Blah blah blah, this chapter is driving me MAD! Love Anakin though I do, I want to get back to the Obi-Wan of Sexiness. Mrrrow! Hope the quality of this chapter didn't suffer too much as a result of that….
Disclaimer: You all know the drill by now, I'm sure! Don't own a thing, except for the plot!
Chapter 3: Anakin Skywalker
"Do not judge the Gods… they have painful secrets."
Jean-Paul Sartre
His worst fear is, and always has been, the fear of being left alone. It is in the darkness that this apprehension returns to him, forcing him to turn and face it, as a young boy will stand and yell loudly at the source of his terrors, if only to prove that he's brave. Inside, the fear still remains, still lingers, waiting for its moment to return. Anakin's passion for flight among the stars is his defiant scream at the old panic, the denial of the deepest darkness of the far reaches of space.
But he has always had Obi-Wan by his side.
The dichotomy of his relationship to the Jedi Master is frustrating, a thing more complex than what he would care to analyze. He resents his Master, sometimes. He loves Obi-Wan always.
Not that he would ever tell him that.
It's not as if he intentionally defies his Masters, although he knows full well that he is held up as a good example of a bad example for the younglings of the Temple. In point of fact, he hates to disappoint Obi-Wan, hates to see the sadness and anger clouding his Master's clear blue eyes. He just always seems to do the wrong thing at the wrong moment. He has an impeccable sense of timing, impeccable in the sense that it has never once failed to get him into trouble, to incite him into doing something that Obi-Wan would describe as 'completely irresponsible.'
Obi-Wan had said it so many times throughout his training that Anakin had started to imitate his Master whenever that particular reprimand came up, mouthing the words along whenever he knew Obi-Wan wasn't looking. Obi-Wan had a frown to fit each individual occasion; number 11, trying-to-be-stern-while-about-to-pass-out-due-to-Padawan's-stupidity was one of the most frequently used, it seemed, right after number 4, which was employed around all modes of interstellar transportation.Anakin didn't know why he had gotten such a rush out of teasing the older Jedi behind his back, all he remembered was that the day of reckoning had been extraordinarily painful – Obi-Wan was better than any of the other Jedi Masters when it came to giving a lecture.
Because he knew Anakin best, and still does. Just as Anakin knows him.
Obi-Wan would scowl and lecture and preach, but sometimes Anakin would catch the tightness at the corners of his mouth, as though his Master was trying desperately not to laugh. Far beneath that reserved surface – so far that even a Corellian mining industry would be hard-pressed to find it – Anakin knows that his Master is just as passionate as he is. Obi-Wan didn't reveal that side of himself to many people. It was those rare glimpses into that secretly guarded part of Obi-Wan, the part that few others ever got to see, that made Anakin revere him completely. They were what had made Anakin start to fall in love.
Anakin had seen the relationships between many Master-Padawan teams while growing up in the Temple, and, like any child, had often whined and moaned about how mean Obi-Wan was, how unfair, and how he wished that he had any other Master.
He knows better now. He knows that he has grown up under Master Kenobi's tutelage, even though it came damn near to killing both of them. He knows that he would never trade the connection they have for anything in the world. Obi-Wan Kenobi is Anakin's partner, his friend and Master, and the best thing that ever happened to him.
Which is why Anakin actually listens to him.
Well, most of the time. He's not a child anymore, after all.
When he was a child, he had been afraid of the dark, scared of his sudden reversal in fortune that had landed him a place as the Padawan of a rather grumpy Jedi Knight. Alone and scared, he would creep from the bed in his room and scamper over to Obi-Wan's room. He had intended, the first time, just to listen to the older Jedi's breathing, but he had ended up wriggling under the blankets to cling to the sleeping man's side. Pressing his cold feet against Obi-Wan's warm skin had obviously been a mistake… Anakin had never heard anyone yell so loudly in his life.
Still, he never once had reprimanded Anakin, had never once irately told him to get the hell out and go back to bed. He would merely sigh, that long-suffering sigh that Anakin came to know so well as his apprentice, flip back the covers, and let the boy curl up in his bed while he dozed in a chair.
Anakin had stopped going there after a few months, of course. He had wanted to be brave, to force Obi-Wan to be pleased with him. But, by the Force, had he always felt safe in that room. Knowing that his Master was near.
That emotion is something he has never really grown out of, a lingering feeling of vague dependency. That is why he increasingly pushes Obi-Wan away as he matures, as an assertion of his own independence, a hollow mask behind which he can hide his desperate attachment. He defies his Master's orders and those of the Council, openly and covertly, follows his heart more than his rational mind, and emphatically blazes his own trail through the galaxy. He refuses to walk in anyone's footsteps; to cower in anyone's shadow.
