I have a very, very big weakness for bedridden, sick, and/or comically overdramatic Anakin. History lesson that I just made up: the common cold was extinguished from the more civilized reaches of Coruscant at least a thousand years ago, though rare cases of it arise every so often, usually causing a tremendous uproar. The Jedi, with their excellent medical care, have managed to avoid vulnerability to the common cold, but as Obi-Wan Kenobi will tell you, Anakin Skywalker is the exception to every rule.

I don't own anything here.

Ahsoka found her Master that morning in a corner of a cafeteria as far away from the living area of the Temple as possible. He was huddled around a bowl of some spicy Outer Rim soup that she would not expect anyone to have for breakfast, glancing warily all around him as if he were an escaped convict on the run from every authority figure on Coruscant. Well, that wasn't that weird, she thought. He did have a serious problem with authority figures, anyway. She had never known him to get up this early to purposely avoid them, though.

"Skyguy?" she said, approaching him, and he jumped in his seat and started coughing into his elbow. "You...okay?"

"Hey, Snips," he said as if nothing was wrong, but his voice was hoarse and he wasn't looking straight at her. He avoided answering her question. "You haven't seen Obi-Wan around, have you?"

"No," she said, throwing her tray down and sitting in front of him. "Although this is the time of day I would expect to see him out, and not you." Anakin frowned, and looked down at his soup.

"Well why are you up so early?" he asked her, pointedly leaning over to look around her headtails.

"I need lightsaber practice," Ahsoka said. "I was going to ask you when you got up, but I figured I would see if I could find anyone who wanted to spar before then." She hesitated before she asked, "You up for it? You don't look too great."

"I'm fine," he said, heavily overdramatizing the fine. She thought about calling him out on it...but she really did need the practice, so whatever or whoever he was avoiding was so not her problem right now. "We'll go once I finish this."

She grimaced. "How can you even eat that stuff without burning your tongue off?"

He looked down at the soup again and contemplated it for a long minute. "You're right. It's not nearly as good as Obi-Wan's."

She raised her seemingly painted-on eyebrow. "Master Kenobi makes soup?"

Anakin's eyes suddenly widened. "No, he doesn't. Forget I ever said that, and don't ever ask him about it. Ever. I mean it. Let's go spar." He stood up too quickly, wobbled a bit, and then bravely carried his bowl of soup over to the garbage disposal and marched out of the cafeteria. Ahsoka rolled her eyes.

Humans.

Ahsoka deflected an underhand strike by Anakin's training saber and returned an overhand chop with her shoto. He blocked it, as she knew he would, and she swung her freed lightsaber low to try to knock him off balance. But his blade moved impossibly fast, and threw the low swing high off her left shoulder. She was about to launch into a high backflip to gain more ground – when her Master suddenly broke into a coughing fit.

She lowered both her sabers for what felt like the twentieth time today. "Are you sure you're okay, Skyguy?"

"I'm fine!" Anakin defended hoarsely. "Sometimes people cough, Snips, it happens!"

Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "Whatever," she said, and went back on the offensive when his fit was over.

Suddenly, the Force got really tense and Anakin visibly seemed to brace himself for something.

"Padawan!"

Ahsoka looked around. Master Kenobi was standing in the closest door of the training salons, his fists clenched at his sides and his beard failing to conceal the uncharacteristically frustrated look on his face.

"Yes, Master?" she said, risking a glance at Skyguy, who appeared to be flinching and trying to very slowly back away.

"No, not you, Ahsoka," Obi-Wan said, his fiery gaze boring into Anakin. "I'm talking about the Padawan next to you who has been avoiding me all morning."

Anakin appeared to have gone mute. He just shrugged and stared at the floor.

"Um...what's going on?" Ahsoka asked Obi-Wan cautiously.

Obi-Wan was not at all unkind when he answered her, though his irritated gaze continued to stare Anakin down. "Anakin has a cold. He has gotten the common cold at least twice a year since he came to Coruscant, and eleven years later he still doesn't seem to understand that bed rest is his only option."

