Part Nine
Anakin was staying after school. He'd missed a day watching Obi-Wan go through his healing trance, and now he had to make up the work. It had been worth it, though, over that twelve-hour period Anakin had paid rapt attention. Both he (though he didn't admit it) and his brother were concerned that he had the attention span to watch for that long, but once Anakin had managed to clear his mind enough to see what Obi-Wan was doing stampeding banthas couldn't pull him away. He saw tendrils and pulses and waves; it was like watching the chatter of navicomputers to engines on a microchip level. Obi-Wan's mind sent all kinds of signals, and Anakin could sense the Force respond to each nuance in kind - and all this while Obi-Wan was asleep! Or, unconscious, or so deep in meditation that he said it felt like sleeping. He'd asked Obi-Wan if he remembered any of it, but his brother said no, healing trances were done on a subconscious level. It was why, he added with an arched eyebrow, a Jedi needed to touch the Force at all times, not just during periods of adrenaline.
So, after school in the shop wing with other students making up work, Anakin wanted to try it out.
One of his assignments was in his engine assembly class, and he felt that he would have the best luck with that rather than trying it on his politics or his diplomacy class. Besides, the six year old, Kohse, was great in both of the topics and he could ask her later. Closing his eyes, he mentally put himself in a podracer, winding through Beggar's Canyon, remembering the vibration of the engine, the wind on his cheeks and sweat under his goggles. He thought about how his brain felt, the sense of expansion he had, that his mind wasn't just in his head but also out there, in the machine where it was talking to him.
Hoping his concentration wouldn't break, he opened his eyes and stared at the engine in front of him. The block of machinery seemed to jump out at him, and suddenly he knew exactly what to do, and it was everything he could do to keep up.
A fist wrapped around an actuator and Anakin furiously got to work. He'd never felt his instincts so keenly; all the training he was doing in the mornings and evenings seemed to be paying off. He saw the design flaws the teacher had put in the engine block, originally meant to challenge the class but in this hyper-instinct frame of mind it looked painfully easy. Anakin was rewiring circuits, replacing diodes, and correcting thrust gauges. He saw a logic error and fixed that. He saw an aging power conduit and he quickly thought about the one in the back cabinets and without really thinking it was in his hand and he was about to replace it when his instincts told him stop and suddenly he was back to himself.
"Whoa," he whispered, jarred by how dull everything suddenly seemed.
That feeling faded quickly, however, when he realized that half dozen students in the room also making up work were staring at him. So was the teacher.
"... What?" he asked, feeling the high levels of scrutiny.
" 'What'?" one of his classmates, twelve year old Horace parroted. "... 'What'? A power conduit just flew across the room to your hand! Didn't you notice?"
Anakin blinked, looking down to the conduit, tracing back his memory. He had needed it and knew it was in a back cabinet... didn't he get up to get it...? No... so then, did he summon it to his hand? Like he was always practicing at night to no avail?
"Whoa. Whoa! Wizard! I finally did it!"
"You mean that was supposed to happen?" Horace shouted.
"Enough," the teacher said, standing from her desk. "Anakin, may I speak with you outside?"
Anakin learned early on to dread that question. The other six stared as he morosely followed the teacher outside. This was the same teacher he had disrespected earlier; he knew it wasn't going to be good.
Imagine his surprise, then, when she crouched down to his level and simply asked, "What happened?"
Anakin wanted to wiggle out of it. "I was doing my make up work...?"
The teacher rubbed her forehead in a very Obi-Wan-like gesture. "You know that wasn't what I was referring to."
Anakin sulked. "It was something Obi-Wan taught me," he mumbled. "He's been training me morning and night, and yesterday he showed me something really cool with the Force, and I wanted to practice touching it when I wasn't racing."
"... the Force?" she prompted.
"Yeah," Anakin replied, still looking out the floor.
The teacher took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair. "And your brother," she asked, "Wait, let me ask this correctly: Does Obi-Wan have the credentials to teach you about this 'Force,' and should you be learning it at such a young age?"
It was a sleight on Obi-Wan! Another one! Anakin's knee-jerk reaction was to retaliate - his mouth was already half open when he heard a small voice in the back of his mind, sounding like his mother: "Stop. Think. Think about what she is asking rather than what you think she's asking." It took a lot of work to reword the questions and play around with the meanings. It was her rubbing her forehead, the Obi-Wan gesture, which made him figure it out.
