For the first time in as long as he could remember, Obi-Wan awoke to silent, still air. Something was amiss. He rolled over and looked at his alarm clock, which showed that he had slept in. There was definitely something wrong. Usually by this time, Anakin would have woken him with malodours smoke, the sound of his power tools, and the strange flavour of oil in the air. If Anakin wasn't building or modifying something, that meant one of two things. Either Anakin had left for some reason, or there had been an emergency. Or, more probably, both.
He got up as quickly as he could, hurrying out into the common area they shared, and was met with a strange scent. Wrinkling his nose, he realized he couldn't come even close to placing it. It smelled, to him, almost like… spices. Was there some sort of cooking-spice related incident Anakin could have set in motion? He couldn't think of anything.
He opened the door to Anakin's quarters, and found his thirteen-year-old apprentice sitting on his bed, legs crossed, with a Bunsen burner balanced precariously on the blankets before him. Anakin looked up at his master and waved, "Good morning!"
"Anakin," Obi-Wan said as calmly as he could, "What is all this?"
Besides the Bunsen burner, Anakin had also found himself a tiny oven, a set of measuring cups, another of bowls, and a hand beater, which he had scattered across his room, some of the cooking implements dangerously close to filthy engine parts Obi-Wan would have chosen to scrub his hands after touching several times before he would have considered eating again, but which Anakin seemed completely comfortable with using without even checking if they had brushed.
As Obi-Wan stared at the untidy room, Anakin used the Force to grab a whisk from behind him. Seeing the massive black smear across the handle, and the darkened spokes, Obi-Wan caught it and wiped it off on his tunic before passing it to his apprentice.
"Well," Anakin said, starting to very intently whisk what seemed to be eggs, complete with flakes of shell, "It's been four years since you saved me from Tatooine, and because I'm actually living with you now, I thought I should do something to thank you."
Obi-Wan carefully picked his way over to Anakin's bed, where he sat, "So you decided to cook breakfast?"
Anakin looked into his bowl and started picking out bits of eggshell, "I've never been much good at cooking," he admitted, although the fact had long been made obvious, "So I thought I'd better give myself lots of time to get this right."
"And extra ingredients for in case you make a mistake, I see," Obi-Wan observed, indicating the egg carton sitting open beside his apprentice.
Anakin gave a noisy sigh and looked in disgust at his most recent attempt, "Tell me about it, this is my fifth try."
Obi-Wan decided he probably didn't want to know what had happened to the other attempts if the bowl full of eggshells and motor oil hadn't been disposed of yet.
"That's very thoughtful of you," he said instead, taking the bowl, which Anakin had returned to whisking, and showing him how to do it without simply splattering the egg mixture all across his room, though it was rather too late, judging by the half-dried yolks on the ceiling.
Anakin took the bowl, and the whisk, back, "Thanks," he said, returning his attention to it, with little more skill than he had had before.
Obi-Wan just sighed affectionately, putting his hand over Anakin's and showing him again, "Is there any way I could help? What are you making, anyway?"
Anakin's hand slipped from the more relaxed way Obi-Wan had showed him to position it, and the whisk flew across the room before Anakin caught it in the Force.
Looking at the new splatter on the wall, Obi-Wan concluded that most of the extra time Anakin had set aside would probably be used for cleaning.
"Mom always used to make this for special occasions," Anakin answered, "I've seen her cook it," he began counting on his fingers, "Every lifeday, her birthday, my birthday, the anniversary of us being lost to Watto, and every time I didn't die in a podrace. So, that's about... thirty five times. I thought I knew it pretty well by now," he finally deemed the bowl of eggshells unsuitable and carried it to the garbage, where he dumped it, "I guess I was wrong."
Obi-Wan added emptying the garbage cans to the list of cleanup Anakin's endeavour was going to require, "Can I help?"
Anakin walked down and tried to crack another egg in his bare hands. Obi-Wan grabbed it from him, and showed him how to do it properly.
"So that's why your cooking isn't usually so crunchy," Anakin said, trying it himself, and managing better than he had with the whisk.
"Don't tell me you've eaten some of this."
Anakin pulled a sealed container out from under his pillow, "I got pretty far on this batch," he said, opening it.
Obi-Wan noted, to his dismay, that the charred, blackened, and crumbling remains of the eggs seemed to have been nibbled.
"The smell of it cooking had made me hungry," Anakin said.