He wants to be able to gaze at Obi-Wan as an equal, craves the warm rush of approval through their Force-bond, symbol of his Master's regard.
He is told that he is the Chosen One, the culmination of a thousand generations of Jedi Lore. That so much rides on his shoulders, and he should behave more accordingly.
He's never felt like the hero from a legend, they were always brave, confident. They were always able to save the ones they loved. He knows that he is unable to do the same, and it eats away at him inside. He lost his mother because of that inability. He looks at Obi-Wan, and remembers the times that Death has come too close. Wondering when their luck will finally run out, when he will arrive too late to save the man who means the galaxy to him. He fears that it is only a matter of time.
He doesn't know what Obi-Wan thinks of the Prophecy, doesn't know what lies behind those calculating azure eyes when his Master regards him in silence. Anakin hopes Obi-Wan doesn't believe it, that his Master respects him for his deeds alone, rather than some intangible destiny laid on him before he knew anything about the Jedi. He hopes Obi-Wan does believe it, because he wants his Master to regard him as unique. As something special.
He worries that Obi-Wan regrets taking him as his Padawan. Even though they're still partners, long after both of them should have moved on.
Anakin is a hero renowned throughout the Galaxy for his brave deeds. He is the strongest, the fastest, and the most powerful of all the Jedi, the quintessential Knight of the Order. However, the title that he claims most proudly is that Obi-Wan Kenobi was his Master.
And yet he still wishes he were a child, so that he could crawl back into that bed, and fall asleep secure in the knowledge that Obi-Wan would watch over him as he slept. Adults don't have the luxury of untroubled sleep. Jedi Knights do not long for the past: they live in the moment, they look to the future.
They do not mourn their comrades.
"NO!" Anakin heard the scream tear itself lose from his throat, the raw disbelief that scratched and tore its way inside him. The explosion had been substantial, the little battered old craft that Obi-Wan, in his pedantic way, had insisted on piloting nearly decimated.
All because of him.
They had been flying so beautifully together, and he had gotten the old geezer to relax for once. Anakin was certain that Obi-Wan would learn to love flying if he just gave it a chance. There was something so powerful about it, something indescribably sensuous. Feeling like there was nothing in the world beyond the enemies at hand, and the security of a wing-mate to guard your back. It was a dance of thought and action, of human reflexes and technology's responses.
But he had had to take that chance, had pushed his limits too far. It was an essential quality in a Knight, Anakin had found, to know just where the boundaries of his luck were. Where his good fortune would, inevitably, run out. He had pushed so far, confident in his own abilities, that he hadn't wondered how lucky Master Kenobi was.
And his Master had paid the price for it. No being that wasn't a Jedi could hope to survive a crash in a ship damaged that badly, and even a Jedi could be wounded beyond the healing abilities of a bacta tank.
But his Master's last thought had only been for the mission. As if he wouldn't follow orders, without Obi-Wan there to watch him.
Do your duty, Anakin. Rescue…on the ship…the Council….
Oh yes, the old farts on Coruscant would love another chance to get at him, to reprimand and humiliate him before their flat, uncaring eyes. Never mind that if he chose to disobey, it could mean Obi-Wan's life. Never mind that they needed all the Jedi in the Order to be in fighting condition, and that Obi-Wan Kenobi was the best Knight of them all. He wasn't even a Jedi Master yet, and he was smarter than Yoda, braver than Windu…
…and had given his former Padawan a direct order. One that he wanted so desperately to ignore.
"You stupid bastard," he whispered, slamming one hand down on the controls of his ship. "You bastard."
Because he couldn't disobey. Either his Master was unconscious or dead, but Anakin couldn't sense him through their Force-bond. If it was the former of the two, and Anakin showed up to rescue him without first completing his mission objective, Obi-Wan would be severely disappointed in him.
And if it was the latter, then he was already too late to save his Master and friend. And if the one he was supposed to rescue died as well…he would have failed Obi-Wan utterly, rendered his sacrifice completely useless.
Anakin hated it when Obi-Wan was right. He had to think of his duty.
There were tears in his eyes as he turned back to the fight, tears that slowly were consumed in the fires of his anger. He would make it to the ship, and he would rescue whoever they were here to find.
And he would kill every single thing, be it man, woman, or droid, that tried to stop him from getting there.
Time slowed down as to be almost motionlessness, his hands whispering across the controls of his starfighter like a dream. R2's beeping and whistled reports came from far away, far beyond his ability to care. The second wave of droid ships was chasing him, and he piloted his craft through the lethargic moments across the hull of the battle cruiser, leading them on a merry chase.
