That night was not a good one. Every time Anakin tried to close his eyes, he saw before them Grievous' thin and twisted body, that long droid face that was impossible to read. What was hidden behind it? Not peace, surely not peace, but then what else could Grievous possibly accomplish by this? The uncertainty would drive him insane…

When at last he awoke, Anakin still felt very tired despite several hours of sleep under his belt. Groaning, he sank his head into his hands, despising Grievous fervently. Something tugged at the back of his mind, something unpleasant, but he let it slide for now. It was only after he had taken a shower, pulled on the heavy Jedi robes, and clipped his lightsaber onto his belt that he remembered that today was his first day of tutoring.

Immediately as he remembered, questions bubbled to the surface of Anakin's thoughts, faster than he could answer them. Would he get along with Drin? Would the boy listen to him? Would Master Brun bring Drin to Anakin's room, or was Anakin supposed to go over there? What exactly was he supposed to teach Drin, anyway? He had only been a Knight for a few months now; was he even qualified to be a tutor? And whose dumb idea had this been, anyway?

It didn't appear that any of these questions were to be answered anytime soon, however, so Anakin stifled them for the moment and went to see if he had anything edible left in his fridge droid.

Until recently, his meals had usually consisted of whatever Obi-Wan was cooking, with occasional deviations into the mess hall and Anakin's stash of protein cubes. But since being deprived of his main source of food, Anakin had been forced to learn to cook himself. It was a messy task, and more than once he had given up, thrown his blackened creation into the trash and headed for the mess hall. But slowly, he was starting to get the hang of it. He was no gourmet, but he could at least fry an egg, which was what he did now.

At about 1000 hours, he heard the inevitable knock on his door. Opening it, Anakin found Drin and Master Brun standing before him. Master Brun's face was inscrutable; Drin's only looked peeved.

"You go back to your room when you're finished, all right?" Master Brun said to her Padawan, who only shrugged. Ignoring this, she handed a datapad to Anakin and said, "That's got most of his homework on it. Just go over the things he doesn't understand." Anakin nodded, took it, and Master Brun left the two of them alone. There was a silence.

"So, what are you learning in your classes?" Anakin asked finally, hoping to break the ice a bit. Drin only shrugged again, and when Anakin was clearly expecting more of an answer than that, he said, "Stuff about the Jedi Code. Mostly."

"What about physical training?"

"Some of that, too."

"Do they teach you to work with the Force?"

"Yeah, sometimes."

Gradually, the feeling crept over Anakin that he was beating his head against a brick wall. After offering Drin something to eat or drink—both were declined—he sat down at the wooden table and motioned for Drin to do the same. Turning on the datapad, he looked through the list of homework subjects that were listed on the screen. Language Studies, Force-working, Lightsaber Training, Galactography… Anakin remembered these subjects well from his former days as a Padawan. He selected one at random and looked at the assignment.

"All right, so what do you want to work on?" Anakin asked, looking up. He was bewildered by what seemed to be this sudden iciness. Drin hadn't exactly been a model of politeness last time they'd met, but he'd at least been decent—and after all, Anakin thought annoyedly, he had saved the kid's life.

"Mm-mm," was what came out of Drin's mouth, which probably could have meant anything, but sounded most like "I don't know", and Anakin's heart sank at the thought that every lesson might be like this.

"What about Galactography?" he suggested, selecting the assignment on the datapad. "It says you have to make a map of the Core planets. Want to try that?"

It was the easiest way out; Drin agreed. For the remainder of the hour the two Jedi could be found sitting side by side, Drin sketching out the location of the planets, their names, and their capitals while Anakin occasionally pointed out helpful tips, like the fact that Alderaan was spelled with three "A's" and not two, or that the letter "Y" was nowhere to be found in the name of Abregado-Rae. The scene was deceptively peaceful, but at least the boy was cooperating.