Obi-Wan was still poking cautiously at the mush. He realized that Anakin was being careful that his cooking implements didn't touch any of his construction material, because the first ones seemed to be half oil.
"What can I do to help?" he asked again, forcing himself not to grab Anakin as the boy poured a quarter of a cup of salt into the bowl. After all, he didn't know the recipe, perhaps Anakin had meant to add so much. As the young Jedi added as much cinnamon, Obi-Wan closed his eyes and sighed.
"Anakin."
"Yeah?" Anakin asked, staring intently at his cooking, trying to scoop out some of the cinnamon, but succeeding only in covering his hands in the gunk.
"Anakin, give me the bowl, and the eggs, and I'll help you."
Anakin pulled the bowl away, "No. I'm doing this for you."
Obi-Wan looked at the boy's tunic, which was also dripping in egg, trying to think of a diplomatic way to say that it would be less bother for him if Anakin would just give up on cooking and go back to building something.
"I'd like to help."
"No way. I can do this."
"Anakin," Obi-Wan tried again, "I'd rather work on this together than to have you finish it for me."
Anakin was busy adding copious amounts of each spice in his reach, "Really?"
"Yes," Obi-Wan said, glad that he seemed to have made progress.
"Okay," Anakin said, "Thank you."
"Are you supposed to be adding so much of those spices?" Obi-Wan asked.
"Something like this," Anakin said, pouring in a large amount of curry powder, which landed in a cloud of dust, and made them both sneeze.
"Are you sure?" Obi-Wan wheezed.
Anakin sneezed twice more before he managed to answer, "Not quite. Mom always used these," he held up a ring of measuring spoons, "But they take so long, and I don't think I'm using them right."
"Show me."
Anakin shrugged, and took a spoon, upending a spice can over it, so that, while it was filled, the bowl was also filled with all the spice that had overflowed, which was a great deal.
"So I decided to just cut down on the dishes I'm going to have to do, and stopped using them."
"Give me the bowl, the spices and the measuring spoons," Obi-Wan commanded, and Anakin passed them over. Obi-Wan immediately stood up and carried the bowl to the garbage, where he dumped it.
"Hey!" Anakin protested, jumping up and accidentally knocking over the still-lit Bunsen burner. He grabbed it, thankfully, before the blankets could ignite. Looking at his burnt hands, he mumbled, "Ouch."
"Let's clean up your little operation here," Obi-Wan suggested, "And do this in the more-fireproof kitchen, all right? I'm amazed you haven't blown the entire room sky high, what with all the oil in here."
"Not all of it is explosive," Anakin said defensively, turning off the burner and beginning to tidy the things up.
Obi-Wan grabbed the three nearest bowls and stacked them, filling the uppermost with spice cans. Anakin followed suit, and they carried the stacks to the kitchen part of the common area. Obi-Wan started to fill the sink, and Anakin put his load down with a crash and returned for more.
When Anakin had dumped the final load down, and returned to his room the hydrospanner that had accidentally slipped into the pile, he stood at Obi-Wan's shoulder and watched as his master did the dishes.
"Anakin," Obi-Wan said at last, "Go and reassure me that no one's replaced my apprentice with another, and build something, all right?"
"Yes, sir!" Anakin said happily, and he hurried back to his room. Soon enough, the air was filled with its familiar, almost homey smell of oil.
Obi-Wan finished drying the last bowl, the one Anakin had been trying to use, and put it on the counter, "Anakin!"
His apprentice burst out of his room, racing over and jumping up to sit on the counter, "Yeah?"
"What do I need to do?"
"First, you need to put three eggs in."
Obi-Wan followed the direction he had been given.
"Obi-Wan?"
:Yes, Anakin?"
"Master Plo told me some Jedi do know their parents, and that the Temple Archives have the documentation from each kid they take. You need to add this," he held up a measuring spoon, "Of each spice."
Obi-Wan took the spoon and started adding spices, "What are you getting at?"
"Well," Anakin said as innocently as he possibly could, "I thought we could go down and find your mother. Because you said you never knew her."
Obi-Wan put down the spice can he was holding with a thump, "No," he said as plainly and forcefully as he could.
Anakin leapt at his reaction, "Okay! Okay! Never mind, then! It was just a suggestion. Sheesh."
Obi-Wan sighed, and finished adding the last spices.
"This much of bread crumbs," Anakin directed, passing him a half-cup measure.
Obi-Wan added it, "I'm sorry I was sharp, Anakin."
Anakin shrugged, "That's okay. I guess even you can't be calm all the time. Why would you react like that?"
