"You can't hide from me, Obi-Wan! You know I can feel you!"
I close my eyes and try to clear my thoughts with a silent exhale. My head is murky, unclear and in complete disarray and no amount of deep breathing will set it right. My heart is racing, pounding against the inside of my chest; the reverberations feel as if they are going to pulse straight through my Jedi tunics and show him where I am like a beacon.
This was not good.
"I can feel every part of you. I always have. Can you feel me? Tell me what you feel."
His intense booming voice is getting closer and deeper and I shut my eyes even tighter, as if my blindness will make me invisible to him. Foolish thought. He can easily sense me through the Force as I'm unable to completely hide all of my emotions. I would love to quiet it, but to silence the Force would mean to silence all life. I wish I could tell him what I feel, but at the moment, I can't even make sense of it. The feelings I have shouldn't come from him. They should come from an enemy, from a threat.
But that's what he is, though I can't bear to bring myself to admit it.
"You want me to find you, don't you, Obi-Wan?" he continues. "Because you know what I'm going to do to you when I get you."
It's not death he's insinuating, though that'd be my preference at the moment. It's something more personal. More private. More intimate. I mentally sigh sadly at his mocking tone. The voice, the sound so familiar, but the words so foreign.
This can't be my Anakin. Not anymore.
"It's what I've wanted from you for years but you continued to deny me. Too focused on the Jedi Code," he says, derision dripping from the last two words as his tone intensifies. "Worrisome Jedi Code! No attachments? No emotion? That's all gone now. All the restriction. All the control. They're gone! We're free! Be happy! Be thankful! You don't have to hide yourself from me anymore!"
He stops talking for a moment while his footsteps continue. The anger I feel rising within him seems to subside a bit and I hear broken flowers and dirt crunch underneath his heavy boots. He speaks again but lowers his voice while sending a small calming wave to me across our still solid bond in the Force, as if I needed conciliation. "But your game of hide-and-seek is fun, Obi-Wan. That is what we're doing, isn't it? Are you having fun? I know I am."
I open my eyes and clench my teeth together, unable to hide my resentment. I should be happy? Thankful? My game? He thinks this is all a game? Was the massacre of the Jedi in the Temple a game for him?
No. He probably didn't toy with them as he's doing with me. I feel his perverted joy, his pleasure. His dominance. His dominance over me. He's trapped me and he knows it. We both know it. I've felt this way many times in my life as a Jedi. It comes with the territory. You have enough enemies and they will end up getting the best of you at one point or another. But I've never felt trapped by a fellow Jedi. Never by someone I call a friend.
Called a friend. This stranger is no friend of mine no matter what he does.
"Did I touch a nerve, my Master?" he asks, interrupting my thoughts, his footsteps steady as he walks closer to my hiding spot. I hear a chuckle from under his breath, a black snicker that makes me shudder from the inside out. "Is that the only thing I'll get to touch of yours tonight?"
I bite back a groan and glance up at the decaying building in front of me from my hiding spot in the garden courtyard. The Jedi Temple is completely in burning shambles--he and the Clones destroyed it on their quest to kill every Jedi in their path, apparently--and the garden is the only place inside of the crumbling Temple walls that I feel somewhat comfortable.
Anakin knows this.
No...not Anakin. This man knows this. This man who knows me so very well and, yet, I feel like I shouldn't know him. Unfortunately for me, if this man was a complete stranger, he'd be looking for me somewhere else, like the High Council Tower or one of the briefing rooms, for instance. Not in the garden. Not in the very place he knew I used to meditate every morning after tea.
The very place Anakin would sigh and groan through forced mediation sessions; his impatience penetrating our bond would always put a fond smile on my face. He'd sit and he'd whistle and hum and be a bother until I said we could leave and do something more 'fun'.
"Master, honestly, do we have to mediate every morning? Once a week seems good enough to me," Anakin once said, his legs crossed in front of him as he twisted and tangled his Padawan braid between his fingers. It was a habit of his. Anakin likes to have something to keep his fingers busy. It's always for the best. As a Padawan, if he wasn't fiddling with a small droid, he was tinkering with his lightsaber. He really wasn't supposed to have items like small droids, as Jedi are not to have personal possessions, but I let it slide. It made him happy. After he lost his arm to Count Dooku on Geonosis, he continuously made upgrades to his new Mechno-Arm. A tweak here, a modification there. He always was the poster child for idle hands being a bad thing.