"I'm not young, I'm old," he said slowly, looking once more at his feet. "Jedi start their training a lot younger. Kids at the Temple already know how to do this stuff. But Obi-Wan does have credentials, I think; he was knighted before we moved here, and Knights always have a Padawan, and I'm his Padawan. Sort of. It's... complicated."
When he dared to look up he saw the teacher staring and trying not to. "... Jedi..." Another deep breath and she put on a smile. "Anakin," she said gently, "I think it's wonderful that you're learning from your brother, and I can understand why you want to practice. " She paused, carefully picking out her words. "But there's a time and place for practicing your brother's curriculum, and there's a time and place for practicing our curriculum. Do you understand?"
"... You're saying I shouldn't use the Force at school." Anakin mumbled, dejecting and upset. Obi-Wan wasn't going to like this...
"Good. I say no harm, no foul. Let's go back and have you finish your make up work."
Anakin followed the teacher back into the lab room and saw four sets of eyes trying not to stare, and two sets of eyes that didn't even try to hide it. One, the twelve-year-old Horace, gave an open glare but said nothing. The teacher gave a meaningful look and his eyes finally lowered. Six-year-old Kohse, however, hopped right off her chair and crawled onto the one next to Anakin.
"How'd you do that?" she asked in an excited voice.
"Uh..." Anakin said intelligently, glancing at the teacher for direction.
Kohse kept going. "Can anyone do that?"
"No," the boy answered.
She looked downright crestfallen for a moment, but then she lit up again. "That's okay! That means you're special. I'm special too! Wanna know why?"
"Uh..."
"I can crack every bone in my body! Listen!" And without further delay the youngling started cracking her knuckles, her wrists, elbows, every joint one could think of. Anakin winced at all of the sounds, feeling phantom pains when she cracked her hips and her neck. "See! Now we're both special!"
"Uh, yeah, I guess we are," Anakin moaned, still twitching from all the noise he'd been forced to listen to.
"Can you be my friend?" Little Kohse asked, even more excited. "I've never had an older friend before because everyone thinks I'm a youngling, but now I know someone who's special like me and I'm really happy!"
It took a moment for Anakin to fully process Kohse's question, she talked very fast, but when he did his eyes widened. "You mean... you don't mind the Force? Or that I was a slave?" ... Just like Padme?
"No! I think it's amazing!"
"Take note, Mr. Skywalker," the teacher said with a smirk, "She'll make you a true diplomat of you. Excellent job Kohse."
"Thanks! ... But what did I do?"
"You used diplomacy to make a friend. I wish your classmates had that level of initiative." She gave a meaningful look to some of the other students.
Neither Anakin nor Kohse fully understood what happened, but Anakin at least decided he didn't care as he went back to work. Kohse stayed next to him and they worked together for the rest of the afternoon. Gifted as she was with diplomacy and negotiation, she didn't know the difference between an actuator and a repulsor gauge. It felt good to be helpful.
When it was over it was near dark, the sun was setting earlier and earlier. Because it was his day off, Obi-Wan wanted to pick Anakin up from school and do some kind of exercise on the walk back. As he waited by the main entrance looking for his brother, the older Horace stepped out.
"So how's a freak like you get to a quality school like this?"
Anakin turned. "What?"
"You heard me, freak. How's a stupid, freak slave trick everybody into thinkin' he belongs in this school?"
The boy felt anger surge in the back of his head, but attacks like this he knew how to handle. This was Greedo, or Sebulba, posing and posturing and trying to inspire fear. Anakin would never show fear, it never helped, and so instead he started posing himself. "I got in here because I belong here. I'm the only human to ever win a podrace, I'm going to be the best pilot in the galaxy, and I'm going to be the best Jedi in the galaxy."
Horace frowned, not expecting to hear the word Jedi. "Don't Jedi raise their kids in some fancy Temple in Coruscant? So why're you here and not there? You some kinda Temple-reject?"
That hit much too close to home, but Anakin still refused to show it. "Just get going, Horace," he said in a tight voice, "It won't be long before I beat you in more than just Engine Assembly."
Horace scoffed. "For a slave and a Temple-reject freak you have big delusions. Your brother feed you those lies? He a Temple-reject, too?"
Anakin saw red after that. There was a stiff uppercut followed by a brutal shove and Anakin had the older boy giving ground. He was shouting epitaphs in Huttese; this youngling had no right to talk about him and especially Obi-Wan like that! It hurt even more because it was so close to the truth, Anakin really was a Temple-reject since they refused to train him and Obi-Wan had walked away from it all to train him. That bitchy Jedi Siri Tachi thought his brother was a reject, too, and to hear it from someone who had nothing to do with any of it made it all seem so much worse. It made him feel inadequate, feel like a failure and he hadn't even fully started yet; it made him feel like he'd let down his mother because she thought he was in the Temple being trained. He hated feeling like that and he wanted to make it stop so he kept swinging and shoving.