"It's not fair!" Skyguy whined, and Ahsoka had to bite back a grin. "Ahsoka never gets sick! You never get sick! Why am I the only Jedi in the universe who gets a common cold that's not even common anymore?"

Obi-Wan responded by pointing towards the door. Anakin groaned. "You're so lucky you have a fully functional immune system, Snips," he said, shuffling his feet and sniffling.

"There's no such thing as luck," Obi-Wan said coldly.

"And you're extra lucky you have me as a Master," he grumbled, stalking off toward Obi-Wan, who sternly retorted "I heard that."

Ahsoka decided at some point during this conversation not to hold back her laughter. "I thought the common cold died out, like, a thousand years ago or something."

"It did," Obi-Wan said pointedly.

"Chosen to bring balance to the Force with soup and a lot of mucus," Anakin muttered. Obi-Wan rolled his eyes and took Anakin's mechanical arm in a durasteel grip.

"Come on. Bed."

"Be careful, I'm fragile!" Anakin complained, allowing himself to be dragged away. Their voices followed them as they left the training dojo.

"That's why I'm holding your prosthetic."

"I'm going to need to get more of them if you don't treat me more gently in my delicate state!"

"I thought you said you were fine."

Anakin sneezed in response.

"That's what I thought."

Ahsoka bit back a grin as she watched them retreat, and she vowed to go visit her reluctantly ill Master – after she found another sparring partner.

Four and a half standard hours, a long sparring session with Aayla Secura, and a trip to the archives to research common colds later, Ahsoka pressed the chime for her Master's and her Master's Master's quarters, wondering not for the first time why they still lived together. A moment later, the door slid open to reveal a very disgruntled-looking Obi-Wan Kenobi, and she began to suspect she knew why after all.

His kind voice betrayed his frazzled appearance. "Ahsoka," he said warmly. "I am pleased to see you, though I must admit I doubt your surgical mask is necessary."

Ahsoka made an expression she was sure Master Kenobi could only see half of under her absolutely necessary facial protection. "I couldn't find much of anything about common colds in the archive database, so I thought I should come prepared. Too much?"

"A little," Obi-Wan said, smiling wryly and moving aside for her to come in. "He's gotten this cold over a dozen times now and I've never been affected by it, nor has anyone he's ever come in contact with. There's no reason to assume you will be."

Ahsoka frowned. "Well, it's better to be safe than sorry, Master." She followed Obi-Wan into the main living space where her Master was lying on the couch under three layers of blankets, propped up on pillows with a cloth draped over his forehead.

"You have a visitor," Obi-Wan said, crouching beside the bedridden Jedi Knight, removing the cloth to check his fever.

Anakin tiredly opened his eyes, which he narrowed when he caught sight of his Padawan. "Ahsoka, I am greatly offended that you feel the need to wear a surgical mask in my presence."

Ahsoka crossed her arms defiantly. "I stand by my choices."

Anakin let out a long moan. "Why does no one truly care about me?"

"Stop talking," Obi-Wan snapped. "You need to rest."

"You just like torturing me."

The Jedi Master rolled his eyes. "Yes, this is the worst torture you have ever endured. And you're going to have to keep enduring it if you don't rest."

"Why am I made to suffer?" Anakin moaned, his arm falling off the couch melodramatically.

Obi-Wan just said, "The Force works in mysterious ways."

"Anakin's colds have a very specific schedule to them, you see," Obi-Wan explained, stirring a pot of hot soup on the stove as Ahsoka leaned against the counter next to him. "The first day, which was yesterday, his throat is a little sore, and he tries very hard to hide it from me. By the end of that day, he's lost his voice. The second day, he wakes up with a fever and uses up his first box of tissues, moans and groans the first half of the day and sleeps the second half."

"I didn't know colds had a schedule," Ahsoka remarked. "But then again, I didn't know colds existed in the Jedi Order."

