Where Bonding Begins
The first week of the fourth month, Obi-Wan came out of meditation to see Anakin sitting across from him in the apartment. Instead of sitting in his corner of the couch he was sitting on the floor, opposite him at the low table, doing his crèche-work. There were easily half a dozen datapads spread across the table, with twice as many archive chips, scraps of paper with half written bits of things, the start of some kind of model; and Anakin, sitting in the middle of it, pouring over one of the datapads and rubbing his forehead, frowning in deep concentration.
Obi-Wan frowned himself, casting his mind back to when he was Anakin's age. Did he ever have that much work to do? Certainly it always felt like it but... He reached up to tug at a braid that was no longer there and tried to factor in the make up work that the boy had to do.
It was at this point that he realized something horrible. He had no idea how far along Anakin was in his learning. He didn't know who his teachers were, how far he had come along in his placement, how he was adapting to his new life. Star's End, he hadn't even done any teaching!
What kind of a Master was he?
What king of example was he setting?
He felt a sting deep in his heart. Qui-Gon would be deeply disappointed in him.
The hurt overwhelmed him all over again, and he almost retreated back into meditation to deal with it - but he understood somehow that that was an escape, and he fought against the urge. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and acknowledged the guilt he felt. It was deep, it hurt, but it was something that was easily rectified. When he realized that, he released a deep breath; and a new emotion assaulted him: anxiety.
When had he last had a conversation with is Padawan?
He threw the feeling into the Force with as much vehemence as he could muster.
It didn't work. But he opened his mouth anyway.
"How is the crèche-work coming?" he asked slowly, lightly.
Anakin's gaze flicked up to him, and then flicked back to the datapad without even a hint of response.
He tried again. "Anakin, how is the crèche-work coming along? Do you need any help?"
"I need to get it done," the boy hissed. The unspoken additive: It's not like you're going to help, went unsaid, but one did not need the Force to see it roiling off him.
That hurt, much more than Obi-Wan expected to, but probably deserved and so he kept a calm face and tried a different tactic.
"You know," he said slowly, reaching up again to tug at a braid that no longer existed. He settled for rubbing his chin instead. "When I was your age I was in the top fifteen percent of my clan."
The blond boy stared at him, his eyes wide and his mind calculating. His gaze narrowed shrewdly as he suddenly started sorting through his pile of work. "Here," he said, handing him certain datapads and archive chips. The Jedi looked at the work blankly. Diplomacy, Force Theory, Literature, Social Networking, and Species Characteristics and Traits. He flipped through the material at first, seeing how much Anakin had and hadn't done. The boy was a terrible speller, and his sentence structure was equally poor; Obi-Wan knew for a fact the child was much more articulate than this. When he looked up, however he saw Anakin was once more pouring over his original work.
"Anakin? What were your questions on these assignments?" the Jedi asked, uncertain where he was supposed to start.
Anakin stared at him blankly. "I thought you said you knew this stuff," he said, his voice accusatory.
"Yes, I do."
"Then you shouldn't have a problem doing it," the blond replied matter-of-factly.
...
... ...
He would not choke. He absolutely would not choke at the very idea that the boy had just suggested! Of all the...!
"Anakin!" he admonished, his voice higher and tighter than what he wanted. "I'm not going to do the work for you!"
Anakin, however, seemed to have had enough. He slammed the datapad onto the low table and growled, "I thought you just said you were going to help me!"
"I am most certainly not going to help you cheat! The very idea-"
"It needs to get done!" Anakin shouted, his voice infinitely louder than Obi-Wan's, overriding his chastisement. "It's already late as it is and there's just so much of it!"
"Already late? When was all this due?" Star's End, how badly had he been failing Anakin?
"Over a week ago!" Anakin all but screamed. "I don't have time for this!" he grabbed a fistful of his work and stormed out of the common room, down the tiny hall and into his room, kicking the door repeatedly after it had slid shut to release his anger.