The two fell over when Horace suffered a misstep on the curb. Horace seemed to come out of his shock, and the twelve year old started using his height and weight to his favor. He grabbed at Anakin's flailing fists, larger hands wrapping around smaller wrists and jerking them above the boy's head. Anakin got his feet under him and tried to stand, pulling himself free of one of Horace's hands. He lifted a foot up to kick the older boy in the face but Horace saw it coming. He twisted on the ground, getting his own feet under him, and rose to his feet. With his fist still wrapped around Anakin's wrist, the limb was twisted tightly and painfully behind Anakin's back.
Even angrier now, Anakin threw a glare over his shoulder. He just wanted to shove the sleamo away, and to his shock the Force answered the call. Horace jerked backward, taking Anakin's arm with him, and suddenly he felt a wrench and pain exploded up his arm. He gasped as Horace tumbled back to the ground.
"Anakin!"
Obi-Wan was there, half jogging and sinking quickly to his knees, a hand reaching out to touch a shoulder. "Are you alright?" he asked quickly, eyes already looking down at Anakin's arm.
"He said I was a Temple-reject!" Anakin cried out. "He said you were a Temple-reject! He said I was a freak and didn't deserve to go to this school! He said-" Two fingers touched his forehead and Anakin felt a great release of pressure, the tight knot of his emotions lessening. It didn't help the pain, though, Anakin had broken something with that Force-push, and tears were stinging his eyes as waves and waves of pain shot up his arm. He refused to show them, not in front of Horace, and he glared at the boy for all he was worth.
"He attacked me first!" Horace was saying in his defense. "Did you see what that freak just did? He tried to kill me!"
Obi-Wan's eyes were closed; his head tilted back slightly in an expression Anakin had come to learn as weariness. He took a deep sigh and turned to face the twelve year old.
"What is your name, youngling?"
"I'm not a youngling, I don't have to tell you anything!"
"Horace," Anakin happily supplied.
Obi-Wan stood slowly, dusting off his trousers. Though he was in his work clothes, he was wearing his Jedi cloak, his arms hidden in the voluminous sleeves and hood dangling behind his back. He was at his full height, his gaze intense, his demeanor serious. This was Jedi Obi-Wan, the one you just had to listen to.
"It has been my experience," Obi-Wan said slowly in calculated tones, "that those who seek to belittle others often feel like they are lacking something in themselves. If you try to raise your own self worth by putting down my Padawan, younger and smaller than you, one wonders just how deeply you feel this lack."
"I'm not inadequate!"
"I never said you were, and so I find it interesting that you assume that is what I meant. It tells me that you are a teenager in a school surrounded by younglings of lesser years than you; it tells me that you want every badly to be considered an adult. From this I infer that you are worried over your age. I infer that your friends of comparable age are already adults and out working. I infer that you hear the clock ticking and that you feel time is running out."
"Shut up!"
And then Obi-Wan smiled. "Much the same happened to me when I was your age. I almost wasn't taken on as an apprentice, and I was scared that I would be a failure." His face darkened slightly, and Anakin thought he heard Obi-Wan repeating Qui-Gon's name in his head with lots of complicated emotions. "But I was able to find who I needed. The same will happen to you. Far better to live in the now than in the future, as my master often told me."
Horace glared, his face flushed. "You... you..." But then his face contorted and he shouted, "If you had a master then you're just a slave too!" before getting up and running down the street.
Anakin and Obi-Wan both watched for a few moments, until the twelve year old disappeared around a corner; then Obi-Wan turned to face his Padawan. "And what do you think you are lacking that would make you lash out like that?" he asked softly. His eyes were not on Anakin, they were on his broken arm, hands deftly tracing over sensitive areas, bits of Force leaking from his fingers.
"I'm no lacking anything!" Anakin protested defensively. "He started it!"
Obi-Wan looked up, his gaze intense but unreadable. "A Jedi must never act out in anger, Padawan," he said slowly, quietly, but with presence in his voice. "Emotions give us strength, but using them blindly, without a level head, only brings pain - only brings the Darkside. You were so focused on your anger that you did not think about how to use the Force, and the result is you broke your own arm, and that boy suffered nothing of your wrath." He paused, then, before asking, "Did his opinion of you change as a result of the fight?"
