The night of Qui-Gon's funeral was hard on all of them. Obi-Wan was hardly conscious of where they were going as a royal guard led Obi-Wan and Anakin from the funeral temple back into the palace proper, her path taking them up several levels from the entrance hall.
Obi-Wan's thoughts were murky at best and the only thing tethering him to reality was his self-appointed task of keeping track of Anakin. The boy was clammy and shaken by the funeral and hung close to the older boy's side. In silence, the two trudged after their chaperone through a maze of elegant stairways and halls, until at last, the woman came to a stop in front of a set of richly decorated double doors seemingly in a random section of the hall they stood in.
Obi-Wan stopped nearly a full second after the woman did, distracted. Anakin failed to notice in time to stop at all and bumped into the older boy's hip instead, Anakin bouncing off a step or two backward, dazed. If the royal guard noticed their inattention, she didn't say anything, merely nodded respectfully at the haggard duo.
"Your lodgings, Knight Kenobi. Mister Skywalker," she said with a respectful bow. "Queen Amidala has set aside these apartments in the royal wing for your use specifically. They are yours to use as you see fit for the duration of your stay in Theed Royal Palace."
Obi-Wan struggled to process her words but eventually nodded. His thoughts were moving slowly as though crawling through viscous bacta, sans the part where it fixed the circuits in his brain that were surely fried.
The guard nodded, shifting a bit on her feet as if uncertain what to make of his lack of enthusiasm. "Queen Amidala also asks that you need not limit your stay for any length of time—whether or not you'll be departing with the remaining Jedi for Coruscant when the time comes," she continued, "the court of Amidala extends to you two heroes of Naboo a permanent residence inside these walls, so long as Her Highness remains in office."
Obi-Wan might have balked merely a day ago, at the prospect of not returning to the Jedi Temple with the other Masters that had come to Naboo to attend Master Qui-Gon's funeral. Now, though, with the words of Grand Master Yoda echoing hollowly in Obi-Wan's memory from earlier in the afternoon, he could only swallow back a lump in his throat and nod in silence.
"…We thank the queen for her kindness," he croaked.
Anakin looked up at him then, the boy's gaze anxious and questioning. Obi-Wan forced himself to look at him.
What will happen to me now?
The Council has not granted me permission, but I will train you. You will be a Jedi. I promise.
Obi-Wan swallowed again. "Come on, then," he said to Anakin, perhaps more gruffly than intended, before leading the boy by the shoulder into the quarters provided with a final nod to the guard Amidala had sent. The woman nodded back and began her descent back down the hall.
—
The apartment was lavishly decorated, fit for a palace on a planet like Naboo where everything was created artistry in mind. However, the rich, complementary colors that went into every linen and stitch of upholstery, not to mention the beautiful art pieces adorning the walls, were wasted on Obi-Wan. He had seen his share of lavish rooms before, traveling on diplomatic missions as Qui-Gon's Padawan, and even the thought of Obi-Wan's former Master drove away any inkling in his mind to spend time pondering difference between this place and their spartan quarters at the Temple in Coruscant.
Moreover, the Padawan—no, Knight, he was knighted now, for all that it meant, Obi-Wan reflected wearily—was far too tired to care about anything but a desperate desire to drop into the nearest of the two colossal beds in the bedroom suite and be dead to the world for at least a week.
Unfortunately, doing exactly that wasn't an option. Abandoning the Jedi Order was not how Obi-Wan had wanted to spend the last precious hours leading up to Qui-Gon's funeral, but abandon it Obi-Wan had. Perhaps the man would be proud—Obi-Wan was his Master's Padawan to the last.
But what that meant now was that Anakin Skywalker was firmly Obi-Wan's responsibility.
And Anakin Skywalker looked like a mess. The boy hadn't moved since Obi-Wan ushered him into the room. The child stood stock-still in the middle of the floor with unfocused eyes, arms wrapped around himself and shivering hard.
Obi-Wan's first, delayed thought was that maybe he ought to get the kid in bed. Anakin looked cold.
Then a faint, acrid scent brought Obi-Wan a bit out of his stupor and helped focus his thoughts. Smoke. Not from a fire, here in the palace, but—a lingering smell, on their clothes from the ritual funeral pyre at the temple. He and Anakin both smelled of smoke from Qui-Gon's funeral pyre.
Well, that was a morbid thought. Obi-Wan sighed and rolled his shoulders, then glanced to Anakin.
"We should clean ourselves up before we go to sleep," Obi-Wan told the boy wearily.