Much to R2D2's dismay, he blocked the droid from firing their blasters at his pursuers, focusing solely on dodging the obstacles ahead and the enemy fire from behind. The massive plasma rifles on the cruiser began to fire on him as well, and he swung the little craft left then right, spinning it end over end in lazy spirals. The missiles impacted on the cloud of droid ships behind him, but the Separatists didn't care about a few destroyed droids. They cared about capturing and killing this Jedi. Or just the latter of the two, if needs be.
Droids are not creative thinkers. They do not have the ability to reason, to wonder, or to improvise, as the Clone Troopers that the Republic used in battle did. Only their sheer weight of numbers allowed them to take so many planets, so many systems. Droids are not stupid, they just cannot think.
So when the droid ships' blaster-fire began impacting on the cruiser's hull, the computer system controlling the shields and cannons began to wonder why.
When the droid ships were continually hit with cannon fire from their own mother ship while their target escaped unscathed, there was only one conclusion for the algorithms to draw.
Anakin left them to discuss their conflict of interest, wrenching his ship upwards out of the increasing storm of a firefight. They wouldn't come close to destroying each other; they were only momentarily thrown by their apparent lack of both target and allies. Soon enough, the mother computer would override the droid ship's programmed response, and all Sith Hell would break loose for him again.
But it gave him time to get under cover.
The firefight also gave ample cover for a single droid ship, controlled by a different program all together, to slip away unnoticed from the battle site.
Dodging into the lee side of the ship, Anakin cut all power to his engines, guiding the ship in through the Force and the residual momentum, slipping through a closing docking-bay before the entrance shield could be reactivated. No one noticed him arrive.
That was worrying.
Anakin dismissed the thought, remembering how much he would tease Obi-Wan for constantly feeling ill-at-ease on their missions if everything was going well. Sometimes, that's just the way things were.
"Master, when the food hall is out of chocolate, you get a bad feeling. This is nothing to worry about. Remember it's good when things go well."
"I mistrust missions that turn out to be too easy."
"That's because you're a masochist, Master. Relax!"
That was, of course, when the concealed droidekas started to fore on them.
The faint smile at that reminiscence faded as swiftly as it had appeared, like a cloud passing over the face of the sun. He couldn't afford to think of Obi-Wan right now. He would only start to worry if he did that….
Slipping from the docking bay was almost painfully simple – there seemed to only have been a skeleton crew of battle droids left behind to guard the ships and mind the bridge. Anakin saw them as he snuck past open doorways and along corridors, using the Force to mask his presence, to distract those few droids who almost met up with him.
Pausing in an alcove, Anakin stretched out with his senses, feeling for the right direction. Force, but he wanted to seek out Obi-Wan instead, but he ignored that impulse, slowing down his breathing and trying to focus. Concentrate. Be mindful of the vagaries of the Living Force, where it converges, and where it has been disrupted.
(Help me, please!)
There!
The voice had crashed into his barriers, like an unskilled Force-user would do when in pain. Untrained, without any barriers or restraints on their skills. They could be highly dangerous to deal with, to both friends and enemies alike; they simply could not control their power.
Anakin was suddenly glad that he had been the one to tackle the spaceship. Obi-Wan wasn't as powerful as he was when it came to matters of the Force, no Jedi possessed the same raw output of power that Anakin had. His Master's connection to that current of power was dexterous, subtle in its intensity. When they meditated together, Anakin felt the flow of it like a river through his Master's mind, constantly seeking out new routes, new solutions. For his part, well…Obi-Wan had frequently described touching Anakin's mind as being 'walloped by a tidal wave of the Force'. Obi-Wan had more restraint… and he was too kind. He would let the raw, untrained power of the woman they were supposed to be rescuing flood his barriers and overwhelm him before he took any kind of action against her.
Anakin had no such finer feelings – he would knock the woman out if he had to, to silence the distracting ripples in the Force. If it meant both of their survival, he wouldn't give a damn what she thought of him for that.
Or what Obi-Wan would think of him for that. His Master could be so frustratingly… chivalrous, even if it was to his and Anakin's detriment.
The sound had come from roughly above him. A few floors up on this Sith-cursed vessel.
Anakin growled in irritation, hating every moment that he lost. Angrily, he activated the com-link to his ship. "R2, do you copy? Come in, R2…"
A series of cheerful whistles and beeps came back to him. Anakin frowned; it was harder to decipher what the little astromech was saying over the frequency.
"R2, I need you to hack into the mainframe computer, and find out what level the holding cells are on. Specifically, any and all prisoners associated with the planet Veenat-III."
He hesitated a moment, tapping one foot impatiently, peering down the hallway to ensure that he was still alone.
"R2? Hurry it up, would you?"
The beeps that came back did not need translation. Anakin wondered idly where his mech had picked up such language. Certainly not from Padmé, she would have had his circuits scrubbed out with diesel oil if she could have translated the astromech's cursing.