"... No," Anakin mumbled.
"Then the effort was fruitless. I suggest you keep that in mind the next time someone suffering from insecurity seeks to provoke you. Nothing good can ever come from anger."
It reminded Anakin very strongly of Qui-Gon, that time he got into a fight with the Rhodian Greedo, and what he said when the Jedi had pulled the two apart. That only made him feel worse, and he lowered his head, unable to look his brother in the face.
"Come on, let's get you to a medical facility. I don't have the skills to mend that break."
Anakin grimaced as he stood, but followed Obi-Wan in dejection.
Obi-Wan was carrying Anakin by the time they got to the med-center. Not just the arm was broken, specifically the wrist, but it seemed that when Anakin had Force-pushed that boy away, he'd also dislocated his own shoulder.
"I know this is difficult, Anakin, especially because this is your first time, but you need to concentrate. It will help."
"I know," was the grunted response.
He'd been trying to show Anakin how to use the Force to help ignore the pain, but was getting nowhere. Anakin was still highly emotional after his confrontation and was still angry about what was said, to say nothing of how poorly he felt because of some perceived disappointment coming from Obi-Wan.
He let out a sigh. "Open the bond," he said quietly, feeling so very, very weary. Despite two days of rest, one of which being a proper healing trance and this wasn't helping. He had been meditating while Anakin had been at school, trying to regain balance in himself yet again, but he knew he never would until he faced what had happened with Qui-Gon and he just didn't have enough time for that. Obi-Wan was still dragged down by melancholy and he just couldn't seem to shake it for more than an hour or so at a time.
"Good, Anakin. You've gotten very good at this. Now watch."
Gently and slowly, Obi-Wan reached for the Force and sent his own aches and pains, minimal as they were, out into the Force. He could feel Anakin trying to mimic him, but with too much force and all at once.
"Slowly, Padawan. One piece at a time."
Anakin growled grumpily, the pain of his arm making him even more irritable than would be expected after getting into a fight. Still, Obi-Wan was quite proud of how his Padawan kept on trying until finally, in a burst of calm, he was able to do it.
"Whoa..." Anakin whispered. "Wizard! It's like I can still feel it and it isn't any less but it's just not..."
"Distracting?"
Anakin nodded vigorously before hissing. "Still there, but manageable."
"Excellent. Now let's see about actually getting treatment."
Anakin gave a small nod before nestling into the crook of his neck.
Obi-Wan's eyes rolled skyward. This was attachment. Every sign of attachment. Though Obi-Wan had to wonder what on earth he'd done to earn that. He should be discouraging it, telling Anakin to rely on the Force, not on him. (After all, his master had relied on him and look were that had ended up... Obi-Wan scolded himself for such thoughts, no matter how true they were...) But Obi-Wan was tired and he knew that for nine years of his life, Anakin had nothing but loving attachment with his mother. To completely stop that would be the harshest form of cruelty that Obi-Wan could think of.
The love of families and their bonds were something that Jedi held in very high regard. But it wasn't something that they could risk for themselves, there just too many possible dangers of sinking to the Darkside. It was why Jedi children were taken so young, to prevent the harsh break from families that could scar a youngling and provide another route to the Darkside.
Obi-Wan needed to figure out how to wean Anakin off of such attachment but now was not the time. Anakin seemed to understand that he was reluctant to show much affection and was satisfied whenever Obi-Wan felt it absolutely necessary to give it. And, though Obi-Wan didn't even want to admit it to himself, he liked giving those signs of affection. It warmed a part of him that was still so lost and alone. Even now, he took a moment to squeeze Anakin as, he told himself, a gesture of his pride in what Anakin could do, and letting himself do that just eased an ache he didn't want to acknowledge.
Anakin was all he really had. Obi-Wan just didn't want to admit that he clung to the boy as much as Anakin clung to him.
They entered Theed's medical center and the receptionist smiled at them.
"Welcome, how can I help you?"
Obi-Wan nodded his head to his Padawan. "While I have training in field medics, I've not the talent for healing. He has a dislocated shoulder and a broken wrist." He scanned Anakin again with the Force. "And some rather bruised pride, but I'll be handling that."
Anakin pulled away enough to scowl at Obi-Wan horribly.
The receptionist smiled. "Let me call down to the ER. Someone should be here in a moment to guide you down there."
Obi-Wan nodded his thanks and sat in the small lobby, Anakin still in his arms, looking at him curiously. "You know some medical stuff?" he asked.