Obi-Wan sat, bits of crèche-work still cluttering the table, wondering just what had happened. What had he done wrong? Resisting the urge to put his head in his hands he opted instead to close his eyes and reflect. He mentally replayed the conversation and, at first glance, did not understand how things had occurred as they did. He tried to shift his perception; instead replaying the events from what he thought would be Anakin's point of view. That took him a minute to filter through; he was reminded (yet again) that Anakin was not raised in the crèche; he didn't grow up being taught that cheating on crèche-work was bad. That thought made him realize that Anakin's education up to this point must have been splotchy at best. The young Jedi had never met Anakin's mother, but the account from Qui-Gon and the myriad stories from the boy himself she tried her best in all her circumstances. Obi-Wan suddenly wondered if young Anakin actually knew how to learn; not how to absorb information you liked and filing it away, but to struggle against something that was difficult and annoying and seemingly impossible and, eventually, finding the answer with deep satisfaction.
No, Obi-Wan decided, the child most likely did not know how to learn. The blond took what he needed and discarded what he didn't; that in itself was a kind of learning, but it limited him in some ways, prevented him from the well-rounded education he was now receiving.
Understanding settled into Obi-Wan's heart, and he opened his eyes in resolve. If Anakin's education was incomplete, then of course he would be having difficulty with the placement work and backlog that he was currently facing. The first thing that needed to be done was, in fact, assess what he did know.
He should have done this so much sooner.
He kept that sting locked away for a later date.
Quickly the Jedi gathered up the work and strode to the boy's room, knocking politely and announcing himself before coming in. Anakin was again sprawled on the floor, his preferred position it looked like, and furiously scribbling at a datapad. As before, he did not acknowledge his master.
Obi-Wan walked into the room and cleared a space directly in front of Anakin in order to sit down. Once he was situated comfortably on the floor, he put his hand over the child's stylus.
He looked up in anger. "I said-" he started to shout, but Obi-Wan put a hand over the boy's mouth and gently said, "Quiet."
"No! You don't understand!"
"Yes, I do," Obi-Wan said, his voice almost a whisper, but it still reached Anakin's ear, stilling him in surprise. "I think," the Jedi said softly, "that the two of us have been going about this slightly wrong."
Sensing he had Anakin's attention, he leaned back and gestured at all the crèche-work. "You are perfectly right; all of this needs to get done. But, what you have wrong," and with a wave of the Force, the pile of 'pads and chips and projects were brushed away, "is that that it doesn't need to 'get done.'"
"That doesn't make any sense!" Anakin growled.
"Let me explain," Obi-Wan said, raising a hand to forestall another round of shouting. "The reason teachers give crèche-work is because it is part of the learning process. They show you something, they guide you in practice, and then you are supposed to take what you've been shown and learn to do it yourself. A Jedi is self-sufficient. Crèche-work isn't about 'getting it done' or even 'getting the right answer,' it's about learning."
Anakin stared at him.
"So," Obi-Wan said, slapping a hand lightly on his knee. "I am going to talk to your teachers tomorrow and tell them to extend their deadlines." The hopeful look in Anakin's eyes suddenly became very bright, and one did not need the Force to sense the relief. "In exchange for this, the work you turn in is going to be top notch, because you are gong to learn it thoroughly." Anakin's hope was crushed. "The first thing we need to do," Obi-Wan continued, not acknowledging Anakin's expressions, "is to ascertain what's happening to make the work so hard for you; because I know you are much more capable than this," and he held up the datapad that showed the boy's horrible spelling and sentence structure.
Anakin's face turned bright red, but he said absolutely nothing.
Obi-Wan kept his face neutral, even though inside he was frowning. Had he done something wrong again? He was expressing his desire to help Anakin, offering himself. He couldn't know what to do unless Anakin asked a question. Was he not clear enough? The Jedi started to open his mouth when Anakin burst out,
"I can't read it!"
"... What?" Obi-Wan asked, fighting not to gape but unable to raise an eyebrow in utter confusion.
"I can't read Basic, alright?" the boy growled, pulling his knees up like a makeshift barrier. "Everything on Tatooine was in Huttese and anything I could find in Basic were technical manuals for the pods or the droids. So. I. Can't. Read. It." He thrust his chin up, as if daring Obi-Wan to laugh.
Obi-Wan blinked at first, taking the time to process the information and waiting to see if there was anything else. When he realized there wasn't he let out an unexpectedly large breath and said, "Stars, Anakin, was that all?"
"And what does that mean?" Anakin demanded, immediately defensive.
"Just that for Jedi it is a - relatively - easy fix," he said, putting aside the 'pad he had been using and looking through the heap for the literature datapad. "First things first, do you have the Basic alphabet memorized?"
