1.

Obi-Wan Kenobi threw back a handful of painkillers, swallowed the pills dry, and went back to reviewing the list of official documents the Republic required a youngling to have upon being transferred from a planet outside Republic jurisdiction to the care of the Jedi Order. It was a very long list. Obi-Wan could feel the little line between his brows deepening with every line of text he read. Sometimes he felt he could name that line "Qui-Gon Jinn."

Did his master have any idea the kind of work taking Anakin Skywalker from a planet in Hutt Space would entail? The boy needed everything: documentation of citizenship, transfer of guardianship. They would have to draw up something approximating a birth certificate, do the calculations to translate Tatooine's cycles to Coruscant's with whatever the boy could remember to hazard a guess at Anakin's age. Anakin would require vaccination upon vaccination, quarantine for at least two weeks while his body processed them all and they got rid of whatever diseases or parasites he'd picked up on Tatooine. The last thing the Jedi needed was an outbreak of some desert virus inside the Core worlds because Master Qui-Gon hadn't thought things through.

He never did. At least three times a Coruscanti revolution, Master Qui-Gon took a fancy to some strange, sad, dangerous thing or creature. Exotic carnivorous plants. The pet monsters of unfortunate crime lords. Pathologically clumsy blights upon existence like Jar Jar Binks. Nearly every time—Obi-Wan refused in the case of Binks—Obi-Wan was the one who ended up dealing with the ramifications. Obi-Wan sorted out what this new thing could eat—or kept it from eating younglings in the Temple. Obi-Wan trekked the thing to a physician—or veterinarian or botanist—to have its hurts all healed. Obi-Wan arranged for the thing to be moved to a sanctuary or nature preserve or adopted into a loving forever home. Qui-Gon moved on blithely complacent in having done a good deed, and Obi-Wan sometimes spent weeks recovering from the experience. Until the next time.

It wasn't all bad. Obi-Wan was fairly sure he'd earned his honors in diplomacy cleaning up Master Qui-Gon's messes. He'd made quite a lot of friends, and he knew he'd mastered Beast Control and learned to mimic a krayt in endeavors for Master Qui-Gon's various foundlings. But sometimes he didn't know what Master Qui-Gon had done before he had Obi-Wan. Sometimes he suspected it was the reason Master Dooku was so sour and the Council as a whole disapproved of Master Qui-Gon.

But Qui-Gon had outdone himself on this mission. Jar Jar alone would have been more than enough. (That Gungun was going back to his people after this, banishment be damned.) But then Qui-Gon had come up with this boy who was a headache just to look at.

Oh, Obi-Wan knew why Qui-Gon had taken Anakin Skywalker. Prophecy or no prophecy, a boy of Anakin's strength within the Force could not be left to his own devices, particularly where they'd found him. It was a Dark Side disaster waiting to happen, even if there weren't suddenly actual Sith around the corner just waiting to come across the boy themselves. If, more than being left to his slavery, anger, and despair, someone like Anakin Skywalker was actually captured by the forces of evil? It didn't bear thinking about.

But taking Anakin would have consequences. He hadn't grown up with the Jedi. He was ignorant of the tenets, bylaws, and culture and by now had missed out upon years of basic instruction in the Force. His shields were nonexistent; the psychic battery he cast out with his mere presence in the Force was . . . extreme. He was sad and fearful now; he had been ripped away from his mother after knowing her nearly a decade, by Obi-Wan's judgment, and Anakin was old and clever enough to know they had not left Shmi Skywalker in the best of circumstances. On the contrary, the way circumstances had unfolded on Tatooine, it would be unsurprising if Watto now resented the comparatively unskilled mother to the podracer and mechanical prodigy he had actually wished to keep. In addition, Watto's losing bets on Sebulba in the Boonta Eve Classic might have left him in dire enough financial straits to consider selling Shmi as well. According to Master Qui-Gon, the Skywalkers had had little respect for their Toydarian master, but it had not seemed as though Watto actually mistreated them. Anakin, at least, seemed healthy and relatively well adjusted, considering. Shmi Skywalker might not do so well with a different master.