"Believe me, my dear Padawan," I began, my eyes closed and my mediation stance looking like Anakin's, although more focused. "You'll look back on this and wish you'd taken advantage of our mediation time."
Why Anakin couldn't just sit still and take one hour of time a day to mediate was always a source of confusion for me. That's all I asked. I enjoyed my time mediating with my Master. I craved spending any type of time with Qui-Gon, especially as the years passed. As we grew together, I wondered if Anakin just didn't enjoy my company as I did with Qui-Gon. He always seemed to want to do the exact opposite of what I wanted him to do. Now, I can tell that Anakin enjoyed my company quite well. He just had his own more intimate activities in mind.
Anakin scoffed. "No, Master, you'll look back on this and realize that we're wasting time and we could be doing something fun. Like sparring." I could sense the mischievous grin on his face and the playful twinkle in his eye. "C'mon, Master. You promised that we'd spar sometime this week and I've got some new moves that I know you'll like. Maybe I'll even teach you something."
I couldn't hide my smile at his genuine attempt to impress me and opened my eyes as I turned my attention towards him. "Yes, I did say that."
"Well?" he asked, his smile matching mine. He looked at me impatiently, twitching as if he was trying to restrain himself from jumping up and dragging me by the hand from the garden to one of the training rooms. "Can we? Please? I think we've meditated enough today. You're calm. I'm calm. We're both--"
"We've been out here all of 20 minutes," I interrupted with a sigh. "Only 10 of those minutes have been dedicated to actual mediating. Believe me, with the kind of Padawan I have, I need all the mediation time I can get."
Anakin smirked and leaned closer. "Oh, Master, you're too sweet."
Where he learned such sarcasm from, I'll never know.
"I know mediation is important," he continued, "but you promised we'd spar and I know you, Master. You never break a promise."
"The week isn't over, Anakin, and what kind of Master would I be if I rewarded your insubordination with a self-described 'fun' activity?" I smiled and closed my eyes again. "Now, where were we?"
I could sense Anakin rolling his eyes before he settled back down to complete the mediation session. Or so I thought. "You're such an old man."
I blinked and looked at him. Old man? "Excuse me?"
"How old are you, anyway, Master? Are you sure you're young enough to have a Padawan?" That trademark teasing tone of his danced along the smirk lingering on his lips.
I crossed my arms and sighed, clenching my teeth together. Only Anakin could make meditation a stressful activity. There I was, in one of my most favorite places in the Temple I call home, surrounded by some of the most beautiful plants from nearly every planet in the galaxy and all I wanted to do was throttle my Padawan.
"I'll have you know that I am only sixteen years older than you. I am not an old man by any standard. I just want the best for you and I believe, just as my Master believed, that the benefit of mediation is worth the time spent."
"Well, Master, now that neither of us is mediating, can we go spar now?" Anakin asked as he stood up. He dusted off his Jedi tunics and offered me a hand up with that mischievous smirk. "C'mon, Master. Spar with me and release some stress. I know you want to."
Anakin would always say that: 'I know you want to.' He was only 15 and he was already telling me what he knew I wanted. In most cases, he was right. He'd continuously suggest something, I would explain why it may or, more often than not, may not be the correct course of action and, against all my better judgment, we'd end up doing it anyway. 'Live a little, Master' seemed to be his motto, and I learned as much from him about life as he learned from me about becoming a Jedi. It's no surprise though. He learned more about life in his nine years growing up as a slave on Tatooine than I ever learned as a youngling in the Jedi Temple.
I like to think that some of my goodness rubbed off on him, but other times, I think that some of his darkness rubbed off on me.
A movement from a neighboring tree snaps me back to the present. The garden is dark and silent now, the only source of light coming from the fires in the dying Temple and sound from my former Padawan and my own rapid heartbeat. The plants are marked by errant blaster fire, pitifully damaged. This garden would never be the same, just as the man seeking me.