After a few weeks, Anakin's relationship with Drin took on a certain understanding. Once he got over the awkwardness of it all, Anakin managed to be quite a decent teacher, and even caught himself enjoying it on a few occasions. Drin, for his part, would do what he was told, but moodily and without enthusiasm. His driving force was not a thirst for knowledge and a hunger for learning, but rather the certainty that if he misbehaved, his Master would throw him in detention for a month.

On some subjects, Drin seemed less reluctant than others; he enjoyed moving things about with the Force, and there were few activities he liked better than lightsaber training. But should Anakin attempt to move back into the world of academics, Drin immediately clammed up, turned sullen and brooding, and hardly bothered to answer Anakin's questions at all. It was times like this that got Anakin so frustrated that he wanted to grab the fourteen-year-old boy by the shoulders and shake him until his teeth rattled.

There were several factors that contributed to Drin's complex attitude toward Anakin, very few of which Anakin actually realized. First, there was the problem that Anakin had saved Drin's life, which, on the one hand, was certainly a positive thing. The downside of it was that Drin was in Anakin's debt for it, and this bothered him.

Master Brun had been right in saying that Drin trusted Anakin—in fact, would do so with his life if ever necessary—and under different circumstances they might have gotten along quite nicely. But Anakin had been put in a position of authority over Drin, making himself an easy target for resentment, at the exact age when Drin was beginning to dislike authority very much. Just when he was beginning to think for himself, he did not appreciate someone only a little older than he telling him what to do. He liked Anakin while Anakin stood on his own—but as a teacher, as the Chosen One, someone supposedly wiser and more experienced than he, Drin did not like him at all.

Anakin, of course, knew nothing of this. He only knew that Drin could be extremely stubborn when he chose to be. One day, after struggling for fifteen minutes with Drin to get him to do a simple arithmetic problem, Anakin suddenly decided that they needed a change of scenery. It couldn't hurt, and at the very least, he might stop subconsciously associating his kitchen table with an hour's worth of frustration.

So he took his pupil to the Room of a Thousand Fountains. In the past, this room, filled with the sound of cold water rushing over smooth stone, had been a source of great comfort to Anakin, and he had found that his thoughts were clearer here, as well. He wasn't the only one, either; at any hour of the day, there would always be at least one Jedi in this massive room, seeking respite from the rest of the galaxy. He didn't know what effect it might have on Drin, but it could only be positive.

Selecting a fountain at random—a large one, at least sixteen feet high—Anakin sat down on its wide rim and motioned for Drin to sit beside him. The boy did so, but he seemed distracted. Nearby, a small bunch of girls and boys about Drin's age were laughing loudly at some unknown joke, splashing each other lightly. Anakin could sense the longing behind the quick look Drin shot them,

They were both sick of mathematics by this time; Anakin searched his mind for another topic. "Did you study those excerpts of the Code like you were supposed to?" he asked. Drin nodded; Anakin didn't believe him. "Ok, let's hear them."

Caught off guard, Drin looked startled as he fumbled for the words. "Um…" he began shakily. "There—there is no emotion; there is…"

"Peace," Anakin filled in.

"Right." Drin was obviously racking his brain. He cast another look, this one more anxious, at the group of youths only a few yards away from them. Anakin felt faintly amused; was he worried about looking stupid in front of his friends? "There is no…um…passion—no, wait, that's not it—"

Why was Drin so anxious? None of the other children were even looking at him—well, except for one of the girls. Her eyes were continually flicking from her friends to Drin, and then back again. Drin was doing the same thing, but always at the times when her head was down, so they kept missing each other. Anakin, suddenly struck with a powerful urge to laugh, swallowed it down with a great effort. Drin had a crush.

"You know, it's written right above the Council door," Anakin said with a grin, with a bit more volume than was necessary. "Not that difficult to remember."

Drin shot him a look that was at once pleading and scowling.

"I can say it louder," Anakin threatened in a low voice.

"That's not fair!" Drin hissed.

The girl was looking away again, apparently very disdainful of the fact that Drin could hardly remember the most basic teaching of the Jedi Code. At the last second, Anakin took pity on him.