Obi-Wan downloaded the last document of the several they would need and stood up in his boot box of a quarters. Queen Amidala treated her protectors well. Her ship was the height of luxury, but space was still at a premium. Obi-Wan didn't have to bunk with the men or the handmaidens, who each shared a single-room barracks. But he could still step off his bunk, turn around, and find himself in the corridor.

He stooped to open the compartment under his bed and pulled out the spare tunic one of the queen's soldiers had found for him after their escape from Naboo. He tossed it onto his bed. One of the people aboard the ship was bound to have an emergency sewing kit. He could cut down and take in the shirt for Anakin. Clothing on Tatooine kept the skin covered from the suns but didn't offer sufficient warmth for deep space. Last Obi-Wan had seen Anakin, he'd been shivering in two or three extra blankets on the seat in the living area nook they had repurposed to be his bed. Surely they could do a little better than that.

He found the boy with the so-called handmaiden, Padmé. Surprisingly headstrong for a servant, that one, and always seemed to speak out when Queen Amidala was dithering over a decision. Although Qui-Gon had indicated the girl had not approved of his actions on Tatooine, she had struck up a firm friendship with Anakin himself. In turn, Anakin clearly worshipped her.

"Have you thawed out yet?" Obi-Wan asked the boy. Anakin looked up at him with those enormous blue eyes, his face thin and paler than usual inside his swathe of blankets. He said nothing, but his fear and accusation stabbed at Obi-Wan like a knife behind the eyes, despite the pain medication. Obi-Wan only just avoided wincing. "My apologies. The joke was in poor taste. Tatooine is in fact one of the most intolerably hot planets human beings can exist on. But human beings are also one of the more adaptable sapient species. It's what you're used to, and space is cold for everyone. I imagine it must be quite painful for you."

"I always wanted to fly on a starship," Anakin said. His voice was small. "I want to go talk to the engineers and the pilot. I want to see how she works, but every time I try—" he shrugged out of his blankets and immediately started shivering again. Not little shivers, either. Enormous, debilitating ones which shook his limbs so badly he had to find it difficult to walk. "I hate it," Anakin concluded, pulling his blanket back around himself and scowling. "It's dumb that you're all fine and I'm stuck here, like a baby, almost."

"You will adjust in time," Obi-Wan promised. "I know a girl not too much older than you back at the temple on Coruscant, the apprentice of my friend, Quinlan. Aayla is from a desert world too. When she first came to the Jedi Order, many years ago, she could hardly walk anywhere without shivering. Now, she's as bold as they come, and not usually bothered with wearing heavy clothes even aboard starships."

Anakin frowned. "She didn't take years to get that way, though, did she? I don't wanna spend years like this."

"You won't," Padmé promised in her turn. "Padawan Kenobi is right: human beings are adaptable. It usually only takes a few weeks to adjust to a new planet."

"How many planets have you gone to?" Anakin asked the girl.

"Not as many as the Jedi," she answered. "A few. In company with the queen on diplomatic visits."

"Dip-lo-mat-ic?" Anakin asked, sounding out the word and frowning again.

"Diplomatic," Obi-Wan repeated. "Trips where the queen was being friendly to other planets, usually to make a treaty, take part in a formal celebration, or improve trade." He would have to watch his words with Anakin, he saw. Although Anakin was passably fluent in Basic, Obi-Wan did not think it was the child's first language. On Tatooine, Huttese would be far more prevalent. "Actually, I was wondering if I could speak with the two of you," he said. "I was hoping to get a better understanding of the way you left. Given the person we saw toward the end of our visit to Tatooine, the Council will want my report of what happened as well as Master Qui-Gon's. I've seen his reports, and spoken with him briefly, but sometimes it helps to get another point of view. After all, for most of our time on Tatooine, I was on the ship."

"You mean the Council will be worried about that guy who almost ran me over," Anakin said. "He was wild! I thought only Jedi carried those laser swords, but I guess Mister Qui-Gon was right and other people can have them after all. What do you want to know? I didn't see him much either. Mister Qui-Gon had me and Padmé run away as fast as we could. I'm pretty fast, but I've never run like that. That guy was scary."

"Yes, he was," Obi-Wan agreed. "But I was hoping you could tell me more about what happened before that, when Qui-Gon found you at Watto's, and afterward."