The thought of his wife for once didn't bring a smile to his face. The tail end of that realization struck him as momentarily odd, but it was forgotten as coordinates began to be transmitted through the comlink.
"Thanks R2," he whispered, in a semi-apology for his impatience. Now that he knew where he was supposed to go, he could get in, grab the girl, and get out. Pick up Obi-Wan on the way back to their spaceship, and get the hell home to Coruscant.
Plain and simple. Just the way he liked things.
-----
Sidious activated the comlink to see an impassive battle-droid face, created in perfect miniature and bathed in blue light, staring up at him.
"The Jedi has landed aboard the ship."
Palpatine raised one eyebrow slowly. "Only one?"
"Roger roger. The other fighter was shot down."
Sidious allowed himself the luxury of a smile, a horrible parody devoid of any warmth whatsoever. "Excellent. And is the rest of the plan in place?"
"Roger. BD143-67 was dispatched as per orders."
Sidious deactivated the comlink and leant back in his chair, highly pleased with himself. Politics was just a game of power after all, and power was something he had in abundance. It also required an ability to know one's enemy better than he knew himself… and the Jedi had proved as predictable as always. They had taken the bait, and walked right in, blinded by their misguided virtues of honour and duty.
Sidious wanted to cackle happily, or rub his hands together in wicked glee, but satisfied himself instead by indulging in another smirk.
Now all he had to do was wait for the jaws of the trap to spring shut.
----
"Bloody Sith Hell!" Anakin cursed inwardly for the umpteenth time. The corridors were like a maze, he could have sworn that he had passed the same elevator shaft twice already. He double checked the coordinates on his wrist com, realizing with some relief that he was, in fact, headed the right way. The ship had obviously been designed to keep interlopers like himself out; they would wander around in hopeless confusion until they were caught.
If R2 had found the right cell block, then it should be just around this corner….
There was a vague, nagging sensation in the Force. Not of any immediate danger, nothing to make Anakin whip out the lightsaber that hung by his side, always close to hand. But there was something… unsettled. An irritating buzz that vibrated through him, distracting, nagging, worrying. Anakin dismissed the warning – he was on an enemy ship, for Sith's sake, of course there was going to be the faint buzz of danger. There was nothing to worry him for the immediate moment, and it was in the immediate moment that he preferred to stay.
The future held far too many difficult decisions.
Padmé.
Obi-Wan.
Anakin sighed, pushing those thoughts aside as he slid around the corner, back pressed against the slick durasteel wall. There were only two humanoids on duty – the first actual life forms that Anakin had seen on the ship. They looked bored already, he noted with a smile. That would make implanting a Force-suggestion into their malleable minds that much easier.
Abandoning pretence, Anakin strode forward to the console where the two sentients sat staring into space. As they started in surprise, he smiled disarmingly, waving his black-gloved right hand.
"There is no danger here. Relax," he instructed in a soothing voice, nudging the Force to influence their minds.
"There is no danger here…" one of the two men repeated slowly, as though unsure.
"Relax." Anakin affirmed, making a subtle gesture with his hand. "You've done well. Now you can get some rest."
"Now we can get some... rest…"
Anakin suppressed a growl of frustration. It would take far too long to send them into a proper sleep. He was too impatient to wait for that, there had to be another way of doing this. Something that even Obi-Wan would approve of….
Maintaining the same benevolent expression, Anakin increased the power of the Force-suggestion, holding his slack-jawed audience at rapt attention. Never letting their eyes stray from his, he deftly waved his left hand at his side, the movement concealed by his cloak.
The guard's blasters rose slowly into the air behind their heads.
"You're going to go to sleep now."
"We're going to go to..."
Anakin let the weapons fall, the heavy metallic alloy striking the two men on their heads and knocking them into unconsciousness. Anakin couldn't hold back his grin. Fast, easy, and effective….
Calling the data pad of the older guard to his hand, Anakin scanned the cell-release codes. Only one of the cells indicated that it was occupied. Well, that certainly narrowed the search down. He would be out of here and down to Veenat-III in no time.
(I'm coming Master. I'll be with you soon. I promise.)
There was a faint answer of… despair? It was muted over the long distance, but it made Anakin frown slightly, wondering at its source. No doubt Obi-Wan was chagrined at having to be rescued yet again by his Padawan. Anakin imagined their meeting with a faint smile. Soon enough. He would be there soon enough.
Even the best of Jedi can be lousy at divination.
Well, sorry that this took so long to put together, and once again, the chapter ends long before I had originally intended. Well, we'll rejoin Anakin and his rescue mission sometime in the next instalment (I hope?) I just liked that last line too much to continue beyond that point – makes for a pretty good cliff-hanger, don't you think?
This story seems to be progressing at a snail's pace. Sorry, sorry, sorry! It will pay off later though, I promise!
Xtine
