back right behind his hip he couldn’t feel. When Anakin ran his fingers over it, though, he could feel the bacta patch there.

The detonator was gone.

There was someone in the room with him. At first, Anakin thought of his mom, and then he remembered Tatooine was more than a week away, and he might never see his mom again, even if things worked out on Naboo and Padmé and the queen went back and freed her like they’d said. None of the Jedi here had moms or dads or husbands or wives or sibs or anything. Someone had told him that. Knight Billaba, or the healer maybe.

They didn’t have masters, either. At least not like Anakin had used to. Maybe that was good enough.

“Anakin. You’re awake.”

The man at the end of the bed moved, and Anakin saw it was Mister Qui-Gon. Anakin dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to stop crying. He wasn’t a baby, and it was a waste of water besides. What’ve you got to cry about, anyway? Mom’s fine. You’re fine. You’re safe. You’re free! Master Windu even came back after his dinner last night and said maybe you could be a Jedi, even though they don’t usually take ’em as old as you. You don’t even have to make up your mind right now, he said. You can learn now, then do other stuff later if you want.

’Cept he was lonely, and cold again, and everything was so big and weird, and I miss Mom.

“Anakin.” Mister Qui-Gon’s voice was nice. He moved, and one of his big hands came over to cover Anakin’s. Anakin clenched his fist. His fingers still felt fat. Qui-Gon moved away.

“’m sorry,” Anakin muttered. “I’ll stop. Being stupid . . .”

“When an older padawan or a Jedi Knight needs surgery, they often manage their pain within the Force, or the healers induce a trance,” Qui-Gon told him. “But you don’t know how to manage your pain within the Force yet, and it’s not good for a person your age to be persuaded to sleep. The healers used the anesthetic drugs they use for pain medication outside of the temple. They can sometimes have unpleasant side effects upon waking.”

“Mister Qui-Gon, I feel—” Anakin bent in half over the bed and heaved. Quickly, Mister Qui-Gon brought up a pan from a table somewhere and held it out for him, but nothing came up. Just a little bit of really nasty-tasting spit.

“And that would be why we didn’t give you lunch or supper yesterday,” Qui-Gon said, just like nothing had happened at all. “The healers will probably bring you in something later. It may not be the kind of rations we made you on Queen Amidala’s ship. Try to eat it anyway. It will be good for you.”

“I don’t care! It’s gone!” Anakin gasped. “Can you, can I—”

Mister Qui-Gon knew what he wanted. He put the pan back up on a table and brought over a bowl. Inside, way smaller than he’d thought it be with a couple bloody napkins, was the slaver chip that had been inside him his whole life, keeping him from running away, letting him know every minute they could blow him up if he got to be too much trouble. Anakin stared down at it. He swallowed and wanted to cry again.

“You’re free, Ani,” Qui-Gon told him. “This is only the last part of a slavery that ended the moment you crossed the finish line at the Boonta Eve Classic. From the moment you passed into my care, you have belonged only to yourself. And I want you to remember you won your freedom. You earned it.”

Anakin swallowed once. He swallowed twice. He stuck out his chin, and then just about gauged out the whole big mess he was feeling and shoved it away into the air. Mister Qui-Gon was right. It was probably mostly just the dope anyway. He collapsed back onto his pillow. “You can take that away, if you want,” he said, nodding at the bowl with his chip in it. Qui-Gon put it aside. Anakin wiped his eyes one more time and took deep breaths until his eyes didn’t burn anymore.

“Obi-Wan was once a slave, you know,” Qui-Gon told him, sitting down again at the end of Anakin’s bed. Anakin stared at him.

“No way,” he said. “Jedi aren’t slaves, and Obi-Wan was a really little kid when he came here. He said!”

“It was just before he became my apprentice,” Qui-Gon said. “He was perhaps a little younger than your friend Padmé but still a few years older than you are now, and we had decided he was not to become a Jedi Knight at the time. Obi-Wan had gone for an apprenticeship in the Jedi AgriCorps instead, to become one of our agricultural assistants. I happened to be investigating a former pupil of mine at the time. He had left the Jedi as well, under less than ideal circumstances. He had, in fact, become a criminal. Obi-Wan began to help me investigate him from his place in the AgriCorps, but he was captured. Xanatos—my former apprentice—enslaved Obi-Wan and sent him to work in a deep sea mine. I rescued Obi-Wan, and he helped me in turn to rescue all of his fellow slaves and end Xanatos’s criminal enterprises on that world. I realized then what a fine knight he would make, and he became my apprentice.”

Anakin blinked. “You mean Obi-Wan almost didn’t become a Jedi?”

“He almost didn’t,” Qui-Gon confirmed. “On two other occasions since, I believe he considered leaving us, but fortunately for us, he’s come back. He chose to remain one of us, and I believe that in time, he will be one of the greatest among our order.”

“Because he freed the slaves? He helps people,” Anakin said.

“Obi-Wan has a great desire to help others. To seek out injustice and right whatever wrongs he can,” Qui-Gon said, “It is true we freed many slaves on Bandomeer, and I was impressed with him there. With his bravery and self-sacrifice, with his drive and resourcefulness in learning the truth when he sensed something was wrong. But remember, Ani: if a Jedi discovers a slave within Republic space, he will of course do his best to free them and to bring whoever enslaved them to justice. Slavery is illegal inside Republic space. But a Jedi does not often have permission to act outside of Republic space.”

“They should be able to do whatever they want wherever, if something’s wrong,” Anakin insisted. “If something’s wrong, it shouldn’t matter if it’s in Republic space or not. Someone should stop it.” He moved his legs under the sheet. They were starting to feel a little better. He wanted out of bed. He wanted to move.

“Where is Obi-Wan, anyway?” Anakin asked. He missed Obi-Wan. Last time he’d seen him had been all the way back on Padmé and Queen Amidala’s ship. He tried reaching out through that sort of hallway they had in their heads, the bond thing, like Obi-Wan had done last night. But maybe Anakin’s head was still too swirly, or maybe he was doing it different than Obi-Wan had last night. Or maybe Obi-Wan was blocking his feelings off again. Jedi seemed like they did that a lot. Anakin couldn’t get through.

“Obi-Wan, I believe, is in the gardens, meditating upon his trials. He had his first this morning: the Trial of Skill, against Master Mace Windu.”

“That big, bald guy, right?” Anakin remembered. “He’s the one who came to see me yesterday to tell me they think I can be a Jedi after all, only not a padawan yet, because I don’t know all the stuff a padawan is supposed to know.”

“That’s the one,” Master Qui-Gon confirmed. “Obi-Wan dueled him this morning to show he has learned the physical skills of a Jedi knight.”

“Did he win?”

Qui-Gon smiled. “Master Windu is quite possibly the best lightsaber duelist within the Jedi Order. He has invented his own form of lightsaber combat and has decades more experience than Obi-Wan, though he remains in the prime of life for his species. Obi-Wan dueled him across an acrobatics course. He held out for the better part of an hour. He more than proved his skill, but he did eventually have to yield to Master Windu. Nevertheless, many apprentices are reviewing the footage from the trial from several angles already. I suspect the dueling may be teaching in the near future. Obi-Wan sent you his best wishes, but naturally, he is a little tired. The next trials will not be so easy for him.”

“Easy? He fought that guy for an hour, and that was easy?” Anakin demanded.

“For a swordsman at Obi-Wan’s level,” Qui-Gon told him. “Obi-Wan has always been gifted with a lightsaber, and endurance is a specialty of his. He will likely find the Trial of Insight particularly suited to him as well, and he has plenty of courage, but—”

“How many trials are there?” Anakin wondered, then stopped, realizing he’d interrupted.

Master Qui-Gon met his eyes and smiled again. “Forgive me, Ani, I was worrying aloud. I’d forgotten you know nothing of our ways. There are five trials for a padawan to pass to knighthood. In order: the Trial of Skill, the Trial of Courage, the Trial of Flesh, the Trial of Spirit, and the Trial of Insight. Though, at times circumstances will align so a padawan completes multiple trials together or completes them out of the traditional order. The Trial of Skill judges a padawan’s physical ability for knighthood; the Trial of Courage, his ability to face challenges independently. The Trial of Flesh measures his capacity to endure through great personal suffering; the Trial of Spirit to face the darkness within himself. Finally, the Trial of Insight judges the padawan’s ability to see beyond the obvious to find the truth.”

Anakin thought about that. “That sounds real,” he said. He especially didn’t like the sound of that Trial of Flesh. “Do they hurt?”

“Often,” Master Qui-Gon confirmed, “But sacrifice is part of the journey. No padawan who passes through the trials is unchanged by the experience. They usually feel what they have gained—the honor of becoming an adult member of our Order, knowledge of themselves, and confidence in their abilities—is worth the pain they suffered. Those who do not usually do not pass.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Anakin decided. “If you didn’t really want to take the trials, you probably didn’t wanna be a Jedi. I guess grown-up Jedi probably do a lot harder things than the padawans do in their trials.” He turned over on his side, looking at the table. “When will he be back?”

“He will be pleased to learn you’re awake now. He may come to visit you later today. But Ani—”

Qui-Gon paused, and Anakin could feel he was nervous, and maybe a little guilty. “The Council will tell Obi-Wan what he must do for his Trial of Courage soon. This often takes the form of a mission away from the Temple. He could be away for some time.”

Anakin wondered: if he and Master Qui-Gon hadn’t told Obi-Wan he was the one who was supposed to train Anakin, would Qui-Gon have kept Obi-Wan as his padawan for longer? If Qui-Gon had kept Obi-Wan as his padawan, and Anakin had become an apprentice, maybe Obi-Wan wouldn’t have had to leave. He could’ve come to see Anakin more, been his friend and helped him. That was what Mister Obi-Wan had wanted.

“Okay,” Anakin told Master Qui-Gon. “I’m a little tired, sir. I think I might try to sleep. Without the dope.”

“Of course, Ani,” Qui-Gon said. “I may not be here when you wake, but I will come and visit you again.”

“Sure. Thanks,” Anakin said. He was gonna be stuck here for days and days anyway. The doctor had said. They wanted to make sure he wouldn’t get any of the kids here in the Temple sick with something that wouldn’t make him sick, ’cause he’d grown up on Tatooine, but could hurt them. It meant he wouldn’t be visiting Padmé and Artoo and the queen and the other handmaidens again. They’d probably leave Coruscant before he got out of here. He couldn’t go anywhere in the city, or in the Temple even.

He turned a little, so he could see Master Qui-Gon again. “Thank you for coming, sir. Really.”

Qui-Gon smiled and stood. “Anytime, Ani.” He left the room, and Anakin was alone. Really alone.

He hated being alone. Without anything to work on, even. There was nothing to do here. Just sit.

Anakin tried to go down the hall in his head again. Just to check on Mister Obi-Wan. Let him know Anakin was awake and thinking about him. He hadn’t known the trials would be so hard. He hadn’t known they could take so long.

OBI-WAN KENOBI

Obi-Wan was suffocated in a growing Darkness. The Light shone in glimmers, flashes that flamed for a bright, beautiful moment before they were extinguished. He heard children screaming and felt the sorrow of decades—a raw, hot wound of loss and failure that would never fade. He heard a laugh, as dry as the scraping of old bones, hoarse and malicious. There was a brief moment of scorching, searing pain, as if he was being dragged across hot coals and gravel—but was it he? Or someone else?

There was an anger, a wrath to match the sorrow. Someone was trapped, enslaved within chains of their own forging, and so the wrath was veined all through with an all-encompassing despair and deep self-loathing.

Obi-Wan wanted to run, to shut his eyes. He was flooded with a sense of horror and helplessness. What can one man, even a Jedi, do against such power, such hate? All the suffering he had seen in his twenty-five years had still not prepared him to face this. The Darkness was coming, relentless. It was coming for all of them.

Against the black, a streak of red. He sensed a hateful intent, a restless fury, and a fiery obsession. Thwarted from its desired target, it searched for a scapegoat, a proxy on which to vent its spleen. And found him.

It found him!

Obi-Wan recalled the winds of the desert. Master Qui-Gon, Padmé, and Anakin, who he had not known at the time. Qui-Gon’s shout, Anakin, dropping to the sands. A figure robed in black, wielding a red saberstaff.

It found him!

Obi-Wan felt tossed into the maelstrom that yesterday he had held from Anakin Skywalker. The Force winds that had sought to claim Anakin then tore at him now, hungry and demanding. No vision was without its price.

Yet, he was a Jedi. He would not yield to the Darkness. Those and that which sought to claim him would be answered.

If pushing the Force away from Anakin had been like lifting the heaviest boulder he had ever dared lift within the meditation gardens, drawing his shields again now to end the vision was the same. The Force ripped and tore at him, the Darkness of the future was coming, and it came for Obi-Wan Kenobi in a way that said it knew his name. Knew, and hated him, with an intimacy as personal as a lover’s.

Yet, in among the Darkness, amid the howl of the Force, there was a voice he recognized. A pull that sought him, yes, but sought his presence, his help and friendship, not his death.

Anakin.

Obi-Wan responded, responded from the throes of his Force vision and the depths of his distress before he knew what he was doing. In answer, there was a wave of panic, of concern and love, and then power hit Obi-Wan like a fighter taking a course to hyperspace straight through another object.

He wanted to scream.

No, it’s too much!

The Darkness fractured into light, but the light was his brain, burning out in the blaze of Anakin’s power.

But Obi-Wan Kenobi was more than his body, more than his mind. A Jedi was spirit, one with the Force, so the Force could not destroy him. He grabbed the comet’s tail of Anakin’s power and harnessed it like the creatures he had befriended on so many worlds who had consented to carry him for a time.

The Darkness continued to burn away, but now They were in control. Obi-Wan formed his mind into a saber, and he fought.

Anakin fought beside him, though he did not know how or why. He couldn’t see the vestiges of the vision that gripped Obi-Wan’s mind, nor did he understand why Obi-Wan needed him. Yet he had known Obi-Wan did need him, and he had answered even before Obi-Wan had moved to call. And though Anakin did not see what Obi-Wan saw or even know what a Force vision was, he was there in Obi-Wan’s mind, providing strength and power, as well as love and support Obi-Wan had neither earned nor asked for. The spirit of the child shone as bright as his connection to the Force.

Obi-Wan used him.

(Anakin was happy to be used. He must never take advantage of this, never, never.)

Obi-Wan fought back the Darkness, rejected the future where it took hold. He rejected the hate which sought him and found the heart of his rejection not in any retaliation, not in violence, fear, anger, or despair, but in hope, in endurance, in a simple but elegant and complete defense.

Obi-Wan Kenobi would not yield.

He withdrew from the vision, followed Anakin across their bond back to sense and daylight and his body sitting on a warm stone within the meditation gardens.

Obi-Wan opened his eyes. He breathed in and out and in again, and collapsed on his back, staring up at the white sky over Coruscant.

“The Force has shown me a vision,” Obi-Wan told the Council. A few had gone on missions or were elsewhere on the planet since he and Qui-Gon had made their report the previous day and were reporting in via holointerface at Master Yoda’s summons. “Never since I was a boy has it been so . . . insistent. I felt in my vision that the machinations of the Sith against us are deep and far-reaching in consequence and may have disastrous repercussions for the future. Our enemies work toward a future where the Force is not in balance but consumed with Darkness and the utter annihilation of any resistance. I know the future is always in motion. No vision of the future is certain to come to pass, yet the Force tells me that this future is far from impossible. The forces against us are powerful, the plans against us comprehensive. The assassin that Master Qui-Gon encountered on Tatooine is an agent of the Darkness, yet he is himself the servant of a greater power.”

Obi-Wan felt the consideration of the Council. Some looked skeptical or disapproving. Because visions of the future were often confusing or unreliable, it was not common practice within the Order to dwell on them or to share what they presented. Living within the Force from moment to moment was by far the more acceptable teaching. Master Qui-Gon had spent much of Obi-Wan’s apprenticeship training him away from casting into the future to calculate his next actions, urging him to use instead what the Force was telling him in a given place or time. Masters who did otherwise—Sifo-Dyas, Mace Windu, were often acknowledged to be walking the edge of a very dangerous knife.

Yet no gift of the Force was without reason, and Obi-Wan knew there was wisdom to be found within the glimpses he had had of the future all his life. He was careful now not to dwell on them, but it helped to consider the likely consequences of acting one way or another. And this time, he had felt compelled to speak.

“You are certain of this: the assassin on Tatooine is the servant of a greater enemy?” Master Windu asked.

Obi-Wan considered his reply. He was, but it was not good practice to assert something before the Council without at least two independent sources of confirmation. A vision in the Force could count as one, but they had no evidence in reality to suggest the assassin on Tatooine was acting on anyone else’s authority. Certainly they had no standing to begin a search for the assassin’s master in any one direction. Obi-Wan could hardly roam the galaxy listening to different laughs for that bone-dry, rasping malice. And he had only ever seen the assassin on Tatooine from a distance.

“I have only my feelings, masters,” he replied.

“More was there, within your vision?” Master Yoda asked.

“I saw the assassin and felt he was my enemy,” Obi-Wan answered. “That he hated me, in person and in particular. Indeed, I felt this about every determinable source of Darkness I sensed within my vision. The center of the Darkness, as well as a second servant, who seemed much less immediate to my Force sense but loomed much larger in my mind. I felt the Darkness was set against every glimmer of Light within the galaxy, yet this opposition was . . . on principle. The hatred I felt extending toward myself was . . . different. Angrier. It was obsessed.

“The intensity almost overwhelmed me. I began to lose sense of myself and the current time and place. Then I felt Anakin—Initiate Skywalker—reaching out for me through our bond through the worst of the vision. I responded without thought. He sensed I was in distress and without my asking shared a great deal of power through what amounted to an instinctive empathic shove.” Obi-Wan smiled, remembering the volcanic surge of energy that had almost instantly cut through the Darkness surrounding him but almost burnt out his mind as well. “That proved a problem in its own right, but I was able to bring Anakin’s power under control and draw upon it to pull myself out of the vision.”

Master Yoda’s ears twitched down. “Ahhhh. Learned something you did, Padawan Kenobi, from this as well as from the vision. Share.”

It was a command. Obi-Wan bowed. “I can handle Anakin,” he replied. “I do not possess his power, yet our strengths are complementary within the Force. Being the helper he requires will not be easy. Yet it is natural—for Anakin Skywalker to seek his help in me and for me to answer him, even when I must learn how best to do so. And I now believe I will find what strength I need to help him to temper and direct his power within the Force and become what I must be to face the Darkness in so doing. Should I pass the remainder of my trials, I will submit a formal declaration of intent to train him.”

“Ahhhh,” Yoda sighed again. “Discovered your strength you have. Found your will within the Force.” He clenched his claws in demonstration.

Master Plo Koon addressed the other Council members. “The Padawan has demonstrated insight in this admission of a truth he initially denied.” The suggestion was implicit, but Obi-Wan understood.

“Masters, I am willing to undergo the trials in their traditional order and iterations,” he said.

There was a pause, and Obi-Wan felt currents pass within the Force. “We will discuss what you have told us, and debate as to whether you will undergo a more traditional Trial of Insight another time,” Master Windu said finally. “For now, the matter before us is your assignment for your Trial of Courage, and I believe your vision has provided us with an answer. After her plea for aid for her planet was met with a delaying action by the Trade Federation and a call for an investigative committee, Queen Amidala has put forth a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum. The Senate is voting for a new supreme chancellor, and Queen Amidala is returning home. This will put pressure on the Federation and could widen the confrontation on Naboo.”

“It could draw out the attacker you encountered on Tatooine, this dark assassin of your vision,” Master Mundi added.

“You will go alone with the queen to Naboo and discover the identity of this dark warrior,” Master Windu ordered. “You believe he is a servant of some greater evil. Find evidence to support your theory, and bring it back to us. This will serve as your Trial of Courage.”

Obi-Wan’s first instinct was to protest. Even if the Council agreed to Master Plo Koon’s suggestion to accept the insights he had gathered from his vision and Anakin’s involvement as success in his Trial of Insight, it seemed unfair. He had fought his Trial of Skill against Master Windu, and he would be sore from the efforts he had expended there for days. Now they wanted him to track down the first prospective Sith the Order had encountered in a millennia? Jedi for a thousand years hadn’t had so intensive of a trial!

Yet there was a fitness in it, he supposed. He had witnessed the assassin, the assassin had featured in his vision, along with an implication of some future personal enmity that certainly did not exist within the present. The Force could be urging him toward a confrontation with the Sith. Meeting the challenge certainly would be an exercise in courage. If he failed to rise to the challenge, could he be trusted to stand firm against any of the coming troubles his vision had hinted at?

Obi-Wan let go of his resentment and turned aside from his fear. He bowed. “It shall be done, masters.”

“May the Force be with you,” Yoda intoned.

“Wait, so they’re sending you after that guy who almost ran me over?” Anakin demanded, eyebrows high. “The one Mister Nodric—” Padmé’s pilot— “had to race the ship over to save Master Qui-Gon from?”

“Indeed,” Master Qui-Gon echoed, frowning, from his seat by the door of Anakin’s med wing room. “The trial seems . . . extreme, even for someone of your skill, Obi-Wan.”

“This is garbage!” Anakin cried, hitting his mattress with his fists. “Padmé and the queen and Artoo and all them are going back to Naboo with no help to that assassin and the Federation and whoever wants to kill them! And the Council wants you with them? They should be helping you! Not sending you straight into the middle of that poodoo!”

“Anakin!” Obi-Wan’s voice rang out with Qui-Gon’s, but after a look between them, Obi-Wan continued, moving close to the boy and sitting beside him on the bed. He reached out physically and in the Force. “Calm yourself. You are casting out into the future—borrowing trouble that may not come to pass. You cannot control what will happen on Naboo. Accept this, and trust your friends to look after themselves and one another. Can you do that?”

He couldn’t. Obi-Wan could sense it within the Force. The boy was a storm of fear and righteous outrage, of desperation denied.

“Here,” he said. “Breathe with me, as we did before.” He walked Anakin through the pre-meditation exercise they had done on Queen Amidala’s ship. Anakin gripped his hand and sleeve with a strength born more of exhaustion than of power. He had been there, Obi-Wan reminded himself, in the midst of the vision that had almost undone Obi-Wan, some sixteen years his senior and much more experienced in the Jedi ways. He had not seen the vision, had not known the nightmare Obi-Wan was living, but he had felt Obi-Wan’s emotions. He had also struggled against the Force tearing away at them. With narcotics still leaving his system, overstimulated and saddened and distressed, still he had struggled. In fact, Anakin had provided most of the raw power Obi-Wan had needed to break away from the vision.

How lost you are, youngling, and how brave, despite it all.

Across the bond, Obi-Wan felt something within Anakin ease, one of many knots of anxiety begin to loosen and untie.

“I’m stuck here,” Anakin whispered. “Having shots until they let me go. I can’t help you, Mister Obi-Wan. Can’t help anybody.” Obi-Wan felt the boy’s grief at that, grief for him, for R2-D2, and for Padmé Naberrie. The child’s feelings for her were strong.

“You’ve already been an enormous help,” Obi-Wan told him. “Not only did you get us off of Tatooine, today I’m fairly certain you led me through what the Council is going to call my Trial of Insight.”

Lights of hope and gratitude brightened the darkness within Anakin. The boy looked up, doubtful, but wanting badly enough to believe it that it hurt. “Really? Earlier, it was what you needed?”

