Anakin groaned back into consciousness. His organs felt weird, but at least today he could feel his organs. Rolling over in the medi-bed, he stared blearily at the cheery pre-teen standing beside him.
"Hi," he managed, squinting. It was a Togruta kid, one of the Younglings he'd seen around the temple. Anakin wasn't overly into waking up to find people staring at his hitherto-o unconscious body, but after misadventures in babysitting the Fett spawn he was particularly uninterested in discovering mystery children hoovering around his bed.
"Hi," she replied, large smile, if anything, growing larger. He stared at her silently for a few seconds longer. When she didn't respond to his unvoiced questions, he cleared his throat.
"Uh..."
"I'm Boba's friend," she added unhelpfully, as Anakin's brain did not recognize those words in that order as constituting a real sentence. "The Council appointed you as my Master."
That second sentence Anakin understood. He pushed himself into a sitting position and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, waiting for his blood to catch up with his new slightly more vertical position.
"W- but I just did a really irresponsible thing with a kid, I... That shouldn't have immediately qualified me to be in charge of a child, this is..." The Jedi Knight composed himself as blood returned to his brain. "Is Obi-Wan back?"
"Master Kenobi just docked a few minutes ago. I think he's heading down to the prison to visit Mr. Fett."
"Good, I need to speak with him immediately," Anakin noted, using his authoritative voice to drown out the steady /help, help, nope, help, nope, nope, help/ repeating in the back of his mind. "You can stay here, or return to your chambers," he added, tossing the covers aside with all the flourish of Obi-Wan flipping away a robe before battle, and face-planted into the floor. Light footsteps padded around the bed to stand before him.
"Do you want me to find a hoover-chair, or go sit in my room?" the Youngling wondered with bright faux-guilelessness.
Hm. Boba's friend.
Obi-Wan navigated the hallways on the route to Jango's cell at a slower pace than he probably should have been keeping. While it wasn't unusual for him to drag his feet on the way to these little family reunions, today he was slowed down less by a reluctance to deal with his brother than he was by uncertainty over what to do with his nephew. While he'd never had an exceptional gift for understanding children, the Knight had a nagging suspicion that maybe Boba shouldn't see his father's initial reaction to hearing that the cloning process hadn't gone exactly as expected. Obi-Wan was sure that Jango wouldn't mean to do anything massively psychologically damaging, but it would be strange if the bounty hunter didn't do five massively psychologically damaging things before breakfast in a good mood. Jango might be skilled at controlling the expression of his emotions, but in a situation where a slight side-eye was likely to be remembered for life, a buffer zone seemed like a good idea.
The problem was, of course, finding a way to create that buffer zone without Boba catching on. The young boy wandered along beside him, not noticing the slow pace as he collected his thoughts. Boba would know exactly what Obi-Wan was doing if he sent him to wait in his chambers, and would therefore suspect that Obi-Wan was anticipating a negative reaction from his father, thus negating the use of giving Jango a minute to digest the news in the first place. Not seeing a good option, the Jedi meandered through the Temple searching for a solution as he drew closer to the cell. Anakin therefore had relatively good timing as he and Asoka exploded around the corner in a hoover chair at a dead sprint, bouncing off of the wall several feet in front of Obi-Wan as they went.
"Ah, Anakin, you're up."
Asoka swung the chair around, new Master and Padawan doing their best to resemble Very Respectable People Doing Business-Like Things. With the sweat running down the Youngling's face and the lunch doing it's best to escape Anakin's stomach, Obi-Wan found he could really only give them points for effort.
"Obi-Wan," Anakin began, squaring his shoulders. "I need to speak to you privately for a moment."
Obi-Wan, who needed a private moment to think, nodded, gesturing to an empty lecture hall and leaving Boba for a moment with his little friend.
"I have a problem," Anakin began as the door slid shut.
"Obviously."
"Ha, ha. I'm serious. The Council appointed me a Padawan."
Obi-Wan felt himself go through a flurry of short thoughts in quick succession, from 'Hm, that's unusual' to a simultaneous 'NOOOOOO' and 'WHY?!', peppered throughout with little flecks of resentment over having almost been disqualified from knighthood via aging out as a Youngling if Padawan appointments were a thing the Counsel could apparently do. He cleared his throat and brought himself back to the present, rubbing his beard as he considered the situation.
"You were not consulted?"
"No, I would never have said yes at a time like this. We're at war, I have a full body mystery injury and I don't... I've been a Knight for fewer than six months, how am I going to teach someone else how to do a thing I'm still figuring out? And before you say it, you were different."
