Legacy V
Chapter 21
Fulcrum
Torbb Bakk'ile proved as good as her word.
Which is to say, she delivered Anakin back to the Temple in a condition of sublime and childish intoxication: the boy was positively drunk upon the wonders of Coruscant's commercial districts, the thrill of flying, and what must have been a bantha's fodder-trough of sugary treats.
His animated chatter reached a speed and crescendo to rival that of a six-lane air traffic pile up during rush hour.
"…and then we went to this wizard frozen goro shop and the manager saw that Master Torbb was a Jedi and he gave me the Thermonuclear Meltdown for free, that's six scoops of goro with cream and hot sauce and sliced yazzamas and nuts and sprinkles and everything and you get your holo on the window display if you can eat it at one sitting and I've never had goro before it's totally rugged and I ate the whole thing even though this humongous Gammorean guy there couldn't finish his and I'm like famous now with my picture on the holoboard where everyone can see it and it says champion podracer and goro eater underneath where your name is and then these three thugs tried to mug us when we came out and Master Torbb blitzed them like without even doing anything, they just flew across the alley and ran away and some other people were cheering and stuff and I wanted to chase them down but she said they were more to be pitied than persecuted which is weird I don't know what she meant but then it was time to come home and whoa! I really like it out in the city do you think I could go again soon?"
Obi-Wan's brows crept upward. And his own master had teasingly called him a chatterbox?
"Well?" Anakin demanded, trotting at his heels.
They came to a sudden halt. "A Jedi does not crave adventure, or distraction – though he may enjoy these things when they fall to his lot. To wish for more, however, is a form of attachment."
The boy blinked up at him, nose scrunching in perplexity. "Yeah, but I'm not a Jedi."
And there was the crux of the problem, was it not?
"Some truths are applicable universally," the young Knight retorted. "The Jedi tradition is not a codex of abstruse regulations … it is a way of life. An insight into sentience, into …" – he sought for the right words- " ..into the connection between the individual and the universe between the individual and every other."
Anakin's keen blue eyes watched him, a pair of limpid unruffled pools waiting for the first touch of wind or wave, the first stone to be thrown upon their clear surface.
The boy is dangerous. He is no longer your concern.
"But not everybody can be a Jedi," the child protested. "Right?"
The boy may not merely be a vergence… he may be the vergence. And that is the last thing the galaxy needs.
The temperature regulator in the concourse was clearly out of joint; a swirling miasma of heat and cold enveloped them, volcanic ash and pure snow drifting in the invisible Force.
"Mister Obi-Wan sir?"
"Perhaps everyone can," the young Jedi replied, improvising with a bold recklessness very much in the vein of Qui-Gon Jinn. "In here." A light tap against Anakin's chest. "Of course, that is presuming there is any room left for wisdom when your insides are full to bursting with frozen goro."
The chlld pranced in place, unable to focus for a nano-second due to the aforementioned overindulgence. "Okay," he said, absently. "Hey, how come nobody's around? What time is it, anyway?"
It was, in point of fact, close to midnight. But it was clear that Hoth would freeze over before Anakin achieved any mental state close ot sleep, much less meditative calm, in his present condition. "It's time for some exercise," Obi-Wan decided, taking the next turning with a grim and determined stride.
"You would, I presume, look favorably upon an offer of sustenance," Yan Dooku drawled, one supercilious brow raised in an indifferent arch.
The young Zabrak warrior tilted his jagged head back, exuding a palpable arrogance. "I have no need of anything you offer me, Jedi. I am no weak suckling like the pathetic slaves your Order flatters with the title Knight."
The Sentinel's answering smile was a thin crescent of irony. "Then, alas, you will have no interest in this trifle." He flourished an elegant but unadorned hilt before the captive's wary eyes, watching for the slightest betraying flutter of recognition.
He was not disappointed. "That artifact does not belong to you, Jedi."
"I should think not," Dooku replied, fastidiously wrapping a fold of dark cloak about the subtle curve of metal. "But neither are you… since clearly you have yet to attain rank."
Rage stirred the air between them to an electric tension; the prisoner's black lips drew back over stained teeth. "Your touch dishonors such a relic," he growled, lantern eyes tracking the Jedi master's unhurried pacing across the narrow cell's width. "None of your kind is worthy to wield such a weapon."
"Indeed?"
"The Darksaber is a blade forged for one cause: to slay traitors like yourself. My master has told me of this."
Dooku laid the priceless artifact upon an inset ledge within the far wall. His sardonic smile did not reach to his eyes. "And yet this glorious thing was found languishing in the antiquities collection of a gentleman farmer on an obscure world. I wonder how many other… exaggerations… your putative mentor has fed you, hmm?"
The Zabrak's snarl of disdain contorted his painted face yet further. "You seek to discredit my master? I will not be swayed by your deceptions, Jedi!"
Coming to an elegant and precisely timed halt directly before his interlocutor, the silver haired Sentinel merely tipped his head forward, an ironic mark of deference. "Of course not. I shall leave to you to your unreflecting loyalty, then.. but consider this: here, in this Temple, we hold both the last desiccated vestiges of the historical Sith Order, and the first fruits of its resurgence. This Master of yours plays for high stakes, when his opponent already holds a full sabaac."
"What vile treachery are you spewing now?" the prisoner growled, turning his back. "I have no use for your lies."
