Author: Empress Vader
Summary: When an older Jedi shows
interest in an already confused sixteen-year-old Anakin, the last thing
he needs is an unexpected visitor. And more than that, he doesn't need
it to be Queen Amidala. But she shows up and he's stuck in a tug of war
match between both women.
Disclaimer: Anybody reading this
knows Star Wars isn't mine. This story was not written for profit,
only entertainment.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A SINGLE TOUCH
Anakin awoke in a cold sweat.
It was the same dream again, the same one he'd been having since puberty
shot through him with a vengeance. He'd crawl through her window just as
she sat down to remove her makeup, that horrid dead white make-up. But
she froze her motions to look at him, shocked, as she should have been.
For it's impossible to crawl through a castle window. The widow in the
Queen's chamber is hundreds of meters of the ground. But none of that rationality
is part of her shock. He'd grown, he was a man. And she was trying to figure
out if it was him, but somehow her heart knew what her eyes weren't sure
of. Still no words were spoken, because none were needed. He reached up
and wiped the make-up from her half of her face, not because he didn't
intend to finish, but because she stopped him with a single touch. And
it only took that touch for them to embrace each other like familiar lovers.
And in the blink of an eye, they were together, and just when things got
really hot, he woke up.
He hated waking up like this.
His sheets were soaked with sweat, his heart beating out of control, other
things he wouldn't even say out loud. He stripped the sheets from the bed.
"R-46," Anakin called. The droid wobbled out the corner. This altered old
model Astromech droid had been modified by him for simple menial task.
His engineering wasn't half as involved as C-3PO, but he was a useful tool.
When he was a boy, he had sent the temple on ends fixing gadgets with no
purpose. There were droids changing light fixtures that were perfectly
fine, reorganizing storage areas over and over again, and causing general
chaos. Finally Obi-Wan limited him to a few projects at a time, one or
two at any given moment. R46 became his project, heck if the temple wasn't
going to take advantage of all their good spare parts, he sure was. Watto
would have loved some of those prime pieces he dug up.
"Foursix, take care of this,"
Anakin said tossing the sheets into the droids extended arm. Then they
left the room. The droid headed toward laundry, Anakin headed toward another
area. He grabbed one of the few droids the temple found a use for, seeker
droids. Set to stun, they were often used for lightsaber practice. Actually,
the frustration this dream often caused made one seeker droid no challenge
at all. So he grabbed four more.
In the practice room, he turned
the seekers on and activated his lightsaber. Power surged through him when
he held this weapon, it belonged there, and it knew him. Adrenaline, the
dream always left him with excess adrenaline, and he filtered his unfulfilled
frustration into every blow, he became rage. Two of the seeker droids shot
at him simultaneously, he deflected the blow easily and hit one of the
seekers with the deflected blow. Three fired, not one hit him. He predicted
each shot and deflected it, then destroyed the remaining droids in dazzling
sweeps of blue light. He and his weapon could not be touched, especially
when his energy was peaked like this.
"Very good," a female voice said.
Siri, she had grown up with Obi-Wan.
And from the moment he'd arrived at the temple she'd been a good friend.
Of course, it helped that she was gorgeous. Oh, she tried her best to play
it down. She kept her hair short, never done up. Even though all the Jedi
wore the same basic tunic, she made sure never to accentuate her femininity.
"Now how will you do against
a live opponent?"
"Care to find out?" Anakin smiled.
They each activated their light
sabers and went at it. Siri was good; she had always been ahead of her
class. But with Anakin she was perfectly matched. Each had their own brand
of competitiveness that the other feed off of. There had been many a midnight
battle like this that went on an on, neither willing to yield to the other.
Anakin loved the way she pushed him to be better. Obi-Wan was too philosophical
about everything.
A distant beep caused Anakin
to get distracted, and that quick Siri's low power blade scorched him.
Anakin jumped at the shock, then yelled at the distraction. The fool droid
Foursix had brought the sheets to him, instead of back to his room.
"Foursix, you hunk of junk, take
them to my room."
Siri raised an eyebrow. "What's
wrong with your sheets?"
Anakin looked down embarrassed,
and he still had energy to work off. "Can we go jog?"
"Sure," Siri said.
There was a long walkway that
circled the temple. They could run it easily by filtering the force, but
Anakin didn't want to. He wanted to feel every strain of his muscle. They
took off, running side by side. Siri was his confidant. He could tell her
things that he wouldn't tell Obi-Wan, because he didn't understand. Sometimes
he wondered if Obi-Wan had ever been a real man, if he had ever been crazy
or wild. He wondered if he had ever made a mistake. Still, even with Siri,
talking about Queen Amidala, the girl he had known as Padme didn't seem
like a good idea. She was his heart's treasure; a special part of the past
that he kept locked away in the hope he could reclaim it in the near future.