“It was,” Obi-Wan confirmed, “Though we’ll work on your delivery—if I hadn’t already been immersed in meditation and trying to defend myself in the midst of my Force vision, I might have been unprepared for you. You could have put me in a hospital bed right next to you.” He squeezed Anakin’s hand, and more slowly than Anakin had earlier, let flow some of his own energy to shore up his young friend.

“Hey!” Anakin said. “That’s like—it was an accident, before,” he admitted. “I didn’t mean to do what I did. Just, you needed help so I sort of . . . did.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan told him. “You’ve got to stop doing these things before you learn what you’re doing,” he added. “Would you fly a ship before you understood how to do it?”

Anakin shrugged. “Sure. No better way to learn. I figured out podracing by jumping in someone’s junked-up pod and pressing buttons.”

Obi-Wan groaned. “Of course you did. Well. It’s a bit more important to be careful when we start pressing buttons within the Force that can have a harmful effect upon our phys—upon our brains or those of our friends. Take your time, Anakin. We will teach you how to use your power safely.”

“We’ll teach me, the Jedi will teach me, or we’ll teach me, you will?” Anakin asked.  

Obi-Wan paused, letting the silence stretch. Then he ruffled up the boy’s fair hair and clicked his tongue. “I suppose I will, once the creche masters have done with you. They must always have their say, you know.”

He could feel Qui-Gon’s smug smile from all the way across the room. Obi-Wan rolled his eyes, and Anakin whooped. He butted his head into Obi-Wan’s chest and threw his arms around Obi-Wan’s neck. “I knew you’d come around!” he cried. “You’ll see! I’ll get through this initiate stuff faster than any Jedi ever! I’ll be your padawan in no time, the best padawan ever!”

Obi-Wan allowed himself to enjoy the hug for about two seconds and permitted it to continue for a few seconds more. Then he extricated himself from Anakin and moved toward Master Qui-Gon and the door. “I’ll return soon, hopefully with good news of our friends from Naboo and our dark, reckless speeder.”

“I’ll be here, having shots,” Anakin said, rolling his own eyes.

“Oh, I’m certain they’ll bring you datapads to study in no time.”

“Greeeat,” Anakin drawled. “See you, Mister Obi-Wan.”

Qui-Gon followed him out of Anakin’s med wing room. “Are you planning to tell me anything about all that?” he asked. “The Trial of Insight?”

“A particularly nasty vision within the Force during my afternoon meditation,” Obi-Wan answered. “Anakin helped me through it. The Archives may have details of my report within the next few days, though the Council may classify them. I’ll send a request for you to be granted access, but I must be going. Queen Amidala sent word from the Senate that she departs within the hour.”

“I know; Master Plo Koon relayed the information at supper hour while you packed for the journey in our quarters,” Master Qui-Gon answered. “You leave immediately?”

Obi-Wan hoisted his knapsack in demonstration. It contained only his canteen, some field rations, and a change of clothes, but it was more than he had had with him on the last mission after the escape from the Trade Federation. “You will look out after Anakin? I don’t foresee his quarantine running smoothly.”

“I will do my best, though members of the Council have expressed a desire to meet in person for shared meditations upon my encounter with the assassin, the invasion of Naboo, and my first meeting with Ani. They also request more detailed reports for the Archives.” Qui-Gon looked into Obi-Wan’s face. “I will look in on him, Obi-Wan.”

“Don’t let it be like the journey from Tatooine,” Obi-Wan urged. “Anakin would have half-starved and frozen if it had been up to you.”

“And now you will be a knight and already have a prospective padawan learner,” Qui-Gon answered. “I think things worked out as they were intended. You’ve been a good apprentice, Obi-Wan, and you’re a much wiser man than I am. Farewell on your journey.” He extended his hand, and Obi-Wan shook it, then turned and walked away from the med wing, toward the Temple exit nearest the docks, where Queen Amidala would be waiting.

Chapter Text

QUI-GON JINN

Qui-Gon turned back around to return to Ani’s room. He would have preferred to retire to his own quarters. He could use the respite. Being around Anakin was . . . exhausting. It was occasionally painful and had been particularly such today since he had awakened. Ani broadcast his emotions like a beacon. He had shielded once, instinctively, in a moment where he felt his mind was under threat, but mere strength and talent within the Force was no substitute for knowledge. His shields had been imperfect, and no one had yet told him the necessity of developing smooth and consistent ones around other Force adepts, let alone begun to teach him how to do it.

Ani had other things on his mind. For a good portion of the last rotation, he had not been conscious. Yet, he would have to learn shielding soon, as much for his own protection as for the comfort of everyone in the Temple.

Yet, as unpleasant as it could sometimes be, Anakin’s unshielded emotions offered more of a window now into what he was thinking and experiencing moment to moment than he would like, if he knew. Certainly more than he would choose to reveal. He was trying very hard to be brave. They needed to understand how best to help him.

Anakin was grieving, and he was angry that he was grieving. Qui-Gon believed that he may have sensed some symptoms of depression in the boy shortly after his awakening this morning—there had been a withdrawal both in his willingness to interact and in his presence within the Force. Qui-Gon also now believed Ani had a propensity to attachment even beyond what was usual in a child raised outside the Jedi Order and had developed a dependency on Obi-Wan in the voyage from Tatooine to Coruscant. Obi-Wan had been kind to him. Obi-Wan had joked about it with Qui-Gon just now, but his words had called Qui-Gon to account: on their recent journey, Qui-Gon had neglected the boy.

He had assumed Anakin would be well upon their journey. He would adjust to the temperature difference between his home world and the rest of the galaxy. The longing for his mother would fade. Anakin was physically healthy, and it had been easier to spend his time in meditation upon the Sith, in counsel with Queen Amidala and Captain Panaka, than to spend it in close proximity to such unshielded intensity within the Living Force.

It had been Obi-Wan who had cared for Ani. Obi-Wan who had cooked for him, arranged his entertainment, ensured that he was clean and warm. Obi-Wan had listened to Anakin and answered questions for him until the sheen of maturity and authority had worn off and Anakin was no longer afraid to ask Obi-Wan all he wanted to know. He had sometimes held back with Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan had begun the consideration of the practicalities of raising and educating Anakin, from medical matters to legal to education and expense. In fact, Obi-Wan had stepped so firmly and confidently into the role of guardian for Ani, and so quickly, observing it had been something of a shock.

Qui-Gon had seen his pupil’s strong talents at Beast Mastery and diplomacy before over the course of Obi-Wan’s apprenticeship. Obi-Wan had a gift for calming and taming even the most recalcitrant of creatures. He was far easier with folk than Qui-Gon himself; more measured and careful in his actions as an adult than he had been as a child, Obi-Wan had friends all over the galaxy and in every social strata. He was one of the Order’s more promising young diplomats. Qui-Gon had not foreseen, however, how well Obi-Wan’s talents would translate into an aptitude for teaching. As Obi-Wan had showed Qui-Gon his ideas for Anakin’s future, completely unaware of what he’d done, Qui-Gon had had a sudden glimpse of the Jedi Master that his pupil might become: patient, wise, and protective, joyful in his teachings, yet humble in his approach. Qui-Gon had been concerned to realize that Obi-Wan might have been ready for knighthood for a long time since and he, Qui-Gon, had been holding his pupil back. He had been too focused on his pupil’s deficiencies and failed to see where he was more than sufficient.

Later meditation had only further revealed the way his pupil shone in service, in protection of another, the way the Force curled and resonated around the union of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s spirits. The very qualities Qui-Gon had often lectured his pupil for became his assets when dealing with Ani. Qui-Gon had urged Obi-Wan to stay more within the present, to dwell less upon an uncertain future. He had told Obi-Wan to pay more attention to his feelings and less to an analysis which often sterilized them. Yet, it was Obi-Wan’s ability to detach from his emotions which enabled him to stay just distant enough from Anakin to avoid being overwhelmed by him. It was Obi-Wan’s tendency to look to the future which would now serve to counter Ani’s impulsivity—as it often had Qui-Gon’s. Qui-Gon himself did not often have visions of the future—a reason he had always been fascinated by the prophecies—but the possibilities surrounding Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker were bright enough that even the Council had seen them.

Obi-Wan would come into his power and his identity in the training of Anakin Skywalker. For his apprentice’s sake, Qui-Gon was glad. Yet, in the days since their landing on Coruscant, Qui-Gon had seen that Anakin appeared to need Obi-Wan in a way which concerned him. It was possible Anakin could transcend this flaw through training. It was not unheard of for young padawans and apprentices to be overly dependent upon their masters and caregivers. Obi-Wan himself had trended a bit that way, overly aggressive in his efforts to impress and too sensitive to criticism of his attitudes, decisions, and techniques as criticisms of his person, which had always shone bright and lovely within the Force. Anakin’s attachment to Obi-Wan was not surprising; only its intensity was unusual, and that could be circumstantial. But if not, if it was an aspect of Anakin’s character, the closeness the training bond between Anakin and Obi-Wan might foster could make matters worse. Qui-Gon was very concerned for Ani now, with Obi-Wan going offworld and into danger.

Qui-Gon rounded the corner and saw Anakin’s doorway hanging ajar. He reached out for the healer assigned to Ani’s case—but she was still on the other side of the ward. He suspected she too found Ani’s presence hard to bear at the moment. Yet, he could have sworn that he had closed Anakin’s door when departing the room with Obi-Wan—he had not wanted them to be overheard.

Qui-Gon pushed the door fully open and glanced inside the room, only to have his suspicion confirmed: Anakin was not inside. It was possible he had merely gone down the hallway in the other direction to use the privy. Possible, Qui-Gon acknowledged, but not likely.

He stretched out with his senses, searching for Anakin, and found him, once again behind his clumsy, instinctive shields. What leaked out around them—as well as Ani’s actual location, outside the Temple—set Qui-Gon running from the med wing.

But by the time he had reached the docks, it was too late. He could fetch his com from his quarters or use the one in the Council chambers to alert his padawan of Queen Amidala’s extra passenger, but he suspected that by the time he got to either location, the queen’s ship would jump to hyperspace and be unreachable until their arrival in the Naboo system.

OBI-WAN KENOBI

The voyage from Coruscant to Naboo was much shorter than the voyage from Tatooine to Coruscant, only a third of the flight time. Queen Amidala was anxious to spend as much time as possible planning her actions when they arrived: while being incarcerated or murdered with her citizens would be a fine political statement, if they could bypass the blockade to make it public to the Senate, the queen was far more interested in freeing her people from the invasion altogether.

Her current idea was to make use of Jar Jar the Useless. Jar Jar could tell her where his people were likeliest to be in this crisis. The Gunguns made up over 70 percent of Naboo’s population, and the queen agreed with Obi-Wan that the invasion was by now likely causing them difficulties as well. They would slip past the blockade and land in Gungun sovereign territory. Jar Jar would take them to treat with Boss Nass, and they would ask for an alliance.

Obi-Wan would keep to the fringes, patrolling the perimeter and sensing for signs of their Sith assassin. Naturally, Obi-Wan would try and stop the assassin if he made another attempt on the queen, but he was currently leaning more toward an approach based on investigation and sabotage. He would prefer to avoid engaging the assassin directly, at least alone. Master Qui-Gon had needed to be rescued back on Tatooine. Obi-Wan did not delude himself that he was more powerful than his teacher. If he could spot the assassin, physically or through the Force, before he got too close, there was a possibility Obi-Wan could find his camp and equipment. He could learn more about the assassin’s mission and his master, his funding, his likely place of origin or planetary base. Bringing back evidence would satisfy Obi-Wan’s assignment from the Council for his Trial of Courage, and, as for the assassin, it was difficult to hit a moving target possessed of a starship and speeders when your own had mysteriously stopped functioning—and your supplies either missing or destroyed.

The queen was aware that while Obi-Wan would continue to accompany her as a friend and protector, he had a different mission than assisting in the liberation of her planet. She had given him her thanks, the larger guest quarters aboard her ship which Qui-Gon had occupied on their last trip, and then proceeded to ignore him. They each had their separate objectives.

The problem was Anakin.

Force bonds typically had a distance limit; while sensing someone across a quarter or city was simple, it grew much more difficult across a planet or system, and when they passed outside of a system, the complications of communicating matter across spacetime grew too great to overcome, even within the Force, except at moments of great joy or anguish, and then only the most powerful and practiced of Jedi Masters could tell something had befallen a being whom they knew.

Once they jumped to hyperspace, Obi-Wan should have had no sense of Anakin’s presence. It should have been like closing the door between them. Yet, as the first day of space travel turned into the second and they drew nearer and nearer to Naboo, Obi-Wan’s sense of Anakin never diminished. He could feel the boy in the back of his mind, and the sense was . . . odd. No sadness, no feeling of boredom there, frustration or interest with study materials the creche teachers brought to the med wing for him to begin on, perhaps. Instead, those clumsy, haphazard shields up more often than not, as if Anakin were hiding, or trying, and beneath them . . . guilt. Determination and excitement.

Obi-Wan’s own unease grew, and an hour before they were due to leave hyperspace and run the blockade, he knew he must investigate or he would never be able to commit fully to his mission. There was a chance that he was wrong and Anakin was back in the Temple, feeling differently about the lessons he might be receiving and his stay in the med wing than Obi-Wan had anticipated, and broadcasting more strongly than any Force user Obi-Wan had encountered because he was stronger than any Force user Obi-Wan had encountered, and their bond might be deeper. But if he wasn’t . . .

First, he spoke with the handmaidens, both Yané, the girl who had by and large taken responsibility for their ship’s cooked meals, and with Padmé herself, “in charge of” the queen’s wardrobe. Both of these had noticed things amiss. Yané thought there seemed to be a leak in one of their water casks and thought one of the others might be stress-eating, as small packets of bread and dehydrated fruit had gone missing—nothing they needed, nothing anyone in particular had wanted, only, if they were stranded on the planet’s surface in a lengthy resistance against the Trade Federation, their rations might become important, so she had been keeping track. Padmé had noticed a gown and headdress had not made it from the apartments on Coruscant back to the queen’s starship; one of the queen’s trunks was now half empty. She didn’t suspect theft by any of the queen’s attendants or visitors during her time on Coruscant but acknowledged they had moved to leave the capital quickly. People always left something behind when traveling, and Queen Amidala had a great many ceremonial gowns and headdresses.

“Is anything wrong, Padawan Kenobi?” Padmé asked.

“I’m not certain,” Obi-Wan answered. “I’m trying to find out.”

Obi-Wan suspected a dock worker back on Coruscant must have been confused or delighted to discover one of Queen Amidala’s sumptuous costumes shoved behind a crate after their departure. He hoped they returned the items to the caretakers in the apartments Queen Amidala usually rented during her visits to Coruscant. More likely they would vanish; each of the queen’s costumes would be worth a great many credits.

Hiding in one of the trunks would have gotten Anakin onboard; there couldn’t be much difference between the weight of a small boy and one of the queen’s voluminous dresses and massive headdresses. Afterward, his task would have been more difficult. There had been a great deal of activity within the queen’s compartments for the past two days. Unless he had moved quickly to a more private location, Anakin would have been discovered. Padmé and the other handmaidens—the queen’s whole entourage, in fact—were fond of the boy, but they would not smuggle him away from the Jedi and down into a war zone. They would have been ignorant of Anakin’s presence or intentions. He had to be somewhere else aboard the ship.

Obi-Wan searched the engine room first, the gaps between different mechanical parts of the queen’s ship. Then the cargo bay. Both were not usually occupied, and Anakin had spent a great deal of time in the engine room in particular upon their last voyage. Anakin might be able to hide in either location unnoticed for quite some time. But there was no trace of the boy in either place.

Obi-Wan kept himself tightly shielded as he searched. Shielding was second nature for him, of course, a matter of etiquette within the Temple and security outside it. Although Force-blind individuals could not sense a Jedi’s aura in the same way as Force adepts, they were aware of an unshielded Jedi’s presence, the sense of energy and potential which surrounded those alive and aware within the Force. Sometimes, covert operations depended upon a Jedi’s maintenance of his shields. In fact, these days it was more difficult to lower his shields than to maintain them—a bit like walking naked out into a public place. Now, however, Obi-Wan did not want Anakin to sense his feelings. He did not want Anakin alerted to his search.

A large part of him had hoped he was wrong, that somehow, despite the feelings leaking from Anakin within the Force, their immediacy, despite the missing rations and Queen Amidala’s half-empty trunk, he would not find Anakin aboard the queen’s ship. But when Obi-Wan stepped inside the boot box quarters he had occupied upon the last voyage, there was a sudden spike of fear inside his mind which did not belong to him. The sense of someone frozen down the hall, every muscle tensed, scarcely daring to breathe.

Of course. Of course Anakin had come here. How many times had he visited Obi-Wan within these quarters on their last trip? Here they were, empty now, and why should Obi-Wan return? There was scarcely room within to stand upon the floor. Anakin had done his best to make the bed from last night, but the comforter was askew.

Obi-Wan wrestled with a completely unexpected hot surge of worry and anger—this definitely from within his own mind. He thrust his hands into his sleeves to grip his wrists and manage the tension.

“Anakin. You can come out of that footlocker.”

There was a pause, then the lid of the room’s footlocker, held to but not latched closed, opened up. Anakin unfolded and stepped out on the floor.

He had not showered or changed since Coruscant. His apprentices’s clothes, given him by the healers, had wrinkled with long hours of hiding. His hair had matted to his head with sweat and dried in interesting configurations. As Obi-Wan looked down at him, Anakin’s stomach audibly rumbled.

“Yané noted the rations you took,” Obi-Wan remarked. “I wondered if you had found the dried fruit any more palatable—were able to eat it better than you were a few days ago.”

“I figured that stuff was nasty enough no one would notice,” Anakin muttered, looking down. “Most of it’s still in there.” He gestured back at the open footlocker. “Are they mad? Are you gonna take me back now?”

“I don’t think you understand, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said. “When we emerge from hyperspace, we will face a hostile Trade Federation blockade. Even if we elude their drones and fighters to land on Naboo, they’re looking for us. They will note our entrance into the system. If we escape merely to fly you back to safety, they will tighten security and Queen Amidala may not be able to enter the system again.”

He felt Anakin’s brief surge of satisfaction within the Force, and fought another wave of anger, almost verging upon rage. “I thought you might not be able to take me back. If I stayed still long enough. We’re almost at Naboo now, right?”

“We are.”

 Anakin frowned. “Hey—Mister Obi-Wan, you’re not mad, are you?”

Obi-Wan concentrated upon his breathing. He concentrated upon the feeling of the deck beneath his feet, the distant scream of the passing stars outside the hyperspace lane, the monotonous hum of the engine.

“Come. Let’s get you something closer to a meal you will actually eat,” he said, turning on his heel and moving toward the mess.

Mad? He was so far beyond mad that he could hardly begin to process the feeling. He wanted to shake the boy, to shout at him, to make him see and feel the depths of his foolishness, the breadth of his helplessness to face what they faced now. Obi-Wan wanted Anakin scared, sorry, repentant.

He felt more anger at Anakin putting himself at risk this way than he had felt at Bruck Chan’s antagonism in his youngling days, at Qui-Gon’s obstinacy at any time during his apprenticeship—any other time he had been “mad” in the past at all. It might as well be an entirely different feeling, but for the fact that, as Yoda always said, fear was at its root. Not fear for himself, that others would cast him out or his antagonists were right, but fear for another, for this stupid, stupid scrap of sentience who had charged behind him into a danger he could not begin to comprehend.

“You’re mad, aren’t you,” Anakin insisted, trotting behind him.

“Anakin, please. Don’t press me,” Obi-Wan told him. “We’ll talk after you’ve had something to eat.”

Something in his tone got through to Anakin. The boy’s demeanor shifted. The satisfaction he had felt upon the confirmation he could not be returned to Coruscant, the relief he had felt on finally being able to break his silence shrank, became subdued. The guilt, which had diminished, surged forth again to dominate.

Good.

Obi-Wan heated some of the flat, unleavened bread Anakin would eat and the tough jerky cuts he enjoyed inside a pan. He seasoned them with a sharp cheese substitute—he had found Anakin was more accepting of new savory flavors than of sweetness—and enough spice to light a wood on fire. Added a couple of dried peppers for good measure; the boy should start eating some vegetables at least. He finished off by filling a large canteen with a double water ration and setting plate and bottle before the boy. “Eat and drink it all,” he ordered. “Are you rec—are you better from your surgery?”

Anakin sloshed the water inside the canteen with wide eyes. He looked back at Obi-Wan, who raised his eyebrows. Anakin loaded a piece of bread with meat and peppers and began to eat, meekly. Between bites he answered. “My back started hurting yesterday, where they took out the detonator. The bacta patch really started to itch, too, so I took it off. But I’m fine, really. I’ve had worse after a day of podracing.” He picked out one of the half-eaten peppers from his meal and examined it. “Hey, these things are kinda good!” he remarked, popping the rest into his mouth. “Thanks, Mister Obi-Wan!”

“You’re welcome. We should take you to the infirmary. Make sure you did not remove your bacta patch premat—that you did not take it off too soon. The healing wound could become infected.”

“Nu-uh,” Anakin said firmly. “I’ve had it with med wings and shots! Besides, we can’t have a lot of time. Hey, do you think I can see Artoo and Padmé now? After I finish,” he added quickly, lifting up the rest of his meal like a peace offering.

“Oh, if we don’t have time to go to the infirmary before we run the Federation blockade, I doubt you’ll have the time to chat with your friends,” Obi-Wan said, unable to hold back his sarcasm this time. “Anakin, why couldn’t you have simply stayed where you were asked?”

“It’s boring in that med wing!” Anakin protested, becoming angry himself now in his desire to justify his actions. “That healer hated coming to the room they gave me. She only ever stayed long enough to do stuff that hurt. Then she practically ran away, like I really did have all those viruses and stuff they talked about, except I don’t! I’m never sick, so I can’t have made anybody else sick ever either, can I?! And Mister Qui-Gon only visited ‘cause he felt bad, ‘cause he brought me there and ‘cause you weren’t there.

“You guys all wanted me to stay there while you and Padmé flew out here into trouble. You’ve got this blockade or whatever, all the Trade Federation drones and fighters and that guy who almost ran me over too. I didn’t know what was gonna happen! But I wasn’t gonna just sit there when I can help!”

“And you were so confident in the help you could provide that you felt impelled to stow away,” Obi-Wan retorted. “Nine years old, weaponless, untrained to use a weapon even if you had one, you determined the warfront simply could not do without you, and you would be invaluable even half-starved and fighting off an infection from an improperly healed surgery site.”

“I can handle myself!” Anakin snapped, turning red. He shoved the remnants of his meal aside, then threw it to the deck. “You never want me!” he exploded. “No one wants me! My mom didn’t even want me! All I ever do is help you guys, and you just—you don’t—” His lip started trembling, but he clamped it down. His fists clenched and he looked down at the table, fuming.

Anakin’s hurt, rage, and terror lashed and roiled within the Force, but this time, Obi-Wan felt it as if from a distance. “You make a marvelous case for yourself,” he said coldly. “Throwing tantrums like a youngling of four, wasting limited rations that weren’t planned for your presence in the first place.”

“I’m not hungry!” Anakin yelled. “I didn’t want your dumb food anyway!” A patent lie. Even as he shouted, Obi-Wan felt Anakin was still hungry. Too bad. The meal Obi-Wan had made him lay scattered across the deck. There was no time to cook another. He would have to make do with a hard-tack ration instead of something hot.

