Thought I'd surprise everyone with another update - or maybe that's frustrate everyone with certain characters.
Chapter 20. What Pattern Doth Life Take?
Anakin Skywalker was frustrated and unhappy. He hated that feeling – it made him feel small and unimportant.
He had been important on Tatooine and on Naboo. He had been the center of his group of friends and he had been at the center of freeing Naboo. He had had worth, he, Anakin Skywalker, son of a slave and a slave himself.
Only one set of chains remained and one day he would be free of those as well. That day he would be acclaimed a hero, when he freed the shackled and punished the wicked, that day he held dominion over the power within him.
Qui-Gon would teach him how to harness that power – all of it.
But he hadn't expected to feel this miserable. He was being educated in academics when he wished to be educated in the Force.
That, perhaps, he might have been able to deal with, but he dealt with something even worse: humiliation. The "Hero of Naboo" was stuck with a bunch of young initiates – his "age mates." Anakin hated it – and he hated them.
With Qui-Gon in the Healers Ward, the Council had thought this placement appropriate – Anakin would get to know the younglings his age while at the same exposing the young boy to the discipline and behavior Jedi younglings were expected to conform to.
Discipline, perhaps not strange for one once a slave, was something Anakin despised and resisted. Outward conformity was belayed by internal rebellion, especially now that he was supposedly free and no longer at the mercy of others – or so the Jedi believed who had hoped to ease his transition. They did not know that Watto had been largely an indifferent owner, berating with words but never beatings. Anakin's Force sensitivity had not allowed him to manipulate a Force-immune Toydarian, but the Force had served as an accurate barometer as to what words and actions of his would influence Watto.
He had learned the art of manipulation well; not just with Watto, but others equally as well.
His life, his talents, and his education had seen to that. That education had begun before he toddled and while his mind was still young and unformed. Like all youngsters, he eagerly absorbed knowledge, and much of his new knowledge was planted deep: knowledge of how to manipulate, to reach for what he wanted, and to let nothing stand in his way.
He had been skillfully taught from afar, without his knowledge or acquiescence in the beginning. His instinctive abilities had been channeled without conscious knowledge – what Anakin desired, Anakin could have – and Anakin had wanted much, living a life in which he had little to call his own.
What he had wanted most of all - craved – was acceptance and respect – and he had learned young that such demanded Power.
His new age mates did not automatically grant it. Boasting of his heroics – as they saw it – did not endear him to them.
Their natural wariness of a total stranger suddenly introduced into and expected to fit into their presence only increased with Anakin's bragging that he, a boy raised outside the Order for whom rules were broken was now Qui-Gon's padawan as well as the Boonta Eve pod-racing champion and destroyer of a droid-control ship.
In their eyes this exception to rules that guided the Order for years expected them to make room for him rather than him trying to fit in. It didn't help that he was officially a padawan after no training at all though they'd been working towards that goal for years.
This outsider, this anything but meek and humble newcomer, had displaced Senior Padawan Kenobi and claimed the master as his own. Such was a calamity; a catastrophe one could not truly comprehend, for to become a padawan was an honor to which all aspired and to be dismissed, a disgrace.
Ordinarily.
Yet this setting aside was rumored to be without cause, and so these younglings rallied to the padawan's side. They knew Obi-Wan Kenobi. He, along with other senior padawans and the occasional knight, worked often with this age group. They admired and liked him; his disgrace became theirs.
What was now to become of said padawan?
None knew; speculation ran rampant. Would he be assigned a new master? Finish his training under the oversight of senior Jedi without a master to call his own? Leave the Order by choice or express command of the Council?
None welcomed this last possibility, especially those who had dared to hope that Obi-Wan, once knighted and ready to mentor a padawan of his own, would be looking amongst their ranks within a few years. This interloper might well dash more than Padawan Kenobi's dreams but theirs as well, and so they did not look kindly on the interloper who had hurt this Jedi and might well be the cause of his dismissal from the Order.
Some had dared to voice their thoughts, after Anakin's arrival and blunt statement of his status within the Order.
"But, but Obi-Wan is Master Jinn's padawan," one confused initiate pointed out.
"Until I came along," Anakin asserted.
"Why are you so special? Master Jinn just can't throw Obi away! What'll happen to Obi now – he won't be kicked out of the Order, will he? What's going to happen to Obi?"
"Don't know, don't care," Anakin shrugged. "He's Bantha-poodoo, anyway."
"Take that back - don't call Obi names!"
"Why not? He probably calls you 'pathetic' behind your backs like he did me and you don't even know it."
Heads immediately shook in negation. "Obi's nice, Obi-Wan wouldn't do that." A chorus of similar words poured out.
Anakin's lips curled as he glared at his age mates. "He almost got Master Qui-Gon killed. He's cruel and he's incompetent – it would have been better for everyone if he'd died there so nobody else would get killed or almost killed."
It had been a good thing the Initiate Master had shown up, alerted by the Force: well-behaved Jedi initiates might have been quite ill behaved otherwise.
Courtesy…a healer treats each patient with courtesy – but bantha-poodoo – such was not always easy. Bant took a calming breath before entering her next patient's room.
Apparently her cool nod of acknowledgment rather than friendly greeting upon her entrance had not been sufficient to deter conversation, for he greeted her cheerily enough.
"Good morning, Bant."