Dooku smoothed his immaculately pressed tunics. "It is not I, but he, who has betrayed you. If wrath is turn it against the one most deserving – he who sent you upon this course of failure and made you his unwitting puppet and dupe."
The young warrior raised one hand in a gesture of dismissal, his face now turned away completely.
Dooku slung one corner of his cloak over his shoulder, gathered the ebony folds in his free hand, and melded into the shadows of the connecting passage, leaving incarnate anger to contend with its own intricacies.
"Yipppeeeeee!" Anakin hollered, performing an imperfect but enthusiastic running somersault as he sped across the tumbling mats.
Obi-Wan watched his companion's cavorting progress about the practice room's perimeter, privately crafting a suitable epithet for Torbb Bakk'ile's treachery. There was no guessing precisely how much sugar a Thermonuclear Meltdown entailed– but it was clearly on a scale commensurate with the mass of an imploding star or the velocity of a ship in full supra-light hyperdrive. He ran a hand thorugh his hair and thanked the Force that, at least, the junior level gymnasium was quite empty at this star-forsaken hour.
Even so , there was something mildly disturbing about watching the biological equivalent of a droid's central processor gone haywire. "Anakin," he called.
When this polite summons proved ineffectual, he resorted to the sharp bark of authority. "Anakin!"
The boy skidded to a ruddy-cheeked halt. "Yeah?"
Such superabundant energy ought to be channeled, at least in part. "Let's practice a few kata."
"Whoa!" the tow-head child was at his side instantaneously, as though teleportation had abruptly been added to his bevy of eerie and precocious talents. "With 'sabers, you mean?"
Obi-Wan selected two wooden bokken from the short rack against a near wall. "Near enough." Sympathetic as he might feel, the lightsaber was still a Jedi's weapon. And Anakin was…. an undefined term.
"Okay." The lightweight shaft of polished gleeb wood satisfied the child's innate curiosity or bloodlust well enough for the time being. He swung it experimentally, flexing wrist and shoulder just so, and hefting the long implement with a savvy light in his bright blue eyes.
"You've handled such things before?" Though he had little doubt brawls erupted regularly in Mos Espa's gutters, it was unheard of and imprudent for slaves to receive martial training.
"Nah. But I like this." An unshuttered grin. "It's wizard. And I want to fight just like you."
The young Knight shook his head. "Foolish. If you fight identically to me, then I would know and anticipate your every move."
Anakin's aura crackled with a combative glee. "Okay, then better than you."
"Ha." There was ambition, and then there was arrogance. "You can begin by attempting to land a strike against me. Go on. Let's see what you've got by way of instinct… and then we can start with Niman."
Screened and veiled behind an impenetrable lattice-work of the Force, an artisan's whimsy constructed of pure thought, of the universal substrate, of compacted Light, the Grand Master looked on with seemingly implacable detachment. His thin, puckered mouth was pressed into an inscrutable line; his snub nose twitched every few seconds as though imbued with a life of its own; his hooded eyes kept their own secrets. Even the tilt of his long pointed ears gave nothing away. Dust motes played in a stray sunbeam, frolicking impudently among the last few wisps of silver upon his craggy pate, an unruly halo to match his stained and fraying garments.
Yan Dooku stood quietly behind, far too wise or experienced to pry into the Master's thoughts before they were ready to be revealed. Below, oblivious to the observers in the balcony above, a tow-headed boy and one of the youngest Knights in the ranks engaged in a simple sparring exercise, something halfway between an early kata and an improvised game, both of them absorbed in the moment and effortlessly fluid within the Force, a pair of mismatched nexu kitlings at play.
Old Yoda grunted at long last , granting permission to speak.
"The child has remarkable potential," Dooku ventured.
The ancient Jedi shifted weight, clawed hands gripping the haft of his stunted cane more tightly. "Council has made decision," he chuffed. "Change it we will not."
"I was privy to the entire debate," the sable-clad Jedi master reminded his own former mentor, a muscle in his jaw twitching in annoyance.
"Blind I am not, nor deaf," Yoda snapped, gargoylish visage rumpling into a terrible scowl. "Remember the words of all present, I do. Outweighed was your opinion, young one."
Dooku stroked his silver beard, repressing a snort of vexation at the reminder. He had earned the deference of nearly every peer and certainly every subordinate in the course of his many decades' service… but Yoda's seniority trumped that of every Jedi alive, and that of many who had passed into the Force's embrace, as well.
"Of course," he added, velveting the syllables with a veneer of hesitation, "The right of apprenticeship, as such, predates and therefore supercedes the strictures governing formal initiates. A master may name as padawan any whom he deems worthy and willing."
With or without the Council's prior approval.
The barest, most unspoken suggestion of such defiance stiffened the ancient one's spine in a most gratifying manner. "Forgetful I am not, either," he rasped out, small pointed teeth flashing for the briefest of moments. Alarming gimlet eyes opened wide, and slid upwards and sideways to skewer Dooku on the spot. "Beware pride, my former padawan."
"Of course, my Master." An obsequious bow, one which did not yield but merely deferred the contest.
Yoda's gaze tracked the boisterous progress of the two figures below, their blended voices echoing happily off the pitched ceiling. "Great power. Destroys those who would shape and use it, yes. Teach power, you cannot. Subdue it, control it, you cannot. Indocile is power." The grand master's ears perked ward in emphasis. "Only the heart can be led, hmph. Teach that you may… but never power."