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Westley: Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
Chapter 8 Aftermath
It took another twelve hours for the official news to reach the Temple. Bant was the one who told Anakin.
Obi-Wan had disappeared hours ago.
"…when they reached the hanger, they were met by the same Dark Zabrak that attacked you and Obi-Wan on Tatooine."
Anakin shuddered, staring down at his hands twisting together in his lap. He had had nightmares about that creature every night for the past two weeks, ever since it had killed his mother. Nightmares where it killed him. And nightmares where he killed it.
And now it had hurt Obi-Wan the same way it had hurt him and it made Anakin want to freeze up again, like he did right after his mom. Freeze up and stay that way. Somehow it didn't hurt so bad when you froze up like that.
"Master Qui-Gon followed the Dark Jedi," Bant continued, staring out the window behind Anakin, "and that was the last time the Naboo saw either of them. From the security tapes, it seems that the Zabrak led Master Qui-Gon towards the city's core reactor, but then they left camera range. No one knows what happened after that. Although the Naboo searched the room, they found no sign of either body, though they did find evidence of a long and vicious fight."
"If they never found his body, then how do they know Qui-Gon is dead?" Anakin demanded. Why was Obi-Wan and everyone so convinced that the big man was dead?
Bant's eyes closed. "Force-sensitives form bonds through the Force to people that they interact closely with. It happens between close friends for example. And between Master and Padawan. These bonds, Anakin, you must understand," her voice caught, "these bonds only break if one of the two dies. That's why we know that he's dead, Anakin. You saw Obi-Wan yesterday, when we meant to go swimming."
Anakin nodded.
"That's what happens when a bond breaks. And the bond between Obi-Wan and his master was stronger than most. Obi-Wan knows."
Anakin nodded, still staring down at his knees. Tears gathered in his eyes and dribbled onto his pants, staining them with his pain. Another wave of the sadness that had stalked him for two weeks struck with a vengeance. He sniffled and hunched in to himself, trying to brace himself for the onslaught. He felt Bant reach her arm over his shoulders. He relaxed back into her arm, grateful for the touch.
She smelled like tears.
Obi-Wan reached the door to his quarters, eager to reach the safety and privacy of his rooms.
Before palming it open, he instinctively scanned the apartment with the Force out of long habit, checking to see if there was anyone inside. He staggered backwards when he felt his master's lion-like Force signature pervading the rooms. Before thought, hope burst in his chest and he keyed open the door, half expecting the man to be sitting on the couch watching some animal documentary on the vidscreen.
But then his brain caught up to his heart and he remembered that Qui-Gon was dead and that all he was sensing were traces of the Jedi Master 's Force-signature that had steeped into the apartment after decades of use. The apartment as empty.
That knowledge struck his stomach like a steel-toed boot and Obi-Wan had to lean against the doorjamb to catch his breath. Reaching into the Force, he collected himself enough to cross the room, past the kitchenette and the living room with the empty couch, past the half-finished droid and mess of tools Anakin had left scattered on the table, past the hallway with the bedrooms, and out to the tiny balcony. He'd had a long day of well-meaning well-wishers—his friends, Qui-Gon's friends—all wanting to make sure that he was coping, asking if he needed anything, dropping by with condolences and casseroles, well meaning words and their own pain bleeding into the Force.
Unable to handle any more of it, Obi-Wan swept open the glass door and stepped out onto the balcony, grateful for the dull, background roar of the traffic. He closed the privacy curtains behind him, shutting out the Temple.
Obi-Wan tried to take a deep, relaxing breath, but, instead of being steady and calming, it took on a gasping hysterical edge. Desperate to ground himself, he turned his focus to the mix-matched patio furniture.
He used the Force to rotate the small loveseat so that it faced the lingering sunset and he dragged the small side table so that he could rest his feet on it. The remaining chair was exiled to the corner of the balcony, though first Obi-Wan snagged a pillow from it that one of Qui-Gon's more artistic friends had stuffed years ago.
Settling into a corner of the couch, flopping his feet up onto the coffee table, hugging the pillow to his chest, Obi-Wan settled in to watch the sunset.
It was the slow lingering kind, with an array of colors only possible with the mix of pollutants unique to Coruscant. The sunset glinted off buildings and was refracted all around Obi-Wan, surrounding him in a warm glow that did nothing to comfort him. Instead, the peace of the sunset merely exacerbated the tearing feeling going on inside Obi-Wan's chest.
He knew that even as a Jedi, it was perfectly acceptable to feel pain upon the death of a close friend, a mentor, a master. And he knew that the trauma of the bond's destruction was only making the feelings of grief sharper and more consuming….but there were darker emotions that boiled at the knowledge that his master's killer still lived, and these, these were not the feelings of a Jedi. The righteous indignation he felt at the murder of his master was woven tightly with strong cords of anger and failure and a desire for vengeance that almost frightened Obi-Wan with their intensity.