Obi-Wan was not actually going to make a comment about having taken Anakin on as a Padawan immediately after becoming a Knight, because he privately agreed that the idea of trying to train someone to do something you had only just started yourself was a terrible one. There were a hundred things that had gone wrong with Anakin's apprenticeship that could have been avoided if Obi-Wan had had more experience, and he was not overly keen to see Anakin go through the same thing while in recovery and adjusting to the new role of the Jedi as soldiers of the Republic.
"This is very unusual. The matter will have to be discussed with the Council," Kenobi decided. Anakin nodded.
"I was hoping that you could speak to them with me. They're more likely to listen to you," he explained.
"Of course. Unfortunately, that may have to wait until tomorrow. I've acquired information which Jango has promised to accept in trade for an explanation of where he retrieved the Force disabling weapons."
Anakin pulled himself out of his slump at the mention of new information on the case. "What did you find?"
Obi-Wan looked down at the box containing his old doll in his hand. He frowned, unsure of where his hesitation to explain was coming from. The Knight had made his mind up on the way back to tell the Council what he had discovered, but in speaking with Anakin and holding the strange, dirty little creature that seemed to be an appropriate metaphor for Jango's familial affection, he found himself unsure.
"Anakin, I'm going to make an unfair request of you," he decided eventually. "I'm going to tell you what is happening, but ask that you refrain from alerting the Council."
Anakin resisted the urge to clean his ears and fought down his excitement. Obi-Wan, keeping secrets from the Council? He wondered if he should be feeling proud. He nodded for the second time in a minute, not sure if saying something would inadvertently change his friend's mind. Obi-Wan paused for another moment before explaining.
"There was a mistake with Boba's cloning process. About 25% of his genetic material was taken from a hair found on an object Jango had with him in his room while he was away." Obi-Wan opened the box to show Anakin the doll. "The hair was mine."
Anakin's eyes widened. "So Boba was affected by the weapon because..."
"He's somewhat Force sensitive. It's at a lower level than any of the current Jedi, but there are records from centuries past which indicate that there have been Knights with lower midichlorion counts." Obi-Wan stopped again, his frown deepening. "I'm not telling the Council for two reasons. First, neither Jango nor Boba want Boba to become a Jedi. While it is almost certain that the Council would not direct that he be trained at this age and with his midichlorion count, it would concern my brother if they knew, as he beleives they may. This would undoubtedly encourage him to be even less cooperative than he's already been."
"Is that a thing?"
"That's absolutely a thing. You have no idea," the Knight sighed. "Second, it is important that the Council not find out that I have a genetic connection to Boba. I can say with relative certainty that the boy would be placed in the custody of another Knight, which I don't believe would be in his best interest."
"Because anyone else would put him in his own special kiddy jail cell. Plus I doubt any other Knight would be letting him see his dad, so we'd lose whatever level of cooperation might be gained from Jango," Anakin reasoned.
"Precisely."
"I agree that it would be unwise to tell the Counsel," the younger Jedi continued, adjusting his posture to conceal the mental high-fives he was giving himself over this turn of events.
"At this juncture," Obi-Wan added.
"At this juncture," Anakin repeated, fully intent on talking the man out of ever revealing this information to anyone else in the Temple if the situation came up. He wasn't rooting for Obi-Wan to become a Sith or anything, but to get to a point where he might understand what Anakin had done, and maybe to be able to be told about his marriage to Padme? Yeah, that was definitely the goal here. "And if you're getting some information out of Jango, I can handle a Padawan for a day."
Obi-Wan released a breath of relief. "Thank you, Anakin. Would you send Boba in, for a moment?"
"Sure," Skywalker replied with a shrug, steering his chair out the door. A moment later, Boba appeared in his place, staring up at his uncle. Obi-Wan reached back to his inner Mandalorian to decide how to phrase what needed to come next.
"Anakin has been assigned Asoka as a Padawan. At the moment, he is conscious, but incapacitated, and still likely to be put in harm's way. I need you and your friend to ensure that he has a chance to recover while I discuss our plan moving forward with your father."
It felt strange to be talking to a child as if they were a tiny soldier, but that's what he remembered from Jaster before arriving at the Temple. At any rate, it seemed effective. For his part, Boba nodded once crisply and left to find Anakin. Obi-Wan rubbed his face, extremely unsure of his decisions, and set off to explain this mess to his brother.