“I appreciate the courage and ability that you showed back on your home planet in the Boonta Eve Classic, Anakin,” he said. “I appreciate the friendship you have shown for me, and I return it. But your help on this mission will not be help at all. We are flying into war. Our company is all well capable of defending themselves. Even Queen Amidala I hear is an accomplished markswoman. But obliged to defend your life as well as hers, we may become vulnerable. Aside from that, you are on probation. The Jedi have not determined to train you as one of us. You are older than any apprentice they have accepted for centuries, and some of the most powerful and influential masters on the Council have grave doubts about your suitability. By running away from the place they put you to follow me, you will only confirm them.”

“They don’t want me, either!” Anakin cried. “They’re just giving me the chance because of you, and ‘cause Qui-Gon messed up, but they can’t put me back. They would if they could! You would!”

“Anakin, I will never take you back to slavery,” Obi-Wan said.

“But you want to,” Anakin accused. “You think it would be easier if Master Qui-Gon had never found me! You wish he never had!”

Obi-Wan exploded his shields out at Anakin, letting him see instead of guess all his resentment, all the stress and pressure he had felt since his master had brought this boy aboard. The worry, the weariness, the annoyance. What it was like to feel Ani as a more or less constant headache, literally, the invasion of having a bond he had neither wanted nor agreed to forced upon him. He had not planned on Anakin. He had not wanted him. Within less than fourteen standard rotations, everything had changed because of Anakin, and the path ahead for Obi-Wan looked infinitely more difficult and painful than he had ever anticipated with more potential for darkness than he had dreamed. He saw it in Anakin now: the injuries that had warped into a near-bottomless pit of fear and need, his rebellion, his anger, how easily it might one day warp to hate. He saw the clouds Master Yoda had sensed hanging over the boy’s future, how all the Jedi training they could give could only serve to make Anakin more dangerous, how all that power could one day be misused.

And how never, for a second, had he once wished his master had left Anakin behind on Tatooine or that the boy had never come into his life. The possibilities he sensed could unfurl for good because of Anakin, within Anakin and within himself. A near-limitless potential to soothe and cure the galaxy’s ills offsetting that darkness within the boy. All of the Light he saw as well.

Showing it to Anakin was an act of violence, undertaken within his anger. Obi-Wan did not intend it to calm Anakin, to comfort or reassure him. He meant to hurt him. Anakin flinched back. He turned white beneath his tan. His eyes locked on Obi-Wan’s, wide and terrified. He began to shake.

“I’m not, I didn’t . . .” His voice faded out into a whisper.

That was when Padmé Naberrie entered the room, still in her handmaiden’s guise. She would not remove it until the fighting ended and she was safe again. She took in the room at a glance and swept over to their table.

“That is enough,” she said. “The pilot is moving to drop us out of hyperspace. He must concentrate, and your arguing is loud enough to echo through the entire ship. Anakin, pick up your plate. Obi-Wan Kenobi, you may dispose of the mess and move to the cockpit. Master Nodric may require your advice. Anakin and I shall strap ourselves into the seats right here for the flight down past the blockade.”

Obi-Wan looked down at the fourteen-year-old child dressed as a servant girl. She was small, even for her age, yet she radiated confidence and authority. Anakin scrambled to pick up his plate. He handed it to Obi-Wan, eyes down.

“Sorry,” he muttered, and Obi-Wan wasn’t sure who he was speaking to. He decided he had best go for the broom.

PADMÉ

Padawan Kenobi left for the cockpit as requested, and Padmé was left alone with her small friend from Tatooine. She had suspected when Yané had told her about Padawan Kenobi’s questions about the rations that it was Ani who had come in inside the other half of the trunk where Rabé had found one of her gowns missing. It might have been a drone or spy droid, or a hostile from one of the smaller species, but somehow, she had known it wasn’t.

She stared down at Ani, at his beautiful blue eyes, the sprinkling of freckles across his nose and cheeks, his blond hair stuck up into spikes with who knew what, and had to fight an urge to weep. She had not wanted him to come. Bad enough to think of all the children imprisoned on her home world, frightened, maybe starving or dying, without bringing another down into it. She tried to comb his hair into some kind of order with her fingers.

“Obi-Wan is right, you know,” she told him. “You should not have come.”

“I wanted to help you,” Anakin said.

“And we just wanted you to be safe.”

“I didn’t know I was gonna make things worse,” Anakin said. “I thought I could do something, like in the podrace, or with Obi-Wan before the Council told him he had to come here. But I—I hurt him, Padmé. I didn’t know that I hurt him, hurt all the Jedi! I knew I’d been a little trouble, but I didn’t know how bad it was. I—maybe Master Qui-Gon should’ve left me on Tatooine. Maybe they should send me back.”

“You know Obi-Wan doesn’t want that. None of them do.” Padmé felt the jolt as the ship dropped out of hyperspace. She pushed down her fear, her need to know where the ship was within space, how close their enemies were, if they would make it. This was the center of the ship, the most secure place she could be. From here, if need be, they could head toward any one of the ship’s four escape pods. In the event of an emergency, this area, far from the engines or shield matrices, would be one of the last to be targeted or lose power.

“I know Obi-Wan doesn’t,” Anakin said. His voice was small. “I—I think I almost killed him, Padmé, before, when I thought I was helping. Maybe I did, a little, but only because he knew what to do with me.” Padmé didn’t have the faintest idea of what Ani was talking about, but she understood he was sad and scared, that he was sorry he had come now but had only come out of love. She reached out and took his hand. He gripped it tightly. “He should hate me,” Ani murmured. “I would hate me.”

“I don’t think Jedi hate people,” Padmé said.

Anakin looked down at their joined hands. “I don’t hurt you, do I? I don’t want to hurt you, Padmé, not ever!”

“I’m worried about you, Ani,” Padmé told him. “I’m sad that you are here. I’m frightened we may not be able to protect you from danger. I know you will see things once we land upon my home world that we cannot protect you from. That is a kind of hurt.”

“Yeah,” Anakin admitted, “but don’t you see? I was feeling like that back there in that dumb old med wing in the Temple on Coruscant. I didn’t want you guys to come here without me. We’re friends. Friends help, even if somebody tells them not to. Isn’t that what your queen is doing? The Senate didn’t want her to come back, right? But she had to help your guys’ people. You ‘n’ Obi-Wan seem to think it’s real bad that I’m here when I’m just nine, but the queen’s not that much older than I am, the way I see it. And she can’t use the Force or anything!”

Padmé looked down at Ani. The ship spun around them and made a sharp turn. Her stomach swooped, and she closed her eyes a moment. “You don’t need the Force to be brave or do the right thing.”

“No, but that’s what I mean!” Anakin agreed, pulling her hand in emphasis. “Look, I didn’t even know I had the Force until Mister Qui-Gon said. Obi-Wan isn’t as strong in the Force as me; that’s why I hurt him so bad. That, and ‘cause I’m not much good yet. But Obi-Wan knows a lot of things I don’t. You and the queen and Artoo and all you guys don’t have the Force, but you’re fighting anyway. I think that’s amazing. That’s why I like you guys. Especially you.”

“Especially me, huh?” Padmé smiled, distracted for a moment from thoughts of making it to the surface and what they would do if they arrived there.

“Well, I don’t know if you’re that much better than the others, really,” Ani admitted, attempting to be fair. “But I know you best.”

Padmé’s smile widened. She dared suppose it could be true. It had been some time since she had had a friend to truly be herself with. To everyone else, she was Queen Amidala, or else a servant. Whether they looked to see the leader of the Naboo, the youngest elected monarch within decades, whose inexperience had led to tragedy, or a girl in uniform behind her, they were not seeing Padmé. Even the closest of her handmaidens—dear, dear Sabé—saw the position she had run for before the person she had been and still was inside. Ani had not known her for a servant when they met. He did not know now she was a queen. He did not think a servant lowly, for he had been a slave, and a slave never had true respect for any queen. But to Anakin, she was simply a girl. He had seen her and thought her beautiful.

“You know me,” she repeated. “Are you sure?”

“Sure, I’m sure,” Ani answered. “I know you here and here—” pointing at his head and heart.

“Your Majesty, we are being hailed,” a voice said over the speaker.

Padmé unbuckled her harness and stood. “I must go,” she said. “The queen will be headed to the cockpit. She may require my advice.”

Chapter Text

OBI-WAN KENOBI

“Master Qui-Gon,” Obi-Wan said. “Fancy meeting you here. It seems the whole gang is back together.”

“I take it you’ve discovered Anakin, then.” Qui-Gon’s voice was wry over the com, with an undercurrent of tension. Outside the front window of Queen Amidala’s ship, Obi-Wan observed two Trade Federation drones pursuing the two-man fighter his master flew across the sky. Life-sign readings showed only one lifeform inside.

“Yes, he climbed out of a trunk and presented an eloquent argument about why he felt he was an indispensable part of our mission.” Obi-Wan tried to keep the tension in his own voice undetectable as sensors tracked Master Qui-Gon undertaking a particularly complex evasive maneuver. His master’s primary guns were nonoperational although his fighter had not yet been damaged. Obi-Wan had a bad feeling that he knew why Master Qui-Gon seemed to be missing his gunner. He was due to pick up his gunner planetside.

Qui-Gon confirmed his guess. “I came to take charge of him and protect him until your own mission is resolved.”

Obi-Wan looked around the cockpit, from Nodric to Padmé to the handmaiden his master had called Sabé dressed in full Queen Amidala regalia for their hopeful upcoming liaison with the Gungun resistance. “Master, we cannot help you,” he said. “We must continue on to the planet’s surface. If we engage with the Trade Federation forces, we draw attention back to ourselves. Queen Amidala and Anakin are both still onboard.”

“Understood, Padawan. I will lose them. Activate your personal com link and tune it to our private channel. I will trace the signal and rendezvous with you on the planet’s surface.”

“May the Force be with you.”

“And you, Master Qui-Gon.” Qui-Gon broke the connection, and Obi-Wan tried to numb himself to the worried, sympathetic looks of the others. He fell into a breathing pattern, separated his anger from himself and released it to the Force. Anakin’s recklessness had put much in jeopardy: his life as well as the lives of those on the queen’s ship who would now have to defend him, his standing within the Order, the integrity of Obi-Wan’s Trial of Courage, and now, Master Qui-Gon and the droid and fighter he had taken from the Order’s hangars to come mitigate the mistake.

Master Qui-Gon would be as unable to leave the planet before a resolution to the conflict as Obi-Wan, the queen, and her entourage. The best Master Qui-Gon would be able to do with Anakin would be to hide him, and traditionally, protecting noncombatants had been Obi-Wan’s role within their partnership. He had sheltered those they needed to care for while his master had done most of the heavy fighting. Now, Obi-Wan’s mission from the Jedi Council necessitated they do things the other way around. Neither of them would care for the change, and Anakin wouldn’t care much for it either. Anakin had apologized for his actions before they had emerged from hyperspace, but Obi-Wan doubted his remorse would last through being told a second time he must stay back from all the action.

This is going to be interesting. Naturally, provided Master Qui-Gon makes it to the surface to find us in the first place. But he wouldn’t think about that.

Instead, he watched as the blockading fleet grew smaller and smaller on the horizon, and Naboo larger and larger. He hoped that the Gunguns were more amenable to an alliance than they had been last time. If they were not, Queen Amidala’s position—and all of theirs by virtue of association—could become desperate. He remembered the fury and the reach of the Darkness he had sensed within his vision, the agent of that Darkness who sought them even now. What machinations had already been set in motion against the Jedi and the Republic, against every bit of Light that existed within the galaxy? What might come to set those forces of evil as firmly and as personally against him as he had sensed they could be within his vision?

You know the answer, Obi-Wan. He could sense it as if his master had said it outright, though Master Qui-Gon was silent across their bond, still moving to evade the agents of the Trade Federation. It was the voice in his own head that had come to sound like Qui-Gon, reminding him to be mindful of the present, to focus upon what he felt to be true in the moment, what he could do and change within the moment instead of hazy what-could-bes, which could provide useful information but ultimately served more often as distractions. The evil Obi-Wan had sensed lying in wait for them in the future, that backed this dark assassin—Obi-Wan was its enemy. He would resist that malicious greed with all that was within him and when all his resources failed. He would not be corrupted, and he would not give in, and someday, some time, his enemy would come to know that. And so, he would fight. And all the power that hate had to command would seek to defeat him.

Accept it. Own the choice you make now and choose to make in the future, and release your fear, Obi-Wan. Is your life and your peace worth more than the lives and peace of all the galaxy? No. Control yourself, and have faith. After all, it seems likely you might prove something of a nuisance to whatever evil is on its way.  

For now, all there is to do is survive to the surface, meet the Gunguns, and discover the queen’s plans for the future. Then you can determine how to protect her and Anakin; which avenue the assassin is likeliest to choose to attack and where he is likeliest to be camped and vulnerable.

Across the ship, however, burned a Light like a beacon, that would be felt by anyone trained in any Force techniques, across a world if not across the literal galaxy. And even as Obi-Wan tried to push off his worries until after they met with the Gunguns and the queen devised her plans, he suspected he knew how the assassin would find them to attack. And he suspected that all his plans of avoiding direct confrontation with the assassin and focusing instead on foiling his attack through a pattern of sabotage and reconnaissance had been foiled in their turn the moment Anakin had climbed into Queen Amidala’s trunk.

They did not find the Gunguns in the hidden city, but Jar Jar Binks informed them of a sacred place on the continent where Boss Nass would have retreated to martial his forces for a counterattack. The Gunguns were there in force. Mounted soldiers patrolled evacuee camps of noncombatants, keeping an eye out for droid or drone infiltrators or anyone who wasn’t Gungun.

Their party was challenged within a reasonable distance of their approach, and every Naboo compelled to surrender their weapons. Obi-Wan was permitted to retain his lightsaber. While the Gunguns disliked and distrusted humans due to decades of souring relations with the Naboo, the Jedi Order was still respected among them, and indeed, there were Gunguns within the Jedi ranks.

“Stay close to me, Ani,” Obi-Wan instructed the boy as Gungun soldiers surrounded their little party and led them away toward Boss Nass to account for themselves. “The Gunguns and our friends do not have good relations. They have historically lived in peace, but the Gunguns are a more insular society. They may blame the Naboo for the invasion.”

Anakin nodded, eyes wide, gazing around at the armored Gunguns and their electric spears. “They aren’t gonna kill us or anything, are they?”

“Unlikely, but they may decide we’re less trouble tossed in a cage somewhere until they sort this whole war out by themselves.”

“But you won’t let that happen, right? You’ll do something before then.”

Obi-Wan glanced down at the boy. “Anakin, my mission here is to locate the assassin trying to kill Queen Amidala and bring intelligence back on his identity and his superiors, if he has them, to the Jedi Council. The Senate has determined not to intervene here on Naboo—at least not yet, and technically, my presence here in the first place bends the Jedi allegiance to the Senate.” He checked to make sure Anakin understood. “Right now, in the eyes of the Senate, we are caught up in an internal affair for Naboo. Queen Amidala and Boss Nass, the leader of the Gunguns, will determine what happens next, not I.”

“Be a lot easier for that one guy to kill her if she’s trapped in a cage someplace,” Anakin muttered. “‘Specially if we’re trapped right there with her.”

Despite the seriousness of their circumstances, Obi-Wan had to suppress a smile. Anakin wasn’t wrong. It was important Anakin understand politics and mission authority if he continued on with the Jedi, yet if the Gunguns did move to imprison them all or worse, Obi-Wan would also indeed have to do something. He couldn’t investigate an assassin from within a cage. Yet, the Gunguns rode right alongside them. It was probably a bad idea if they knew Obi-Wan had no intention of allowing himself to be taken prisoner.

The last time Obi-Wan had seen Boss Nass, the leader of the Gungun people, he had been sitting on a throne at his leisure. Now he stood in the dirt under the trees of the Gungun sacred place, and he was dressed for battle and hardship alongside all his people.

“Your Honor, Queen Amidala of the Naboo,” the general who had taken charge of them after their surrender announced, bowing, and gesturing toward Sabé, who was still in the Queen Amidala regalia. Boss Nass scowled harder than he had even in the hidden city, and Obi-Wan sensed an arrowing in of hostility among the Gungun soldiers. They truly did not care for the humans who shared their world.

Jar Jar Binks gave his erstwhile leader a floppy wave. “Uh, heyo dadee, Big Boss Nass, Your Honor,” he said.

The Gungun leader inclined his head to his exiled citizen. “Jar Jar Binks. Who’s da uss-en others?” he asked. It was a way of acknowledging the difference between those who had come before him. For all his blundering, Binks remained a Gungun. Binks was one of Boss Nass’s people, and by asking Jar Jar once again who the Naboo were when his general had just told him, Boss Nass offered the humans an insult.

Sidestepping both the insult and the attempt to sideline the Naboo, Sabé stepped forward to address the Gungun leader directly. “I am Queen Amidala of the Naboo,” she said, in the low, monotone voice it seemed that both she and Padmé had developed to assist in their deception. “I come before you in peace.”

Boss Nass sneered. “Ah, Naboo biggen. Yousa bringen da Mackineeks. Yousa all bombad.” He gestured dismissively, but the words, denotatively ambiguous within the Gungun pidgin dialect, were a curse within this context. As Obi-Wan had surmised, the Gunguns—or, more specifically, Boss Nass, blamed the Naboo’s interests in trade and interrelations with the wider galaxy for the Trade Federation invasion.

Yet, there was reason to feel somewhat better than could have been expected. Boss Nass clearly perceived no threat from Queen Amidala and her entourage. He was angry; sullen, but Obi-Wan sensed he did not plan to do anything to them. He would insult and then ignore them. There would be no need for escaping any cage, but the Naboo would receive no help.

Nevertheless, Sabé was out of her depth. She was a warrior. She might have been prepared for a denial. She would have been prepared for battle. This cold dismissal into irrelevance by the Gungun leader was beyond her. She did not know how to pierce through Nass’s indifference to plead their case. Instead, she fell back on the approved course of action. “We have searched you out because we wish to form an alliance.”

A shift in the mood and current of the grove. Obi-Wan felt Anakin’s attention in particular come to an acute focus as Padmé stepped forward in front of her decoy, taking charge. “Your Honor,” she called.

Boss Nass turned, surprised. “Whosa dis?” he demanded.

“I am Queen Amidala,” Padmé declared. Obi-Wan shifted his weight. It was a gamble, revealing herself now, yet the true Amidala would be much better prepared to navigate the politics of the situation than her decoy. He was ready to defend her if it proved necessary.

And beside him, Obi-Wan sensed a sudden pulse of shock then an intensifying of Anakin’s interest with the proceedings. A fierce, joyous triumph and delight. Anakin fist-pumped. “I knew it!” he exclaimed, though mindful of the proceedings, he did not speak above a whisper. Obi-Wan shot him a look. Anakin subsided.

“This is my decoy, my protection, my loyal bodyguard,” Padmé was explaining. “I apologize for our deception, but it was necessary for my protection. Although we do not always agree, Your Honor, our two great societies have always lived in peace.”

It was the right note to strike from the first: the Gunguns often felt offended by what they felt was the arrogance of the humans who made up less than a third of the planet’s population yet claimed to represent the whole. Their traditional warrior’s culture was isolationist and simpler than the Naboo, who prided themselves upon their artistry and sophistication. In fact, the Gunguns had fairly advanced technology, yet it lacked the intersystem, luxury style of the technology of the human inhabitants of the planet. By acknowledging the two societies as equals, Padmé had already extended a hand to the Gunguns and their leader.

There was also an impact to Amidala’s approach of passion and earnestness now, as opposed to the pomp and ceremony Sabé had been trained to. The formality was appropriate at the galas or festivals that made up the queen’s ordinary schedule. Less so in a meeting with a displaced people fighting for survival and pleading for her own people already imprisoned. Not for nothing had Naberrie been made Naboo’s youngest elected monarch in generations.

“The Trade Federation has destroyed all that we have worked so hard to build,” Padmé continued. “If we do not act quickly, all will be lost forever. I ask you to help us.” A thought crossed Padmé’s face, and abruptly, she knelt before the Gungun leader.

Anakin moved before Obi-Wan even registered that he should do the same, and then they were all kneeling before the Gunguns.

“No,” Padmé amended, “I beg you to help us. We are your humble servants. Our fate is in your hands.”

The clearing fell silent as they waited for Boss Nass’s answer. Amidala’s sincerity rang out over the sacred grove, and Obi-Wan could only admire the way she had allowed her true humility and desperation in this moment to show through—surrendering her dignity here could only flatter the Gunguns and show her commitment to the salvation of her people. Yet she had a strength she could not understand completely: the full force of Anakin’s will now was trained upon Padmé’s support. The Force-blind in the grove would not understand fully what was happening; Obi-Wan doubted Anakin himself understood what the strength of his respect, admiration, and compassion for his friend did now, but Anakin’s attention gave Amidala power. She would sense she was not alone, that others stood behind her in sentiment as well as in form, loved her all the more in this moment of weakness before beings who had historically had no fellow feeling or compassion for her people. The Gunguns would feel an intensified sense of Amidala’s righteousness, an echo of Anakin’s own sense of Padmé’s worth.

The boy had knelt before even the handmaidens and security forces trained to respond to Amidala. He was very attuned to her.

Obi-Wan was unsurprised when Boss Nass broke out into a wide, amphibious grin. “Ha!” he cried, throwing his arms out in both directions. “Yousa no tinken yousa greater den da Gunguns?” he demanded. Wordlessly, Padmé shook her head. “Mesa like this,” Boss Nass told her. “Maybe wesa being friends.” He made an imperious gesture, and soldiers came forward with the Naboo weapons. Padmé rose, and all of them rose. They could begin negotiations—not on whether they would ally at all but on what terms that alliance would be. So simply was it settled: they were all of them going to war.

“Here,” Obi-Wan said, offering Anakin some of the Gungun soldier rations, a piece of jerky made from various Naboo protein sources and fish skin. “Most of your last meal wound up all over Padmé’s floor. You should eat while you have the chance.”

With the immediate threat of the Gunguns gone, an awkwardness had settled over the pair of them. Anakin’s shouts and accusations on the ship hung in the air between them, and so did Obi-Wan’s response. Hours after the fact, Obi-Wan regretted losing his temper with the boy.

He’s nine years old, and it was a temper tantrum, founded in what has been a period of near-incomparable stress for the boy.

You should have done better.

“Thanks,” Anakin muttered, taking the jerky. “I’m sorry. ‘Bout before. I shouldn’t’ve—” he broke off, eyes falling. He bit off a piece of the meat, made a face, but chewed and swallowed anyway. Gungun food was edible for humans, but the species did have very different tastes. “Why do the Gunguns all talk like that?”

Obi-Wan recognized the change of subject as Ani’s own banner of surrender. He was requesting knowledge, attempting to return them to a familiar footing. Obi-Wan allowed it. They discussed the ways different cultures sometimes personalized and bastardized Basic as a show of individuality. Anakin ate. Eventually, Master Qui-Gon showed up.

Obi-Wan clasped his master’s arm, sharing his relief with the Force. “It’s like you to be late to the party.”

“I trust you can catch me up,” Qui-Gon answered, glancing over at where Padmé and her captain, Panaka, conferred with Boss Nass, his generals, and tragically, Jar Jar Binks, whom Boss Nass had elected to thank for their new alliance. “I see our Queen Amidala has finally doffed her disguise.”

“You knew Padmé was the queen?!” Anakin demanded.

Obi-Wan suppressed a smile. “I thought you knew too. You said you did.”

Anakin blushed. “Okay, so I didn’t know know,” he admitted. “I’m just glad it’s her, okay? It makes sense, you know? She’s smarter than all of them!”

