The night sky was beginning to lighten as Anakin and Emalda approached the Fahren. Emalda was still clutching her jacket and parcel. They had spoken very little on the walk.
"Did you finish purchasing supplies?" asked Anakin politely, though the last thing he wanted was conversation.
"Supplies? Oh, yes. Yes, I found everything we needed."
She gazed off into the middle distance. Anakin noted that the robe she'd borrowed from Ben had stitching coming loose on the bottom hem.

"Where did you learn to be a Jedi?" she asked suddenly. "Is it very far away?"
Her vertical pupils focused on Anakin's face. She was searching his expression for something other than the answer to his question.
"I was trained in a Jedi Temple," said Anakin uncomfortably. "Though, not the one on Coruscant obviously - the Empire destroyed that before I was born."
"The same for your Master, then," asked Emalda, apparently not noticing Anakin's uneasy lie. "Or was he old enough to remember... the time before the Purge?"

Anakin stopped, flustered. He couldn't remember the careful dates Leia had taught him, about how long ago the Empire had purged the Jedi Order. Ben was thirty-five. Was that old enough to believably have memories of the Republic? Was it safer just to lie and claim Ben had never known life before the Empire? Leia had briefed them on the things they would be expected to know but Anakin remembered only the dates that applied to Anakin himself. He hadn't thought he'd need to lie on Ben's behalf.

"I'm sorry," said Emalda, gazing at him sadly.
Anakin frowned at her in puzzlement before realising she'd interpreted his flustered silence as distress. She was fidgeting restlessly with the sleeve of Ben's robe.
"I shouldn't have mentioned... so many Jedi died...," she stammered uncertainly. "I'm sure you don't want to talk about it."
"No, I don't particularly want to talk about... that," agreed Anakin, grateful for the out.

Anakin had never had many close friends in the Temple, and as he'd grown older and his missions more frequent, he'd seen the few he had less and less often. Obi-Wan was easily able to name several old friends and age-mates, missing specific people. Anakin had grieved the loss of the Jedi Order but it had always been for the loss of the family they had been to him rather than the loss of the individuals. He hasn't spent much time thinking about his own age-mates; not even about what fate might have befallen Tru Veld, whom he had considered his closest friend at the Temple.

They walked in silence up the ramp and Emalda walked in a daze towards the cabin. Anakin paused to close the ramp again. Anakin wondered that it had taken him this long to think of Tru Veld. He even spared a thought to wonder what had become of those like Ferris, who had never been a friend of Anakin's by any stretch of the imagination. He could remember walking into his first lesson with the other Initates, older than all of them but lacking the basic skills that many had been learning since before they could walk. He had always been talented but it was like being gifted at jumping hurdles before you knew how to walk from one to the next. Anakin was maybe the last one alive to have known them.

Anakin entered the cabin to see Emalda sitting forlornly on her bunk. He crossed to sit opposite her, on Obi-Wan's bunk.
"Some things shouldn't be forgotten," said Anakin. "Ask me if you want."
"I don't want to... open old wounds," said Emalda.
"Ask away," Anakin assured her.
"Something easy," Emalda promised him. "Uh... how old were you when you started Jedi training? I've heard rumours about the Jedi stealing babies and that kind of thing..."
"Sometimes babies were taken in, if they had the ability," said Anakin grinning. "But, they weren't stolen. Parents' permission only."
"Oh, of course," said Emalda nervously. "I never really believed that one anyway. Can't even remember where I heard it."
"I was one of the oldest accepted," said Anakin. "Eight years old."

"Kallea's kilts...," muttered Emalda. "Old at eight. How could you ever know anything else?"
"It's a sacrifice," said Anakin, recognising the warm feeling in his chest as pride. "But for a good cause and the betterment of the galaxy. I can't imagine being anything else."
Anakin smiled to himself, remembering when the Jedi had been a powerful symbol for everything good in the Republic - a time when a young slave boy on Tattoine had longed to be one of them. It saddened him to think that in this time, there might be other young boys who never got the chance to live that dream.

"So, Ben's been taking you on missions since you were eight years old?" said Emalda. "That's... I can't imagine walking into that kind of situation..."
Anakin grinned and shook his head.
"I was accepted into the Temple at eight. I didn't start accompanying my Master on missions until I was twelve."
"That's still young."
"There are risks but Ben was with me the whole way. He'd never let anything happen to me."

"So," said Emalda casually. "Ben's upbringing was the same? He had a Master looking out for him too?"
"Ben's Master was Qui-Gon," said Anakin.
"So, Qui-Gon's opinion matters to Ben."
Emalda's expression turned gloomy at this and hugged her knees to her chest. Anakin looked at her suspiciously, wondering if he should warn her that the Jedi Code forbid romantic attachments. He also wondered about the parcel she had been hiding under her coat. Emalda was trying to keep secrets from the Jedi and doing it rather badly.