Worse, he didn't have the peace of mind to sort through those purely negative and dangerous emotions to deal with them. And so they stayed, stirring up his understandable feelings of guilt and pain, both fresh and old, and increasing his grave sense of failure. He had failed to protect his master and now he was failing to deal with that failure.
Master would be disappointed. Despite the heat of his feelings, the thought left him feeling cold, inside and out.
The steaming ball of conflicted emotions, some rational, some irrational, pounded away inside of Obi-Wan, grinding at his head and his heart. Around him, he could feel the Force responding to the violence of his emotions—some parts of it whipped into swirls and eddies, other parts attempting to soothe his aching soul.
The hard pain writhing at the back of his head didn't help, the epicenter of the vicious migraine he'd been enduring…since. Apparently this kind of pain was a common symptom of a ripped bond. The meds that the Healer had pushed into his hand with an understanding face and a comforting pat on the arm were supposed to kick in soon.
Not that they would do much for the soul-drowning guilt he felt at not being there when his master died, but that was another matter.
"Obi-Wan?"
The Jedi's attention had been focused on both his roiling emotions and the steady sunset; he hadn't heard the glass door behind him open. Anakin's voice startled him, but years of field work had taught him not to show it.
He tilted his head in acknowledgement of Anakin's presence, but he didn't turn around.
Anakin took the half-hearted acknowledgement as permission to stay. Distantly, Obi-Wan sensed Anakin try to walk around the edge of the couch so he could sit on it as well, but the way the couch was situated meant that there was not enough room to do so. Anakin's response to this was to scramble over the back of the seat. Because of Anakin's height, there was a long, precarious moment when he teetered on the top of the back rest that had Obi-Wan preparing to send out the Force to cushion the inevitable fall. Fortunately, Anakin just managed to fall forward into the safety of the cushions, without any external aid. Obi-Wan felt his mouth almost twitch in amusement at the child's actions, though he didn't say anything. Anakin stayed silent as well, merely arranging himself on the couch next to Obi-Wan.
Unlike Obi-Wan's sprawling position, he pulled himself up into as small a ball as a nine year old child could be, with his knees under his nose and his arms wrapped tightly around his shins. He curled up in the corner created by Obi-Wan and the backrest, without quite resting against either.
Obi-Wan's had neither the strength nor the heart to send Anakin away, despite his need for solitude. And, despite the initial intrusion, he found that he did not mind the boy's silent and still presence. Even his blinding Force-presence felt somehow soothing. Eventually, Obi-Wan's attention drifted back to the fading light, the pinks and yellows of early sunset merging with the reds and purples of an increasingly later one.
"I'm sorry," Anakin said said, suddenly breaking the silence.
It didn't sound like the kind of apology most people gave someone in mourning. It wasn't a customary acknowledgement of pain. There was a kind of heavy, knowingness there that weighed down on Obi-Wan's insides.
"What do you mean?" Obi-Wan inquired, ignoring the way his voice crackled with emotion and disuse.
"That you feel it too," Anakin said in a small voice, before burying his head in his self-made ball.
Obi-Wan felt like he'd been slammed in the gut again. Despite having spent days trying to help Anakin deal with Shmi's sudden murder, Obi-Wan had completely forgotten about the boy's pain in the face of his own agony.
Not having the slightest idea what to say in the face of Anakin's renewed pain, on top of his fresh one, he pulled one arm away from his pillow and wrapped it around Anakin, pulling the child into his side. Anakin curled tightly into Obi-Wan's embrace.
Grief and a numbing sense of failure built up anew in Obi-Wan, welling up from his toes and pooling in his stomach and swirling through his head. Distantly, he felt his side grow wet as Anakin's tears soaked his tunic. He never noticed the ones that dribbled down his own face.
The purple shading faded into blue and green as the last glint of sunlight was swallowed by the glow of Coruscant's bursting nightlife. Rush hour traffic at the end of one work day picked back up as the other half of the population woke up and began their odyssey to work. The brown-orange of the Coruscanti night sky glowed brightly overhead. The post-sunset glow that turned the whole world grey-blue was swallowed up by the lights of billions of beings.
The chaos and the rush was somehow soothing to Obi-Wan, easing his migraine (though not the grief) to the point where he remembered that he probably ought to feed Anakin something for dinner. And, myself as well, he added with the twist of an eyebrow. He hadn't had much of an appetite since… since it happened.
Unwilling to leave the bubble of equilibrium that he and Anakin had finally built for themselves, Obi-Wan stretched out with the Force into the apartment's kitchenette. Determinedly ignoring Qui-Gon's strong Force signature, he located the stock of casseroles that various friends and acquaintances had kindly left him.
The idea was that upon the death of someone close, the Jedi in question would need time to rediscover their balance and their place within the Force. Taking care of one's body was necessary to that end. However, grieving people rarely had the energy to cook a proper meal, and even fewer had the inclination to eat in the crowded cafeteria under the microscope of a Temple's worth of Jedi. Hence the plethora of casseroles that now lined the cooling unit and counter tops and covered the kitchen table.