“Indeed,” Qui-Gon grinned.  

“You will learn how to spot if a leader is using a decoy, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, “Like Padmé with her bodyguard, Sabé. It can be useful to know on planets like Naboo where the leader is expected to maintain a degree of anonymity—to be more of a front or a mask than a person. You know, Amidala is an assumed name. Padmé made it up for her candidate within the elections, and the other candidates did the same. Do not feel that your friend has lied to you. She truly is Padmé Naberrie.”

He meant to be kind, but in this assumption, it seemed Obi-Wan had attributed more anxiety to Anakin in this moment than he possessed. Anakin scoffed. “Oh, I know that. Back on the ship the first time, she told me about her family and the droids she has at home and everything. She misses them too, but she said what she does now is more important. I just didn’t realize how important.”

It occurred to Obi-Wan that Anakin and Padmé Naberrie had found common ground in more than their love for the R2-D2 unit. If Anakin did become a Jedi instead of joining the corps or returning to a life in freedom with his mother, provided they freed her at the end of this campaign, he too would be electing to pursue a life of public service instead of a life with his family.

His master called them back to attention. “What is your plan now, Obi-Wan? We both traversed the blockade to arrive here, but I wouldn’t gamble our chances on running it again, particularly with Anakin.”

He had come to the same conclusion, then: it would not be safe to attempt to leave the planet with Anakin until the situation with the Trade Federation was resolved. Obi-Wan looked down at Anakin, uncertain how to proceed now with the boy. There were things Obi-Wan should discuss with his master, yet he didn’t want to reveal more than Anakin could handle once again. It would be simple enough to tell Ani to go to Rabé or one of the other handmaidens now, to work with the R2 unit or see if he could meet the Gungun mount master; he had shown interest in the creatures that they rode. Yet all the available options to send him out of earshot now would also send him to the fringes of the camp, and if Obi-Wan was correct, the fringes of the camp was the last place Anakin Skywalker should be. He could hardly tell the boy to stick his fingers in his ears and sing.

No, Obi-Wan decided. Their priority at the moment was to keep Anakin physically safe, and it would not be the worst thing for him to hear the likeliest consequence of his recent decisions. Obi-Wan would permit Anakin to hear it.

This time, not to frighten him. This time, to make sure he is prepared, he resolved.

“Unfortunately, I think running with Anakin into the wildlands may be an equally risky proposition, master,” Obi-Wan confessed. It would have been his preference, but with a likely Force-User, it was simply not feasible. “If I had to guess, I would say the assassin most likely found us before by tracking the transponder of Queen Amidala’s ship, or else Trade Federation agents had placed a tracer. However, Padmé is no longer in her ship. Now that she has gone to ground and is preparing for a planetside combat, I suspect the assassin may look for a shortcut to find her.”

They both looked down at Anakin, and Obi-Wan felt his master’s understanding. “You believe he may track Anakin,” he concluded, grim. “It would be tempting,” he admitted. “He would have felt Ani with the queen on Tatooine and again now that she has reentered the Naboo system.”

“‘Cause I’m loud, right?” Anakin asked, sounding resigned. “I don’t know if ‘loud’ is the right word, but that’s how it felt through the thing Obi-Wan showed me. Like you guys, Jedi, hear me all the time. Like a krayt dragon or something, hollering at everything. You think that sleemo from Tatooine would hear it too?”

“The thing my padawan showed you?” Master Qui-Gon repeated, looking over at Obi-Wan, eyes narrowed. Because Anakin was loud, he could feel the boy’s guilt and hurt now.

Obi-Wan endeavored to stay on track. “I think it’s possible,” he told Anakin, “Even probable, if our adversary is indeed a Force adept.”

“I’ve tried that thing all you Jedi do to make you kinda less noticeable,” Anakin said, “but I don’t think I’m too good at it yet. It’s how you found me on the ship, right?”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan confirmed. “You had left traces in Padmé’s wardrobe and food supplies, of course, but I knew to check them because I felt you were still nearby.”

“Anakin would be simple to track across a planet,” Qui-Gon said. “I see. If our assassin assumes he has remained with Queen Amidala, we could potentially draw him out by separating from her, but whether you are right or wrong in this, it may not be the ideal scenario to divide our forces.”

“If I’m right, a trained assassin you had trouble with last time heads straight for you and Anakin,” Obi-Wan confirmed. “If I’m wrong, we leave the queen without Jedi protection. No. I believe the best way to protect you both is to remain together,” he said, addressing Anakin directly now.

Anakin plucked at his sleeve. He wouldn’t look up at them. His feelings churned faster within the Force. “If I’d stayed at the Temple like you told me, this never woulda happened.”

“You couldn’t have known, Ani,” Master Qui-Gon told him. “I’m surprised that you are aware you transmit your emotions in the Force now. Have you and Obi-Wan discussed this?”

Anakin’s eyes shifted to Obi-Wan and away. “Sort of,” he muttered. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t listen,” he told Obi-Wan. “I coulda done what you said back at the Jedi Temple. I was really bored, and scared for you and Padmé, but I coulda done what you and the healer and the council wanted. But I think me and Mister Qui-Gon should probably go away—away from Padmé if we can’t leave the planet. I could probably fly us out. But if that assassin chases after me like you think, at least he won’t get Padmé and them, and you can follow him, and you and Qui-Gon can get him.”

“If I thought the assassin likely to follow me or Master Qui-Gon as a shortcut to Queen Amidala, it would be one thing to separate our forces,” Obi-Wan said, looking up into Anakin’s eyes. “But I would prefer not to use you as bait, Ani. I’m not willing to take the risk that this man can take us by surprise if you are with us. If you are as close to the center of things as you can be, he will be forced to show himself to someone before he can fulfill his objective and attack Padmé. Then Qui-Gon and I can head him off.”

Qui-Gon frowned. “Padawan, your objective is to discover what you can of the assassin on your own. This is your Trial of Courage from the Council. They will not approve of my involvement, nor did I believe you planned to confront the assassin directly.”

Obi-Wan looked over his shoulder up at his master. “I hadn’t, but if he goes for Anakin, one or the other of us will have to stop him, Master.”

“But he could go for Padmé,” Anakin pointed out. “If he does what you think he’s gonna do, he’s just following me to get to her, right?” He shook his head and looked up past Obi-Wan to his master. “Uh-uh. I’ve been enough trouble. That guy’s got a new way to find her, now Obi-Wan’s talking about messing up his trial to take care of me, we’re not gonna put Padmé in any more danger. We need to go.”

Obi-Wan considered. Anakin’s feelings for the young queen of the Naboo were strong. The boy was protective of his friends. A good quality, yet in Anakin, demonstrably carried to an extreme. It was this protective instinct which had led him to stow away in Padmé’s wardrobe. The regret Anakin felt now for the consequences of that decision would not stop him from making a similarly disastrous one in fleeing to protect her now—and to protect Obi-Wan’s own trials, for Obi-Wan could not ignore that he was himself one of the friends Anakin was driven to protect so fiercely. If Anakin became a Jedi, he would have to learn to let go of the fear of loss which lay behind his ferocity. For now, it was probably best to work within it.

He squeezed the boy’s shoulders, returning Anakin’s attention to himself. “We don’t know that I’m right, Anakin,” he pointed out. “It is likely our enemy may be following you now. It would be the simplest course of action. But he may use other methods. If you and Master Qui-Gon run, he may follow you and then double back when he realizes you have separated from Padmé. He may not follow you at all and attack Padmé as soon as he sees an opportunity. We do not know what he will do. We do not know him well enough. What we do know is that staying together offers us the best chance to protect both you and Padmé now. We will have more eyes watching for his approach. We will have more weapons that can stop him. We will have more people qualified to fight. Do you understand?”

“We will stop him, Ani,” Qui-Gon added. “We will protect you and your friend.”

Anakin searched Obi-Wan’s face. Obi-Wan felt the boy begin to probe him with the Force. He had probably done it thousands of times before, searching the intentions of others, judging deception and trustworthiness by instinct. This time, however, Anakin realized what he was doing. He was beginning to understand when he used the Force, and Obi-Wan had showed him how this particular trick could feel . . . invasive. Anakin stopped. His eyes met Obi-Wan’s, and Obi-Wan felt something akin to the scratching of an akk dog at the door between their minds—Anakin, asking for permission.

Pleased and touched, Obi-Wan opened the link. He extended his consciousness to Anakin, gently, this time. He offered Anakin his apologies for his behavior on the ship, his conviction that staying together truly was their best course of action. He offered Anakin his forgiveness. In return, he felt a near-overwhelming wave of mixed relief-shame-thanks, punctuated with the equivalent of half a dozen psychic exclamation points. And, amid all Anakin’s gratitude and humiliation, the smallest hidden kernel of rebellion. Anakin’s pride had been badly bruised.

Just as gently as he had allowed Anakin into his mind, Obi-Wan evicted the boy again, closing the door between them while making it clear he was not locking the passage. Anakin nodded. “Okay,” Anakin said, turning to Master Qui-Gon. “We’ll stay together,” he agreed. “I guess since we’re all here anyway, we should probably stick around to see what happens. Anyway, maybe one of you can do something to help these guys. They seem like they’re planning quite the fight. I’ll go make sure Artoo is ready.” He walked off, but he walked toward the center of the camp. Obi-Wan and Master Qui-Gon let him go.

“You’ve quarreled,” Master Qui-Gon observed.

“I . . . did not handle Anakin’s decision to stow away on the queen’s ship and put himself in danger as well as I might have,” Obi-Wan confessed. “I showed him some things he did not need to know. Not now, anyway, when he has so little control. He is to blame for his own poor decisions, but—” Obi-Wan sighed. “We have perhaps been too mindful of our own comfort around him. He has sensed the Jedi draw back from him, Master, and he is already afraid. He cannot help his power or his lack of training.”

“No,” Master Qui-Gon agreed. “I was struck by your charge of neglect back at the Temple, Obi-Wan, and concerned to realize I had not cared for the boy in accordance with the merits of his situation. You, at least, have not drawn back from Ani, despite the challenges he presents. I’m proud of you.”

“There have been times I would have liked to draw back,” Obi-Wan answered. “He knows, and of course that only complicates things further. I swear I didn’t mean to acquire an apprentice until I obtained a knighthood.”

Qui-Gon hummed. “I think the Council is happier at the prospect of you with him than me.”

“Yes, well, you always said the Council doesn’t know everything.” Obi-Wan looked out through the trees of the Gungun sacred place, watching the play of light and shadow across the leaf-strewn ground and sensing for the darkness that was their assassin. He was on Naboo, yes, but not too near. “Master, have you ever doubted yourself? With me? Would you say you have made mistakes over the course of my apprenticeship?”

“I’ve made many,” Qui-Gon answered at once. “There were times I sought out the guidance of others, concerned I would be unable to mend the breaches that arose between the two of us. There were times I misjudged you, times I could not teach you in the ways that you most needed. You would lose your temper, and so would I, and I daresay there were days and weeks and even months when neither of us did ourselves too much credit, as Jedi or as men.

“Yet, you have grown,” Qui-Gon finished, “with me and sometimes, I think, around or in spite of me. Anakin will do the same, and I believe you will be a better guardian and teacher to him than I have been to you. But, on days when you are not, I will be there, Obi-Wan. And, if I’m not, you can always count on Yoda to stick his nose in.”

Obi-Wan smiled. “Thank you, Master.”

Master Qui-Gon clapped his shoulder. “Anytime. Now, we should find Ani before he gets into too much trouble. Then we will need to consult with Padmé to determine our best placement within the battle.”

Obi-Wan bowed and fell into train behind his master. There would be a penalty for this, he knew. Another mission away, a longer time until he achieved his knighthood. His trials had been corrupted. But Queen Amidala’s safety, Anakin’s safety was more important. And it was nice to be at his master’s side again.

ANAKIN

Back home, Anakin used to think battles would be exciting. Turned out, they were a lot of work before anyone ever started flying fighters or shooting a blaster. You had to figure out exactly where everyone was gonna stand, where they were gonna get their guns and how many power packs they needed, how the bad guys were gonna come at you, and what you’d do if they didn’t do that but did something else instead. And when you were fighting with somebody else, somebody who wasn’t exactly friendly, there was a whole lot of arguing.

Obi-Wan and Mister Qui-Gon wouldn’t let him keep watch on the edge of the Gungun camp in case those Trade Federation guys came close. They didn’t want that assassin to sneak up on them. So Anakin had to stay right in the middle of the camp. By now, he knew he’d’ve been safer and smarter staying back at the Jedi Temple. Before too long, he’d heard enough of the arguing about the most boring things to work out it would’ve probably also been more interesting back in the med wing doing whatever work the Council had had in mind to start catching him up on the apprentice stuff. They’d left all the compatible parts for Artoo back on the ship, too. He couldn’t even work on Padmé’s droid!

Obi-Wan made it a little better. He made suggestions to Padmé’s security guys or the Gungun generals every now and then—they’d made Jar Jar a general!—but mostly, he stayed by Anakin. He explained why they couldn’t just fight the droids but had to go after the droid controller up in orbit too; why it was important Padmé and Sabé and Captain Panaka and them get the viceroy of the Trade Federation quick. He talked about why Boss Nass had a lady writing out terms for an alliance thing with Padmé in the time they were waiting for intelligence officers to come back with information for the battle maps.

“I guess they’ll probably teach me how to read and write back at the Temple, huh?” Anakin said, unenthusiastic. He knew learning things would be a lot easier once he didn’t have to figure everything out himself but could read what other people had figured out already. But it was just more stuff to know. There was more of that almost every hour, it felt like. He didn’t know when he’d ever be done.

Obi-Wan’s eyes focused in on him then. Obi-Wan had weird colored eyes. They weren’t blue or green but kinda both, and when they focused, you could just tell how smart he was. “They’ll teach you,” he promised. “Are you worried about it?”

“Nah, I’ll get it,” Anakin said. “It’s just a lot, you know? I know you probably can’t. It’s probably apprentice stuff, not the padawan stuff I’ll be learning when you’re my master, but I wish you could teach me. Things just make sense when you explain them. You don’t laugh when I don’t know stuff, either, and you don’t think it’s ‘cause I’m stupid.” He paused. “I know I’ve done some stupid stuff, but I know you know I’m not stupid.”

“I do know, Anakin,” Obi-Wan assured him. He was silent for a moment. Anakin thought he felt a little awkward. “You’re right that reading and writing is usually covered by the youngling instructors, but if you like, and if I am living within the Temple and not on mission, I could help you with your lessons. You are going to have to learn a lot, and I have discussed with both Qui-Gon and the Council how your learning plan is going to have to be rather different. We all understand you are coming to us under unusual circumstances. It makes sense that we will need to teach you in unusual ways.”

Anakin smiled. Obi-Wan just got it. “That’d be good,” he said. “I know I should probably learn some stuff with the little kids. I’ll need to learn some things the way all you Jedi do if I’m gonna be one. But if you help me too, I can probably catch up faster, you know? I could be your padawan faster, a real help instead of how I’ve been—like you are for Mister Qui-Gon. And I probably wouldn’t feel so dumb all the time.”

“Oh, there were times when I was younger when I got Master Qui-Gon into trouble too,” Obi-Wan promised him. “I wasn’t always the paragon of padawan perfection you see before you, and he would be the first to say so.”

Anakin looked up at Obi-Wan, skeptical. Mister Qui-Gon loved Obi-Wan. Everyone loved him. Obi-Wan always did the right thing, probably. He didn’t mess up like Anakin when he was just trying to help, and he didn’t get mad when Anakin messed up either, or not as mad as he could. He knew so much.  And he was kind, too, which Mom said was most important. Even when Anakin was a pain, he didn’t care. He just did what he needed to to keep everyone safe, even when it looked super hard.

Only, Obi-Wan didn’t always keep himself safe. Anakin being a pain and messing up since they’d met had put Obi-Wan in danger, from the assassin guy and from Anakin himself, when Anakin didn’t know what he was doing with the Force. Anakin had to get better. He had to stop just playing around with this Force stuff the way he’d played around with Watto’s junk back home. He could wear goggles and gloves in case he blew something up back then—now if he blew something up . . . he was in Obi-Wan’s head. And he didn’t even really know how he had got there. He didn’t want to mess up and blow up Obi-Wan by mistake, and he was pretty sure Obi-Wan had been trying to tell him that a couple of times he’d almost done it.

And this assassin guy, the scary one who’d almost run over Anakin and Padmé back home. If Obi-Wan was right, he’d find Padmé following Anakin, and Obi-Wan and Mister Qui-Gon would have to fight him now to keep Anakin and Padmé safe, instead of just following him and blowing up all his stuff or whatever like Obi-Wan had maybe wanted before. Anakin hadn’t wanted that! He wanted all his friends far away from that guy! He definitely didn’t want everybody in more danger just because they had to look out for him. He wasn’t even supposed to be here.

The Gunguns got on people-movers and their weird, snuffly animals and went away. They were gonna have a big battle out on the plain. It was gonna draw the Trade Federation droid forces out away from Theed. Anakin said bye to Jar Jar. He stayed with Obi-Wan, Mister Qui-Gon, and the queen’s party. They’d be going for fighters back at the queen’s palace to take on the droid control ship in space. They’d be going after the viceroy who was in charge of this whole invasion. And if that assassin guy showed up for Padmé, Obi-Wan and Mister Qui-Gon would take him.

Anakin rode on a speeder with Mister Qui-Gon to Theed. He wished he had a blaster or something. There was Artoo, up with Padmé. No one really knew all he could do now, and he was excited to try his new weapons out. Artoo really liked some action. He’d protect Anakin and Padmé just like Obi-Wan and Mister Qui-Gon. But Anakin really wished he knew how to protect himself. It wasn’t too hard to use a blaster, right? Padmé and the handmaidens had learned, and they weren’t too much older than he was.

Man, if Watto could see him now. Fighting in a battle, wondering what to do with a blaster if he got hold of one a little later. If a slave ever got a blaster back home, they were killed outright as a rebellion risk.

Naboo sure was pretty. Way prettier than Coruscant, for all it didn’t have so many people. As he and Mister Qui-Gon and them sped across the land, Anakin saw what Obi-Wan had meant: There was a lot of water on Padmé’s planet. Lakes of it. Oceans even! They only had the one star, and it was colder than Tatooine, especially with the wind from the speeder. And every shade of green Anakin had seen had always been on people before—Hutts and Twi’leks and Rodians. Now, green was everywhere. Plants were everywhere. If there were planets like this, no wonder Obi-Wan and other people liked vegetables so much.

Theed, though—as they raced into Theed, some of the buildings kinda reminded Anakin of Mos Espa, if Mos Espa had had trees growing everywhere. The buildings looked more like buildings on Tatooine than Coruscant, anyway. White stone, with open windows. Only there was paintings and this decorative glass everywhere. Filmy, lacy curtains blowing from windows way bigger than anything they had on Tatooine.

But no people. It was creepy. All the people that shoulda been in the city weren’t. Captain Panaka had said the droids had taken them all to camps, and now there were only droids, marching here and there in lines with assault rifles. There were several of them right in front of the palace, where Padmé said they needed to go to catch the viceroy and send the pilots after that droid controller to save the Gunguns.

They were sneaky. Padmé had some of her security guys, along with a couple of the handmaidens, creep around the square. They would keep the droids outside busy while the rest of them got inside the palace. Padmé had a little light to signal the attack, but before it started, Mister Qui-Gon grabbed Anakin’s shoulder. Made him look up.

“Once we get inside, you find a safe place to hide and stay there,” he told Anakin.

Anakin tensed. He wasn’t gonna do that! What if that assassin guy came looking? He could find Anakin just like Obi-Wan had back on the ship! No, when people started shooting, Anakin was gonna find a blaster! He was gonna find some way to fix this! But he couldn’t tell Qui-Gon that. If he did, Qui-Gon would only take him away, and then Obi-Wan would be alone, and the assassin could come after Anakin and Qui-Gon or the queen, and things would just be bad all over. So Anakin lied. “Sure,” he said.

Qui-Gon glared at him, extending a finger, and Anakin wondered if Mister Qui-Gon maybe knew he was lying. “Stay there,” he said again.

But then Padmé had signaled with her little light, the other team had blown up a droid tank, and Anakin was in the middle of his very first battle.

People and droids were shooting everywhere!  It was loud and smelled like a racing track, what with machines blowing up and people getting burned and all. And Anakin didn’t have a blaster. He didn’t have armor or anything.

Someone shot right behind him! Anakin crouched down and hunched in close to the wall. The Jedi had their lightsabers out, and they were batting away blaster bolts like they were playing ball or something. Obi-Wan was out in front. It was like he wasn’t even scared at all! Padmé walked behind him, moving toward the door she’d said was closest to the hangar. Qui-Gon was on her other side. Anakin kept next to him, and Artoo, Sabé, and the pilots came behind. Sabé was still pretending to be the queen. They all knew she wasn’t, but Padmé was hoping the viceroy and them wouldn’t know.

Across the courtyard, Anakin felt one of their guys die, shot by one of those Trade Federation droids. He felt how the guy hurt, how he was surprised, then just . . . not there anymore. He’d seen people die before, in the podrace and in other times back home. This was different. There was something ugly and crazy about this. Things were tense.

But it was like Obi-Wan didn’t even feel it. He could feel Obi-Wan—Mister Qui-Gon too, but Obi-Wan a whole lot more. It was like they were meditating or something. Like none of the blaster fire or the people dying or any of it mattered. But they were using the Force. He could feel it—using it the same way he did to podrace, only he hadn’t known what he was doing then. They were using the Force to feel where the blaster bolts would be, to keep them away from everyone in their group.

Anakin was scared, but Obi-Wan wasn’t. He could handle a couple little droids and their blasters. He knew how to do this. He was strong and fast and just as good with his lightsaber as Anakin had ever thought he would be. One day, Anakin thought, I’ll be like that. One day, he’d be so good with a lightsaber that he could walk right out in front of the people he cared about and nothing would touch them. He could kill anything bad that came at him. Obi-Wan was killing droids all over, sending their own blaster bolts right back at them!

Padmé was brave too, though. She shot droids with this shiny little blaster sometimes, but mostly she just kept going, heading for the door. Anakin hurried after her. She knew where she was going!

She opened the door they’d been headed for with a special code and walked right inside. Anakin followed her in with Sabé and Artoo and Captain Panaka and the Jedi and the pilots, but he looked back over his shoulder as they went out of the sun—they were leaving an awful lot of people fighting back there. Security guys, some of Padmé’s friends, and no Jedi to bat all the blaster bolts away for them. He felt more bad stuff, and just knew that two more of them had been killed, or else hurt real, real bad. Yané? One of Captain Panaka’s friends? Anakin had no idea, but he was sad, and mad, and he ran after Obi-Wan and Mister Qui-Gon, even though part of him didn’t want to. Part of him wanted to stay and help, to fight. But he couldn’t, and he knew that this was why Padmé hadn’t wanted him to come.

Padmé took them down a hallway, real wide and pretty but not too long. She was right that it was close to the hangar. Off to the right, there were a bunch of metal walkways and forcefields that looked like some kind of power complex. Anakin got a bad feeling looking at them. And there was something else too—more than the droids and their blasters, more than Padmé’s friends dying or being just what Obi-Wan had said, little and unarmed in the middle of a battle with no way to make sure he wasn’t fodder next. Something else was coming. Something evil.

Padmé opened the hangar door, and there were more droids waiting there. The area was big and open, and there wasn’t a good way to hide behind Obi-Wan anymore.