"Yes," Obi-Wan replied. "It was part of my training and all Jedi know the basics. One never knew when things would go badly and one had to be prepared." He gave a cracked smile. "There was one mission we were on when I was, oh, sixteen I think, and my Master dislocated his shoulder much as you have. It was the first time I'd ever had to set one. I must admit, all the knowledge in the world isn't the same as practical experience."
"I bet Qui-Gon didn't even flinch," Anakin smiled.
Obi-Wan couldn't quite hold back the chuckle. "Oh, he flinched all right. He damn near convulsed. I hadn't warned him and he was trying to do some Force healing on another injury he had and didn't realize what I was doing." He looked aside. "I thought I'd hurt him."
"But you didn't," Anakin insisted. "He was fine when I met him, so you musta done great!"
"Oh yes. After he'd told me to warn him next time and swearing a blue streak about how his head was aching from breaking his concentration, he did say that I did a very good job."
Anakin frowned at him, though Obi-Wan wasn't sure why, and poked at him with his good arm. "So why don't you set my arm? It can't be any good dislocated like it is."
Obi-Wan hesitated. "It will hurt Anakin. A lot. Even with the Force to help manage the pain, there will still be pain. And your grip on the Force is still new. The shock of it will undoubtedly make you lose your grasp." Anakin had had a difficult enough day. "I am not a trained healer. My medical knowledge involves keeping someone in one piece until a proper healer can take a look."
"Then it's a good thing you came straight here."
Obi-Wan and Anakin, as one, turned and looked at the healer, white coat and all. The woman was middle-aged, dark hair streaked heavily with gray. "So, you must be the most well-behaved boy I've ever seen who's got a dislocated shoulder and broken wrist."
"Oh it hurts!" Anakin replied. "It hurts worse than my first crash, but Obi-Wan showed me how to handle it."
The healer raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. "Well, then, if you two could come with me? I'm Healer Koilana Dalamone."
"Thank you, Healer Dalamone."
"Please, just Koilana." She took the two of them down a wide hall to a large, open room with curtained off areas for privacy. Once in one of the curtained "rooms", she handed Obi-Wan a datapad.
"Now, if you would please fill this out while I examine Anakin?"
"Of course." Forms ran bureaucracy after all. Even in medcenters. As he started to fill in the pertinent information like names, address, contact information, etc, Obi-Wan could feel Anakin clutching on the bond as the healer poked and prodded and brought in a nurse to help pop the shoulder back into place. He sent soothing waves of calm and when Anakin cried out as his shoulder was fixed, Obi-Wan put down his datapad and came over.
Anakin latched his free hand onto Obi-Wan's wrist, not even whimpering after that initial cry. Obi-Wan frowned. He knew that having a joint relocated was painful, and even Qui-Gon, after Obi-Wan had set it, had grunted as he moved. Anakin didn't utter a sound, merely scrunched up his face and held on tight.
Concerned, Obi-Wan reached through the bond more directly, offering strength and calm. Anakin grabbed onto it almost instinctually and Obi-Wan thought he saw pictures of a Hutt, one whose cruelty to property was known to be worse if one made a sound. A previous owner, but not Watto, thank the stars.
"It's alright, Anakin," Obi-Wan said quietly. "You're not in that place any more. I won't think any less of you."
Anakin took a breath but just shook his head, holding Obi-Wan's wrist closer. Obi-Wan ran his free hand through Anakin's hair and rested it on Anakin's good shoulder. "It's alright, Padawan. You don't need to hold it inside. I'm here. Holding back like this might do you more harm in the long run."
"It's weakness," Anakin muttered, wrapping what he could of himself around Obi-Wan's wrist.
Obi-Wan frowned, leaning down to put his forehead against Anakin's. "Crying, being upset, expressing pain. It's not a weakness. Stars above know that I have cried many, many times over the years."
Anakin sobbed and held tighter, but did not cry. "You only cried once," he mumbled.
And yet again, there was that painfully familiar ache in his chest from the hole that Qui-Gon had left behind. Obi-Wan had only cried once after Qui-Gon's death; in front of Anakin. Since then, he'd done everything he could to remain busy and occupied. Anakin needed him, and needed him as a strong Knight to help guide and nurture him. Not an orphaned Padawan who wanted nothing more than to curl in a ball and just ignore the world.
Had he been doing it wrong? Setting forth a bad example? Even Jedi cried, for it was a release of emotions. And if there was one thing Anakin needed help with was releasing his emotions. Particularly releasing them constructively, if that afternoon's fight was any indication.
Had he been messing up from the start?
How could he be any good for Anakin like this?