Obi-Wan allowed a small smile to grace his features as he added something to the soup. "He spends the third day watching the Holonet, falls asleep, wakes up, asks for soup, falls asleep again. Repeat as necessary for the remainder of the cold."

"That's rough," Ahsoka said, just as Anakin coughed from down the hall.

Obi-Wan turned off the stove and removed the pot. "Would you like some soup, Ahsoka?" He was about to pull a few bowls out of a cabinet when a loud thud and a long "Nooooo!" came from the other room. Obi-Wan sighed and hurried in there with Ahsoka hot on his heels.

Her Master was lying on the ground, twisted in a mess of blankets and gripping the caf table to stay upright. Obi-Wan hurried to his side. "What happened?"

Anakin transferred his grip to Obi-Wan's forearms. "You can't," he said, forcing the words out of his tremendously sore throat. "She can't have any. That's my soup. It's all I have. You can't take that away from me."

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes and heaved his former Padawan back onto the couch. "I made plenty for everyone, Anakin. You'll have more than enough."

"I trusted you," he moaned nonsensically. "And now you're betraying me."

Obi-Wan pressed rubbed his eyes tiredly. "It's just soup, Anakin."

"It's my soup." Cough.

"You're going to have to learn to share eventually."

"Nobata," Anakin groaned in Huttese, before slumping back into the pillows Obi-Wan shoved behind his head.

The soup didn't turn out to be great. Or, uh, even remotely good, no offense to Master Kenobi's culinary talents which, at times, had proven themselves to be quite reasonable. Ahsoka sipped the reddish liquid in the armchair beside her begrudging Master and nearly spit it out on the first go, fully understanding why Master Kenobi hadn't poured any for himself.

"This is –" she started, stopping herself before saying something rude. "Very spicy."

"It's delicious," Anakin corrected. Sipping on his blue milk that Obi-Wan apparently got just for these occasions, he looked very much like a bedridden child from the Outer Rim. "You just don't appreciate it."

Ahsoka stood up and scooched past her Masters. "I'm just going to...put this in the kitchen to cool."

"Wait!" Anakin said, sitting up too quickly. "If you're not going to eat it, I will!"

"No, no, I'll eat it!" Ahsoka said quickly, glancing at Master Kenobi, who was smiling at her very knowingly, before hurrying into the kitchen. When she returned, soup abandoned, Anakin had slumped back into the pillows and was muttering something very fluently in Huttese. He took another gulp of soup and a dreamy look passed over his face. "Inkabunga."

She left for a while, telling Master Kenobi she needed a breath of fresh air (when really she just needed to get some food that contained an actually reasonable amount of spice), and when she returned her Masters were engaged in an all-out argument. She peeked around the corner to see Obi-Wan standing over Anakin threateningly with a bottle in one hand and a spoon in the other.

"Just take it!"

"I don't need any of your Core medicine, old man!"

"You will take this medicine and you will like it!"

"You said it yourself, all I need is bed rest! And soup."

"If you want to get better, you will take this medicine!"

"I'm not going to take it!"

"If you don't cooperate, I will force feed you."

"Force feed me?" Anakin said cheekily. "You mean, feed me using the Force?"

"You know perfectly well that is not what I mean."

"A Jedi does not use the Force for frivolous purposes, Master."

"I will do it, Anakin, don't test me!"

"You would not – !"

Ahsoka turned on her heel and started toward the door, but not before she heard some sounds of struggle and a long groan.

"I can't believe you just did that! I could have swallowed my tongue just now!"

"Wouldn't that have been a blessing."

"...Your bedside manner is terrible, Master."

She returned the next day, sincerely hoping both her Jedi mentors (one of them quite literally) would have cooler heads.

But then she found herself in the middle of a tense conversation with Master Kenobi outside the quarters.

"Please, Ahsoka, I'm begging you. Just for an hour."

"No way, Master. I'm sorry."

"I just need to go to a Council meeting. It won't take long."

Ahsoka sighed. "Can't you do it over a comm?"