“Ani, find cover, quick!” Mister Qui-Gon ordered. Anakin ran.

He went off to the side, like he’d done before. There were shipping crates and stuff there, boxes like the one he’d hid on to get back onto Padmé’s ship, only these ones were metal. Maybe they could stop a blaster. Maybe he could hide. Ani spun around behind one and crouched, watching the others. He was scared.

“Get to your ships!” Padmé yelled at the pilots, and Anakin saw there were ships, fighters, lined up and ready to go. Droids too, astromechs like R2-D2. They’d be the pilots’ helpers, helping manage the fighter and fixing the fighters in a battle.

Anakin saw everybody fighting—Sabé with a knife in one hand and a blaster in another. She stepped through the battle like she was dancing, like she did this every day, even wearing that Queen Amidala wig and tunic. She liked this a lot better than talking in that Queen Amidala voice for Padmé, he could tell. This was what she was for—she was protecting Padmé just like Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon were protecting him.

There were droids leaking oil and systems overloading all over the floor. Then the pilots started to leave, jumping into the fighters, bringing astromechs on elevators up with them. The ships came alive with roars all over the hangar, flew out toward the blue sky up ahead.

But one guy didn’t make it: he was shot, just like the guys out in the courtyard, just a little way away from his fighter. Ani saw him go down. He swore he could smell the guy’s burning body! But Artoo, who’d been with him, didn’t stop. He headed straight on past the pilot toward the last fighter, and Anakin suddenly just knew he’d go anyway. That little droid would fly off into the battle up in orbit all alone without a pilot. But he couldn’t do it, not alone. He was the best little droid in the whole galaxy, probably, except maybe for Threepio. But he couldn’t fly a fighter all alone.

Anakin ran after him.

“Hey, wait up, Artoo!”

Artoo’s central processor swung around. He had sensors on the back too, so he could still see where he was going. He whistled for Ani to go with him.

“You wanna go up there?!”

R2-D2 explained an astromech’s primary function was to assist in dangerous spaceflight conditions, but he required an engineer. Anakin was the best engineer he knew. Together, they would be unstoppable!

Anakin looked back at Obi-Wan, Mister Qui-Gon, and the others, cleaning up the rest of the hangar droids. This definitely wasn’t what they’d wanted when they told him to find a place to hide! Suddenly, he didn’t care. He’d been dumb heading out here to help his friends without a weapon, but right there was a weapon he knew he could use! He might not be able to use the Force right yet or fight like a Jedi, but in that cockpit, he could push buttons until he figured out what they did all he wanted, and R2-D2 would help.

He took a running jump and caught the lip of the fighter. He climbed inside and strapped in, and in a couple tries, he’d figured out how to raise the elevator with R2-D2. He didn’t try anything else, though—not yet. R2-D2 wanted to go. He wanted to fly in the space battle. But while Artoo could probably do a lot with the functions of the fighter, he couldn’t fly it fly it. That was up to his partner. He whistled. Artoo really wanted to get out of here. But Anakin stayed put.

All the droids in the hangar were down. Ani doubted even he’d be able to make much out of them anymore, even with all of Watto’s tools. Padmé and Obi-Wan and them circled up, breathing real heavy. Padmé looked at Ani for a second, just a second to make sure he was alright. Then she got back to business. “My guess is the viceroy’s in the throne room,” she said.

Captain Panaka nodded and raised his hand over his head to call the others. “Red group! Blue group! Everybody, this way!”

They started moving. Anakin panicked. They were going to leave him behind! That thing was getting closer, the bad thing, the evil, and they were gonna leave him! He stood up in his seat. “Hey, wait for me!”

Mister Qui-Gon turned around. “Anakin, stay where you are,” he ordered. “You’ll be safe there.”

Obi-Wan didn’t like that; Ani could tell. He frowned. “Are you certain that’s a good idea, master?” he murmured.

“The hangar is clear. We can seal it behind us. Anakin will be alright,” Master Qui-Gon said.

“I’m not worried about a hangar breach—” Obi-Wan began.

“There’s no time, Padawan,” Master Qui-Gon interrupted. “Stay in that cockpit!” he said again.

Then the hangar door opened, and that guy was there. The one from Tatooine.

Anakin hadn’t got a good look at him before. The guy had come up behind him on a speeder, and then Qui-Gon had been fighting him and Anakin had been running faster than he’d ever run in his whole life. Now he saw the guy, shorter than Mister Qui-Gon but bigger around than Obi-Wan, all in black. He had this paint all over his skin, this awful, ugly black and red. He had horns like a crown all around his head. His eyes were yellow, his teeth were black, and he was the bad thing Anakin had known was coming. He was the evil.

Looking at him, Anakin just knew the guy hated everyone. He mighta been sent to kill Padmé, but he would kill every one of them if he could. He wanted to! And he wanted to kill Mister Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan most of all.

“We’ll handle this,” Mister Qui-Gon told the others. He and Obi-Wan stepped forward, between the assassin and the rest of them.

“We’ll take the long way,” Padmé agreed, already moving away from the Jedi and the assassin toward another door closer to the fighter exit. But Anakin felt a surge of mean happiness from the assassin—he wanted that, too! Before Ani could shout a warning, a whole new bunch of droids rolled into the hangar!

These ones were different from the droids with assault rifles. A whole lot bigger, with forcefields and miniguns! One of Captain Panaka’s guys went down. The others scattered.

Anakin grit his teeth. He pulled up the helmet from next to the pilot’s seat—that part was the same as in a podracer. He put it on and strapped it—better to be safe than sorry. He pushed two buttons before he figured out how to activate the fighter. The bubble dome came up and sealed around him. He heard the airlock seal, a hiss—that was life support, coming on.

He didn’t know half the buttons, but the fighter was a machine, and Ani knew he could figure this out. His friends were down there! They needed help! And Anakin could help them, no matter what Obi-Wan said. In this ship, he could help them.

He found the guns, the wheels, ground steering. The systems came online, and Anakin fired. His first shot blasted one of the new droids right off the floor and into smithereens!

Anakin cheered and aimed again—this was easy! It was fun! Two, three, four, he shot them, and Padmé and the others were all clear. He’d done it, just like Obi-Wan out in the courtyard! He looked back at Obi-Wan now. Him and Qui-Gon were fighting that guy, the assassin. Obi-Wan’s lightsaber was blue, Mister Qui-Gon’s was green, and the assassin had a double blade, like a staff. It was red, and it screamed at Anakin just like the assassin did in the Force. Die! Die! Die!

Anakin glared. “You wanna kill me, you’re gonna have to come and get me, sleemo,” he muttered. He examined all the buttons in the fighter. He could do this.

He wasn’t staying around to be trouble for the others. He wasn’t gonna stay where Padmé would worry when she needed to get the viceroy, where Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon would try to protect him instead of taking care of themselves.

He was gonna fly and cause some real trouble.

OBI-WAN KENOBI

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Obi-Wan knew Anakin was going rogue again. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that the boy’s discomfort and anger had been building since the battle began and that the moment that damned droid had rolled forward without a pilot, Ani had seen an opportunity, that Master Qui-Gon’s brilliant idea for the boy to stay in a fighter cockpit was anything but. Anakin was too brave and too cocky for his own good, and he would go somewhere neither of them could follow. An attempt to divide their enemy’s attention? To fight on a footing where Anakin believed he stood more of a chance?

It didn’t matter. This truly was a test—to surrender his fear for Anakin, to cloak himself in the here and now, for before him was the Sith, and in person, Obi-Wan now had no doubts they faced a Sith. The athletic Iridonian before them was a howling void of rage, aggression, and malice within the Force. Anakin had defeated his attempt to flank Queen Amidala and her retinue, to pin them down with destroyer droids. Their path ahead to the viceroy would now be as clear as they could make it. Obi-Wan and Master Qui-Gon would guard the rear, keep this assassin from pursuit. He would not have Queen Amidala. He would go no further.

Obi-Wan attacked, channeling the Force into Ataru strikes to push the assassin back, out of the hangar, away from the queen and her companions pursuing the viceroy, away from Anakin. With his back, he tried to block Qui-Gon from the fight—this was his battle, his test. Yet even as he tried to choreograph his intentions to his master, he could feel his master’s determination. He would not allow Obi-Wan to face this foe alone, and Anakin was not in Qui-Gon’s thoughts at all. He was gone. There were no more fighters to pursue him. The Force would be with him, or it would not, but their task lay before them.

Obi-Wan was unsurprised when Qui-Gon circled around him, moving to press upon the assassin’s other side, yet somewhere in the back of his mind, he cried out against his master’s decision, cried out against Anakin’s departure and their inability to follow. And somewhere in the forefront, he felt the assassin sense his feelings, felt his hateful joy at Obi-Wan’s helplessness and distress. He had pushed them into this confrontation. He might have his orders, or he might not, but in the end, he did not care who he fought and killed, only that his enemies should suffer.

Between the two of them, Obi-Wan and his master had the advantage. The assassin gave way before them, pushed steadily back and toward the palace’s power complex, where deep wells drilling down to house the generators for the hangar would offer a secondary advantage. Yet the assassin was equal to them. The greater reach of his saberstaff gave him more area with which to deflect their blows, and he supplemented his own slashes with powerful kicks and elbow-strikes.

There was something about his style. Obi-Wan had heard that Mace Windu had studied the ancient Sith texts to develop his own Vaapad style. Here was proof positive, for the leashed aggression Master Windu channeled into his own dueling was unleashed here. The fury of the Sith’s strokes matched the screaming of his bleeding lightsaber crystal, attacking them alongside his physical press. Obi-Wan had fought in skirmishes and battles since he was twelve years old, and still he had never experienced a psychic onslaught such as this. Never had he encountered such projected, weaponized hate.

Obi-Wan and his master pressed the assassin out to the catwalks, managing to corner him on a projection of a platform without railing—this area would mostly be tenanted by maintenance droids, and Naboo had obviously saved funds on safety measures. Obi-Wan pressed their advantage, using the Force to add power to his attacks, trying to force the assassin off the platform into the generator wells down below.

Instead, the Iridonian flipped back in a stunning display of acrobatic talent, using the Force in his own right to make what would ordinarily have been a jump of only a meter or so into a chasm-spanning leap to a walkway leading onward, toward the power plant waste disposal systems. Now it was he who controlled the battle. Obi-Wan felt it, felt the danger of it: their adversary was clever as well as aggressive, yet his master was tiring. He could feel it. He leaped to follow, to once again take the brunt of the battle.

The assassin had expected it. Within two strokes, he lashed out with another brutal kick beneath the guard. This time, Master Qui-Gon was not nearby to counter on Obi-Wan’s behalf. It caught Obi-Wan directly in the gut and sent him flying, off the catwalk, down toward the generator wells. Down . . . down . . .

Calling upon the Force to supply his stolen breath, Obi-Wan maneuvered in midair to land on a lower level of the power plant catwalks. He crouched, gasping, attempting to recover against the waves of sickening pain in his abdomen. Above, he heard the clash of lightsabers once again amid the other mechanical noises of the Naboo power complex. Master Qui-Gon had reengaged. Alone.

This is wrong. This is all wrong.

Anakin should have stayed back at the Temple. Qui-Gon should have stayed back at the Temple. This was always meant to be Obi-Wan’s fight alone. It wasn’t even meant to be a fight! He had only ever intended a reconnaissance mission for the Council, the type in which he specialized, and a fight only ever at the last possible extreme. A Jedi did not wield his lightsaber in anger. He raised it to protect others, to keep the peace. Now he and his master both fought to kill, not droids engaged in an illegal occupation but another person.

And Qui-Gon was still tiring.

Obi-Wan released his pain and confusion to the Force. He gathered his strength and leapt, up one level, two, to where Qui-Gon and the Iridonian fought above and saw with horror what had passed in the mere seconds he had been recovering.

His master still believed he held the advantage. He pressed the attack, the Iridonian defended and gave way as before, but as with the vault from the platform, the retreat was too deliberate. The assassin’s blocks were easy, contemptuous, and his steps unhurried as he led Qui-Gon on and on, into the waste disposal system.

Obi-Wan raced ahead, but too late. Automated systems meant to control access to the waste systems activated. A series of laser radiation shields came on, filling the corridor. The assassin? Out past the access corridor into the waste disposal area. Qui-Gon, one shield beyond him closer to Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan? Several shields back, nearly a hundred meters away, watching. All of them had time to recover, but some would recover more quickly than others.

Obi-Wan thought he saw the Iridonian smile, a smile that was more a fierce baring of black teeth in his painted face.

Qui-Gon knelt on the floor of the catwalk, marshaling his strength within the Force. Obi-Wan felt his resolve but also his weariness and his acceptance, the solidity of his master’s belief the will of the Force would guide them, always.

But had this been the will of the Force? His master drawn by guilt and affection into a conflict he need never have participated in, facing a foe that had already proved beyond him alone? In the moment, Obi-Wan could not help but doubt it. Recklessness had brought them to this pass—Anakin’s in stowing onto Padmé’s ship; Qui-Gon’s in pursuing him, spurred by Obi-Wan’s half-joking remarks to him moments before the boy’s escape.

Mine, in so protecting my pride pursuing the Iridonian alone I allowed him under my guard, to take me out of the fight.

Obi-Wan tried to center himself, to gather himself to run when the radiation shields deactivated. There was no control panel on this side of the bridge—he had looked.

He was still too slow.

The radiation shields went down. Obi-Wan sped ahead, sprinting all-out to rejoin the fray, but managed only to reach the area where Qui-Gon had crouched moments before when the system reactivated, blocking further intrusion from the power system into the waste disposal systems. Obi-Wan almost cried aloud as his master reengaged the enemy alone.

And the assassin had stopped retreating. Fighting only a single enemy again, Obi-Wan restrained by the radiation shields from further interference, the Iridonian no longer had any cause to hold back any measure of his skill. Obi-Wan felt his master recognize it, realize he had been drawn into this position. His master’s style was purely offensive; it had been years since Qui-Gon had practiced any of the defensive forms. He needed them now against the fury of the Sith’s unchecked skill.

You fight too much in the style of your master, Obi-Wan, Master Windu had told him after their recent duel. You are competent in Form IV, but it is not where your talents truly lie. Consider it before we fight again.

Obi-Wan knew it. For years, he had attempted to mimic Master Qui-Gon, to use the Force as he did and fight as he fought. It had seemed the best way to please his master, and only in the past few years had he begun to realize that they functioned better together when each of them played to his own strengths, that his were different from his master’s. It was difficult to break old habits, however, and he had not studied the more defensive forms he felt more of an affinity to the way he knew he should.

His master was the more experienced duelist; he had thus far avoided many of the unconventional physical attacks the Iridonian added to his personal style. For a time, it seemed he could hold. Obi-Wan could see the sweat on Qui-Gon’s brow beyond the shield, see how his movements were slower and more labored, but he had used the time to collect himself well. Somehow, he was diverting the Sith’s strokes, moving his feet so he kept away from both flashing, screaming blades.

Until he wasn’t. The Sith caught his master in an Ataru downstroke, seizing the hilt of his master’s own lightsaber and smashing it down once, twice, three times into Master Qui-Gon’s face, dazing him. Qui-Gon’s guard faltered. Obi-Wan cried out, and the Sith met his eyes through the radiation shield, drinking in his despair as he brought the tip of his saberstaff around toward Qui-Gon’s unprotected center.

Qui-Gon gasped and jerked, reflexively pushing his lightsaber down and deflecting the Iridonian’s blade—but not enough. The tip slid away from his torso but found its mark in his lower thigh, cutting across flesh and bone, out toward the waste disposal system.

Qui-Gon screamed. His severed left leg fell to the deck, and his body fell down and back. He lost hold of his lightsaber, too shocked and injured to grip it. His eyes were a mask of pain and shock. He lay there, helpless. The Iridonian’s laugh of triumph was lost, overtaken by the noise of the mechanical systems. He paused, gloating over his enemy, gloating over Obi-Wan’s master, his agony, Obi-Wan’s agony, his inevitable kill, and for the first time in more than a decade, Obi-Wan knew what it was to hate.

Then the radiation shields opened once again.

Obi-Wan leapt forward, screaming, throwing himself bodily into the Sith, forcing him back, away from Qui-Gon. The Sith turned his bloodshot, yellow eyes to Obi-Wan’s face, and Obi-Wan felt with relish his surprise at the ferocity of Obi-Wan’s own onslaught. Wasn’t he a Jedi, and forbidden from using his aggression in battle?

Obi-Wan didn’t care. His master, his teacher, his friend lay behind him on the ground. Obi-Wan felt Qui-Gon’s pain as though it were his own, waves of agony, the cold, numbing shock of dismemberment. Though the Sith’s lightsaber would have cauterized the major blood vessels at the moment of severance, the trauma, the shock of it could still kill his master. The Sith would get no second chance.

He battered at the Iridonian, cutting down at him, targeting the grip of the saberstaff between his hands until—victory!—he cut through the grip, fritzing out the emitters and power matrices of half the staff. Half the staff went out. The Iridonian snarled and threw away half his staff, forced to fight single-hilted. It was a different battle now.

Obi-Wan snarled back, a mirror of the Sith’s own rage and anger, his own mockery. Yes, let’s see how you do now, Sith. Let’s see how you do now, forced to fight on even ground.

The assassin kicked, he punched, but Obi-Wan was prepared for these tricks now. He dodged them, one and all, pulling in long-forgotten techniques from his youngling days, from other forms to keep up his guard. He was winning, and he saw that knowledge reflected in the Iridonian’s yellow eyes, the triumphant rage turning to a cornered, desperate variety. Obi-Wan felt the Sith’s downfall, seconds away.

Then, denied recourse to the second half of his blade, denied recourse to his feet and fists, the assassin struck out within the Force. Obi-Wan was caught with a wave of it, borne back against his will, away from his lightsaber, down into the waste sinks. He caught hold of a safety light and dangled, unarmed, a meter below the sink lip.

Master! he thought, feeling Qui-Gon Jinn’s faltering consciousness above, terrified the assassin would seize his moment. But Obi-Wan had angered him now, and instead of taking his chance to finish off Master Qui-Gon, he heard a click above—a booted instep colliding with his lightsaber and it spun, silver and quite beyond his retrieval into the melting pit of the waste systems below. Obi-Wan felt it go, felt the extinguishing of his weapon and his hope. He looked up into the Iridonian’s twisted expression, saw his satisfaction, his total conviction that he had won. Qui-Gon Jinn, crippled and possibly expiring on the deck, was no threat. He could savor his power and the pain of his enemies. He would watch as Obi-Wan’s strength drained away from him and his arms gave way, and if Obi-Wan attempted an escape—he was unarmed. The assassin could strike him down.

Then—something. A shift in the currents of the Force. A Darkness lifted, clouds of chaos and confusion that Obi-Wan had ceased to feel even shrouding Naboo. They had been there the entirety of his visits. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt a surge of excitement, triumph, of sheer youthful power and the exuberance of winning.

The Sith felt it too. His attention wavered. He looked to the ceiling, to the invisible skies beyond, where something had just gone very wrong for his plans and the plans of his masters. And in that instant, Obi-Wan’s mind became clear. He stretched out with his feelings and sensed his opportunity.

His master’s saber lay abandoned beside the body of its keeper, yet Obi-Wan could still feel its presence within the Force—an ally and a friend for more than a decade, his entire apprenticeship. He closed his eyes and took hold of it with the Force, martialed his energy, and sprang.

He launched himself from the maintenance light, launched himself out of the melting pit. He seized and activated Qui-Gon Jinn’s blade in midair and activated it, green and ready. He sensed his opening. He reveled in it. He brought his master’s blade around, and he took his master’s vengeance.

The assassin’s eyes snapped to his one final time, but before his brain realized what had happened, he had fallen, bisected, into the melting pit. Obi-Wan allowed himself one instant of satisfaction before rushing to Qui-Gon’s side.

Master Qui-Gon was as pale as ash. Sweat poured from his brow, and his eyes moved wildly from side to side. He gasped in pain. It was all he could do to keep hold of consciousness. “Obi—Obi-Wan . . . what have you . . . what have you done?”

“It’s over, Master,” Obi-Wan promised his master. “He’s dead. We’re safe.”

“Ani—Anakin—” Qui-Gon started.

“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan answered. His sense of Anakin was lost now in a great wave of joy, the celebration of many hearts and souls above. There’d been a victory—the destruction of the droid-controller ship, almost certainly, but what part Anakin had played within it, where he was now and what he was doing, Obi-Wan did not know. And here, now, his master’s pain pressed at him. He was fading. The shock would overcome him. “Stay with me, Master,” he begged. He gripped Qui-Gon’s hands in his, willing him to remain, to stay awake, to live. But his master’s hands were losing their strength, growing cold and clammy in his grasp.

“The Force will be with you, Obi-Wan. Always,” Qui-Gon told him, closing his eyes against the pain. Obi-Wan felt a sense of surrender in his master, a resignation.

“No,” he said, diving into his mind, chasing the fading consciousness of Qui-Gon Jinn. No. You don’t get to leave us yet. He gripped onto his sense of Qui-Gon, tugged him back, placing a hand on either side of his master’s brow. “Sleep, master,” he said, layering his voice with power in the Force. “Sleep. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

Chapter Text

OBI-WAN KENOBI

The scene in the queen’s palace hangar was very different upon the fighter pilots’ return than upon their leaving. The droid scraps and the body of the sole pilot who had died in the battle had been removed by Queen Amidala’s attendants—the former to the incinerator, the latter to a temporary resting place with the other fallen Naboo in the palace. The Gunguns were taking an accounting of their own dead. Many had died before the destruction of the droid-controller ship and Padmé’s capture of the viceroy had put an end both to the battle and the Trade Federation occupation of the planet entire.

The pilots flew in to overjoyed security guards and servants, already beginning to return from the dispersing detention camps. Sweethearts and spouses embraced; comrades clapped one another on the back. Everywhere Obi-Wan looked, there was celebration, laughter and tears and an all-present gladness. And in the center of it all, lifted on the shoulders of several new admirers, the unlikely young hero of the battle.

The Force was with Anakin Skywalker indeed. Not only had the boy flown off with his damned astromech in clear violation of the spirit if not the word of Master Qui-Gon’s orders, he had intuitively grasped the controls of the Naboo fighter well enough not only to skillfully elude pursuit but to fly the thing into the shielded heart of the droid-controller ship and blow up the reactor. The fighter pilots gushed about his talent and his bravery in language Anakin certainly shouldn’t be hearing, let alone using. Obi-Wan had heard the boy use several Huttese curse words before. From his position in an alcove near where Anakin had hid upon first entering the hangar before it had occurred to him to fly, Obi-Wan heard that Ani had picked up several new vulgarities in Basic.

He had thought Anakin would be near impossible before.

It was funny, from a certain point of view. Anakin, whom he had thought a doom upon the battle, a constraint in their planning and in their available courses of action, had turned out to be quite possibly the biggest reason for the Naboo victory. While Padmé’s capture of the viceroy had gone according to plan, Anakin’s destruction of the droid-controller ship at nearly that same moment had given Queen Amidala nearly unbelievable leverage in negotiations. Not only did she have the viceroy himself, his droid army was in ruins. The Trade Federation had taken a loss of some millions of credits in the Naboo venture, and the viceroy’s compatriots were not only unlikely to commit to further extortion of the Naboo, he was likely facing lengthy and extensive punishment both politically and in his business operations for the crime of losing in this gamble. A nine-year-old boy and a fourteen-year-old girl had effectively ended a war and crippled a major interstellar corporation.