Anakin glanced up at him. The boy was glassy-eyed and unfocused. "Huh?" he asked.
"I said, we should shower before we go to sleep," Obi-Wan repeated patiently. "Do you want to go first, or should I?"
He gestured toward the refresher attached to the side of their shared bedroom in the suite. Anakin followed his gaze, then blinked, looking surprised.
"A refresher?" he asked. "In here?"
Obi-Wan knew if he had the energy for it, he'd be losing patience with how slow Anakin was being on the uptake. At the moment, though, all the young Knight could feel was an exhaustion that gave him a sense of near-resignation.
"Yes," Obi-Wan said. "In here. These quarters are private, it makes sense that we would have our own refresher."
Anakin nodded. "Well, yeah, a refresher," he mumbled. "But, like, with its own sonic and everything…"
Maybe that seemed extravagant to Anakin—which made sense, given where he was from—but Obi-Wan gently corrected the train of thought a bit further.
"Actually, I'd bet it's a real shower, not a sonic. Scratch that, I'm positive," he said to Anakin. "This planet has plenty of water." And Theed Royal Palace was far too opulent for sonics. A place like this would consider the use of them outright insulting in a building meant for royalty. Obi-Wan would bet that none of the houses in Theed, probably even on Naboo itself, used sonic showers.
By the look on Anakin's face, this obviously had not occurred to him. The boy was pale.
"Real showers?" he repeated, his voice high. "With, like… running water? To get cleaned up with?"
Obi-Wan nodded again. He was struck by the thought of how miserable a planet like Tatooine must be, where every drop of water was scarce enough to merit its own transaction. He'd overheard a bit about the moisture farms that sustained the population and wasn't envious of the lifestyle it implied, especially for people living in slave quarters where they couldn't even allocate their own rations.
"I take it that means you'll want to go first?" he asked, pushing down a selfish bit of exhaustion that rose up at the thought.
Anakin looked at him. "Me?" he said shakily, then shook his head. "I don't need a shower. Honest. I used the sonic at home less than a week ago."
A week. Obi-Wan winced. He tried to imagine how much sand a body could accumulate in a full week on Tatooine, where even the short distances Obi-Wan had traveled from the ship left his clothes a dusty mess. He wondered if the sonics available to slaves on the desert planet were placed within individual dwellings, or communally shared—or cleaned, ever. "I'm afraid you do need to take a shower, Padawan," he said, shaking his head. "Part of being a Jedi means taking care of yourself." Obi-Wan had said as much, before, during the doctor's visit Anakin had been compelled to attend (as had the rest of the fighters and participants) after the recent battle for Naboo, per the wishes of the royal court. But Obi-Wan pressed the issue further now, elaborating, "And that includes keeping yourself clean. Otherwise, you get sick more often, and wounds become infected."
Like the ones the healer had already treated Anakin for: truly sickening marks from what looked like the lash of a whip. There had also been wounds the doctor had surmised were caused by blunt force trauma, such as a beating, in more places than Obi-Wan cared to remember.
There would also have to be several procedures done in the future to realign broken bones that had been improperly set in the past and not healed right. But with so many Naboo and Gungans injured in the fight to retake the planet, Anakin's lesser wounds hadn't been placed on the medics' list for priority treatment.
"Speaking of which," Obi-Wan said as these thoughts turned over in his head, "this will be a good opportunity to change your bandages once you're finished." Along with the pairs of nightclothes and extra outfit apiece laid out on the separate beds roughly matching his and Anakin's sizes, Obi-Wan could see a medical kit placed neatly on the bedside table facing the refresher. Padmé's people must have thought of that earlier, and Obi-Wan was grateful.
It was difficult, slipping out of the mindset of needing to worry only for his and Master Qui-Gon's physical well-being. The thought stung, but Obi-Wan took a deep breath and tried to push the fresh wave of grief into the Force. It wasn't the point, anyway. The point was that he needed to be concerned with caring for Anakin, who was gifted in many arenas but altogether too young to care for himself.
As if to prove Obi-Wan's point, Anakin's face twisted in displeasure. "I don't want to," he said.
Obi-Wan's years of training in emotional composure kept him from rolling his eyes or snapping out a retort. But it was a near thing. He was tired, and this was wasting time.
"This is not up for debate," he said. "Go into the refresher, and get in the shower, now. Or the bath, if one's been provided. I don't care which you choose, but you can't go to bed smelling like smoke and covered in the same muck we've been running around in the past three days."