"All you have is the moment, Padawan mine. Worrying over past mistakes, wondering at the future, they do not help you do what is needed in the here and now."
Obi-Wan let out a long, tired sigh, shoving all his emotion away. Anakin needed him. That was his first and only priority.
"Perhaps that has been wrong of me," he said quietly. "I have been trying to keep occupied since that night and I work on my grief at night after you are asleep so that I don't have to bother you. You've had enough going on."
The healer applied an IV patch that made Anakin give out a sigh of relief as some sort of painkillers were finally given, but Anakin did not let go.
"Obi-Wan," Anakin started, but got no further as Koilana politely cleared her throat.
"We need to take him down to X-Ray," she said softly, yet brusquely. "If you would wait here, we should be back shortly." She glanced at the discarded datapad. "And please finish filling out the forms."
Obi-Wan nodded, squeezing Anakin's good shoulder and running a hand through the blond locks and sending calm through the Force. Anakin wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. Glancing at Obi-Wan, he finally released his deathgrip and looked to Koilana. "Ready when you are," he said. "So, I hear that medcenters give treats to kids. Will I get one?"
The healer chuckled as she listed a few things on her own datapad. "I'm not sure. I hear that I'm apparently notorious for sweets whenever a youngling ends up in my ER, but I don't have anyone to compare to other than myself."
"Neither do I," Anakin said brightly. "Maybe I can use you as my standard?"
"One hopes you don't end up in the ER often."
"I wouldn't know. I don't think I've ever been in a medcenter before, let alone an ER."
The nurse giggled and Obi-Wan watched as they wheeled Anakin away. He picked up the datapad and, not seeing any chairs nearby, leaned onto the counter of the nurse's station to start inputting data. So much information required for bureaucracy. When were Anakin's last immunizations, had he suffered any broken bones before, any preexisting medical ailments to be aware of, allergies to certain medicines, the list went on and on. Most he already knew, some he skipped until he could talk to Anakin (after all, the boy had been a podracer... and had crashed if his earlier statement was any indication, Obi-Wan just didn't know...)
There was one blank however, that he wasn't certain of and couldn't ask Anakin about.
Insurance.
Obi-Wan racked his brain trying to recall if he'd filled out any insurance forms in the myriad of filework that he'd done both in getting a job and with Shamde. He was fairly certain that he hadn't done any such forms with Shamde, and given that employers usually gave insurance to their employees, it was likely that Obi-Wan had filled something out once his foreman had agreed to hire him. But that day... was a very emotional one. Very draining. He'd been at his absolute worst by the end of the day, and he'd been working hard not to slide back down to that despair and hopelessness because Anakin needed him. He'd cut off his braid because he was no longer a child and it was high time he started acting like it.
With a heavy sigh, Obi-Wan took a deep breath, hoping to slip into a light meditation to recall events of that day with more clarity and hopefully if he'd filled out any insurance files.
He never got that far, however, when he heard a familiar voice.
"Needin' helpin'! Yous Hisen havin' a heala?"
Obi-Wan turned. "Augara?"
Sure enough, the dark brown Gungan was helping to hold up an older human that Obi-Wan also recognized. He rushed forward with the nurses, already calling on the Force to scan the man.
"Obi! What yousa doin' helaa?"
"Anakin got into a fight," he said hurriedly. "This is Vidar, isn't it? He has a cracked rib, broken femur, to say nothing of the fractures on his skull! A concussion, at least; Augara, what happened?"
Together, they helped lift the heavily built man onto a gurney as a page came over the system for a healer to come immediately to the ER. Vidar gave a weak cough, looking around blearily, struggling to get up.
"A beam fallin'," Augara explained, trying to help hold Vidar down. "Hesa no movin' fast enough. Oof!" Vidar somehow had the strength to hit Augara right on the bill and nurses were already calling for a sedative patch.
Obi-Wan knew his method would be faster. Gently pushing aside a nurse, Obi-Wan held Vidar's bloody head, looked right into his eyes and said, "Sleep," with firm gentleness. The man slumped back to the gurney, nurses already catching him and letting him down gently.
With Vidar finally quiet, Augara stepped back and Obi-Wan did as well until a nurse grabbed him. "You said concussion, cracked rib, and broken femur? Where?"