Obi-Wan looked from the bowl to his apprentice, then back at the bowl, wondering if it would be safe to tell Anakin that he should taste it. No, he told himself, you don't want him to get salmonella poisoning.
"Anakin, I've dedicated my life to the Jedi. I don't need to know my mother."
"Come on!" Anakin said in frustration, "She must wanna know you! And what about your father? He would be so proud to see his Jedi son again!"
Obi-Wan decided he would risk the odds of Anakin getting salmonella, "Tell me if I'm close with this," he commanded, shoving a spoonful of egg, spice, and bread crumbs into the boy's mouth as he tried to keep talking.
Anakin spluttered, but he ate it, "Yeah, pretty close. Now you need to bake it into little cakes."
Obi-Wan took the spoon and began dropping small mounds onto a cooking tray. He put it into the oven, which Anakin told him shouldn't be preheated, and turned it on.
"How long should I cook these?"
"Ten minutes," Anakin said. He had brought out some pieces from his room, and he was fiddling with them. Obi-Wan ignored the fact that it was a lightsaber power pack, praying that Anakin thought it would make a good engine from a small model, or something, anything, but that he needed to make himself another lightsaber already.
"Do you even know your mom's name?" Anakin asked curiously.
"No," Obi-Wan said, "And I don't intend to learn it."
"Why not?"
Why, oh why, did there have to be a time when I couldn't just fill his mouth with enough food that he couldn't talk? "I wouldn't know her, she probably wouldn't know me, and we would only be meeting to part again."
"That doesn't matter," Anakin insisted, "You should know who she is. I bet she misses you a ton!"
"Seeing each other again would only make it harder for her if she misses me," Obi-Wan said, checking the timer and seeing, to his great frustration that there were still a good five minutes to wait.
"She'd still want to see you. I bet she's really upset that you don't care enough to get in touch with her again."
Obi-Wan watched the timer ticking down for two full minutes before he answered, "I'd rather not worry about it."
"That's not very Jedi-like."
"How is it not?"
"You should put her feelings before yours," Anakin said.
"I am. Anakin, no matter how much she might miss me, or how hurt she might be that I've never got in touch with her, she hasn't raised me. I believe that if any of that would bother her, it would hurt her more to realize that her own son is a stranger."
"Do you think my mom would feel that way about me now?"
"No. Your mother raised you, and you are her special little boy. If my mother wanted a child, I'm sure she's had more. Those children would be more hers than I ever was, because they would have been so heavily influenced by her. I'm sure she's happy with whatever life she's chosen for herself."
The timer beeped, and Obi-Wan gratefully leapt on the oven, pulling out the tray and placing it on the stovetop.
"But you still are her son. I still think she'd want to hear from you," Anakin insisted.
Obi-Wan snatched one of the egg and breadcrumb cakes, stuffing it into his apprentice's mouth. Anakin immediately spat it into his hands, and dropped it, complaining, "Hey, Master, that's still really hot."
"I'm sorry, Anakin," Obi-Wan said, quickly pouring him a glass of milk, which he drank.
"Next time, think about the temperature of stuff before you give it to me to taste," Anakin said.
Obi-Wan nodded sheepishly, wishing he hadn't acted so hastily. Of course Anakin wouldn't know to shut up. He had certainly never picked up a cue for the like in the time Obi-Wan had known him, and why would he learn them now?
"I'm sorry," he repeated, feeling very ashamed.
Anakin had picked the biscuit back up and was eating it. He shrugged, "I don't mind. This is pretty good. Next you want to chop that up really fine."
Obi-Wan did, taking note that he should be more forgiving of Anakin's next slip in conduct to repay him. Once the egg cakes were carefully diced into tiny cubes, he turned his gaze upwards to his apprentice.
"Now you find any vegetables you have lying around and chop them up too," Anakin directed, "I'll help," he finished leaping off the counter and pulling open the fridge, yanking out crisper drawers with unnecessary vigor.
He tossed Obi-Wan an onion, and a garlic, and a hot pepper, taking for himself a turnip, a sweet potato, and, after looking at it doubtfully, and sniffing it a couple of times, a partially rotten squash. He tossed a cutting board down in front of Obi-Wan, and began attacking his vegetables of choice with a knife.
"Throw away the squash," Obi-Wan said, hoping against hope that Anakin had simply assumed that squash were always like that.