Anakin grimaced and shook his head, but it looked to be a gesture more of frustration than outright refusal. "Can I at least keep my clothes on?" he asked, his voice pitched high with desperation.
Obi-Wan almost spluttered at the request. "What? No!" he said, aghast. "Of course not, Anakin. How would you even get clean like that, those clothes are dirtier than you are! No. The whole point of bathing is to wash your skin beneath the bandages so your infections don't get worse." The young man sighed in frustration, shaking his head. "Just take everything off and get in the shower. If you're quick it will only take a few minutes."
Anakin's expressions shifted. The look he gave Obi-Wan was difficult to read, but the boy was certainly the furthest thing from pleased.
"I already had to take my clothes off for the stupid doctor," the boy argued, sounding on the precipice of a full-blown tantrum, "and he put all that cleaning stuff on my skin before he wrapped it up. Why are you making me do it again!"
"Disinfecting wounds to clean them is not the same as actually scrubbing yourself off in a real shower, Padawan," Obi-Wan said with a disapproving glare. He approached Anakin and took advantage of their height difference to faintly loom over the small boy, and Obi-Wan's brought up his hands to plant on his hips. His patience was worn dangerously thin by exhaustion and battle-fatigue; and his composure, usually something Obi-Wan prided himself on, was frayed to its lowest threshold with the grief he felt at the ceremony given no room to breathe in the face of Anakin's childish refusal.
In short, Obi-Wan was at his limit with this conversation. The resistance he was facing for what should have been a simple demand was frankly ridiculous, and he no longer had a reason not to make his displeasure known.
"Now, are you going to go into the refresher and take a shower?" he demanded peevishly. Anakin took a step back from him, eyes wide, and Obi-Wan followed with a step forward of his own to keep the distance closed. "Or am I going to have to drag you in there myself while you kick and scream like a feral tooka-kitten?"
Anakin kept backing away, until he hit the wall behind him, stiffening in shock with a jerking look of dismay behind him as he clearly hadn't anticipated being cut short. His eyes darted around the bedroom and then back to Obi-Wan, panic beginning to bleed through in Anakin's body language as he finally met the elder's gaze. Anakin's pupils had dilated and his breaths grew shallow, the boy grasping at the wall behind him with splayed fingers in jerky, uncertain movements. His knees braced as if to run but they'd begun shaking so badly there was little chance his legs would carry him if he attempted to bolt.
"…O-bi-Wa-an?" Anakin asked finally, his voice coming out as a shaky whimper. The boy's arms pulled away from the wall behind him and wound around his own body protectively, shaking hard from head to toe.
Obi-Wan stopped dead. His anger fled him, replaced by concern and dread. If the obvious terror in Anakin's behavior wasn't disturbing enough, the young Knight could feel the panic and adrenaline rolling off his new apprentice through the Force, so powerful as to nearly be suffocating for the young child.
"Anakin?" Obi-Wan asked, worry replacing all his pent-up ire in an instant. He quickly knelt down to be closer to the boy's eye level and reached out a hand, trying to placate his fears. "What's the matter? Did I say something to frighten you?"
That had not been Obi-Wan's intention—the furthest thing from it. Certainly, he'd have liked to get Anakin to listen to Obi-Wan's instructions, and he wasn't beyond using a touch of authoritatively based intimidation in his wording to achieve those ends.
But to be greeted with outright fear in answer was a signal that Obi-Wan had made a grave misstep. His stomach plummeted. Obi-Wan was horrified to the center of his very being at the prospect of his own apprentice, hardly more than a youngling, regarding Obi-Wan with genuine fear as if Obi-Wan was a threat, not a person Anakin could trust.
"…Anakin?" Obi-Wan asked again, voice softer this time as he laid his hand on the boy's shoulder. Anakin looked at Obi-Wan's hand resting there, then back to Obi-Wan's face. The boy's expression was still wild-eyed and his breathing shallow.
He jerked his gaze away, staring at the opposite far wall instead of at Obi-Wan.
"Shower," Anakin finally said, sounding near to stammer over his own tongue. "I'm—I'll go. Don't have to– Don't– …I'll go. M-Master."
Obi-Wan blinked, uncertain how to process this. But slowly, he nodded, pulling his hand back from Anakin's shoulder. "You'll be all right?" he asked cautiously, searching the boy's face. "Do you need me to he–"
"No!" The word was spoken with such vehemence that Obi-Wan started, and when Anakin darted past him into the refresher Obi-Wan was too taken aback to react in time to stop him. There was the sound of a fist slamming against the wall inside and the door to the refresher slid shut, and Obi-Wan was left staring at the closed door in absolute bewilderment.