Obi-Wan stepped back to Vidar's side and started pointing what he saw. He put his hand over the break in the femur, "A clean break, all the way through, about ten centimeters from the hip, no stress signs from walking here," before swiftly pointing at the ribs, "Cracked fifth rib on the left side, looks very fragile," he narrowed his eyes, "and a hairline fracture on the sixth, though I may be wrong," and finally he glided his fingers just over Vidar's head, "A web from the parietal down to the left temporal, with one crack reaching to the frontal. Those are obvious, and I'm probably missing many of the smaller injuries, but there's no damage to the brain that I can feel." He stepped back. "I'm useless at telling if there's anything wrong with the organs. I've never had the talent for healing."
The nurse nodded and said nothing else as they rushed to get Vidar deeper into the medcenter.
"Yousa hidin' mui talents," Augara let out a breath. "Yousa chosin' buildin' why? Yousa coulda doin' anyt'in' yousa wantin'."
Before Obi-Wan even had the chance to reply, a nurse came forward, grabbed his sleeve, and started tugging. "If you've had medical training like you say," she said condescendingly, "you should know you never touch a person's blood! Do you have any idea how many pathogens are transmitted through blood? You idiot," she growled.
"Field medics milady," Obi-Wan replied. She shoved him into a room with a sink and was already pushing him too it. "In the field, where supplies aren't always handy. I've had to do basic medicine in fields, swamps, and once in a warzone."
"So?" she snarled, her gloved hands scrubbing his thoroughly under the water. "You should still know better, you moron!"
Clearly, this woman wouldn't be one to handle the public regularly. Obi-Wan couldn't help the chuckle.
"Don't laugh at me, you scruffy nerf-herder!"
"Scruffy?" Oh come now, Jedi often wore their hair long... But then, the average Nabooan male did not. He probably did look unusual. He sighed. Maybe he should at least pull it back.
Later. More important things to do now... like finishing those damn forms.
"I appreciate your concern," he said, pulling away from the sink. "But I still have forms I need to fill out and-"
She ignored him utterly, grabbed his sleeves, and started cutting them off at the elbows.
"I beg your pardon," he pulled away a bit more forcefully. This was his Jedi tunic and she was going to just slice them up? Why?
"Those sleeves are covered in blood and with a youngling to look after you will not be spreading anything to him," she said flatly. "Now come here," she reached forward again.
He sidestepped easily. "I do know how to wash blood out," he said firmly. "There's no need for you to be-"
"Then you need to go home shirtless."
"What?"
"If you don't want any infections, give me that damn tunic and I'll put it in a biohazard bag and you can go home shirtless," she said stiffly. "But with the weather getting colder, you'll probably catch your death, so it's better if I just cut off those sleeves."
"I..." A thousand thoughts were running through Obi-Wan's mind. How the trial of Nute Gunray was coming up and he needed to look every inch the Jedi he no longer was and this was the only tunic he had from before he'd left the Jedi. How clothes, even at cheap stores, would still be an expense in to his tiny paycheck. How this tunic was one of his last connections he still had with being a Jedi and he just didn't want to part with it. But that was attachment, something he needed to wean Anakin off of, but how could he when he didn't even want to let go of a piece of clothing?
His shoulders slumped. "It's just clothing," he told himself. "Just clothing. Nothing more, nothing less." He untied his obi and deftly removed the tunic, handing it to the grouchy nurse. "I don't suppose you have something I could wear?" She held the tunic like it was a rag in her gloved hands and dumped it into the biohazard bin.
"I'm sure I can scrounge something up," she grumbled. She then shoved him, shirtless out the door. "Now go finish those forms!"
Utterly embarrassed at being half-naked, Obi-Wan, blushing brightly, returned to the nurse's station where Augara took one look at him and laughed. "Obi, yousa no match for a fightin' female, nosa."
"I rather doubt any man is," Obi-Wan replied, feeling like all the nurses were staring at him. "Hopefully that unpleasant woman will provide me with something to wear."
He grabbed the datapad. "Augara, you might remember better than me. What insurance is our grouchy foreman providing for us?"
Augara frowned, closing his eyestalks to think for a moment. "Mesa no thinkin' wesa have 'surance," he replied. "Mesa already losin' pay for bringin' Vidar here. Others whosa go gettin' hurt say nosa 'surance."
Obi-Wan blinked. "We don't have any insurance? No health plans? Anything?"
Augara shook his head, long ears flapping. "Mui ot'ers sayin' deysa gettin' behind on-a de bills."
He was certain his stomach was somewhere down in the basement. "Behind on their bills?" Oh dear. Oh dear. The Temple had always taken care of expenses, and if one needed treatment outside of the Halls of Healing, all a Jedi needed to do was file it with the report and it would be taken care of. Just how expensive were medcenter bills?