Yet there were parts of him that wanted Siri, wanted to hold too her. But
she was too old for him, what was it with him and women to old for him.
He wondered if he would ever see Amidala again anyway.
"I knew her as Padme," he finally
said after they'd run a Kilometer. "But she's known to most people as Queen
Amidala."
"Obi-Wan told me about her. You
still think about her?" She questioned. "It's been seven years."
"I loved her, from the moment
I meant her I loved her," he stopped running, and she stopped to. "I can
remember every detail of her face, her smile. They way she said Ani, with
it's own particular music to it. She's amazing, I wish you could meet her.
I mean she started her life as a farm girl, but she's so poised and refined,
and smart, it seems like she's been raised among royalty. And she can be
so gentle, it's shocking to see her flip into this warrior and this diplomat
and retain that sweetness somewhere in her deeper self." The teenager stopped
and sat down. "Which is why it disturbs me now that in my dreams all I
can think about is her and well, me, doing, having---" Siri sat beside
him.
"It happens, you grow up, you
like girls, you think about it. Girls think about it to."
"But what about that whole Jedi
wisdom thing? 'For the Jedi their is no emotion, there is peace.' Yoda
drills it in your head. But Passion is an emotion and it rages through
you, it can't be controlled or rationalized. What do I do?"
"Or do what we do, run it off."
Siri sighed. "You know, I use to have a crush on Obi-Wan."
Anakin turned to her in shock.
"You know your master though;
he's Jedi to the bone. I mean, when he was a kid, he had his days. He wasn't
always perfect. He even left the Jedi once."
"What!!! He left and came back."
"Seems somebody on Melida/Daan
got to him. I know there was a girl and she died. I don't know what there
relationship was. He never really got why I was so hard on him after he
came back. Anyway, I got over him though, just like you'll get over her.
It just happens."
"I don't think it's going to
happen with me," the sixteen-year-old replied.
Siri placed a hand on Anakin's
neck. A comforting hand only, But all that built up tension caused him
to do something crazy, that single touch made him turn and tackle her lips
in a kiss. Was he crazy? She was nearly thirty. But he couldn't stop himself.
And for a minute, Siri was shocked
at sat there frozen until the boy pulled away. They then looked at each
other awkwardly.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled.
"Don't be," she replied and grabbed
him for another kiss. He couldn't help responding. He was kissing Siri.
This mature, beautiful, voluptuous, Jedi woman. The woman who had taught
him how to handle a lightsaber. And she wanted to kiss him.
For the longest time they embraced,
but then the face of Queen Amidala with her half removed makeup, half revealed
face flashed in his mind and he stopped himself.
"What?" Siri asked.
"Is this right?" Anakin asked.
"I don't know, but it sure feels
good."
It didn't sound like the usual
response of a Jedi knight. They were renowned for their wisdom, but that
wisdom came at a distance from the situation. When things got this personal
and intimate, forgetting that Jedi wisdom was easy. Everything else he
had done, even when he caused trouble, felt right in his head somewhere.
At first, this had also. But now that the adrenaline rush was gone, the
world seemed a little upside down. He shouldn't have kissed her at all.
"A Jedi must have the most serious
mind," Yoda's voice jumped into his head.
"I should get back to my room,
Foursix might shred the sheets or something," Anakin said getting up and
running off. He speed into the temple so fast he ran into Obi-Wan, hitting
him square in the chest and falling backward. He scrambled to his feet.
"Sorry Master," the boy said
softly.
"What's the rush Padawan?"
"My droid, he still has some
kinks to work out."
"R46, he's got a lot of quirks
all right. Seems to cause more harm than help for you. Sometimes I think
you invite chaos Padawan, that you enjoy it. Your great with mechanicals,
built a working protocol droid. Yet, you can't get this simple unit to
work right."
Obi-Wan looked past him at to
the door. Siri entered. She looked at the master and Padawan and then turned
away down another hallway. Obi-Wan looked at the boys singed tunic.
"Another late night training
session?" Obi-Wan asked.
"You could call it that," Anakin
replied. "I was having trouble sleeping; she helped me work off the tension.
May I go?"
Obi-Wan nodded.
*****
"Anakin," the two-year-old yelled
as she ran to him. Teca was his baby. He'd brought the sick baby to the
temple and when they insisted she be sent to an orphanage, he'd insisted
she was force sensitive and must stay. They hadn't felt it at first, but
when the baby made her full recovery, she'd been confirmed as force sensitive.
From the moment he found her, he'd taken care of her. He'd feed her, sing
her bedtime stories, and play with her for at least an hour everyday. Unless
he was off on a mission with Obi-Wan, he showed up when she woke up and
put her to bed at night. Sometimes she spent the whole days at his side.
He never told anyone how much she looked like Padme.