There was nothing left to do for now besides wait for Anakin to finish, however. It was a few minutes before Obi-Wan heard the water turn on, and the sound of the shower spray was accompanied by a high-pitched yelp that in other circumstances, might have been comical.
But with all that had happened, all Obi-Wan could feel as he glanced to the closed refresher was a worried sense about him that had nothing to do with the currents of the surrounding Force.
—
The water had barely run for two minutes—and Obi-Wan still glancing over the clothes the palace staff had left for him to wear over the coming night and day—when he heard the spray turn off, to his surprise. It was another minute or so before Anakin emerged from the refresher in a chattering bundle wrapped up in a towel that dwarfed him to such a degree that Obi-Wan almost didn't notice at first that the boy's filthy rags he'd been wearing before the bath were on beneath them.
Obi-Wan's eyes widened as he glanced Anakin over, watching more carefully than he might have if not for the incident before Anakin locked himself in the refresher to take his shower. "Anakin," he started slowly, and the boy bristled.
"What? I took a shower like you said!" the boy said, petulantly, eyes red-rimmed now and thin body shivering all over. Even with the towel wrapped around himself Anakin was clearly freezing, his teeth chattered as he tried to warm himself through his damp clothes by curling in on himself where he stood. "What is it now?"
Obi-Wan was already shaking his head, approaching to lift the towel partially from where it was pulled around Anakin's shoulders. "Your hair isn't even all the way wet," he noted, reaching a hand up to card through the half-wet strands plastered to Anakin's forehead. Obi-Wan frowned. "Did you wash it?"
"Wash what?"
"Your hair," Obi-Wan said, too puzzled to be irritated by the half-wet mop of hair on the boy's head, which clearly had not been thoroughly rinsed let alone washed. And what part of Obi-Wan's meaning hadn't been clear?
There was a pregnant pause. "I took a shower," Anakin said defensively in reply, stubbornly.
Something wasn't quite right in that answer. Why, for example, was Obi-Wan getting such an uncertain reading from Anakin across the Force, like the boy didn't understand what it was he was answering? Almost as if he was just trying to say something that would pass inspection to Obi-Wan's satisfaction, but it was an inspection Obi-Wan was completely clueless of.
"There's no way you were able to wash your hair without getting it wet all the way," he told Anakin reasonably. "Plus, why did you put your dirty clothes back on? I can't bandage you if you've already gotten dirt in the wounds again. Go on and get back in the shower again, you need to wash a bit more thoroughly this time."
Anakin looked at Obi-Wan as if about to burst into tears.
"Again?" he asked, his voice high and cracking. "I can't—but I already took a shower!"
"But you didn't get all the way clean," Obi-Wan said, bemused. "I know you wouldn't have had enough time to wash all that dirt away, Ani. Just go back in and wash yourself properly this time, I'll wait for you."
"No!" Anakin looked stricken, then his eyes widened and hands clapped over his mouth as if unable to believe he'd given a direct refusal. His eyes darted around the room again, teary and looking desperately like he wished he could escape or disappear into the carpet.
"I mean—I can't–" he cried, small hands curled into helpless fists, "–it's, it's so much water, I can't make it pour less, Obi-Wan! It just goes down the sieve at the bottom of the tub!"
Obi-Wan's brow furrowed. "It's okay that it does," he said, trying to take Anakin's words into what Obi-Wan knew of his upbringing. Using that much water on Tatooine would be a luxury, wouldn't it? "There's plenty of water here, Anakin. You're supposed to use as much as it takes in the shower so that you can properly wash all over, and clean your hair too."
Anakin trembled in front of him, shaking his head. "I can't," he whispered, voice cracking.
"Yes, you can," Obi-Wan reassured him, then frowned when Anakin only answered with the same wide-eyed stare of frightened denial. Obi-Wan tried a different approach. "Why can't you, young one?" he asked, more gently this time.
Anakin stared at him, then took several deep, shuddering breaths without breaking eye contact. Then the boy ducked his head and tucked his towel under one skinny arm as best he could, before pulling up one of the sleeves of his ratty tunic now damp from the water clinging to the boy's skin.
"Look," Anakin said softly, holding up his arm for Obi-Wan to see. At first, he couldn't see more than the bare, heavily tanned skin of Anakin's lower arm, but Obi-Wan did notice after a moment a smudge of something dark against the boy's complexion.
Obi-Wan glanced back up to Anakin's face. "What is it?" he asked, confused.