Funny, how one forgot over the years what the young could do. And funny, how the Force would always endeavor to keep one humble just when one was filled most with a sense of one’s own self-importance. Had he been proud to finally be acknowledged as worthy of knighthood by Master Qui-Gon? Flattered that this child looked to him and not his master or any one of the more experienced Jedi for guidance and protection? Had some part of him reveled in being sent against the first Sith the Jedi Order had encountered in centuries for his Trial of Courage? Here was the Force to remind him exactly how foolish he had been.

Well, it was wisdom he could pass along to Anakin anyway. Unless Anakin was so favored by the Force to be protected every time he got a little cocky, which might not actually be out of the question, Obi-Wan could tell him one day circumstances would conspire to humiliate him in his turn.

Just not today.

The boy had a horrible case of helmet hair. His face was flushed, and the grin across it as he celebrated with the pilots could outshine the stars. The joy radiating from him now was every bit as “loud” as every wave of anger and pain he had ever broadcast, and the “sound” of it was as beautiful as a symphony orchestra with a full-voice choir. The sentiment of every brave heart on Naboo was from Anakin’s a near-tangible rhapsody that Obi-Wan could put to words if he liked:

All is well. All is right. The evil one is defeated, and we are here, we are here, we are here!!! We are victorious. We are together. We are one. All is well.

Obi-Wan himself was filled with conflict. This was a gift; this was Anakin’s gift—one of so many he could share with the galaxy. His confidence and his courage would be reflected in the hearts of all his friends. His faith and hope could strengthen armies and nations and worlds entire. If he received even a modicum of training to do on purpose what he did so naturally on his own—even discounting his prodigious talents as a pilot, even discounting the fierce love and protectiveness that made him guardian and champion to all his friends even despite his age—he could be a more powerful force for good than any Obi-Wan knew of in the galaxy, certainly than any he knew centered in one person.

But Anakin’s gifts, though expressed through the Force, were not a Jedi’s giftings. Jedi training could help him control the power that so oppressed him; could help him protect himself against the onslaught he probably was not even aware he experienced every day, parse and analyze it, and find peace. It could teach him how to harness the abilities he used clumsily, instinctually now, keep from hurting those he did not wish to hurt and learn to help those he wished to help in a way that would be helpful.

It could also be the harnessing of a wild creature, the shuttering of a star. Anakin could be a Jedi Knight like no other, or the training could rob him of something essential to himself. The discipline of a Jedi Knight was difficult for anyone to learn. Obi-Wan wondered, though, if it might actually be counter to something within Anakin’s spirit—not the Darkness he had felt before but an irrepressibility, an openness to the galaxy, giving and receiving. The warrior nature he sensed within Anakin now could be an incredible asset to a Jedi, as it was to Mace Windu, or it could lead him down a path of aggression.

Obi-Wan himself was not immune to that. He could teach Anakin to guard against that instinct within himself, but would he now be a hypocrite when he did so?

Anakin caught sight of him from within the crowd. The joy directed at the galaxy in general before now turned full force upon Obi-Wan himself, like a lance of Light. Obi-Wan was hard-pressed not to gasp. Anakin didn’t even hesitate. He broke away from the circle of pilots excitedly recounting his exploit to the onlookers, or asking questions if they had not observed, away from the servants and civilians crowding into the hangar from every direction to hear what had happened, how they had won. He extricated himself from half a dozen people trying to touch him, to shake his hand, embrace him, muss his hair, and thank him for all that he had done, and he ran full-tilt for Obi-Wan in the corner.

And Obi-Wan fell to one knee, held out his arms, and let Anakin run to him, embrace him just like friends and family were doing all over the hangar. He hugged Anakin back, slipping from his Jedi discipline for a second time that day to allow himself to feel his own joy, his own relief and gratitude to the Force and all the powers of the galaxy that his small friend had returned to him. That Anakin was whole and healthy, that he was victorious, that he was good and brave and well after the battle. He mussed Anakin’s already disastrous hair himself, felt Anakin’s heart beat against his own, and knew just how far he was from the perfect Jedi, the perfect master, especially for this small boy who would have so much difficulty to begin with.

Yet, he would train Anakin. He would help him to the absolute best of his imperfect ability. He would watch this young whirlwind grow and change and no doubt be humbled by him many, many more times in the future. Because as a Jedi should, he wanted the best for Anakin Skywalker, and now he knew the boy, he trusted no one else to provide it as well as he would—because, as a Jedi absolutely should not, he selfishly wanted to keep the boy close to him. Because he understood where Anakin might fall short in the future. Because he shared in those faults.

“Obi-Wan, did you hear, did you know, I blew it up! Artoo and I did it, we flew up into that battle and right into . . .”

Obi-Wan pushed the boy out to arm’s length but didn’t let him go. He let the boy’s words wash over him, letting Ani himself tell him what he had indeed heard from about a dozen people since the battle’s end. “Yes, I understand you’ve been quite the hero,” he said. “Piloting a machine you’ve had no training on in an attacking force you weren’t to join in a battle you had no business even being present for, you somehow managed to be the person to destroy the primary objective instead of getting yourself blown up.” He watched the excitement drain out of Anakin, felt the sense of hurt and injustice begin to build, and relented with a smile. “Well done. You really must take me flying sometime. I always seem to miss all of the excitement.”

There would be time to discuss all the ways Anakin could have got himself killed later, all the reasons caution and training would be assets to his future, even though he hadn’t shown much regard for them up till now. For the moment, Anakin’s happiness felt more important.

“Yeah, how are you always gone when I fly, Obi-Wan?” he asked, pressing in for another hug and forgetting that always now encompassed a grand total of two instances.

“Planning,” Obi-Wan deadpanned, “or else the mercy of the Force, sparing me the harrowing experience.” He stood, extricating himself from Anakin.

“Harrowing?” Anakin asked, frowning.

“Terrifying,” Obi-Wan explained. “‘Tense.’”

“Oh, yeah, it was at first,” Anakin agreed. “I didn’t know what all the buttons did, and that fighter had some really dumb automated protocols that could’ve got me and Artoo both killed. But he overrode ‘em, and when I was really in charge, we did okay. I mean, there was this one scary part where we crashed into a hangar and the shields were overheated, but Artoo got ‘em back before the droids in there realized what was happening.”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan broke in, taking the boy’s hand and starting the walk toward the hangar exit. “You do realize that none of this description is revi—changing my opinion about ‘terrifying,’ don’t you? It sounds like you were lucky to escape with your life.”

Anakin shrugged. “Maybe a little,” he admitted, “but I knew I could handle it. A lot easier up there than down here without a blaster!”

Obi-Wan looked sideways at his small charge. “You were looking for a blaster during the fighting?” he asked.

“Well, yeah!” Anakin answered, as if it should be patently obvious that a nine-year-old would want such a thing. “I was sitting bantha poodoo otherwise! And everybody else was fighting!” He looked around then, frowning. “Hey, where’s Mister Qui-Gon?”

Obi-Wan had been considering for the past hour whether it would be better to break the news to Anakin with his shields up or down. Anakin had tended to respond better to a measure of openness than otherwise, and there was merit to presenting the boy both with evidence that he was not alone in his fear and turmoil and with an example of how to cope with those feelings. They had learned this as well in their brief time together.

Yet—Obi-Wan couldn’t do it. He was not strong enough.

He had yet to find his peace with what had happened, both to Master Qui-Gon and within himself. His feelings were not those of a Jedi. Not yet. He did not want to show them to Anakin—and, if he was honest, he did not want to experience Anakin’s feelings. His own emotions were more than enough. Anakin was strong enough to break in on him if he chose, or simply if he lost control, and it might happen, but . . .

But Obi-Wan would not let him into this moment by choice. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

“Master Qui-Gon was injured in the battle,” he said, focusing hard on the floor beneath his feet, the pattern of his breathing, Anakin’s hand within his own. Maintaining his shields with every effort of his being.

Anakin stopped dead. “Wait, what?” he asked. “That guy you were fighting got him? How bad?”

“Fairly badly,” Obi-Wan answered. “Master Qui-Gon lost his right leg, Anakin, several centimeters above the knee. He is in the queen’s infirmary now. Because his injury was from a lightsaber, he has not lost blood as he might from a vibroblade or metal sword injury, but he will still require treatment for the burn, and the shock and trauma of the limb loss is still quite dangerous.”

Anakin was silent, but his grip had suddenly tightened on Obi-Wan’s hand. The flush of victory had faded from his cheeks, and he was pale beneath his desert tan. “How dangerous?” he asked. His voice was small. “Is he . . . is he gonna . . .” he couldn’t say it.

“The medi-droid and medical professionals say that every hour that passes, he is in less danger. I believe in him, Ani, and you should too. Master Qui-Gon has been fighting battles as a Jedi Master for decades. He will likely live just as long as he might have before the battle.”

“But he might not,” Anakin said, zeroing in on the obfuscation with his characteristic mix of bluntness and acuity. “That’s what you’re really saying! Mister Qui-Gon might die because of me!”

Obi-Wan turned and gripped Anakin by the shoulders. “No,” he said. “I do not believe Master Qui-Gon will die, Anakin, and even if he does, it is not because of you. He might die because a Sith cut his leg off. You, I, and Master Qui-Gon all bear some responsibility for what happened here, but what happened is not our fault. Do you understand the difference?”

“No!” Anakin cried. “How is any of this your fault or Mister Qui-Gon’s? If I’d never even come here, he wouldn’t’ve either! Neither of you would’ve fought that guy, and—”

Obi-Wan cut him off. “And the Sith might have gone on to kill and injure many other beings in the future, or the Naboo pilots might have lost the space battle. Instead, we fought, you and I, and we prevailed. That Sith is in two pieces at the bottom of the Theed palace melting pit now. The droid-controller is destroyed, and our friends are victorious. Justice was served.

“The will of the Force is not always clear,” he continued. “I would have prevented you from coming to Naboo, Anakin. I would have kept you and my master safe. I would have kept you both from seeing what you have seen and suffering what you have suffered here today. And I would have been wrong.”

“How have I suffered?” Anakin asked. “I dreamed my whole life of flying in a space battle. I wanted to help you!”

“There were not only droids on that droid-controller ship,” Obi-Wan answered, rising and turning away again. “You killed beings when you exploded the reactor. To take a life is one of the greatest forms of suffering a being can experience.”

Anakin frowned. “But they were bad guys,” he reasoned. “They were trying to take over this whole planet! You don’t think it was bad to kill that Sith that cut off Master Qui-Gon’s leg, do you?”

Obi-Wan was silent. He didn’t have an answer. Or rather, he had too many, and felt them all to be true.

Anakin took his hand again. “Can we go see Master Qui-Gon?” he asked. “I want to see him. I wanna make sure he’s okay . . . and apologize.”

Obi-Wan wanted to argue with Anakin again, tell him he didn’t need to apologize. But he was out of energy for a moral debate, and right now, Anakin’s desire was perfectly in line with his own. “I placed him into a healing trance after his injury,” he said. “The doctors have decided not to wake him until his life sign readings demons—until they show that his body will handle that well. They are treating him unconscious.”

“Like me during my surgery, except without all that nasty dope,” Anakin said. “He won’t feel gross after he wakes up like I did, will he?”

“I doubt he will feel himself,” Obi-Wan said, “but he is unlikely to be sick. We can go to him. He will not know we are there until he wakes.”

“That’s okay,” Anakin said. “It’s better to wake up with somebody. Mister—Master Qui-Gon was there for me after my surgery. I wanna be there for him now.”

“He may not be himself,” Obi-Wan warned again. “A leg is a lot to lose. And Anakin—I may not be able to stay. The Council is on their way—”

“Oh, no! Don’t tell me I’m in trouble with them too for leaving!”

Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow. “From the conversation I had with them before coming here, they aren’t pleased with you, or me or Qui-Gon or your healer back at the Temple for allowing you to slip past us, but no. In actuality, an apprentice’s escape from the med wing is not as important to the Jedi Council as the illegal occupation of a Republic world, the election of a new chancellor who happens to hail from that world, or the discovery and death of a Sith after some hundreds of years. Shocking, I know.”

Anakin seemed unsure whether to be relieved or annoyed at that. He was tired of being lectured about his foolishness and inexperience, no doubt, but his ego did not approve of being less important.

“Would you prefer the entire Council travel to Naboo merely to tell you that you’ve been naughty?” Obi-Wan asked the boy.

“I guess not when you put it like that,” Anakin grumbled.

It seemed the entire Council had traveled to Naboo to tell him that he’d been naughty, Obi-Wan reflected a little later. He spent near the entire meeting with them being lectured, and mostly to no purpose.

On the whole, the Council was more comfortable with a dead Sith than a live one running around and making trouble. They could hardly discipline Obi-Wan for defending himself and a master of their Order against a disciple of evil who would not have hesitated to kill in his turn. So, they settled for expressing through a number of empty reprimands that they were not pleased that Obi-Wan had essentially failed the mission they had given him. He had been unable to locate any trace of the Sith’s camp. Any further evidence of who the Iridonian might have been or who might have sent him, for what purpose, had gone into the melting pit with his body. They did not know whether he had been the master or an apprentice, as Obi-Wan’s vision and feelings had led him to suspect.

For a thousand years, Sith had come in pairs. Master Yoda swore it, though there had been precious little evidence of them for centuries. If there was one, if Obi-Wan had fought him here on Naboo, somewhere there was another. And whether they were master or apprentice, if they survived, eventually there would be another, and they would come for their revenge. They would continue working against the Jedi. When Obi-Wan had killed the Sith, he had also killed the Jedi’s best hope of finding and defeating their enemy.

Yet, he had killed a Sith. They respected that, preferred it really, though they couldn’t say so, and so they didn’t really know what to do with him.

Anakin was another thorny little problem. They could hardly punish him for what had in fact been a breathtaking display of bravery, loyalty, and competence; an act that had ultimately resulted in the liberation of a Republic world. Anakin’s victory supported everything Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon had told the Council of Anakin’s potential, and there were the politics to consider.

He also had not officially been in Obi-Wan or Qui-Gon’s care at the time of his escape. As a padawan himself, Obi-Wan had not yet taken up responsibility as Anakin’s guardian, or indeed even made a formal submission of his intention to train Anakin, though it had become widely understood that Obi-Wan would at some point make this submission after he became a Jedi Knight. But when the Council had agreed to accept Anakin for a provisional apprenticeship, legally, Qui-Gon’s guardianship of the boy had terminated, and the Order’s had begun. Technically, Qui-Gon’s presence in the med wing at the time Anakin had chosen to stow away on Queen Amidala’s ship had been coincidence, and he had pursued Anakin afterward as a matter of conscience. The Council themselves bore the brunt of the charge for the negligence which had permitted Anakin’s adventure. They knew this.

Yet, like Obi-Wan himself, they were embarrassed. And being several years older and more dignified, they were less used to it and more put out.

Several were expressing new doubts about Anakin’s suitability for the Order. Against expectations, Anakin had acquitted himself rather well before them on Coruscant, considering his disadvantages in age and situation. Now they had discovered his system-wide rebellious streak. The first thing he had done upon being accepted to the Jedi Order had been to abandon his post and responsibilities as an apprentice to go along on Obi-Wan’s mission. Upon being duly scolded for that, he had then gone on to fly a fighter in a dangerous space battle. That he had won said dangerous space battle said nothing at all about the character that had led him to make such a series of reckless decisions in the first place.

The Council was in a difficult position. Obi-Wan had failed in his mission but done what no Jedi had done for centuries in the failing, as well as defeated a dangerous enemy of the Order. Anakin was a youngling and unable to be held to account for his own actions, yet there was no one the Council could legally hold to account but themselves. In the meantime, Queen Amidala and the newly elected chancellor, both of Naboo, had already been vocal and profuse in their praise for both Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker. Queen Amidala wanted to present them both with ceremonial awards, though as members of the Jedi Order, they of course could not accept.

The Council was not pleased, yet their hands were tied, by the court of public opinion if nothing else. So, after many long-winded reprimands about recklessness and the caution and responsibility required when supervising bold, upstart younglings—Obi-Wan wanted to challenge them to do better—they let him go. They said nothing of his trial, but he had a hunch that despite his avowed naughtiness, he had impressed them more than he hadn’t. And he had his own feelings about that.

Obi-Wan was left alone with Master Yoda at the end of the Council meeting in one of Queen Amidala’s numerous opulent reception rooms. He let himself relax a little; he had known Master Yoda since childhood. The Grandmaster of the Order took an active hand in the education of the Order’s younglings, and particularly in Obi-Wan’s own education. For whatever reason, Master Yoda had always been a friend.

“Sadness I sense in you, young Obi-Wan,” the little master observed. “Frustration. Yet we hear Master Qui-Gon will recover.”

“Yes, they sent word just before the meeting,” Obi-Wan agreed. “He is out of danger. He will have months of pain and adjustment; above-the-knee amputations, I understand, are particularly difficult. He may never be the lightsaber duelist that he was.”

“Mmm. New strength he may find within the Force,” Yoda answered. “That he is with us still, I understand, we owe to you.”

“I don’t know. I put him into stasis, yes, after the battle. I held the trance until he was strong enough to feel through our bond what he needed and maintain it himself.”

“Great focus you needed for this,” Yoda remarked. “Great strength within the Light Side.”

Obi-Wan knelt on the floor of Queen Amidala’s reception chamber, looking inward. “Master Yoda, I thought I was a servant of the Light. Yet, when I slew the Sith, it was no great act of skill or courage. Afterward, Master Qui-Gon asked me, ‘What have you done?’ And I knew what he meant. I answered aggression with aggression and hate with hate. As I cut down the Sith, I saw in the act the very image of my enemy’s own Darkness. And I am unsettled.”

Master Yoda walked slowly over. He sat opposite Obi-Wan, his gimer stick across his knees. “Ahhhh,” he sighed. “So subtle are the ways of the Dark Side. So easily twisted, tainted our feelings of friendship, protection! We carry our own destruction with us, always. Recognize this, every true Jedi must. After the Sith was dead, how felt you?”

Obi-Wan reflected. “In the moment, I felt only satisfaction. Afterward, I was sorry I had lost control.” He looked up and met Master Yoda’s large, wise eyes without fear. “Understand, I feel no regret for killing him. I doubt I would have had the ability to take him alive. But—the way I killed him. The reason. There, there is reason to regret.”

Yoda closed his eyes. His ears went back. “Yes,” he said. “Sense your honesty, I do. And after? After the regret, after the slaying, went you to your master then?”

“He was hurt,” Obi-Wan confirmed. “Possibly dying. He needed me.”

“Saved him, you did. Why?” Yoda demanded.

Obi-Wan understood what Master Yoda was getting at. Had he saved Qui-Gon to suffer, because selfishly, he could not let his friend and master go? Or had he saved him out of compassion, out of respect for his master’s life? Because he felt a conviction or a leading that Qui-Gon Jinn had more to do?

“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan answered. “I knew he didn’t have to die. I knew I didn’t want him to. But, Master Yoda, I honestly can’t say which consideration weighed more upon me in the moment. I acted, as I acted in the battle with the Sith. Which is better: to commit a good act in the wrong way or a foolish one in the right way? Which is worse? I thought the Council wise in their decision to send me to Naboo alone, yet, as it turns out, without Anakin, the entire battle might have been lost.”

Yoda was silent for a long, long moment. “A shroud there is over the Force,” he said. “Notice it we did not, until this occupation began. When came you and Master Qui-Gon with news of a Sith on Tatooine, thought I: ‘Here is our old enemy.’ A great darkness lifted when young Skywalker won the battle, when you slew the Sith. Yet some darkness remains. Believe you, I do: you slew not the master, but the apprentice. Machinations there are behind this, dark and deep. My vision, clouded it is. I cannot answer you.”

Obi-Wan had never heard Yoda admit he didn’t know something. It was practically the little goblin’s trademark to know everything under the suns. Yet now, Master Yoda sounded . . . tired. Almost afraid.

“Grieve I do, for my grandpadawan’s injury,” Master Yoda added. “Grieve I do, for the injury to your spirit. Yet, learned have you. The Council sees this. No more trials will there be.”

Obi-Wan looked up, shocked. “You’ll count them all completed? I know you were considering counting my vision back at the Temple as a sufficient demonstration of insight, but—I failed, Master Yoda. In a multitude of ways. I did not obtain intelligence on the Sith’s associates. I did not face him alone. When I killed him, I am certain I touched the Dark Side, if I did not give over to it permanently. Master Qui-Gon paid a flesh price, not I! In what way have I shown myself capable or worthy of being a Jedi Knight?”

Yoda giggled, and Obi-Wan felt the old master’s amusement, but also his fondness. “Puzzling, is it not, young Obi-Wan? The greatest teacher, failure is. Confront this, all padawans and masters must. Yes, over and over! Learned your weakness, you have. Your folly, both with young Skywalker and the Sith. You have confronted the frailty within. What is this but a trial of the spirit? Suffered, you did, with your master, and when you lost your lightsaber.” He pointed with his gimer stick at the empty place on Obi-Wan’s belt. “Go forth, stronger. Grow beyond, a Jedi Knight. No doubts have the Council about your courage.”

Obi-Wan blinked. It felt like a cheat, almost. Yet he couldn’t deny it would be nice to go home and rest, without having to worry about having to top himself on a second Trial of Courage or think about what he could possibly face in his trials of Flesh and Spirit. “I want to hold off on the ceremony until Master Qui-Gon can attend,” he told Yoda. “He deserves to be there.”

“Certainly. Attend he should,” Yoda agreed. “And Skywalker—intend you still to train him?”

Obi-Wan looked across at Yoda, releasing his surprise and relief and slight indignation at the casual dismissal of his remaining trials into the Force and gathering himself to address this question. He had known it was coming.

“Shouldn’t I?” he asked.

Master Yoda pursed his wide green mouth. His ears flipped back and forth. “Powerful, he is,” he admitted. “The Chosen One, he could be. Yet—more than one meaning, a prophecy can have. Dangerous, Skywalker is.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan agreed without reservation. “As dangerous as you are to your enemies, I imagine.” Master Yoda did not refute him, and Obi-Wan felt empowered to go on. “He is volatile,” Obi-Wan conceded. “He’s old to enter the Order, and he has a predisposition both toward strong attachments to others and to aggression against those that threaten them. At the moment, much of both is based in a fear of loss and change. He’s also not overly inclined to follow orders. He has shown no evidence of remorse or regret for those he killed in the space battle, which is . . . troubling.”

He saw Yoda nodding, agreeing with everything he had said.

“Yet, we must consider where he comes from and how he’s come, Master Yoda,” Obi-Wan continued. “Anakin Skywalker comes from a brutal background. Kill or be killed, crime and punishment—however petty the crime—this is all he knows. But despite this, he has a brave and generous heart and a selfless spirit. He thinks nothing of his own safety, nothing of his own comfort, no matter what his sufferings. All his thoughts and actions are for others. He knows the concept of self-sacrifice better than any of us could teach it. And he is brilliant. He uses the Force more naturally than any being I have ever encountered. To him it is natural, like breathing, extending your arm to reach something. He knows no other way to be. I believe he can be trained. I believe he can be a Jedi like none we have ever seen.”

Yoda hummed. “Sense this in him, the Council does,” he agreed. “Yet, believe you also a great Jedi young Skywalker could not be?”

Obi-Wan was silent for moment. “Yes,” he admitted. “He could also be a great pilot or mechanic. He could be a great war commander. He has already made a lifelong reputation. Or—”

“Or fall to the Dark Side, Skywalker could,” Yoda finished.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan agreed at last, bowing his head. Then he swallowed and looked up. “But so could I. Isn’t that what we’ve learned here, Master Yoda?”