Qui-Gon had had a lot of friends.
Obi-Wan had a lot of casseroles.
Obi-Wan found a dish on the kitchen table that the Force assured him was promising. He gathered two forks from the drying rack and stabbed them into the dish. Then, with gentle care, he levitated the entirety through the door that Anakin had neglected to close, over the top of his head, and into his hands.
The baking pan smelled good—it looked like an enchilada casserole. With extra cheese. With a nod of thanks to the Force for its choice (it swirled around him like a hug before returning to its normal, near-intangible nature), he put a hand on Anakin's head and gently shook the boy out of his haze.
"Anakin?"
The boy's head popped up and he looked blearily at the man.
"Food?" Obi-Wan added, waving the dish in Anakin's direction.
"What is it?" Anakin asked, hesitantly, his nose crinkled up in a frown of confusion.
"It is an enchilada casserole."
Anakin looked at him blankly.
After almost two weeks taking care of Anakin, the Jedi had gotten used to introducing him to new things, new foods in particular. It always left Obi-Wan with a mixed sense of joy for having the chance to show Anakin something new and regret that Anakin had been deprived of so much.
"You'll like it," he assured. "Here."
He handed Anakin a fork. The former slave dug the fork into the cheesy pile and scooped up a heaping helping of the food. Obi-Wan watched, vaguely impressed as Anakin wedged the whole bite into his mouth at once.
The nine year old's face light up with glee.
Half-swallowing, Anakin opened his mouth and muttered something incomprehensible around the half-masticated food. Apparently, it was a well practiced skill as no food came flying out of his full mouth.
"Swallow!" Obi-Wan chided, with a mental cringe.
Anakin swallowed again, but repeated his previous words completely unrepentant: "This is good!"
Nudging the child's shoulder with his elbow, Obi-Wan almost snorted before grabbing his own fork and taking a far more conservative bite than his younger counterpart had. At that point, he discovered, that maybe he did have an appetite after all.
Together, the two males demolished about three-quarters of the dish in relative silence. When they were done, Obi-Wan levitated the ruins onto the wicker chair in the corner, ignoring the voice in the back of his head that scolded him for using the Force so frivolously.
He relaxed back, hoping to begin digesting some of his emotional overload along with his slightly overlarge dinner. Next to him, Anakin stretched out as well, though in contrast to Obi-Wan's stillness, Anakin was starting to get twitchy after sitting still for so long.
Obi-Wan tracked it absently. It started with Anakin's left foot, which began a silent, staccato dance against the armrest. Then, Obi-Wan watched as it jumped to the child's fingers, which began twittering around in his lap and pulling at his clothing. Then Anakin's head started to move as he began to study the small balcony and the plants that Qui-Gon had doggedly grown there, despite the bad sunlight and the planet's pollution. Anakin's body followed his line of sight as his restless nature overpowered his earlier wave of grief. He pushed himself off the couch and stretched out his stiffness before stepping towards the balcony edge.
"Obi-Wan?" His voice was small and he faced away from Obi-Wan, looking out over the city.
"Mmm?"
"Bant, yesterday, she told me what happened with…with Mr. Qui-Gon. But she said she didn't know anything else. About what happened. On Naboo, I mean. Do you…is Padme safe?"
Obi-Wan tugged at his braid. "I don't know about Padme. All I know is what Master Yoda told me," Obi-Wan paused to swallow down the lump in his throat. Anakin turned around to face him, resting his weight on one foot and bopping his left heel off the balcony railing behind him.
The Padawan continued. "The queen sent the message. They have the Viceroy of the Trade Federation in custody. They used him as leverage to disable the droid control ship, but it's still in orbit," he paused again, running a hand through his hair. "Master Yoda said the Council dispatched a Jedi team from a nearby sector to help maintain the status quo and a couple of Knights were dispatched from the Temple to meet them."
"Status quo?"
"They'll make sure that the droids aren't reactivated and that the Viceroy doesn't escape," he trailed off, thinking. They'll also search for the Dark Jedi that murdered Master. The Darksider hasn't been seen since the day the Naboo retook Theed. What's he doing? Is he in league with the Trade Federation? Is he their assassin? If he was after the Queen, why hasn't he killed her and rescued the Viceroy? If the Queen isn't the target, who is? Or, did Master kill him? Did they kill each other? But then, where did the bodies go? Is there a third player here that killed them both? One that took their bodies? It doesn't make any sense!
There were too many possibilities and not nearly enough data available to come to any realistic conclusions. It left Obi-Wan feeling more unsettled than ever.
It didn't take knowledge of the Unifying Force to know that there was something larger in play here, but the whys and wherefores were utterly elusive, lost in the same shadow that so carefully occluded Anakin's future.
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