"Ok, tell me the seven lightsaber forms," he said. Drin, with an expression of gratitude, immediately began rattling off what he knew by heart, and Anakin saw the girl flash Drin a smile before she walked away.

Lessons began to go more smoothly after that.

To Anakin, it seemed as though he had been struggling against a viciously stubborn current for weeks on end, and now finally it had relaxed. Drin still seemed to have it coded into his DNA that he resist everything he was taught, but he did it with much less force now, partly out of appreciation and partly because he knew Anakin could easily embarrass him in front of his friends.

As for Anakin himself, he found the slow, steady rhythm of Temple life almost beautiful in contrast to the unnervingly fast-paced missions he remembered, the terrifying knowledge that this breath he was taking now might be his last. The thought occurred to him with a start as he sat, one day, sitting opposite from Drin in their normal places at his kitchen table, that he had never taken the time to realize that before.

Anakin had always loved the Temple, for the people in it and for the building itself, but always before he had ached for the next time that he and Obi-Wan would race off to save some far-off planet. When, Anakin wondered distantly, had he stopped living for that next rush of adrenaline?

"There," said Drin, pushing his datapad over to Anakin's side of the table and inadvertently jerking his teacher out of his thoughts. Distracted, Anakin pulled it to him and looked over the work. It was well done, with only a few mistakes; Drin's grades had begun to improve, not dramatically, but steadily, and Anakin actually felt proud of his pupil for that.

"Ok, great," he told Drin, handing the datapad back. "What else do you have for today?"

Drin's eyes rolled upward as he thought. "Uh…just Basic Mechanics, I think. Master Ti gave us all parts of mouse droids, and we were supposed to put them back together. It's due tomorrow."

Anakin gave him a look. "And you haven't done any of it, have you?"

"I don't know why you like that stuff!" Drin complained by way of excuse. "It doesn't make any sense."

"It makes perfect sense," Anakin retorted. "That's why I like it."

"Does not," was Drin's witty response. "Anyway, yeah, I need help on that."

Anakin shrugged. "All right, fine. Where are the parts?"

"In my room," Drin said. "Can we work on it in there? I don't want to carry them all the way over here."

Anakin acquiesced, and allowed himself to be led out of the apartment. He had not yet been to Drin's room, and didn't know the way. Drin guided him through the halls, putting on the faintest swagger when they passed that same girl—Aviva, Anakin had learned her name was—and Anakin bit back a grin. He knew he shouldn't encourage such a thing, but after all, surely every Jedi had had a crush at one point or another.

Without a word, Drin turned off into a room, and Anakin blindly followed him through the door. The sight that greeted his eyes was not a particularly outstanding one—a bit messier than most Jedi rooms, perhaps—but still, something about it caused Anakin to hesitate as he stepped into it. He was struck with a sensation of something so familiar that Anakin could not believe he couldn't remember what it was.

"I think the parts are in my bedroom," said Drin, picking his way around the couch. "I'll go get them."

"Hey," Anakin said suddenly, "How long have you been here?"

Drin paused, confused, and turned to face Anakin. "What, you mean, in the Temple?"

Anakin shook his head impatiently. "No, no, I mean in this set of rooms."

"I don't know. A year, maybe. I used to have one that was a lot farther away from my Master, but then this one opened up, so she moved me in here. Why?"

Biting his lip, Anakin said, "Nothing. It doesn't matter."

Drin shrugged carelessly and vanished into the next room; Anakin turned in a slow circle, taking in the room all over again. A smile twisted a corner of his mouth. Of all the unlikely coincidences, of all the bewildering turns of fate, how had this come to pass?

"Here," said Drin, reemerging from his bedroom, his hands full of parts. "I think I've got them all, but if we're missing a few, they're probably under my dresser."

With a grin, Anakin cleared a place amidst the knick-knacks strewn across the ground, and Drin placed the parts down there. For the next two hours, they sat side by side, heads bent as they worked together, upon what had once been Obi-Wan's floor.