Chapter Seven: Observations

"Careful."

"I am always careful."

"Padawan."

"I am almost always careful," Anakin corrected with a grin as he guided the runner through the billowing white clouds above the Selenoor Buhka landscape. Oranges and blues mingled in the high atmosphere as the small runner zipped across the world heading for the Selé capital city of Laskus. Warm sunlight cut through the gently curving cockpit window highlighting gold flecks in his sandy blond hair.

Hiiro'eza Katua gripped the edge of her seat with one hand and the long fingers of the other gripped the navigational station. She closed her eyes so she would not be witness to them flying into the side of a mountain. "You do realize we are approaching Mount Reiki."

"It is a very large chunk of rock, Master," Anakin said lightly as his fingers danced over the myriad controls, smoothly guiding the craft along the flight path. "I can hardly miss it."

"That was what you said on Pravaka Prime."

"That was a slight miscalculation."

"Try not to have a miscalculation here."

"Trust me, my Master, I don't want to spend anymore time here than I have too."

The remark caught Hiiro's attention, causing her to look up. Her black eyes focused on her young padawan. The training bond was open but she could sense his glib attitude was all masking. She did not like it when he hid his emotions from her, unfortunately he did it often and she did not know how to get him to cope with the turmoil inside.

Hiiro watched as her padawan's frenetic movements slowed as the ship cruised toward the capital city. This moment of peace also revealed the small manifestations of uncontrolled emotions still welling within the eighteen-year-old. His right hand tightened into a fist then relaxed only to be repeated.

Sighing inwardly, she doubted the anger inside would ever be completely tamed. The Isa'rui master also confronted the deep down truth that if it were not for a tragedy that had so humbled him, even she may not have been able to adequately train him. There were things he still clung to from his childhood on Tatooine that blocked him from ever knowing true inner peace. That, coupled with his guilt was a great burden on the youth.

Yet, the guilt was something he would just have to live with until he accepted it and was able to move on. She could not ease it by telling him it was not his fault. He had allowed his emotions to overcome him and he had blatantly disobeyed an order most initiates would have remained steadfast too.

The investigation on the mission had given her the truth and surprisingly it was quite accurate to Anakin's version of events. That had always surprised her. Most would pass the blame or disregard what did not fit, but Anakin took it all on himself and rightly so.

Still, even though he had learned from the event, he had never moved on.

That meddling Council and their so-called wisdom

She sighed and dampened the thought. There would be plenty of time to analyze in depth the details of that thought later.

Quietly turning her focus to the young man, Hiiro could hardly believe he was the boy she had met all those years ago in the healing center. He had seemed so small and fragile back then.

The Council had called her home from a mission halfway across the galaxy telling her she had a potential student. She never liked it when they thought them selves so mighty to dictate who she trained. Padawans were chosen only after months of evaluation and study. She would meet with the troubled youths and determine what it would take to put them on the right track to becoming proper Jedi knights and if it could be done.

Master Hiiro'eza had refused to train more potential students than she had years and at nearly a hundred and fifty, she had plenty of years. She was proud of the four whose lives she had intervened in and brought to knighthood. But in obedience to the Council's wish, she came to see the boy.

There had been rumbling about the Skywalker boy, she was not deaf to the whispers amongst the Jedi. He was special. That would not affect her judgment and it did not.

Mace Windu had briefed her on the situation, a mission gone wrong, an ambush and an orphaned padawan. When she had asked about the young master, Mace simply said he was gone.

The boy had been crushed under a wall alongside his master. Shattered bones, head and back injuries read like a shopping list. The Senebrak healers had done wonders to heal the body but they could do little with the mind.

A powerful yet frightened and disoriented child had awoken to discover the pain of having his training bond cruelly severed and his master gone. He had fought the caregivers and in a terror filled fit, thrown beings and objects around the room. All the healers could do was sedate him. The Jedi medics that brought the boy back to the Temple had adhered to the same philosophy, wishing his body would heal before they faced the daunting task of dealing with grief and a torn training bond.

That was where she entered the picture. She could bond with the sleeping mind of young Anakin and ease him back into his now upside down world.

Hiiro spent days at the eleven-year-old's bedside, mulling over whether or not to bond herself with the boy and as such become his new master, reading progress reports, mission reports, speaking with those who had some contact with the boy before that last mission. What she found was that there was a common feeling of a greater loss of the young knight than emotion toward Anakin. He was an afterthought.

Yet through observations of others as well as the young master's own words in training notes, there was affection. It was very clear that even though it was a forced bond, Kenobi thought well of the boy and certainly tried to do what was best for him. There was obvious inexperience on the young master's part but that would be expected of any new teacher let alone one forced into training a child from the wilds of Tatooine. It was an unorthodox pairing to say the least and the Council should never have allowed it. There were plenty of qualified masters about who could have taken on the youth after he was initiated into the communal life of all Temple younglings. It would have given the boy an opportunity to slowly adjust among agemates and learn from their common experience.

Whereas this time could have offered young Kenobi room to grow into knighthood. From the reports she read, for all intents and purposes, he was still a padawan in knight's clothing. It was a difficult thing to transition from padawan to knight in the best of circumstances but to be forced into it was a tragedy in the making. She had seen the adverse affect of early promotion before and always felt sorry to those whom it had been bestowed upon.

Worse, she was convinced, to have gone from padawan to master in the skip of a heartbeat would be devastating.

For some reason and only the Force knew for sure, she remained at the boy's bedside contemplating taking him as her padawan learner. Not even firmly convinced that he could be brought to knighthood, she reached out and found a willing mind, grasping desperately to fix the shattered bond. Never once in the years since had she regretted it.