He turned to the nurse covering the station. "Excuse me," he asked, "but roughly how much will it cost for Anakin to get his treatment?"
The nurse frowned. "You said you don't have insurance?" he asked.
"No, I don't think we do," Obi-Wan replied.
The nurse frowned, looking sympathetic.
Obi-Wan closed his eyes and lowered his head to his hands. They managed paycheck to paycheck. Any savings they'd managed to accumulate were pitiful, at best and Obi-Wan worked every chance he could as it was. Even if he took on another shift, every other day, that would cut into his time training Anakin and that just wasn't acceptable. Nor could he have Anakin go out and do chores-for-pay, for the same reason.
What were they going to do?
"Hey Obi-Wan! Why'd you lose your shirt? And what's Augara doing here?" called Anakin as Koilana wheeled him back from X-Ray.
Obi-Wan took a breath. A deep breath. And then another. Composure. He needed his composure.
There was a tentative poke at the bond. "Obi-Wan?"
Another deep breath and he looked up. "Augara brought in a colleague of ours who was injured at the jobsite. I helped settle him down and got blood all over me," he replied. "A nurse said she'd get me a clean shirt. Now, how are you doing?"
Augara put a hand on his shoulder, but Obi-Wan merely nodded and brushed it off, heading to his Padawan.
"Oh, your little brother here is quite the charmer," Koilana smiled. "And very well-behaved, if you ignore why he ended up here in the first place."
"I see you have a cast," Obi-Wan looked at the thin, hard wrapping around Anakin's wrist. "How long will it be on?"
"Three weeks!" Anakin sounded petulant. "And you were going to show me those new forms tomorrow! Now that's going to have to wait!"
Obi-Wan reached out to ruffle his Padawan's hair, needing the comfort of giving the affection. "Then perhaps now you'll see why fights are rather pointless if you can avoid them."
Anakin huffed, but didn't argue.
"So, can we go home today?"
"Yes," Koilana replied. "We have no reason to keep him here. Just make sure he takes it easy with that arm and when we remove the cast, we'll talk about how to build strength back into the muscles. Minimize usage of the shoulder, it will be sore after being popped back, but the bacta we've applied will be what allows any movement at all."
Obi-Wan nodded. "And," he hesitated, "When might we expect the bill to arrive?"
Koilana frowned, but remained a professional. "Given how long filework takes with filing and such, by the time you come in for removing the cast."
Good. There was a little time to... do something... work out something.
"Now Anakin," he said, still running a hand through the blond locks. "Let's go home. We have much to discuss."
How were the two of them going to do this?
Author's Notes: Another sign of greatness, Obi-Wan p0wns fighting children. Though really that doesn't take much... :D And Anakin keeps trying. He'll get it eventually; like when he's twenty. Though with the psychological scaring of slavery one wonders if he'll ever learn to not clutch what he thinks is his so tightly. Would that any of us could...
The fight with Horace shows Anakin why anger is bad, in a way Anakin couldn't really learn at the Temple. This little bit is very important for him. He's working withe the Force and given his natural talent with it, he's catching up, even if hes not training all day the way he would at the Temple. By confronting Horace and doing more damage to himself than what he wanted, Obi-Wan is able to see some of the pitfalls in a different light than what he would at the more reserved Temple.
It's a way to nip some of Anakin's problems in the bud. He doesn't have to hide as much as he would at the Temple. And Anakin makes a friend, which he didn't in the Temple until he was almost fifteen (Tru Veld).
Poor Anakin. He learned early on not to express pain and Obi-Wan's only just realizing this tendency and will have to compensate for it. And naturally, in the middle of dealing with it, he's interrupted. Hehehe. Obi-Wan's still in depression and backslides a bit, but not horrendously so.
And life plays it's joke again on Obi-Wan, this time with insurance.
I heard this story third hand, so it probably isn't true, but once upon a time there was a TV show where people lived out wishes/fantasies or some such. One episode, the young couple wanted to spend six months living below the poverty line for the experience. The girl got a job waitressing, the guy got a job doing manual labor. They were making ends meet, much like Obi-Wan, but there were no savings to speak of, and when the guy finally got injured on site, since they couldn't afford health insurance, the bills of getting treatment were astronomical and there wasn't even a co-pay. Our mother's hospital bill when all was said and done was seventy thousand dollars - more than our father makes in a year, and our father was in the hospital for over a month with his surgery. Imagine not having insurance to pay that! Now the screws are on Obi-Wan, and, finally, he takes action.
Nest chapter: An arrest.