"And how is my Teca," he said
lifting the little one in the air.
"She wanna fly," Teca replied.
"Well, fly my Teca, fly," Anakin
said spinning her around in the sky.
"Can she come with me for a little
while?" Anakin asked Morik. He was the new caretaker for this age group.
"Sure," Morik replied.
"We go," the baby asked.
"We go," Anakin said lifting
the baby onto his back. "We're going to play with Obi-Wan today."
"Oba-one. I like Oba-one," Teca
replied.
Obi-Wan arranged the huge weighted
objects across the floor, using the force. Anakin would be here soon and
he didn't know what to say to him. I saw you, you're caught. Siri was going
to be even harder to confront. 'He's just a kid Siri,' Obi-Wan thought.
He couldn't go to Yoda with this, or Mace Windu, or even Adi Gallia. And
she'd trained Siri. He didn't want to ruin a reputation that didn't have
to be ruined, but you can't fool Jedi for long. At his age, Anakin was
a tangle of emotions anyway and his background made this years all the
more complicated. The last thing he needed was some older woman confusing
him more.
"Good morning Master," Anakin
said cheerfully as he entered the room, interrupting his master's thoughts.
He slipped baby Teca off his back.
He loved the boy, he couldn't
help it. Despite the serious face he had to put on for the council, he'd
found some of Anakin's hijinks amusing. He came to love him like a son,
he had worked hard to earn the respect and trust the boy had given Qui-Gon
and the boy had returned the favor and done his best to be a good Jedi.
Sometimes he got frustrated and felt the need to break free. But he'd apologize,
come back and repent. What more could you ask of him?
"I see we have company today."
"Is that okay master?"
"Yes, it's quite all right,"
Obi-Wan replied. "Now one of these objects in front of you . . ."
She'd come seeking him, unable
to help herself. Only she got lost in one of the many corridors and had
to ask a child for the location of the room. He'd reached into his mind
and pointed her in the general direction. And she'd found him. Cloaked
in her plain gray hooded tunic, it was easy to be ignored. They knew she
wasn't a Jedi and the temple rarely had visitors, but there was no malicious
intent in her presence.
She looked into the room and
there sat a young man, the youth couldn't have been Anakin, but it was.
He was levitating 5 large objects around his head. There was a baby sucking
a bottle beside him and Obi-Wan, who instead of looking youthful was beginning
to look distinguished, was instructing him. The wisdom she'd always seen
in Qui-Gon was now settling into Obi-Wan. She wondered if Anakin would
be the same way when he was older. She wouldn't disturb him, besides it
was just amazing to watch her little man doing this. "Little man", that
phrase suddenly felt wrong. He was taller than she was.
Suddenly Anakin turned as if
he had been hit, hit by her presence probably. She'd forgotten how keen
Jedi senses were. All the objects started dropped toward the ground, but
never hit the floor. He grasped control an instant before it would have
crashed.
"Very good Padawan, you averted
a disaster, but in the future don't allow yourself to get distracted. Never
turn off your sense of the world around you, but don't let it make you
lose your focus."
What he felt, couldn't be real,
Anakin thought. "Lower the objects gently and take a break." Obi-Wan sighed
as he did this. "I felt her too."
Anakin smiled and turned toward
the door. As she walked in, wearing a nondescript gray hooded tunic, his
heart beat speed up. He always thought he would come to her, that he could
plan for this moment in time where she'd see him all grown up. She dropped
the hood and those big brown eyes looked up at him. And she smiled. He
felt nine all over again, his throat turned to Jelly and he couldn't speak.
"I was in Coruscant, I couldn't
resist dropping by," the queen of Naboo said, her eyes roaming his body.
She exhaled, she knew he'd grown but she wasn't prepared for this sudden
rush. He was all male. What happened to the little boy? Who, in seven short
years, had replaced him with this viral young man?
"I hope you don't mind Obi-Wan,"
Amidala asked.
"Mind, of course not," Obi-Wan
replied. It might have been the truth a day ago, but now that Siri had
done what she'd done he didn't know if this would alleviate or complicate
the problem with Siri. Maybe when Padme left, Anakin would feel it wrong
to go back to Siri.
The way he was looking at her
there was no doubt in his mind Anakin was still in love with her. And this
time, she felt it too. Anakin still hadn't said a word to her. After dreaming
about her on and off for years, no one could have predicted she would just
show up one day in the temple. And Anakin saw she had become very shapely
in the last couple years. When he'd known her way back when, she'd been
on the verge of womanhood, now she was a woman.
"Who you?" Teca finally asked.
"Padme, at least for now," Queen
Amidala replied, he eyes still glued to the tall Jedi in front of her.
"I Teca, I two,"
"Can I ---," Anakin begin. "You're
beautiful." He finally said sounding like a child and embarrassed about
his lack of words.