Anakin squirmed. "I went in and got under the water," he said. "And it got me all wet but it didn't get rid of the grease. See?" he asked, fingers tracing over the dark smudge on his skin. Shamefaced, he ducked his head again. "It didn't work. And it was using so much water…am I doing something wrong?" His voice was high and pleading. If Anakin had sounded near tears before, he seemed to be just barely holding back sobs by now.
Obi-Wan was, of course, moved with pity by Anakin's tone, but the Jedi Knight was also deeply bewildered. Obi-Wan turned over the words in his head to make sure he had heard correctly and found he still struggled to grasp what the problem was.
He knew Anakin wasn't stupid. Even if he could be reckless and overenthusiastic and perhaps a bit simpleminded in his reasoning the way children were sometimes, Obi-Wan had seen and heard what the boy could do and understood that Anakin Skywalker was quite intelligent, especially for his age. Even beyond that, the situation causing so much distress for the boy was so self-explanatory Obi-Wan doubted unintelligent people would ever face it as any kind of issue that needed solving.
So the boy's very genuine ignorance flummoxed him. Obi-Wan paused to think and when he spoke, took care not to let any of that confusion seep into his voice, lest Anakin mistake it for condescension, or worse.
"You let the water run over your skin?" Obi-Wan finally asked tentatively.
Anakin nodded. "Yes!" he said tearfully. "A whole lot of it. And I didn't get clean. That's why I had to stop anyway. I couldn't just keep wasting it."
Obi-Wan nodded, lost. Maybe Anakin had simply been too rushed, Obi-Wan thought. The boy had hardly been under the spray more than a couple of minutes, and there were probably layers of dirt on him enough to form a second skin. It made sense, Obi-Wan supposed.
"So, while you were in the shower, all the grease–" he gestured to Anakin's arm, "–and dirt, didn't come off fast enough? When you washed your skin?"
Anakin started nodding, then stopped, tilting his head. "Washed my skin?" he asked.
Obi-Wan nodded impatiently. "You know, with soap."
"Soap?" Anakin's brow was wrinkled with confusion.
Oh. "Anakin," Obi-Wan asked pointedly, "did you wash your skin with soap and water in the shower?" He raised his brows, glancing down at the shivering boy in his damp clothes.
Anakin's look twisted from confusion to disbelief. "Soap?" he asked again, ice-blue eyes narrowed as if he thought Obi-Wan were pulling some trick. "How'm I supposed to use soap in a shower when there's water pouring all over me? Where would I even get soap?"
"I think you will find," Obi-Wan said delicately, "that there is soap in the bathroom, if you check for it."
"Why would I be looking for soap in a water shower?" Anakin asked in frustration, reaching up to yank on his own hair with a sudden growl. "I thought the point was you wash it with water! And that doesn't even work!"
Obi-Wan quickly reached out and grabbed the boy's wrists so he'd stop pulling on his own hair, but was careful to keep a gentle grip. "What do you use when you wash yourself at home—er. On Tatooine?" he asked, wincing internally at the slip-up.
Anakin's eyes flashed vulnerable with hurt as he caught what Obi-Wan had mistakenly said, longing filling the boy's face before he remembered the question. He shifted on feet slightly in disquiet, small hands fidgeting in Obi-Wan's holding them still.
"You don't wash in a sonic. You just stand and it blows you clean," Anakin said, petulantly, like this was perfectly obvious. Which it was, of course; that was how sonic showers worked.
Obi-Wan nodded. He allowed his eyes to flutter closed for a brief moment, breathing in and exhaling in short order to dig inside himself for more patience to make his point.
"But outside the sonic shower. If you were to, say, get grease on yourself from working on…I don't know, a droid," Obi-Wan continued, "and you needed to wash it off quickly. What would you use?"
He was waiting for Anakin to reply soap, so Obi-Wan could tell him the principle in a water shower was much the same.
Anakin apparently had other ideas. "Oil," he said plainly.
Obi-Wan paused. "What?" he asked, taken aback. "Oil?"
Anakin nodded, looking more tired and impatient himself by the minute. "Uh-huh," he said crossly. Clearly, he thought Obi-Wan was dragging this out on purpose or playing mind games. "What else are you supposed to clean stuff with that doesn't use any water?"
Obi-Wan opened his mouth to answer, then closed it. That made perfect sense, actually. Clearly, there had been a cultural miscommunication at play, and Obi-Wan had a responsibility to fix it and hope the rocky start didn't set their relationship back more than previous actions already head done. He didn't want Anakin to think Obi-Wan made his life hard on purpose.