Yoda’s ears flipped back and forth several more times. “Determined, you are. Revealed, your desires are. Qui-Gon’s stubbornness I sense in you. Need that you do not. Agree the Council does. Our judgment stands. A Jedi Skywalker shall be, if wish it he does. Keep you from taking him as an apprentice, we will not.” He raised a claw in front of his face, and his expression grew stern. “But heed what you have learned, Obi-Wan. Heed what we have said, you and I! Agree with this, I do not.” He climbed to his feet and looked down at them.

“Go,” he said. “See to Master Qui-Gon. Tell what we have said to young Skywalker. We will make arrangements for a return to the Temple after the celebrations.”

Obi-Wan watched the little master shuffle out of the reception room, feeling at once a sense of parole and a looming disconcertion. As he had never known Yoda not to know something before, he had never known Yoda to be wrong. Master Yoda knew everything, and Master Yoda was always right. These were some of the basic facts of life in the Jedi Order as Obi-Wan had known it as a youngling and a padawan. Now, he was to be a Jedi Knight, and suddenly Master Yoda was admitting ignorance, and if he was right about Anakin, the rest of the entire Council and Qui-Gon Jinn were wrong, and Obi-Wan might be heading toward a terrible mistake.

QUI-GON JINN

He could still feel his leg. Pins and needles from a lack of circulation. The Naboo silk sheets upon his toes. The knee which had been sensitive to weather changes since a mission when he was thirty-seven. At the same time, he could feel the dull numbness of the heavy medication they were using to keep him from feeling the full agony of the still unhealed lightsaber burn. He could see his right leg ended just below his mid-thigh. It simply . . . stopped.

Yet he could feel it.

Qui-Gon could not stop looking at it. He knew he should not; he was not ready. He could not begin to accept what he had lost, that if he rose from the bed and tried to walk, he would only fall. Until the burn healed, he would be confined to a bed or a chair, dependent upon others to move him. When it was sufficiently repaired, it would be months of rehabilitation, trial and error with different prostheses and mechanical replacements. None would feel or function like the leg that he had lost; all would cause him pain from the pressure of his weight upon the amputation site. Like a youngling, minus a youngling’s elasticity and adaptability, he would have to learn to walk again. He would have to learn what his body now would permit him to do with a lightsaber, how the Force could and could not compensate.

There was pain and grief and anger that could not simply be resolved through a simple sharing with the Force. It would return, and return, until one came at last to acceptance of a galaxy that was not as it should be, of hurts that could not be healed and wrongs which could never be made right. Qui-Gon had felt it before. When he had lost Xanatos—every time. Tahl’s injury, and later, her death. This would be the same.

It was not the same.

This time, he was to bear the scar upon his body as well as on his spirit, to accept it each time he stepped.

Tahl had learned how with the Force, even the gravest losses could be overcome.

Tahl had always been so much stronger than he.

He was thirsty.

There was no water upon his bedside table. He could see a pitcher and a glass on a table across the room. No one had thought to place it closer. If he wanted a drink, he would need to ask for it. The humility of it, the depth of his need was staggering.

There was a tapping at the door. Qui-Gon wished to see no one. At the same time, he craved a diversion from his thoughts. He did not know which feeling was the stronger.

“Enter,” he called.

He closed his eyes against the wave of joy that washed over him then. It was like the shriek of a seabird on the beach on the loveliest day of the summer. Ani. Blocking him out would require more strength of will than Qui-Gon possessed at present, yet his feelings ran so counter to Qui-Gon’s own. He braced himself and shifted to face the boy.

Behind him, quieter, tightly shielded and expression taut and carefully blank, Qui-Gon’s own apprentice, his best apprentice. Through no effort of my own.

Obi-Wan crossed immediately over to the nurse’s table beneath the window, open out onto one of Naboo’s many stunning vistas. He picked up the clay pitcher so far out of Qui-Gon’s own reach, filled the glass beside it, and brought it over without a word.

Qui-Gon drank, avoiding his apprentice’s gaze. Obi-Wan was a gifted diplomat, skilled at maintaining his composure and his shields in even the most trying of circumstances. He was a talented card player and could probably make his living as a gambler if he chose. He would be wearing the face he wore to bluff their way past hardened rogues and villains now, but Qui-Gon feared what he would see in his apprentice’s eyes.

Obi-Wan would blame himself. He had made a mistake early on in their duel with the Iridonian, before they had both become accustomed to the unconventional physical strikes the Sith added to his style. It was that mistake which had first caused them to become separated, yet it was Qui-Gon’s own mistake which had led to his injury. He had become overconfident, allowed himself to be drawn into an overextended position. Obi-Wan was not to blame for his injury. Yet today, Qui-Gon had no power to assuage Obi-Wan’s guilt. It was all he could do to keep his own composure.

Obi-Wan would have to be strong for himself, for a time.

Ani looked very small beside Qui-Gon’s apprentice. One grew accustomed to the way Anakin felt—the lightning and flash and fire within the Force—and forgot he was nine years old. His initial happiness at finding Qui-Gon conscious had, thankfully, dimmed, but now Qui-Gon had to face the first trial of a dance he knew would prove routine. Ani tried—he did try—to keep his eyes on Qui-Gon’s face, yet they kept dragging downward, where Qui-Gon’s own gaze and every sense was attuned. His face was solemn, yet now, Qui-Gon sensed him attempting to gather his pathetic little shields around himself again, trying to hide his feelings as Obi-Wan was, trying to give Qui-Gon that small mercy.

“I’m glad you’re up, Mist—Master Qui-Gon,” Ani said. “I thought you were gonna sleep forever.”

Qui-Gon replied automatically. “Not forever. I woke some time ago. And what have you been up to?”

“We were at the victory celebration in the plaza,” Anakin answered. “The whole Jedi Council was there, and the new chancellor guy, and Padmé, and Sabé and everyone else who survived the battle, and a whole regiment of Gunguns! You should’ve seen their crazy dances! We missed you, though.”

“It sounds like quite the party,” Qui-Gon told him. “I’m sorry that I missed it.”

“They’re saving an award for you,” Anakin informed him. “Me and Obi-Wan—Master Obi-Wan—we both got one. The Council didn’t want us to, something about us being outside of our mandate in the battle, but the chancellor said it’d be a bad prece-something if the Republic didn’t honor bravery like we showed.”

“Precedent, Anakin,” Obi-Wan interjected. “It means it would set a bad example.”

“Right,” Ani said. “So, we all get awards. Padmé gave them to us herself, all done up in her Queen Amidala get-up and everything. And the chancellor says he wouldn’t be surprised if they built a statue of me.”

“A statue?” Qui-Gon asked, frowning and looking toward his apprentice. The conversation had begun as routine, a mere diversion from emotions he could not yet confront or dismiss, yet now he was interested despite himself. That Obi-Wan should receive some sort of award made sense, if only from a secular perspective. He had killed an enemy of the queen. Yet why should Anakin be honored?

“Right, you won’t have heard,” Obi-Wan told him, voice wry. “Due to your brilliant idea for him to hide inside a Naboo fighter, Anakin flew off and won the space battle.”

Of course, Anakin had to provide all the details then: how he and the astromech droid he had modified, R2-D2, had intuited the workings of a spacecraft Anakin had never flown before, evaded drones and Trade Federation turrets to fly to the center of the droid-controller ship and blow up the reactor, flying out an instant before the ship’s destruction. Ani swore it had been even more tense than the Boonta Eve Classic.

Obi-Wan left the door open, so to speak, through Anakin’s explanation, on this matter at least sharing his feelings with Qui-Gon. There was a trace of rueful accusation; Obi-Wan had known, in the moment, that ordering Anakin to take refuge in a fighter would likely backfire upon them. Some self-deprecation—Obi-Wan had been vocal about believing Ani would be useless and a hindrance in the battle, and now, here he was, the preeminent hero of the venture. There was also, however, a great deal more pride and fondness for Anakin than Qui-Gon might have expected.

Their bond now had gone beyond a complication of the duties Obi-Wan often undertook for the little foundlings of their misadventures, beyond a psychic link an untrained vergence had created in a moment of crisis. His apprentice no longer felt bound to Anakin Skywalker by obligation, Qui-Gon saw. While both Qui-Gon and the Council had sensed the harmoniousness of the Force surrounding the pair of them, Obi-Wan had acted more instinctively—and had felt himself somewhat the victim of those instincts. Possessed with a full measure of the Jedi virtue of compassion and endowed with a somewhat rarer helping of good sense besides, Obi-Wan had merely responded to the strength of a child’s need. He had seen a job that needed doing and done it, in the workmanlike way he had often approached his apprenticeship and partnership with Qui-Gon. In truth, Ani had rather chosen him than the other way around, sensing perhaps a stability and dependability in Obi-Wan to replace that he had left behind.

Qui-Gon sensed Obi-Wan still had a full consciousness of all the challenges serving as guardian to Anakin Skywalker was likely to present. He sensed Obi-Wan still carried some trepidation about his ability to meet them. He was young, grounded and self-aware, and more now than he had ever been before. Though Obi-Wan did not feel fallen to Qui-Gon’s mind, the Darkness of the anger in which Obi-Wan had slain the Sith still cast a shadow on him. He felt his apprentice’s regret, his resolve that he must do better. And he felt too, Obi-Wan’s resolve to do better for Anakin Skywalker. Obi-Wan was not only committed to Ani, he was determined to teach him.

The determination of Obi-Wan Kenobi was already something of a byword to the Jedi. Qui-Gon’s apprentice was known for his cleverness, yes, for his aptitude with a lightsaber—and would be now more than ever—but also for being one of the only Jedi in the Order who could be as stubborn as Qui-Gon himself, with a fierce tenacity that was nevertheless a good deal politer than Qui-Gon’s own. If all of that determination and tenacity had turned to training Anakin Skywalker now—Qui-Gon almost smiled despite the gaping void in the sheets below his thigh.

Little Ani might have met his match.

Over the course of a few weeks, his apprentice had become a man. And there was something else . . . Qui-Gon probed at his apprentice’s recent feelings.

“They’ve decided to knight you for your actions here,” he said, interrupting Anakin’s description of everything every single pilot who had survived the battle had said about their impressions of Ani’s flying and techniques.

The very tips of Obi-Wan’s ears turned pink. “Yes,” he confirmed. “The Council has ruled our encounter with the Sith a sufficient trial of my suitability for knighthood. I suppose they feel any further test might be anticlimactic. When I’ve forged a new lightsaber, we’ve returned to Coruscant, and you’re well enough to attend, we’ll have the ceremony.”

“A new—” Qui-Gon’s eyes went to Obi-Wan’s belt. He had not noticed Obi-Wan had lost his lightsaber. Things at the end of the duel had been fuzzy. He remembered only the pain, magnified and reflected back to him by Obi-Wan’s own experience. He remembered lying helpless in the Naboo power complex waste systems, unable to intervene as the Sith gloated over them, unable to intervene as Obi-Wan’s fury rose and turned for a mere instant into something terrible, something he had not seen from his rigidly controlled apprentice since nearly the beginning of their partnership, when he had almost passed over Obi-Wan because of it. Qui-Gon himself walked much closer to that edge than his apprentice most days; he had hoped that because Obi-Wan had witnessed his struggles, as well as what had become of Xanatos, it would steer him permanently away from such temptations.

His heart had broken many times over the years, yet if he ever saw Obi-Wan fall to Darkness, Qui-Gon did not know that he could survive.

He lifted his eyes again to Obi-Wan, and wordlessly passed across his relief that Obi-Wan lived and stood still committed to the Light. Obi-Wan passed back a sense of apology for the times over the years when he himself had judged Qui-Gon’s frailties. Until now, no Darkness had ever come close enough to the things which Obi-Wan held most dear. He had found right and wrong easy to define, the high road easy for him to choose. Now he knew it would not always be so, and Qui-Gon sensed his preparedness now to resist, the preemptive bracing against what he now recognized could be a lifetime war.

“Not everyone is permitted to let another pay their flesh price in the trials,” Qui-Gon observed. As Obi-Wan and Anakin recoiled, he continued. “Not everyone feels an injury to another’s flesh as though it were his own. The Council judged right, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan had paled. He closed his eyes and the door between them, and Qui-Gon knew he gathered himself. “Thank you, Master,” he murmured. “And I am sorry.”

“Does it hurt a lot?” Ani asked then, his voice small. Tentatively, he reached out, and Qui-Gon allowed the boy to take his hand.

“Not now,” Qui-Gon answered. “They have salved the burn with a numbing agent, but as it heals and I come off the medications, and as I try to find the right prosthesis, I am certain it will hurt.”

Anakin absorbed this. A darkness to match the darkness Qui-Gon had felt from his apprentice in the waste disposal system entered the room, but it was not Obi-Wan’s darkness. “I’m glad Obi-Wan killed that scum,” Anakin said, his voice low and unaccountably ferocious. “I hope it hurt him.”

Qui-Gon met his apprentice’s gaze over Anakin’s head and saw no surprise at Ani’s bloodthirstiness there, just grim recognition and resolve. Obi-Wan had seen this in Anakin too when Qui-Gon had not, either because he had spent more time with the boy or because he had always looked beyond the power and the prophecy to the person beneath.

“He was dangerous, and he needed to die,” Obi-Wan answered Anakin. “But we should not be happy at the suffering of any being, Anakin. The reason he needed to die is because he was happy hurting Master Qui-Gon. When we take joy in the pain we can inflict upon our enemies, we become no better ourselves. There are no bad or good guys, just wrongdoing all around.”

Anakin scowled. “If he wanted to make Master Qui-Gon hurt, he should have hurt too,” he reasoned. “That’s just fair. Right, Master Qui-Gon?” Obi-Wan’s face tightened at the insensitivity of Anakin’s appeal, but Qui-Gon shook his head at his apprentice. Anakin’s feelings wouldn’t go away just because they didn’t talk about them.

“There are different kinds of fairness, Ani,” he answered. “There is the fairness of doing to others what they have done to you—or worse, as a deterrent—and there is the fairness of doing to others what they should do to you, of acting in the way you believe everyone should. Obi-Wan believes, as I do and as the Jedi Order does, that it is better to act according to the second kind of fairness. If more people did so, it would be a kinder galaxy.”

He used the word deliberately: Anakin had mentioned more than once the value his mother placed on kindness. The boy kept frowning, but the expression was more thoughtful than stubborn now.

“But aren’t you mad?” he asked then.

“Very,” Qui-Gon admitted. “I suspect I shall be mad for a long, long time, Anakin. I will work on it, so it does not affect the way I treat you, or Obi-Wan, or anyone. I would hate it if I was less than fair to you because someone else had been cruel to me. Sometimes, I will have bad days. I had a friend once who was blinded in an adventure. She had many bad days. Days when she felt sorry for herself, when she could scarcely manage a single kind word for anyone. But she worked past it, and she apologized, and became once again a wonderful Jedi Knight, and through all of it, she was my friend.”

“Master Tahl,” Obi-Wan murmured, remembering. “She was my friend Bant’s master,” he told Anakin.

“What happened to her?” Anakin wanted to know.

Qui-Gon could not answer. “She died,” Obi-Wan replied. “A few years ago, now.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Anakin said. He looked up at Qui-Gon. “I can see how you might want to remember her now, though. You’re probably gonna miss her even more than you used to now, huh?”

“Anakin, why don’t you tell Qui-Gon about your talk with the chancellor after the ceremony today?” Obi-Wan interrupted, a more graceless transition than he usually made, but effective. Anakin realized he’d been insensitive and accepted the wordless reprimand. Qui-Gon sent Obi-Wan a weak but grateful smile. Obi-Wan returned it.

Anakin shrugged. “He asked me to tea when we’ve all been back to Coruscant for a few days,” he told Qui-Gon. “It sounds pretty boring, but it was nice of him, I guess. He’s probably just happy I saved his planet. Helped save,” he added, looking up at Obi-Wan quickly. Qui-Gon guessed his apprentice had already lectured Ani once or twice about his boasting.

“It’s a big honor, Anakin, and I expect you to be on your best behavior when you go,” Obi-Wan told him. “The chancellor of the Republic has many demands upon his time.”

“So will I, when we get back,” Anakin said. “I’ve missed about five years and a week of training.”

It was a joke—one of the first he had heard Anakin make, and Qui-Gon was surprised into chuckling. Obi-Wan was having a good effect on the boy in more ways than one. A little bubble of delight burst out into the Force—Anakin, pleased at his own cleverness, pleased at having made Qui-Gon laugh—and Qui-Gon felt a rush of fondness for these two young men, his apprentice and the boy who would be Obi-Wan’s own apprentice. He had a long, hard road ahead, but he was glad it had not ended in the Naboo power complex.

“We’ll see what we can do about that,” he promised. “Though I trust you won’t be skipping out on more to go win any other wars across the galaxy.” Anakin would be too much for even Obi-Wan every day. It took a Temple to raise a youngling. Master Yoda certainly hadn’t butted out of his grandpadawan and great-grandpadawan’s education, and Qui-Gon saw no reason that he should. Obi-Wan would have no cause to charge him with neglect in future, and being there for Obi-Wan and Anakin would give him a reason to recover.

“No promises, Master Qui-Gon, now I’ve got the taste for it,” Anakin smiled.

“Oh, no,” Obi-Wan told the boy. “We have a concept in the Jedi Order: Temple-bound. It isn’t generally literal, but I will see you glued within a study carrel or to a training salle floor for the next two years if I have to.”

It was a risky threat to make, given Anakin’s history, but Ani took it in the spirit it was intended, grinning up at Obi-Wan. “You’ll have to stay glued with me to make me stay!” he said. “I guess I can handle it then.”

“I suddenly have a terrible feeling about all this,” Obi-Wan said.

Anakin just laughed.

Chapter Text

PADMÉ

The Toydarian’s wings beat faster to account for the weight of the money bag in his tiny arms. His eyes glittered with thoughts of all the gambling he could do with the money—proper Hutt peggats and truguts Padmé had exchanged for with the Banking Clan. But he was suspicious. “Ay, what’s your game, girl?” he demanded. “You had to cross half the galaxy to get back here. For what? The broken-down slave of a junker?”

“My concerns are irrelevant,” Padmé told Watto coolly, using her best Queen Amidala voice. “I do not deal in games; only money.” The Toydarian’s expression shifted as he recollected his own words to Master Qui-Gon upon their last visit and realized that she had been listening from her place inside the shop. “There is more than enough there to compensate you for Shmi Skywalker’s loss.”

Paying this creature for another lifeform made her sick, and was somewhat more expensive than it would have been to smuggle Shmi offworld, according to her sources. But it was safer than trusting the mission to a smuggler. Buying Anakin’s mother, no bounty hunter or whatever passed for law enforcement out here would question Padmé’s rights to Shmi, or rather—Shmi’s rights to herself, since Padmé meant to free the poor woman immediately.

“Eh, you don’t think about my costs, having to get someone else, or a droid, to do her work,” the Toydarian said slyly. “I’m near-beggared from the last time you people were here, and now you want to take some more.”

Padmé narrowed her eyes and looked down her nose. “I have done my research. That—” she gestured to the bag Watto held—“is 130 percent of what a general slave in Shmi’s condition and time of life is worth.” It was, in fact, much closer to what Anakin’s value would have been to the Toydarian. She knew that Watto had not wanted to lose her friend and suspected Master Qui-Gon to have cheated to ensure Ani left with them. She was trying not to think of what Watto might do with the funds if he did not immediately gamble them away.

Watto flapped his wings, considering. “Ay, you’re right,” he admitted finally. “Must mean something to you. Don’t know what you want with the woman. Ay! Shmi!” he yelled, much as he had yelled to Ani the first time Padmé had met him.

Anakin’s mother emerged from the workroom. She had seemed tired, far older than her years the last time they had met. Mere weeks later, she seemed older still. She was thinner, and Padmé saw some threads of silver amid her neat brown coiffure that she had not seen before. She recognized Padmé, and her eyes went wide.

“This stupid girl wants to buy you,” Watto informed the woman in Huttese. Padmé did not let on that she understood the language “Five times what you’re worth. Go and get your things.”

“Yes, Master,” Shmi responded, eyes widening still further. She glanced once at Padmé, then hurried from the room.

“I’ll get her title and detonator,” Watto told Padmé. “Must be somewhere around here. Eh, how’s little Ani?”

Padmé did not feel like discussing her friend with the being that once had owned him. In truth, she was not certain their own dealings with Ani had been gentler than Watto’s; like the Toydarian, they had risked his life again and again. It had been unconscionable considering his age, and yet, each time, the choice had been Ani’s own. He had volunteered to race for them; he had made the choice to fly out into the battle. They had been negligent, too permissive; yet Watto had been abusive.

“I don’t know,” she lied. “He left my home world with his new master more than three standard weeks ago. I don’t imagine he’ll keep in touch.” This was all true, and the last still pained her more than she understood. Ani had years of training and many changes before him, and both of them would be very busy, yet she would miss him. Somehow more than their short acquaintance seemed to warrant. No doubt due to the great debt that she owed him and all they had been through together.

“Good mechanic,” Watto observed idly. “Good racer. I never knew how good, or I could have made a lot more money off him. If Sebulba or someone else didn’t kill him first. Eh, I kinda miss him around the place, you know?”

I doubt he misses you as much, Padmé thought but did not say. That Watto thought he could reminisce fondly about the boy whose death he could speak of so casually was the outside of enough. But she did not want to insult the Toydarian until she truly held the title to Anakin’s mother.

Watto rummaged in a drawer, sticking the money bag back into a cabinet and locking it while he was at it. Finally, he tossed over a worn datapad. Padmé had to stoop to catch it, and Taka, guarding her today instead of Sabé and the others because she had learned it would be more useful upon Tatooine to dress plainly and walk with a man to discourage even the thought of an attack, scowled at the junker.

“There’s the title, and here’s the detonator,” Watto said, handing it over too now that he had flown back close. “Got to be a bit more careful with that. Wouldn’t want to blow up your . . . eh . . . investment.” He smirked, showing a little more of his right-side tusk.

Shmi Skywalker slipped back into the room, giving Taka a little nod of acknowledgment and a wide berth. She had a single satchel over her shoulder, no more than Ani, when they had first taken him from Tatooine.  Behind her walked a familiar, unfinished protocol droid, and Padmé’s heart squeezed inside her chest. She had forgotten C-3PO.

“May I take him, Watto?” Shmi asked in Basic. She spoke quietly and with deference, but Padmé noticed she did not call the Toydarian ‘master’ now. She felt a rush of approval and fondness for the older woman, but she was careful not to let anything show upon her face.

Watto looked over the droid and chewed on the inside of his cheek. Padmé saw him sizing up what he could charge for Ani’s naked creation, what it would cost him to plate the droid attractively enough to sell for what it was worth. “Eh, take it,” he said finally. “It might be impressive enough, one day, but I don’t need its translator functions. Anyway, it’s got an annoying personality.”

“I say, that’s not a very polite thing to say,” C-3PO remarked in the Core standard accent Anakin had programmed him to have.

Watto sneered and ignored him, turning back to Padmé. “Call it a two-for-one special,” he said. “What can I say? I like your face better than the old man’s. You don’t mind taking the droid off my hands, right? Some good parts in there, if you don’t need a translator either.”

Padmé went hot all over at the thought of scrapping Anakin’s creation, and she saw a look of panic and despair come over his mother’s face—the droid was all she had left of her son. She hastened to reassure the woman without breaking her composure. “The construction is more valuable. Mistress Skywalker, you may bring C-3PO with you. He is yours.”

