"You know," Anakin growled, in a foul mood, "I think telling me that Palpatine is in this world was one of the first things you should have told me."
Obi-Wan sat across from Anakin in the same ditch they had practiced in the weekend before. "Well not necessarily," He said with a shrug. "I wasn't immediately sure what side you were on, and then once I figured it out, I was much more concerned with helping you." Anakin would have protested to being doubted, but in this case he deserved it.
"I get that, but the man is the most evil man to ever exist." Anakin said through clenched teeth. What had Palpatine already done to this world? Anakin wouldn't know the difference since he'd only been there for barely two weeks, but it was the world that Padme had grown up in and loved. However, Palpatine had been from Naboo in his Galaxy as well—he had a habit of being where Padme was.
"We don't even know if he remembers," Obi-Wan said, trying to keep Anakin calm.
But Anakin was not calm. He couldn't sit still anymore. He got back to his feet and began to pace. Obi-Wan let out an exasperated sigh. "Have you met him? Do you know that for sure?"
"Well, no, but…" Obi-Wan started, but Anakin interrupted.
"Trust me, he remembers. Palpatine had back up plans for his back up plans." Anakin groaned. "What if me throwing him into that shaft started his life here? What if I inadvertedly caused another abuse of power by his hands?"
"But if he doesn't remember…" Obi-Wan tried again, mostly to try calming him down. Obi-Wan himself had always been a little suspicious, but he found out quickly that it was much easier to meet a celebrity like Mace L. Windu than Senator Palpatine. Besides, he'd never seen anything that screamed Sith Lord, but then again Anakin knew Palpatine better than anyone. If Anakin was concerned…
"Even if he doesn't remember, he would have the use of the Force. It doesn't make sense that Yoda and you have the Force and he wouldn't. That man…" Anakin stopped pacing, a shudder running down his spine. "There isn't any goodness in him. I don't think there ever was."
"People aren't born evil." Obi-Wan pointed out, but Anakin was shaking his head.
"You don't understand. I've seen who he really is first hand. I've felt his Force Signature…his soul is complete and total darkness." Anakin looked at Obi-Wan pleadingly. "He's a danger, Obi-Wan. He must be stopped before he turns this world into a smaller version of the Empire."
Obi-Wan took time to read Anakin through the Force. He didn't detect fear, but he did detect regret and anger…not necessarily at Palpatine, but rather at himself. Obi-Wan would have liked to take away the blame, but Anakin had played a major part in Palpatine's atrocities. Anakin would have seen through the lie easily. "Anakin, this world's politics are not the same as our galaxy. On one planet, countries can't even decide what the best form of government is, so there are a variety of governments across the world. Every time someone has tried to take over the world, regardless of how much power they have, no one has ever been able to. I think it would be harder for Palpatine to take over this world."
Anakin was shaking his head again before Obi-Wan finished. "If anyone could accomplish it," Anakin said gravely, "Palpatine can. Especially if he is still a Force user."
That, Obi-Wan didn't have an answer to.
If Anakin thought Palpatine was a danger in this world, Obi-Wan decided he would trust him. "Okay," He said, "I will do some digging. In the meantime maybe it would be beneficial if we asked Padme to ask her parents…"
"Absolutely not," Anakin said, his voice firm, leaving no room for negotiations. "I will not have her involved in this again."
"Anakin…"
"No."
Obi-Wan sighed. There was no talking to him when he was like this. "Okay." He relented—for now. "It's obvious that there is no way that you'll achieve inner peace in the mood you're in. So let's focus on something else today." Obi-Wan stood, reaching into his jacket to pull his lightsaber out of his pocket.
Anakin's eyes widened at the sight of it. He hadn't seen a lightsaber in this world, or any technology that would suggest that it was possible. "How…?" He began, and Obi-Wan raised a hand to stop him.
"When I woke up, I had this still attached to my belt," He said, tossing it to him. Anakin caught it with ease, though he didn't ignite it.
"Why didn't I still have mine?" Anakin asked. Obi-Wan's felt foreign in his hands. He had built all of his lightsabers himself, and to use someone else's….well, it didn't feel right.
Obi-Wan shrugged. "Maybe for the same reason you weren't given immediate access to the Force." He opened his duffel bag and pulled out a large bag of oranges and a blind fold. "We no longer have the training equipment from home," He said, "But we can make do with this."
Anakin frowned as Obi-Wan handed him the blindfold. "You're going to throw those at me. Aren't you." Anakin didn't bother asking, he already knew the answer from the mischievous glint in Obi-Wan's eyes. His master was going to enjoy this very much.