…And the first step was disabusing his soon-to-be Padawan of the notion that people bathed in oil on planets where water was readily available.
"Anakin," he said, letting go of the boy's wrists at last and holding up his own hands in surrender. "I think we've had a bit of a communications breakdown, which was my fault. It wasn't my place to assume you knew how things like bathing might differ on a planet with a different infrastructure than the one you grew up on. What I should have made clearer is, in a water shower or a bath, you stand under the spray or sit in the water until your skin and hair or wet. Then you scrub yourself down with soaps. Soap like the kind you'd use on your skin is different than shampoo you clean your hair with, but we can get to that in a moment. The important thing to know is that you're meant to wash yourself thoroughly with cleansers to get rid of dirt and bacteria on your body, not just get your skin wet. The water won't do everything on its own. Once you've finished washing yourself, you rinse the soap with the dirt off your skin, and then you're clean. Does that make sense?"
Anakin stared up at him, listening attentively throughout this long speech, and finally his face tinged pink. "Oh," he said, looking faintly ashamed, and also rather like something had just clicked into place he hadn't quite understood before now and felt embarrassed about.
Which, Obi-Wan figured, was probably exactly what had happened. Maybe only the rich on Tatooine bathed with water, or maybe non-slaves used soap in their refreshers. Maybe a little of both. Obi-Wan had no idea. Anakin had clearly picked up the knowledge of what soap was secondhand in passing but likely hadn't known enough to apply it to himself, in a completely foreign situation, operating at the limits of his exhaustion.
Obi-Wan could relate. But he suppressed his own desire to yawn, knowing it would lead nowhere productive toward getting them both into bed.
"Here, Anakin," he said gently. "Why don't I help you wash up in the shower this time, so it'll go a bit faster than letting you try to figure things out on your own. Then I can shower, and get your bandages redone, so we can both–"
"No!"
Obi-Wan stopped when cut off, looking to Anakin in surprise. "No?" Obi-Wan asked him, surprised more by the vehemence in his tone than the answer itself.
Anakin shook his head, eyes wide. He was curled in on himself again, trying to make himself small as he stared at Obi-Wan with an expression that was…difficult to read.
"No," he whispered, his voice small enough it broke on the syllable. "I don't…I don't wanna do that. Please."
Obi-Wan found himself nearly alarmed by the sudden shift in Anakin's behavior—not to mention the waves of complicated emotion tangling through the Force at his words, a mess of fear and shame so powerful Obi-Wan had to strengthen his mental shields to avoid being overwhelmed.
"Okay," he said, softly, not wanting to spook the boy further. "Okay, Anakin. I was only offering if you thought it might be easier. I won't do anything you don't want." He hesitated, uncertain how to ask without making the problem worse, especially when Obi-Wan didn't know what it was. But it was clearly there. "Anakin—young one—are you all right?" he asked, slowly and cautiously.
Anakin nodded stiffly, looking like he would have answered anything to be away from Obi-Wan in that moment. "Yes," he said tightly. "I'm fine."
Obi-Wan hesitated again. "You'll be okay taking another shower on your own?" he asked, just to make sure. Not wanting to push his luck "Do you need me to show you what soap to use for–"
"No!"
Again, the vehement denial took Obi-Wan aback. He'd done something to spook the boy, but Obi-Wan had no idea what, and Anakin wasn't in the mood to talk about it.
It was something they'd have to discuss later, when Obi-Wan began teaching the boy the importance of not being ruled by his emotions, particularly fear. But tonight…Obi-Wan decided reluctantly it was going to have to be for the best that he let it go. Neither of them were in great condition to do much by way of learning or teaching, they'd just attended an emotionally exhausting funeral for a man they hadn't been prepared to lose, and emotions were running high as a matter of course. Any lessons or investigative questioning would best be done at a less difficult time.
"Okay, Anakin," Obi-Wan said quietly. He paused, considering. "Just…call me if you need anything in there, all right? I promise I won't laugh."
For whatever reason, Anakin twitched minutely at this, nearly a flinch. Maybe Obi-Wan had miscalculated again.
"Yes, Master," the boy said with a jerking nod, speaking so quietly Obi-Wan nearly couldn't hear him.
And then Anakin had scrambled back into the bathroom so fast there may as well have been a rancor on his heels. The door slid closed, leaving Obi-Wan alone in the bedchamber in puzzled, worried silence, wondering what Qui-Gon might have done instead and if it would have made his terrified charge less leery.