“Wonderful!” C-3PO enthused. “Are we leaving, Mistress Shmi? Where to?”

Shmi looked wary, confused. Padmé turned away from Watto and toward Anakin’s mother. “That depends upon her,” she answered. In Watto’s sight, she handed over Shmi’s title and detonator. Shmi looked down at them, scarcely believing it. Her hands trembled. “Mistress Skywalker, these belong to you as well. You are a free woman. I paid the Toydarian 162 peggats and 2 truguts for your title. If you come with me to my ship but choose to remain on Tatooine, I will pay you the same again. You may also come with me and have the money exchanged for its value in the Republic: 6,500 credits. Either sum should permit you to begin your new life in freedom.”

Her government had not complained when Padmé asked for the funds to free the mother of their savior and help her to find a fresh start. Indeed, Padmé’s parents and several of her friends had made personal donations to help offset the cost. Yet Padmé was aware that it had been a serious ask immediately after the occupation, and not less so because she had insisted on going to Tatooine again personally. She was going to have to be very clever in the next several months in the reconstruction efforts in order to rebuild the political capital she had traded in for this gift to Anakin Skywalker. Yet she did not begrudge him, or his mother, who had been so kind when she and her people were stranded on Tatooine, though they themselves had nothing. She would free every slave in the Rim if she could.

But Watto burst out laughing. “Hahaha! I get it: you’re one of those! Soft-hearted slave sympathizers! Soft heart and soft head! Leave a slave on her own, she’ll be dead in weeks! Then what good’s all your money?

Eh, Shmi, you want to go with this wermo? I’m not so bad! I always took care of you, no?”

“You have your money,” Padmé said, without looking back at Watto. She held Anakin’s mother’s gaze, waiting. “This is Mistress Skywalker’s decision.”

Watto’s expression soured. “Little . . .” he broke off into a stream of Huttese curses under his breath. C-3P0 exclaimed, and Taka’s face went dark, but Padmé gestured for Taka to hold his peace and did not ask the droid to translate. She waited, and so did Watto.

Shmi stared at her title and detonator within her hands, Watto, and back at Padmé. Her shoulders set then, and for a moment, Padmé saw her son within her face. They had similar features, though Ani’s coloring was very different from his mother’s. “I will go, Watto,” she said.

Watto spat. “Eh, on your own head be it,” he said. “Good riddance.” He flew off in a temper, cursing in Huttese again. Shmi watched him go.

“I always wanted to leave this planet,” she murmured, almost as much to herself as to Padmé. “Yet I never dreamed I would.” Carefully, she slid the protective casing back over the detonator to keep it from activating accidentally. She slipped it and her title within her satchel and slung both back over her shoulder once again. She met Padmé’s eyes then, and the intelligence, emotion, and composure there was astounding. “Please—your name is Padmé, is it not?”

“You have a good memory,” Padmé complimented her. “It is. Padmé Naberrie. This is Taka, one of my guards. He was not with me the last time but agreed to accompany me from the ship today.”

“Hello, Taka,” Shmi said politely.

“Mistress Skywalker,” Taka returned gravely, with a little bow.

Shmi colored. “Please. I can’t get used to it when even the droid calls me that. It’s Shmi.”

Taka smiled at her. “I’ll try. Feels like the mother of Anakin Skywalker should merit a little more respect, though.”

Shmi raised her eyebrows at Padmé, wordlessly waiting for clarification.

“There is much to discuss,” Padmé told her. “Let us leave this place, if you will go with us at least as far as into space.”

“And farther,” Shmi murmured, but fervently. She fell into step in between Padmé and Taka. “Come, C-3PO.”

“Excellent!” the droid gushed. “Are we going on a real starship!” In the droid’s enthusiasm, Padmé heard his creator, and she smiled.

She wanted to take Shmi’s arm, but she remembered the woman’s caution around Taka and refrained. “We are, Threepio,” she said. “You remember the droid with us last time, R2-D2? He is with us as well.”

“Oh, lovely,” C-3PO said. “I liked him! Horribly opinionated and willful, I thought, but undoubtedly an interesting conversationalist.”

Shmi smiled as well. “I remember Ani thought the same,” she said. “He was excited by your astromech. And by you,” she added, turning to Padmé. “He took to you more quickly than I have seen him take to anyone. Have you come back here for him? You must understand that I cannot pay you back.”

Padmé had been impressed with Anakin’s mother upon their first meeting, and she remained impressed. She had to be so frightened now, leaving behind everything she knew, volunteering to go upon a starship with a near-stranger. Padmé had hoped that Shmi would agree to leave Tatooine; left alone on this planet with the sum Padmé did have for her upon the ship, Anakin’s mother might have indeed become easy prey. Yet she had known that she could not set a woman free then dictate how she should use that freedom. She had simply prayed that Shmi would have sense or trust enough in them to accept further help. And not only was Shmi doing so, she was courageous and intelligent enough to investigate.

“Don’t think of that,” Padmé told her in a low voice “In truth, I would have paid a great deal more—indeed five times what I might have. I did not pay quite that much; I am sorry Watto said that to you. I felt badly when we could not take you during our first visit. You were so kind to us when we were strangers, stranded on your planet, and it was only ill fortune we could not free you as well as your son.”

Shmi shook her head. “I knew Master Qui-Gon would not be able to free us both. I wanted him to choose Ani. I would have asked him to. I did not think I would see him, or Anakin, or you again.”

The question was implicit. Where is my son? Where is Master Qui-Gon?

They walked through the markets at a leisurely pace; Padmé wanted to give Anakin’s mother plenty of time to process what was happening. Fortunately, this time, they would not have to trek all the way out to the wastes. Their ship had made the journey to Tatooine without incident, and Nodric had set them down inside the port. C-3PO marveled at everything they passed and sometimes complained of sand in his parts. They would have to give him an oil bath back upon the ship. If Shmi permitted it, they would see about getting him some plating. Gold would look nice with the lights Anakin had used for his eyes.

“You wondered at how Taka greeted you,” Padmé said. “We owe Anakin a great debt. Not just for his actions here on Tatooine. We could never have left without him, but later, he did so much more for us. Not just for me or for the Jedi but for everyone upon my home world. A powerful trade conglomerate had taken over my government and captured many of my people. They held the invasion with a powerful droid army. Your son flew a fighter in an offensive against their droid-controller ship in orbit. He destroyed it and freed us all. To me, to Taka, and to everyone upon my home world, your son is an honored hero. As his mother, you also are worthy of respect and honor.”

Shmi’s step faltered. “And Ani is he—is he—”

“He landed with a cleaner face than he did after the Boonta Eve Classic,” Padmé said. “There was not a scratch upon him, Shmi. My people have written several songs and poems. They will paint paintings and murals.” The rueful amusement was heavy in her voice. “It was not our will that he fly in the battle. In truth, he was not meant to be anywhere near my home world’s system during the invasion. He hid upon our ship to return with us from the Republic capital on Coruscant—me, my people, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Master Qui-Gon’s former apprentice, who had been assigned to help us. Anakin did not wish for us to fight alone. We did not believe he could be of any help, and then he climbed into a fighter with Artoo and saved us all.”

“Artoo? R2-D2? Don’t tell me he’s been off fighting battles!” C-3PO interjected. “How horrid!”

“Ani will be pleased,” Shmi said, forcing a laugh. “He should not have done it, but I believe he did. It would be just like him to fly a fighter in a battle for his friends. He would not think that he should not do it. He never let being young or anyone’s saying ‘can’t’ stop him. He always dreamed of being a fighter pilot . . . and he is protective of his friends.”

Padme’s hand fell to her wrist, where she had made a bracelet of the japor snippet Anakin had made for her. Anakin was a breath of fresh air. Open and honest. Things seemed clearer when he was near. She felt stronger and better. She had not known him long, but he was already dear to her, and though she might never see him again, she knew she would never forget him. “I know you are hoping I have come to take you to him,” she admitted. “That would have been my preference. I offered him a home with us if he wanted. He would have been received with joy and honor. My own parents would have been glad to raise him, or half a dozen other families of good name. Yet he chose to return to Coruscant with the Jedi, like the two of you wanted.”

She had mixed feelings about that. She could hardly fault Ani for choosing a life of public service, yet the Jedi were so strange. She could not help but feel he would miss a great deal growing up among them. And she would miss him.

“And still you came back for me? All this way?” Shmi asked, and now it was she who reached out to Padmé, taking her arm and smiling down. “You are good to remember me.”

Padmé shook her head, placing her hand over Shmi’s upon her arm. “Slavery is an abominable practice,” she said passionately, “and it was abominable that we had to choose when first we met—you or Anakin. Abominable that you are separated now. Freeing you now, helping you however we can, is the least we can do—for Ani, and for you. I am ashamed now to say I only came myself instead of sending another because of a promise I made to the Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi. I always thought to send someone for you, but now I cannot believe I would have sent anyone else. This is too important.”

Shmi was shaking her head, but Padmé pressed her. “You are important,” she repeated, insisting. The woman’s humility pained her. She could feel Anakin’s mother did not feel she was worthy of the trip, did not feel she was worthy of freedom. Ani had always known he was destined for better things. Shmi Skywalker believed in her son, but it was terrible how she seemed not to believe in herself.

“I am sorry,” she continued. “It is not within my power to guarantee that you will see your son again. I have resources, as you see. For the moment, I am—” she looked sideways. Taka continued to scan the marketplace, looking for threats. Padmé herself did not see any; she had taken care to dress as the natives did upon this voyage. The money bag for Watto had been concealed within her clothes on the way to his shop; the other bag was secured upon their ship, under guard of eight more of her security forces, including Sabé, who was a more than capable commander if pirates decided the ship seemed a likely target. Still, it was unwise to confess her true position when others could overhear. She would be a ripe prospect for a ransom-seeking adventurer, and they had only Taka with them.

But Anakin’s mother understood. “Like my son, you are more than you seem,” she finished. “Perhaps not in the same way. You carry yourself with authority for one as young as you are. You were angry, last time, that the Jedi did not follow your wishes. As if you had been used to beings doing so.”

Padmé smiled. “You are observant,” she said.

“It is a valuable skill, for a slave,” Shmi replied.

“You are not a slave now,” Padmé said firmly. “I can tell you more when we are aboard the ship. For now, let us say that my power has its limits. I have several friends off of my home world, and more now than I did when last we met. If you wish it, I will ask favors of certain of them and try to facilitate a faster residency and citizenship upon Coruscant for you. Anakin lives there now. But I could not promise you would be near him. I could not promise the Jedi would permit you to see him; they rarely have contact with their families. It is custom for a Jedi to forsake the person he was before. The credits I have to give you will help to smooth your way, wherever you choose to go, but that is all I can promise—unless you choose to come with me to my home world of Naboo. It is your choice, Shmi,” she emphasized, “But if you wish, I can guarantee you a comfortable home and paid employment there.”

Shmi hesitated. “Anakin lives on Coruscant now. With the Jedi? What will happen to him now?” she asked. Her voice was wistful.

With Anakin’s mother, Padmé would gladly tell all she knew. “He has been accepted to an apprenticeship within the Jedi Order. The Jedi Council—the Jedi leaders—and all their friends are working very hard to make sure he learns all he needs to know. They understand how special Ani is. And he is clever. Within a couple of years, maybe less, he will be ready to become a Jedi padawan—a Jedi Knight’s special apprentice—and begin a new stage of learning within the field. He will visit many worlds as he always dreamed and help those planets and peoples as he has helped mine. Hopefully, in more peaceful circumstances. A Jedi has already volunteered to be his master—his teacher and his guardian, not his owner, Shmi,” she added.

“Master Qui-Gon?” Shmi asked.

“No; Obi-Wan Kenobi, Master Qui-Gon’s own former apprentice.”

“You mentioned him before,” Shmi recalled. “He was the one who convinced you to come yourself to fetch me. He was with you in the battle for your home world, and on the ship where Ani hid to come along?”

“In truth, I am fairly certain Ani chased Obi-Wan Kenobi to the battle upon my home world as much as he chased me,” Padmé smiled. “The two of them formed a special bond on our initial voyage back to Coruscant. He was on Tatooine, you know, upon the ship when Master Qui-Gon and I met you here in town. He met Anakin only days after Master Qui-Gon and I did. He was Master Qui-Gon’s padawan at the time, his special apprentice, although of age and advanced enough in his studies for his knighthood. A padawan often serves as his master’s assistant, so it was Obi-Wan who made many of the practical arrangements for Anakin’s care, his transfer of citizenship, medicals, special concerns regarding his education, and so on.”

“Special concerns,” Shmi repeated, a line creasing between her brows. “You mean, because he was a slave?”

Padmé paused. “Yes and no,” she admitted finally. She did not want Shmi’s mother to worry about Anakin’s education, to feel that she had failed in any way in the teaching of her son, in preparing him for the Jedi. His background on Tatooine had left him disadvantaged, yet Ani was still quite possibly one of the most intelligent people Padmé had ever met. His gifts with piloting, mechanics, droid-crafting—everything—he could function as well and better as many a full-grown engineer or soldier. He had built C-3PO and a podracer alone out of spare parts! The only challenge she foresaw in teaching him was in his teachers remembering he was, in fact, still a child and should not do all the grown-up things he would wish to and could succeed in. Padmé now felt she had been too young to seek the throne of the Naboo when she had; on sleepless nights, sometimes she wondered whether things with the Trade Federation would have deteriorated as badly as they had if a more experienced leader had been on the throne. Sometimes she thought of the things other girls were doing at her age and wondered if she regretted her sacrifice. Anakin, like her, was all too willing to put himself at the disposal of the public good; she hoped he never lived to regret it, yet she feared he would.

“Most of the Jedi join the Order five or six standard years before Ani,” she explained, “or at the comparable ages for their species. There is much other apprentices Ani’s age will know now that he does not. Yet my friends tell me he shows great promise. Obi-Wan came up with several plans to help Anakin to catch up. He had not yet learned that when one begins to do a difficult task, one’s reward is often to be assigned to complete that difficult task.” She smiled. She had learned that lesson back in school at eight or nine years old. Fortunately, she had never been afraid to take on the difficult tasks she assigned herself.

“Master Qui-Gon saw the wisdom and maturity of his apprentice,” she told Shmi. “Perhaps more to the point, Anakin grew quite attached to Obi-Wan. It is customary for a Jedi Knight to train an apprentice to attain his mastery. As Obi-Wan Kenobi was ready for knighthood, Master Qui-Gon and the Jedi Council—and Anakin himself—believed training Anakin would be Obi-Wan’s next step in his own journey.”

Shmi Skywalker was intelligent in her own right. She had been listening, and she had heard what Padmé had not said. “And what did your Obi-Wan Kenobi think of this?” she asked.

Padmé smiled, remembering. “I believe he was terrified at first,” she conceded. “As all responsible people are when they discover they have become responsible for another life.” She remembered the sudden terror she had experienced on election night, after the elation had passed and she realized she was now the head of state for every human on Naboo. “As incredible as Ani is, he can be quite a handful.”

“He can,” Shmi agreed. “At times, it is all you can do to sit back. Let him be Ani.” Her smile now was proud and fond, and it wiped much of the weariness and the desert aging from her face so you could see that, beneath it, she was still a lovely woman.

Padmé nodded. “It was difficult for Obi-Wan, especially when Anakin ran away from the Jedi Temple to join the battle. He worried, and it was hard for him to admit—hard for us all to see that Anakin was quite capable in the dangerous place we would all have done much to keep him from going to again. Obi-Wan Kenobi will be made a Jedi Knight very soon, if he has not been made one already. He too showed great heroism in the battle for my home world. He saved his master’s life and defeated an enemy that the Jedi had not seen in many centuries. Yet I believe that in caring for Ani, he will need all the strength and courage he has shown so far and more. Perhaps we should have you made a Jedi Knight, Shmi!”

“Not for me, thank you,” Shmi smiled. Yet she still seemed troubled. Her step was slower and slower, as though a weight held her down. Her grip upon Padmé now seemed more to steady her than for affection or gratitude’s sake. It tightened suddenly, as Shmi silently asked for her attention. “Padmé, will this Obi-Wan Kenobi care for Ani?” She asked. “Understand, not just teach him or give him the things he needs—will he love him? I can see he is a thoughtful man, a thorough man. He sent you here. It is easier, to go with you instead of a stranger. But I do not know Obi-Wan Kenobi. You say Ani is attached to him . . .”

Padmé considered how to answer Anakin’s mother. Shmi had ceded her rights to her son, yet it had to have been the hardest, most painful choice she had made in her life. It would hurt her always. And she could not help but want to know he was safe and happy now, that he was loved. Master Qui-Gon had seemed so interested and invested when they had met Anakin—and Master Qui-Gon was the man that Shmi knew.

The Jedi were strange. It had been clear to Padmé when they had returned to the ship that both Jedi initially saw Ani as an assignment—Master Qui-Gon due to whatever gifts their small friend possessed within the Force, and Obi-Wan Kenobi because Master Qui-Gon had taken Ani from his home. She had not initially seen much in the way of real affection for the boy from either of them, though Master Qui-Gon had perhaps seemed the warmer and more approachable—and more used to children than his apprentice, had more easily provided the small touches and reassurances Anakin craved, at least on Tatooine. Yet Obi-Wan had quickly proved the more compassionate and considerate of Anakin’s feelings, and of his mother, left behind. He had not seemed to relish his care of Anakin, at least at first, but he was at least conscientious—and thorough, as Shmi had observed.

But later—later . . .

Padmé thought back to Anakin and Obi-Wan’s disagreement upon the ship after Obi-Wan had discovered Anakin’s presence, to the meal upon the deck, the accusations Ani had hurled at the young Jedi, and what Ani had confided in her afterward. He should hate me. I would hate me. Anakin had indeed been much trouble for Obi-Wan, yet Obi-Wan had never hated him, and when Obi-Wan had been angry with Anakin, he had been angry in the manner of a father or an elder brother. A new father or elder brother, surely. One with much to learn. But a father or elder brother all the same.

In the last days she had seen the two of them on Naboo, three weeks ago now, they had always been together. They had fussed over Master Qui-Gon until he had been ready to return to Coruscant, each in their disparate ways. Obi-Wan had always been ready with what his master needed, though Qui-Gon had not said a word. Ani had gone far, far out of his way to keep the older man distracted and diverted from his sorrow and anger. Still, they had always been together. And when they had not been with Qui-Gon, when they had talked with Chancellor Palpatine or briefed the cabinet upon their perspectives of the battle, at several dinners Padmé had invited the two of them to attend—they had bickered like family, both working to puncture the other’s occasional self-importance in the different ways it was expressed.

She had thought Obi-Wan Kenobi exceptionally intelligent and correct when they first met, but she had also thought him cold, and occasionally unkind. She had found him warmer and more amusing by the day toward the end of the Jedi’s stay in Theed. Ani, so earnest, had begun to learn to laugh at himself and at others, and she had seen it was in imitation of his friend and future guardian’s own manner. Beside Obi-Wan, he had begun to learn this and many other things in leaps and bounds.

Shmi seemed to understand that Padmé was giving her question due consideration before she judged, not hesitating to offer what she thought might be an unwelcome judgment. Now Padmé looked at her.

“I have faith they will do well together,” she said. “When last I saw them together, Obi-Wan Kenobi had grown comfortable and confident in his task. He was as happy in Ani’s company as Ani was in his. It was truly lovely to watch the two of them together. And Obi-Wan has already begun to teach Ani to understand the powers he has—powers people like the two of us can only dream of, but powers that have always been part of him. With the Jedi, Anakin will learn to use those powers to help people like he always dreamed.”

It was not a truly straightforward answer; she had not said that Obi-Wan would love Ani. In truth, Padmé did not know if a Jedi could love, certainly not in the way that Anakin’s mother could. Yet, she saw that her answer satisfied Shmi Skywalker—and saw that it pained her as much as it gave her joy. Padmé’s heart hurt for the poor woman.

Shmi Skywalker had given up her only son to give him a better life. Ani had been all she had, everything to her. She was proud and happy now to learn he was happy, but as Padmé gave her the news of her son’s bright future, she also told Shmi Ani had chosen that future over a possible return to her, for if he had remained on Naboo as she had offered, he could have reunited with his mother. As Padmé gave Shmi good reports of the man who would raise Ani now—raise him well, teaching him, feeding him, protecting him, worrying for him when he went outside the bounds and did horribly dangerous things despite all his orders not to—she also told Shmi of the man who would, in time, replace her, become more important to Ani than she was. And she could not help but be just a little jealous, and very sad.

Still—“Good,” Shmi said. “Good.” More quietly, she added, “I told him not to look back. I must not either.”

They turned the corner and came to the dock with the waiting ship. Shmi saw the ship. Her head tilted back, and a trace of fear came back to her face. Behind them, C-3PO rhapsodized to the progressively more irritated Taka. Little Ani’s droid was gregarious.

Then, the resemblance to her son surged again in Shmi Skywalker’s face and body—the bravery that was so intrinsic to them both. She gazed around at the dusty marketplace, at the burning suns above, then at the ship again, with the air of a woman eager to shake Tatooine’s dust off of her feet. “Tell me about your world, Padmé,” she commanded.

“Naboo is beautiful,” Padmé said simply. “We have only one sun, but it is bright enough for us. There are large oceans, fields, and forests. You may have heard of them, but until you have seen it, you cannot imagine. Ani couldn’t. We have cities like this, but they are governed wisely and well. No one is a slave, and my people make art and music and lovely clothes and tapestries. They work, and are paid and honored for their work, and then they rest and live their lives with their friends and families.

“It has been a sad time for my people lately. Enemies came and killed many and imprisoned many more. Families were separated. Many roads and buildings were destroyed. It will take many years to repair all the damage, and decades to forget what we have suffered. But my people are brave, and they are willing. We will grow from this and rise better than ever before.”

She thought of the new alliance between her people and the Gunguns. Jar Jar Binks had been named an ambassador to the Naboo, and there were trade and cultural exchange negotiation underway. Relief was coming from many other planets and guilds of the Republic, ashamed at their apathy during the Trade Federation blockade and invasion. She was angry still at the way they had hesitated and held back when her people were most in need. But she saw the potential for great gain in this, a way forward where she could turn her people’s suffering into policies within the Republic that would ensure this could never happen again, that no planet would be left alone to suffer as hers had been.

“Your Naboo sounds lovely,” Shmi said. “It also seems there is much to be done.”

“There is,” Padmé confirmed.

“Well then,” Shmi said. “If I may—Ani is not the only Skywalker good at fixing things. If you would offer me a place—paid work—if you would offer me a place, I will use what you have given me to work by your side. My son freed your world; you have freed me. Maybe we can work together to make both prices worth the paying.”

Padmé stared at Shmi Skywalker, almost overcome with her admiration for the woman. For there she stood, poor and most likely illiterate, only half an hour from slavery, yet as dignified in her offer as any senator or ambassador Padmé had known. Probably a great deal more intelligent. She shifted so that she and Shmi Skywalker clasped forearms across their bodies instead of side by side. “Mistress Skywalker, it would be my honor,” she said, bowing to the older woman.

And this time, Shmi did not object to the title but bowed back, clasping her forearm in turn. “Come, C-3PO,” she said. “Let’s see if we can find your friend.” She led the way into the open boarding ramp, strolling past the other guards with nods of acknowledgment as though she and not Padmé were the queen. Padmé let out a sudden laugh, overwhelmed with the force of her contentment and delight, and moved to follow her new friend.