Cold fingers of guilt gripped Anakin's heart, and he wished he had sampled the drug while sober so he could have been prepared for the inevitable coming-down. Anger and hate bubbled up in him, bringing with them nausea and a despair so deep it threatened to bring him to his knees.

So this was the "crash" in "Crash and Burn."

Anakin clenched his fists, feeling his joints popping under the strain. He hated Zan Arbor for making him do this. How dare that woman give him a taste of something so wonderful, only to have it ripped away, leaving him with this – this burning hatred, this overwhelming shame. This need, this yearning, for something more.

He hated Obi-Wan. For not listening. For not understanding. For setting the bar so impossibly high that Anakin was all but destined for failure. He loathed Obi-Wan's perfection, his unerring sense of propriety, his unwavering dedication to the Code. He hated Obi-Wan for rescuing him. He could have been happy.

Most of all, though, Anakin hated himself, what he was becoming. He hated that he'd desperately excused himself from his class, only to run back to the apartment and throw his mattress to the floor through the Force, grabbing a vial and mixing it into the first liquid he came across.

Warm calm flooded his senses, and Anakin sank to the floor, head in his hands. If he had any question about the value of what he was doing, this feeling was the answer. This peace made everything all right. Everything would work out. Everything would be fine. Whatever he felt while coming down would fade away just as easily. He wasn't happy, but he was calm.

And that was a start.

--

The first thing Obi-Wan noticed when he entered the apartment was how quiet it was. Normally when Anakin was around, there was always some kind of noise: blaring music, the clattering of dishes, the various mechanical and electronic noises of whatever his new project was. Today… nothing.

He could sense Anakin's muted presence, and there were signs of him – a robe haphazardly flung over a chair, his boots beside the door, lightsaber on the kitchen table. And yet… something was wrong. Something was off.

"Anakin?" Pulling off his own robe, Obi-Wan crossed the threshold into the main living area. To his surprise, Anakin was lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling, a glass of juice on the floor beside him. At the sound of Obi-Wan's voice, the young Padawan turned his head slightly in acknowledgement, then went back to staring at the ceiling.

"Are you all right, Padawan?" Obi-Wan prompted, moving closer to the couch. He knit his brows in puzzlement, for where normally he would feel tumultuous, barely-contained emotions, there was little more than a contented hum in Anakin's Force-signature.

Anakin turned his head again and looked up at Obi-Wan with half-lidded eyes. "I'm fine, Master," he responded, and Obi-Wan realized that even Anakin's voice was different. "Stop worrying."

Somebody has to, Obi-Wan's inner voice chided before he could stop it. He had tried, these past few days – weeks, really – to keep his worry for Anakin to a minimum, to tell himself that Anakin's actions lately were perfectly understandable, given what he had been through. It would take some time to readjust to life in the Temple, to a life of emotion.

But just where were Anakin's emotions today? It was as though a blanket had been thrown over what Obi-Wan normally felt from his apprentice, with all the normal feelings still there, but… held at bay by something Obi-Wan couldn't see.

Obi-Wan perched on the arm of the couch and gazed critically at his Padawan. "Have you been working on those meditations Master Yoda suggested?" he asked, trying to illicit a sentence of more than three words.

Anakin nodded. "Yes, Master. I feel much calmer."

Four words. That was a start, at least. It seemed like lately he was counting smaller and smaller things as breakthroughs, something that both confounded and irritated Obi-Wan. Where once the prospect of Anakin mastering a new kata level filled Obi-Wan with pride, now he felt the same success if Anakin spoke to him more than twice in one day.

Part of it was probably the age, Obi-Wan had been told by the other masters. Obi-Wan remembered his own teenage years all too clearly – it wasn't as though he was so much older than Anakin that he couldn't recall how it felt to be that age. But still, it went back to the fact that Anakin was not Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan had little to go on to try and connect.

But beyond the expected difficulties that came with living with a teenager, there was something else. Something… something Obi-Wan knew he had to get to the bottom of, if he had any hopes of succeeding as Anakin's master.