Prompt: Friend
"You need to make some friends, Anakin."
He's heard this phrase, and variations of it way too often. He ignores it, brushes it off. It's not that he doesn't want friends, of course, because he does a lot. He just doesn't get how Jedi are friends. I mean, there's that no attachment thing, (which Anakin thought was a bunch of poodoo, even if he wasn't saying so). How can you be friends if you aren't attached? He'd asked Obi-Wan, but Obi-Wan had explained that it was about "letting-go" when the time came. That didn't make sense to Anakin either. Why would you let a friend go? And apparently, the Jedi were his "family" now? That makes even less sense to him.
This is how Anakin understands it. This is how anyone who grows up a slave on Tatooine understands it. Friendship, family, is never letting go, because if you do you might never see each other again. It's about taking the pain, and shouldering each other's burden, and protecting each other from the masters. It's about surviving the storm together, and never, ever abandoning someone in the desert. It's about blood spilled in the sand. When sticking up for someone could get you killed, being family meant loving so fiercely you'll slit your own wrists rather than watch them get hurt, because either way you're going to bleed for standing by them. The desert is harsh, and the love that blooms there must be equally as deadly. You love them or you don't, and which is which becomes clear pretty quick, because if you do love someone, you'll fight anything that stands between you until you can't fight it anymore. Stang the consequences, and there will be consequences. You just don't care. That's friendship. That's family. That's not "letting go." What the kriff is that?
This is why Anakin can't make friends here, one of the reasons, anyway. He's too different, he doesn't get it: Why would he want to be friends with people who'd "let him go," and who won't get "attached" to him? What's the point? When he was a slave he was given a value, it was a number value, and that was awful, but at least it was value. So far as Anakin can tell, the Jedi don't value each other at all, not even for credits. So, what's the karking point? He wishes Obi-Wan would just shut-up about it. The others didn't want him, so he didn't want them, and that was about all there was to it. Why keep bringing it up again?