Ass Cover: They belong to Lucasfilm, and the Bearded One. I'm just borrowing them for a spell. Cuz I just finished one of these lovely little works, and I wonder why it's always Anakin lusting after Obi-Wan and never the other way around. So… yeah. Here I go. Be wary. Put this after A Master's Mind.

A Master's Heart

In my dreams, he is perfect. While I am awake, he is falling.

He is now, sitting beside me in this ship that carries us once again away from Coruscant, and farther still from Naboo, he is asleep. When he was a child, he dreamt of being among the stars, away from the sand and the heat that was his home world of Tatooine. From the moment my Master took him from that wasteland, he has hated space, hated being among the stars, hated the chill of the airless void.

I have developed a fear of him, something that holds a grip on my heart, an emotion that is second only to one other in my heart. I fear that, should his anger again rage out of control as it has before, time and again, I will lose him to the Dark Side.

"Padme," he says, whispering the name of his love as he sleeps. I wonder if ever in my sleep my unconsciousness has betrayed me, revealing my secrets. But then, Anakin's resolve has never been as strong as mine, and perhaps that is why he has begun to give in to the Dark.

I would show him what it is to feel the Dark Side invade you and still yet come back to the light. I would force him to turn away from it.

I would change to force him to.

I shock myself when I think this, knowing that I am fully willing to embrace the Dark Side simply to prevent my Padawan from doing so.

A Very un-Jedi thought, from one who upholds all that the Jedi Order is meant to be. But then, no other Jedi Knight has had to train a Padawan who has so much riding upon his fate. If he is in fact the Chosen One, as my master so believed he was, then he must not be allowed to turn to the Dark Side.

If by force I may have him, take him and change him, I will.

If that is what I need to do, the Dark Side's will be done.

"Anakin," I say, shaking him gently, waking him from sleep and peaceful dreams of his wife, and her home on Naboo. He doesn't like the climate of that planet either. He is never happy, with his living spaces, except in the Jedi Temple. Tatooine too hot and sandy and dry, and Naboo too wet. He opens his eyes and looks at me, and they're wide and blue and I remember that I love this young man.

"Yes, Master?" he asks, his voice soft and a bit hoarse from sleep.

"We are about to arrive, my Padawan. I want you awake and alert."

I chicken out at the last moment, when I could have told him everything, told him of my love for him and my desperation to keep him from his darkening path.

Someday, though, I will tell him. Soon, I will tell him. I will turn him from the Dark Side, even if it means losing myself.