"Why?" Anakin asked, finishing mutilating the potato into fairly even roughly chopped lumps, "I'll just cut around the rotten bits," he said, picking it up and carving them off in one smooth motion. As he started to proceed to systematically destroy it too he said, "Honestly, Master, you worry too much."
Cautiously, Obi-Wan picked up the onion and carefully began to dice it as well. Beside him, Anakin dumped the remains of the half-squash into the bowl of egg, quickly followed by the potato. As he went to work on the turnip, Obi-Wan carefully finished cubing the onion and poured it carefully into the mix. Anakin dumped his demolished turnip in as well, grabbing the hot pepper off of Obi-Wan's cutting board.
"Anakin, are you sure you want to put that in there?"
Anakin looked at it, then drove his knife in, his eyes beginning to water, "Sure. Why wouldn't I be?"
"That's a hot pepper you've got there."
Anakin popped a bit into his mouth, and Obi-Wan exasperatedly watched his face turn red. His Padawan semi-discreetly spit the strip back into his hand and threw it out before wiping the tears from his eyes and nodding, "Yeah."
"You must be joking."
"No way," Anakin said, finishing with the pepper and dumping the lot into the bowl.
Obi-Wan flinched, and returned to cutting the garlic. As he slid it into the bowl, Anakin looked at it doubtfully, "That's not gonna be enough vegetables."
Obi-Wan opened his mouth to suggest that they should simply remove some of the hot pepper if that was the problem, but Anakin had already returned to the crisper, and passed him half a cucumber and an avocado.
He chose not to question it, simply setting it down the cucumber and beginning to slice it. As Anakin dropped down a large hunk of half-green meat on his cutting board, however, he broke, "Anakin, that's not green because it's a vegetable!"
Anakin nodded, once again deftly removing the blemishes with his knife, "'Course not. But I know you're not going to use it," he said, as though throwing away spoiled food was a terrible, unthinkable crime. Which, Obi-Wan reminded himself, his upbringing would have taught him.
Obi-Wan just sighed, pitting the avocado as Anakin dumped the massacred meat into the bowl, and grabbed half of the avocado right out of Obi-Wan's hands, chopping it up too and pitching it into the bowl as well.
"Now," Anakin said, already pushing past Obi-Wan's knees to reach the cupboards below, and yanking out a baking pan, "You pour it all into this and cook it for an hour."
Obi-Wan reached for the pan, but Anakin was already pouring in the egg and vegetable mixture. He turned on the oven for his apprentice, and Anakin put in the tray.
"What do you want for breakfast?" Anakin asked happily.
"I'll get myself a bowl of cereal," Obi-Wan said faintly, not quite sure he wanted to eat anything at all after the display his apprentice had just put on.
"Okay," Anakin said, already grabbing himself a piece of fruit, which he ate almost before Obi-Wan had had time to add milk to his cereal.
"We can have some of that when it's done cooking!" Anakin said eagerly, and Obi-Wan reminded how eager to please he had been with the attempt at cooking. He smiled weakly at the boy, silently making a vow not to ingest any more of the so-called 'food' than he could possibly avoid.
"Why don't you go build something, and I'll clean the kitchen," he offered, looking forward to seeing Anakin go.
"Sure!" Anakin happily headed off to his room, and Obi-Wan sighed in relief, and carried his dishes to the counter. With all the care and delicacy of someone managing highly toxic waste, he carried the remains of the squash and the meat to the garbage, and did the dishes. Then he proceeded to venture into Anakin's room, which the boy objected to loudly, and emptied his garbage can. As the last dishes were dried and put away, the timer dinged loudly, marking what Obi-Wan assumed was likely to mean certain doom, probably by poisoning, if not by sheer over-potency of flavour.
Anakin, however, came racing eagerly into the room, and used the Force to remove the food from the oven, presumably saving the time it would have taken him to put on oven mitts. Obi-Wan decided there was no point it questioning it.
"Now," Anakin said, opening a cupboard, "You take a slice of that, and pour this all over it!" he produced a bottle of corn syrup.
Obi-Wan reluctantly retrieved plates for them, and before he could take the knife and serve it, so as to give himself as little as possible, Anakin had dropped a slab onto each plate, and he knew that there was no escape from eating at least most of it, unless Anakin deemed it completely inedible. Which was unlikely. Obi-Wan tried not to think too hard about some of the things he had seen the young boy eat.
As Anakin began slopping the sugary syrup over both plates, Obi-Wan resigned himself to his fate of being forced to eat the stuff, but Anakin was so enthusiastic, that he almost began to trust in the boy's abilities with cooking.