Obi-Wan frowned. "When you're a Jedi Master, you'll understand."

The Padawan leaned against the wall. "Fine. But you can't hold me responsible for whatever happens. And I'm not making him soup."

Master Kenobi looked like a tremendous weight had been lifted off his shoulders. "Thank you, Ahsoka. Really. And don't worry, you don't have to do anything. Just make sure he stays in bed. Don't let him leave. I'll make some soup before I go, and there's milk in the fridge and extra blankets in his room. And –"

Ahsoka snorted. "Don't worry, Master. I've looked after younglings before."

Anakin was not overly enthusiastic about the departure of his Master.

"You're not Obi-Wan," he said, looking at her grumpily.

She raised a brow and crossed her arms over her chest. "He left you some soup. You want it?"

Anakin scowled. "Where did he go?"

Ahsoka cleared her throat. "Very important Council business."

He didn't seem to buy it. "He's never left me before when I've had a cold. This isn't like him. There's something going on here, isn't there? What's going on, Ahsoka?"

She stared at him incredulously. "What are you talking about?"

He looked at her for a long while, considering, before he said: "Just get me the soup, Snips."

She rolled her eyes and walked into the kitchen.

When she walked back into the living space, he was gone. She didn't completely understand how it had happened – her Togruta biology gave her extrasensory abilities that had always doubled up with her Force sensitivity to give her an impressive awareness of the space around her. So, how her human Master managed to escape his quarters was quite beyond her. She grumpily placed the bowl of Obi-Wan's 'special' soup on the caf table and ran out into the corridor.

He was just rounding the end of the corridor when she saw him and pressed a button on her commlink that she had set up before Master Kenobi left. A second later, she heard a harsh "Cease hostilities!" and a very loud, over exaggerated groan, and was marched back to his waiting Padawan by faceless, yellow-lightsaber-bearing Jedi.

"I can't believe he called the Temple Guards on me," Anakin was grumbling as he allowed himself to be herded back into his quarters. "He's reached an all-time low."

Obi-Wan was not very amused when he returned.

"I'm gone for an hour. An hour. And you can't manage to stay in bed that long!"

Anakin sat looking away from him with his arms crossed and a pouty face on. "You shouldn't have left," he said, and Ahsoka was truly beginning to appreciate what her Master must have been like when he was her age. She liked to think she was much better behaved.

"I don't understand you. I left you soup, and milk, and everything you could have possibly needed."

Anakin just pursed his lips and looked ahead defiantly.

Obi-Wan sighed heavily. "That's it, Anakin. No Holonet today."

Anakin's pout vanished immediately as he looked up at his Master in utter shock. "What? But Master, I'm sick!"

"Well then you will have to reach wellness by quiet contemplation," Obi-Wan said, "Because you are not going to watch the Holonet."

Anakin swung his legs back onto the couch and pulled the blankets over his head, his coughs muffled by the fabric. "Jee oto nee choo!"

Ahsoka didn't return until late the next day. Relieved from the short-term burden of looking after her sick Master, she had taken the opportunity to practice more with her sabers, research a little bit more in the archives (this time looking up common phrases in Huttese so she didn't have to be so clueless when Anakin shouted out expletives in the future), and meditate for a bit. Her mentors' quarters were dark when she let herself in.

Obi-Wan appeared to have rescinded his restriction on the Holonet for this rotation. A holodrama was playing on a quiet volume, with light from the screen flashing softly throughout the room. Her Master was lying on the couch, his head resting on Obi-Wan's lap, Obi-Wan's hand tangled in Anakin's hair. There was a bowl of what she recognized as the melted remnants of blue milk ice cream resting on the caf table. As she curled up in an armchair like a Tooka, she realized they had both fallen asleep. As amusing as her Masters' constant banter was, it was a relief to see them relaxed, peaceful, intimate. She smiled, settled in to watch the holodrama, and vowed that she would make sure to be as far from Coruscant as possible the next time Anakin showed any flu-like symptoms.

What a pain in the montrals.

~The End~