"Use the lightsaber to stop them before they hit you and you should be fine." Obi-Wan said, clearly amused by Anakin's reaction.
"I haven't been able to use the Force…" Anakin began, but Obi-Wan cut him off.
"I am not asking you to use the Force to accomplish a major feat. I'm asking you to use it to guide your motions. You know that this is the first thing that Younglings learn when they begin training. I expect that you will master it fairly quickly, even with your…limitations."
Anakin scowled, hundreds of possible retorts filling his mind, but he forced himself to push those thoughts away. It wouldn't do any good arguing. Besides, he had done this once before, and Luke had probably…
He hesitated. "Did you teach Luke to do this?"
"I did." Obi-Wan replied, but he offered no more detail.
If Luke could do it, Anakin thought, putting on the blindfold, then so could he.
As soon as the blindfold was secured, Anakin held the lightsaber in his hands, focusing on the Force within himself. Once he found it, he ignited the lightsaber, feeling the familiar thrum of its energy as he smoothly settled into a defensive stance. He breathed deeply, feeling the flow of the Force move within him, stretching, and…
An orange struck his shoulder.
"Hey!" Anakin hissed, trying to shrug away the sting.
"Stretch out with your feelings, Anakin." Obi-Wan said, and seconds later another orange struck him in the stomach, hard enough to wind Anakin a little.
Anakin grunted, trying to focus once again, cursing that he couldn't immediately tap into the Force like he used to. He had gotten so used immersing himself in the Dark Side of the Force that Anakin had forgotten what it was like to only use it when necessary. He felt it within his chest, felt it begin to flow through him, and once he was sure that it flowed through him, he began to stretch his mind out, picturing the oranges floating in the air in front of Obi-Wan.
For a while, Anakin waited in tense anticipation. Then, he felt the oranges fly forward, and he felt where they would strike before they did. He reacted with his lightsaber, the oranges slicing in two and falling harmlessly to the ground at his feet.
Obi-Wan didn't stop there. He continued to fire oranges at the former Sith Lord, pushing Anakin to react rapidly, or to wait in anticipation as they began to fly at random intervals. Anakin hit every one seemingly effortlessly, but in fact he was straining to keep control over the Force. The Force didn't come as naturally as it used to, and he could feel it trying to restrain itself again. He continued to focus however, and soon Obi-Wan stopped. "I'm out of oranges." He announced, "You can take the blind fold off now."
Anakin turned off the lightsaber and pulled off his blind fold, blinking into the dim evening light. He looked at the sliced fruit at his feet and a slow grin began to spread across his face. "Do you realize that this is the first time I've actually been able to use the Force?" He asked, trying to contain the burst of elation at having completed such a simple task. It didn't matter that as Darth Vader this task would have been so mundane he wouldn't have even thought about it. Now he could say that he could somewhat use the Force, which was much better than not being able to at all.
Obi-Wan smiled back. "Congratulations." He said, holding his hand out for his lightsaber. Anakin handed it back to him after some hesitation, feeling vulnerable once it was out of his grasp. He had spent most of his life with a lightsaber by his side. Now that he remembered what it was like to have one, he didn't want to let go.
Even if he didn't fully love the style of lightsaber Obi-Wan had.
"I think that will be enough—wait." Obi-Wan tensed, and Anakin could feel him reaching out with the Force to feel the surrounding area. Anakin, confident from his recent accomplishment, tried to do the same, but he couldn't extend it past himself still. Before he could dwell on that and get frustrated, Obi-Wan straightened, his entire body stiff. "How long have you been hiding there, Mindy?"
Wait, what?
For a few, strained moments, nothing happened. But when Obi-Wan opened his mouth again, bushes at the top of the ditch began to rustle and Mindy crawled out, leaves stuck in her short black hair, cursing as branches scratched her skin. She tripped as she tried to stand, but she caught herself before she hit the ground, standing up straight, shooting both Anakin and Obi-Wan a glare. "I've been here long enough to know you have some weird thing against Senator Palpatine. Something about him being Diablo or whatever."
Anakin, frozen in shock, his heart rate speeding up erratically as he tried to figure out an explanation for everything Mindy had seen, barely registered the unfamiliar word 'Diablo.' "Mindy," He said, his voice hoarse, "Did you…why are you here?"