The healer glanced at her patient. Her lips tightened, but politely enough, she returned, "Good morning, Master Jinn."
She went back to studying the chart, but she could feel his eyes on her, a sense of curiosity in his gaze as if he didn't quite understand her coolness. Through her friendship with Obi-Wan, not to mention the friendship between Qui-Gon and her own master, both knew she usually wasn't prone to such formality in private. Formality now served as a welcome barricade; it allowed civility regardless of internal conflict.
"Are you personally offended by my wound?"
That startled her; Bant glanced at the Jedi master to see the trace of a smile on his face. He didn't know – he did not really know?
"I find all deliberately inflicted wounds offensive." The man dared nod in agreement. Bant let out a small sigh. "Such as to Obi-Wan."
All expression faded from his face. "My padawan – ."
"Obi-Wan?" Bant kept her expression bland. "He almost died for you; do you know how close he came – how sick he was? Then at his most vulnerable, you struck the final blow. I really don't know why he risked harming himself like that considering how you all but threw him aside -."
"It wasn't like that," he interrupted. "The Force –."
"The Force is not cruel, Master Jinn. However, you were," Bant interrupted in turn.
"Whatever your reasons, I will not dispute them, but I will dispute the means you used. Did Obi-Wan mean so little to you that you didn't even think to mention, oh, sometime before you proposed he was ready for the trials, to tell him that so he wouldn't be blind-sided by you? Maybe you would have had a chance to cut his braid before you replaced him with that boy – you know, the one you barely even knew."
His eyes held hers, not angry, oh, Force, not angry, but pleading – wanting her to see he had done the right thing, the only thing. She knew different: he had had options, choices he had not made. There were always multiple paths one could pursue, but single-minded focus had blinded Qui-Gon to those possibilities. That had been why Master and Padawan had made such an effective team: their skills and focus complemented each other, making the team stronger than the whole.
"I had to make the Council see sense – the Force told me Anakin should be trained," he insisted.
So he was still blind to those alternative paths – need she point them out to him? Why was he so – dismissive of Obi-Wan or so – focused on the boy that he could not see beyond him?
"By you – right away – while you still had a padawan? Have you even been to see Obi-Wan? Even said, 'I'm sorry, but this boy is more important to the Force but you are important to me and I still care about you?' Have you?"
Silence greeted her words. Had Qui-Gon finally realized the magnitude, the consequences of his actions?
"No," Qui-Gon finally admitted in a low voice, no longer meeting her eyes. "No, I have not and I will not. Besides, Obi-Wan has made his own choices and wishes no further contact with me. What's done is done…there is no point in revisiting the past."
"That's just a convenient way of avoiding the consequences of the past, Master Jinn, if you ask me." His eyes flashed up to hers, a protest dead on his lips when their eyes locked. "Obi is damaged, do you understand that? Damaged and you brush it off as of no consequence or worse – his choice? Live in the moment is such a convenient excuse to walk away from the debris you leave behind, isn't it – only this time the debris is the boy you raised and the boy I once thought you cared for - Obi-Wan."
Bant slammed the datapad shut and left without a glance behind her.
Open-mouthed horror flashed in blue eyes behind her.
~~Somewhere not too far and not too close…
"Do the consequences of your behavior strike at your heart, pathetic Jedi?" hissed a man always on guard. Nothing – ever – was left to chance. Even now, with his tool Kenobi unexpectedly a danger, he had adapted to new circumstances, new knowledge. "Well it should, but the time to reproach yourself is not now. As yet you could make amends with that once precious padawan of yours – far too forgiving is he for it to be otherwise."
Kenobi…the figure tasted the word, seeking the mysteries so tantalizing and intriguing that swirled around him. The Force refused to divulge what he sought; a consequence, no doubt of the poor padawan's health. Events had gotten a bit out of hand on Naboo. Such a shame, really; but he suspected no permanent harm was done.
He would work it into his plans; he always could. The figure leaned back, chuckling. He would allow Qui-Gon Jinn his moment of utter devastation, just one of many to come. He preferred the delicate jabs of pain and horror, the rising crescendo of fear and awareness. He could create it – and he could wipe it away, only to inflict it once more.
Yes, he would glean more information from Kenobi later. Once consciousness was regained.
There were still secrets to be divulged, prey to hunt, souls to bend to his will as he bent minds and bodies. Kenobi could wait. He could still play with Jinn.
In a mockery of caring, he twisted the screw of mounting self-loathing. "Tsk, tsk, Qui-Gon, has someone opened your eyes to what you did to that once 'gentle soul'? He's broken now, broken by you. Here I thought a Jedi's heart – yours – was large enough for more than just one, but no, your focus has always been so narrow that you are blind to the periphery."
The voice grew silky and soft, nearly caressing even as a crushing pressure squeezed the addressed Jedi's chest, the pain of knowledge and realization, the devastating reality he had self-inflicted on one he counted a dear friend, not just padawan.
I shall wring more torment from your soul – and his, as well.
"Obi-Wan betrayed and hurt you. He deserves your scorn. But he is beneath you; an insect to be crushed and ignored. The Chosen One is your one concern now."
The pain in the Jedi master eased with this reminder from the Force; forgetfulness washed over him like a soothing wave as another face swam into his mind's sight: Anakin.
Qui-Gon's shame and horror dissipated, leached away. It had lasted but a second, then disappeared, gone as if it had never existed.