Anakin started eating his own food on the way to the table, and to Obi-Wan's disappointment, he didn't gag, and say that they probably shouldn't risk it, rather continuing to shovel it into his mouth.
Obi-Wan put down his plate and tried to think of something to say in order to stall for a while, but Anakin beat him to it.
"Why won't you come with me so we can try to find out who your mother is?" Anakin asked beseechingly.
"If I offered to take you to visit your mother," Obi-Wan asked in desperation, "Would you stop asking about mine?"
Anakin hesitated, seeming to consider it, and for a second, Obi-Wan dared to hope. Then Anakin shook his head, "No. But I'd like it if you'd take me to see her too."
Obi-Wan looked at his apprentice, at the hope and longing in his face, the continuing avid curiosity about Obi-Wan's mother, and realized that the boy couldn't possibly understand the truth about his own mother.
"Anakin, I lied to you," he admitted, taking up his fork and taking a bite of food before remembering what it was. Surprisingly, it wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be, "I knew my mother."
"You did?" Anakin demanded, "Then why didn't you tell me about her?"
"For everything that you've been through, you've lost your child's faith in most things, but I've seen how you idolize your mother. My mother," he paused, "Was not the god-like figure you have me imagining as your mother."
At this, Anakin looked utterly bewildered, and Obi-Wan felt his confidence shake again, unsure that telling his apprentice the whole truth was really the right answer.
"My mother was not, as you might say, 'all there'," he admitted, "I was born on the streets of Coruscant. I never knew my father. My mother, even, didn't seem completely aware that I was a living being, and I am lucky that she treated any substantial, undestroyed object that came into her possession with such care."
Anakin seemed to have gone into a state of suspended disbelief, "How could you possibly remember that? How old were you when you were taken?"
"They think I was only about six months," Obi-Wan answered, "We can't know. I have a fairly good memory," which Anakin must have known from the missions they'd been on together, "And the rest I was told by the master who discovered me."
"Who was it?" Anakin asked, seeping up the information with all the enthusiasm of one caught up in a good, fictional, story.
"He died shortly before you would have been born," Obi-Wan answered softly, carefully looking down into his glass, spinning it slowly in his hands.
"Oh," Anakin said, sounding very solemn. When Obi-Wan couldn't bring himself to answer, he added, "I'd like to help you. If I can…"
Obi-Wan shook his head, forcing himself back to the present, "No. I'll be all right. It was the far distant past."
But Anakin had already leapt to his feet, his eyes alight, "We have to find her!"
"I'd be happier if we never talked about her again," Obi-Wan answered.
"No!" Anakin said passionately, "We need to find her!"
"What good could that do?" Obi-Wan asked with a façade of calm, gently pulling Anakin back down to his seat, "The master who discovered me traded myself for a blanket wrapped around a cheap doll while she slept. She probably still hasn't realized the difference."
Anakin had sprung back to his feet, reminding Obi-Wan of a jack-in-the-box, "Master, we need to find her. I've seen all the awfulness the galaxy has to offer, and I've seen people like you're describing. She couldn't cope with the responsibility of having a child, because of all the pressure that she was already living with, and that's why she imagined you as nothing more than a doll. She'd be really proud of you."
Obi-Wan shook his head, and Anakin brought both hands down hard on the table, "She would be," he said fiercely, and Obi-Wan tried to pull him back down into his seat, "Knowing that you had become a Jedi Knight would be one of the greatest gifts she could be given! I know you probably think it would be shelter, or food, but knowing that she's your mother would mean hope! It would show her that no matter how sad and useless her life might seem, she had a child who's become something! Who can protect people like her!"
"Anakin," Obi-Wan said, "She doesn't know that she's a mother at all."
Anakin's voice rose, "Of course she knows! How could she possibly not know?" then he sat down, putting on his calmest expression, "Master, let's go try to see her, at least. Then maybe we could go talk to her if you want to. Please, Master. I promise you, it's for the best."
Obi-Wan looked at his apprentice, who was looking at him pleadingly, and longed to refuse. He knew Anakin would never accept a refusal, though, so he nodded, slowly.
Seeming to sense the gravity of the situation, and the conflict of his master's emotions, Anakin slowly, deliberately, ate the rest of his slab of egg and vegetables. Obi-Wan, too, finished, and then stood and slowly, as calmly as possible, led the boy down to the records to begin their search.