"Anakin," whispered Emalda, so quiet that Anakin had to lean forward to hear her.
"Yes?" asked Anakin.
"Teach me how to fight."
"WHAT?"
Anakin pulled back in surprise, giving her a skeptical look.
"Not your Jedi tricks," she said hurriedly. "Just anything. Just... a blaster... a blowpipe... hand-to-hand even."
"You don't want to get involved in violence," said Anakin, waving a dismissive hand.
"I'm already involved."
"Leave any fighting for us Jedi. We're trained for it."
"My would-be-muggers didn't care that I wasn't a Jedi," Emalda reminded him, leaning forward to lay a hand on his arm. "I've spent a long time being pushed around, Anakin. I want to feel safe."

"We can keep you safe," said Anakin confidently, covering her hand with his own. "My Master and I won't let anything happen to you. Neither will Qui-Gon or Obi-Wan."
Emalda pulled away from him in frustration and paced around the room.
"I didn't say I wanted to be safe," she snapped. "I said I wanted to feel safe, even if its just an illusion. Are those my life choices? Be afraid or find someone strong enough to hide behind? Am I really that pathetic?"

"Don't say that!" snapped Anakin, rising to his feet and inadvertently towering over her.
She took a timid step back and Anakin had to stop to calm himself down.
"We're both tired," said Anakin, more calmly. "Maybe when we've rested I can show you a few moves - but it has to be with my Master's permission."
"Do you think he'll agree?"
"I think my Master has a lot of time for you."
He got a smile for his trouble and she turned away to find her sleep clothes. Anakin scrubbed his hands over his face. Between the near-collision and the actual fight, he was exhausted. He stripped off his outer tunics and his boots. He stretched out on Obi-Wan's bunk, determined to rest for just a moment. He fell asleep before Emalda had a chance to say good night.

Anakin dreamed of standing on rich blue carpet, as shafts of sunlight lit empty and silent hallways. Statues of grand beings guarded the staircases that spanned most of the room's width. Majestic pillars towered above his head to a ceiling that was as austere as it was elegant. He could even smell the blooms in the meditation gardens. Anakin was not surprised to be dreaming of the Jedi Temple when he had been thinking of it so much.

There was a flash of lightning and the whole room darkened to pitch blackness. Marching boots and blaster fire fringed the edge of Anakin's hearing but it was too dark to see anything. His skin crawled as he heard two lightsabers clashing, sizzling and snapping, even as the marching boots droned on. Another flash of lightning illuminated the room once more. Midday light returned and Anakin was still standing alone in an empty hall. The smell of battle and ozone lingered. Anakin had the uneasy sense that something had happened, though he couldn't guess whether it was a vision from the future or memory from the past. He reached for his lightsaber, only to find it wasn't on his belt.

Anakin walked out of the hall, glancing over his shoulder. He was watching for attack - or for his Master to appear and berate him for losing his lightsaber again. The door to the map room slid open at his approach. The shades had been drawn and a holographic map of the galaxy activated. Stars, planets, moons - entire solar systems drifted lazily about the small circular room. Qui-Gon Jinn sat cross-legged on the floor, looking up at the display. His companion was an Ekash woman, swathed in soft blue material with a furry tail curled up behind her. Her thick sandy hair was braided into a dozen little top-knots which rested across the back of her skull.

"What about Corellia?" she asked Qui-Gon, pointing at a spinning planet.
"No," said Qui-Gon. "No Jedi left there, either."
She pointed at another planet.
"What about there?"
"I'm afraid not."
The Ekash woman titled her head and looked critically at Qui-Gon. She poked him in the chest.
"What about here?"
Qui-Gon rubbed the spot she'd poked, and didn't look up as Aankin stepped forward into the room.
"Yes," said Qui-Gon. "Many of my fellow Jedi do indeed have a place in my heart."
"They must be very small, then," she snorted. "You may be a big man, Qui-Gon Jinn, but I still don't think you could fit many other people inside you."

Anakin smothered a laugh as he knelt in front of them to examine the woman's face.
"Are you Dr Colash?" asked Anakin. "We've been looking for you."
She raised an eyebrow skeptically.
"Not looking very hard, are you?"
She tugged sharply on Anakin's braid and laughed to herself. She elbowed Qui-Gon but he didn't share her amusement. Qui-Gon reached into his robes where she had elbowed him, and pulled out Anakin's lightsaber. He balanced it across his open palm, studying it intensely.
"You want this, don't you?" he asked Anakin.

Anakin reached for it but Qui-Gon pulled it away.
"I'm not sure," said Qui-Gon suspiciously. "Luke's told me things about you, things of fire and small moons."
"Nonsense, Qui-Gon," interrupted Dr Colash. "You must have faith that he will take the right path."
The lightsaber was dropped into Anakin's outstretched hand, though Qui-Gon's frown didn't quite fade. Dr Colash looked very pleased with herself.
"This is what you should be paying attention to, anyway," she said.
She pulled a small, brown parcel from behind her back. She looked at it distastefully and then began to wiggle it in the air while making engine noises.
"Zoom, zoom, Anakin," she said.