She slid down the bank of the ditch, landing in a puddle of murky water before she answered. "I told you that I would find the answers to whatever it is you're hiding." She said, her voice confident as she walked boldly up to them. "So you better start explaining why you have issues with Senator Palpy, why you have some weird glowing sword-looking thing, and how you," She pointed at Obi-Wan, "can make oranges float."
"Senator Palpy…?" Obi-Wan questioned.
Mindy waved her hand dismissively. "That's my nickname for him." She looked Anakin straight in the eye, her dark eyes hard and determined. "I waited through your ridiculous…whatever it is you two are doing before confronting you. So what's up?"
Anakin swallowed nervously. How had Obi-Wan not sensed Mindy earlier? Had he been that focused on Anakin's training that he had forgotten his own training?
He would worry about that later. Right now, he was trying to come up with a reasonable explanation, but the more he tried the more he realized that he couldn't.
With dread settling into his stomach, he realized he had to tell her.
So he did. He told her of being from another galaxy. He told her of the Jedi and the Force, of meeting Padme's other dimension self there and marrying her, of falling to the Dark Side, of Padme's death, the rebellion and his death. He didn't go into a lot of detail of just what he had done as Darth Vader, but he gave her enough detail to explain his outburst the weekend before. By the time he was finished, the sun had set and mosquitos were feeding off of them.
Mindy waited and listened, her face uncharacteristically unreadable, but as he watched her eyes, he saw fear creeping in. Still, when he finished, she pulled her gaze away from his to look at Obi-Wan. "Please tell me you're both crazy."
Obi-Wan's face was grim. "I'm afraid not."
She was silent for a while, the information slowly sinking in. "So you are a crazed mass murderer." Her voice was flat and serious, which almost frightened Anakin. It was the voice of someone who was about to snap and Mindy was not a person he wanted to be around when that happened.
Anakin answered with the truth though. "Yes."
Mindy closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers. "Do I even want to know how many people?"
"No."
She shook her head, her eyebrows furrowing. "This is crazy. I'm crazy for believing you."
That did surprise Anakin. "You believe me?" He asked incredulously.
"Of course I do," she hissed. "The way you look at Padme, the weird things you say, the complete cluelessness to simple everyday things like toasters… It just didn't add up to 'memory loss' victim."
"So what are you going to do about it?" Obi-Wan asked seriously.
Anakin asked the more pressing question on his mind. "Will you tell Padme?"
Mindy's eyes flashed open, and the amount of fear, of mistrust, in them made Anakin step backwards.
How he wished they had sensed her presence earlier.
"Oh, I'm not going to tell her. I might believe you, but I know that she won't." Her voice was dark, warning. "Let me tell you this, Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader, or whoever you are: you are NOT worthy of my Padme."
The words, although Anakin agreed with them, were still like a knife to his heart. He took another step back even as she stepped forward, jabbing her finger into his chest. "You stay away from her. Stay away. You got her killed once before. Do NOT take her away from the world of the living again."
There was so much venom in her voice, and she glared at him with such a ferocity that Anakin was speechless. If he had been Darth Vader, he would have tried to recruit her as a top general in the Imperial army. She was that intimidating.
But despite that, he saw the fear in her eyes. She was terrified. Of him. Of what he could do. But like he had predicted, she still stood up for her friend. If that anger and protectiveness wasn't directed at him, he may have been more impressed.
But right now, he was a little afraid.
She didn't say anything else. She just whirled on her heel and stormed to the ditch and, rather ungracefully, climbed out.
She was gone for quite a while before Obi-Wan spoke. "I'm going to try to talk to her. For now, go spend the night at my apartment. The key is under the mat."
Anakin could do nothing but nod—he doubted Obi-Wan would change her mind. She was right. He didn't deserve…well, any happiness, really.
Still, his heart ached painfully as he continued to stare off after her.
No I am not dead! I have taken a new job, so things are pretty crazy and stressful right now. But I'm still writing. In fact, I've already started on the next chapter. Yay! I was going to make this longer, but I've already made you guys wait. So next chapter will (probably) be longer. I will try to update that one this weekend. We shall see though.
Anyhow. I have a question for you: how do you feel about Obi-Wan being in a relationship with someone? I ask because a friend pointed out that Obi-Wan has learned from Luke the good power of relationships, and in this world he's not exactly bound to the rules of the Jedi since he's one of the few who even knows of the Force. I don't know who it would be with, but I wondered what you thought.
Well, that's it for tonight. Thank you for your support! Be sure to review!
Love,
Sarah