"... Yes..." the boy said slowly, hesitantly.
"Good. And do you have the phonetics memorized as well?"
"The what?"
"The phonetics. The sounds each letter represents. Do you know them?"
"Yes, I do."
"Then the work is half done," Obi-Wan said, pulling out what he needed. By way of explanation he continued, "One does not travel with Master Qu -" he faltered briefly, but closed his eyes to shake it off before continuing. "Master Qui-Gon without picking up a few things. There was one mission where we were mediating with two political parties of a planet. The treaties and laws were in two different languages, and we had to read over all of them as an objective eye - among other things." He found the datapad he was looking for and turned his gaze to Anakin. "Open the bond and I can give you a hand."
The boy was openly curious now, his mercurial attitude having shifted again. "Okay, sure. But how do you open the bond?"
Obi-Wan froze, realizing that in their over three months of being together they had never used the bond for anything, even simple meditation. He hurt all over again and a particularly loud corner of his mind wondered if he would ever stop, but he fought to throw it all aside. He would do what was necessary. He would. For Qui-Gon's sake. Obi-Wan slowly took Anakin through the steps of opening the bond, explaining as he did that with practice this would become instinctual, and when he felt the connection to the boy he opened his own mind, working through Anakin's mind until he found the language center of the brain and planted his suggestion there.
"Woah, what was that?" the blond asked.
"Here," Obi-Wan said again. "Can you read this now?" he handed Anakin the literature work.
"Woah! Wizard!"
"My Master put that suggestion on me; it helps the mind better absorb foreign languages and integrate it faster. I could read both languages inside a standard week. The more difficult works you read, I found, the faster you can absorb the language, so that when the suggestion wears off, you have a larger vocabulary to pull from, and anything after that is using standard reading strategies to parse words you don't know."
"Then give me the mechanics pad, quick!" Anakin said, his eyes darting all over the literature datapad. Over the next three hours Obi-Wan and Anakin worked on the more vocabulary intensive subjects: mechanics, literature, diplomacy, and the sciences. Anakin flew through the work, at last understanding what he was reading and his intelligence finally showing in his work. Obi-Wan actually had to slow the boy down to make sure that he answered the questions completely, and that he learned the work thoroughly.
By the third day, Anakin was competently fluent in Basic, and Obi-Wan next focused on what the boy did and didn't know in each of the subjects, working first with the ones that Anakin felt most confident in, getting the smaller and easier-to-finish work not only out of the way, but back to his teachers to prove that work was being done. Within two weeks Anakin had all of his make up work turned in, though it meant many long nights. Obi-Wan was relentless in checking for understanding, and he held true to his promise, Anakin learned the work thoroughly, and by the end of the fourth month he had finally settled in with his agemates in all of his classes.
Obi-Wan hesitated at first, but he allowed himself a small swell of pride that Anakin had covered so much material so quickly. It was yet another sign that the boy was gifted, and the Jedi saw once more that Master Qui-Gon had been right to fight for Anakin.
... Even if Qui-Gon did ignore his own Padawan in the process.
Obi-Wan shook his head when he had that thought and went back into meditation, content that Anakin would be busy with his crèche-work in the meantime.
Author's Notes: ...Ooookay, so much for writing drabbles. This reads like an entire scene; so I guess we'll this a ficlet. What can I say, we're both just really long winded. :P
This is also a fair amount of self-gratification in this one as well; we're both teachers, and any chance we get to insert it (and use it correctly) is always a pleasure for us. If anyone's read our Naruto fic called Team Time, you'll have a vague idea of what we mean. Having said that, the idea of talking about things like placement tests or home(crèche)-work warms a little nook of our hearts. We also are greatly entertained by the idea that the Force is a reading strategy - you have no idea how much that entertains us. About the only thing missing is math, but then Anakin likely excels in mathematics and so it didn't seem right for this particular moment. Maybe we'll play into it later...?
This first arc is both easy and hard in some respects. We want to show all the small changes of how they bond, but still show that their relationship is starting out broken. Anakin is next door to Palpatine right now, and one can't really ignore him, so even the touching scenes have to be just a little bit painful.
Anyway, as always, we hope you like.
Next time: Hugs can save the galaxy.