Anakin and Padmé didn't have much to say that Obi-Wan hadn't extrapolated from Master Qui-Gon's calls during their trip, from their short debriefing afterward, and from his own personal observation. That wasn't the point. Anakin gave him a lurid blow-by-blow account of the Boonta Eve Classic, the superiority of his own podracer, and the dirty tricks of one Sebulba, and as he did so, his presence relaxed and brightened within the Force. His eyes lit up; a glow of health and excitement returned to his small, pale face; and his blanket cocoon even loosened around him. Padmé inserted the occasional remark about Anakin or Qui-Gon's recklessness; the queen's displeasure at Master Qui-Gon having, at one point, put their entire ship up as collateral for the entrance fee; and her own amazement when Anakin had managed to repair his damaged pod not once but twice at crisis points during the race.

"Impressive," Obi-Wan said as they finished the account of the big pod race. "From what I understand, the winner of the Boonta Eve Classic comes in for some substantial winnings. Yet Master Qui-Gon's half and your racing pod could not win both you and your mother from Watto?"

Padmé frowned, and Anakin's face fell. Misery climbed in the Force again, and Obi-Wan did his best to wall his mind against it. "I'm worth a lot," Anakin said. "I tried to be, so Watto wouldn't sell us back to the Hutts or something. He's a grumpy cheat, and he gambles too much, but he didn't hit us or anything, and it was better business to keep us fed and healthy and doing all the work he didn't wanna than to sell us. A lot of that junk he sold was worth more when I was done with it. He coulda been rich, if he didn't gamble everything away as soon as he got it, and he always thought the next time he would win." Anakin shrugged. "Mister Qui-Gon coulda got Mom real easy with just some of those winnings, even after going back to pay the entrance fee. He couldn't've got me too." After a moment, Anakin said, "Mom's nice. Well behaved. Really smart, and not half as much trouble as me. But she's not as skilled, you know? And she's getting kind of old. For Tatooine."

For a female human slave on Tatooine, he meant. The suns tended to age humans prematurely. The warning docs the Jedi had on Tatooine said humans on the planet often didn't live to half of their potential lifespan. Cancers were common. Female slaves were often more valued for their beauty or fertility than their ability for hard labor. Shmi Skywalker's value would be decreasing every revolution. It could never have been worth much to a junker like Watto in the first place. He had probably only taken her to care for Anakin; the boy would have been too young to care for himself all the time when Watto had first obtained him.

"I wonder," Obi-Wan mused aloud. "The Jedi don't go in much for wealth or possessions, but for the mother of the boy whose death-defying heroics won her an escape in a time of crisis—"

Padmé understood. "I will speak with the queen," she said. She turned to Anakin. She reached out to grip his forearm. "Anakin, I make no promises. We used all of the resources we had to repair the ship and free you from Watto. My planet is under blockade by the Trade Federation. The queen's life is in danger, and even if she escapes, she may not be queen for much longer. But if she is, if the Senate steps in to help, we may be able to return to Tatooine someday, with more money. We could buy your mother too. I'm sure the queen would want this."

Anakin regarded Padmé. "I know you're all in trouble," he said. "Mom knew Mister Qui-Gon couldn't get both of us out. She wanted me to go with you. She wanted me free, even if she had to stay with Watto. And she knew I might not be able to come back." His lip trembled, and his eyes shone. He swallowed. "I'll be okay, Padmé, Mister Obi-Wan. She told me I would be. You don't have to go back and get her. I know it'd be really hard."

"It will be hard," Padmé agreed. "But doing the right thing is never easy. We try to do it anyway when we can." She squeezed Anakin's arm. "If we can, Ani. We will come back for your mother."

"Thank you," Anakin said in a small voice. His eyes overflowed then. He bowed his head, muttered a curse in Huttese, and dashed his arm across his eyes. Padmé gave his arm another squeeze, got up from her place beside him, and walked away, tucking a small, white ornament into a pocket as she did so.

Obi-Wan sat quietly on the seat opposite the boy's until he'd finished crying. That had been a good day's work. Padmé Naberrie was kind and compassionate, and she was the type to keep her word. Anakin had helped them. She would remember it, and if she was in a position to do so when the war on her planet was over, she would leverage any royal resources she needed to free Shmi Skywalker. Knowing she would do so would put Anakin's mind at ease, and if she actually managed it, the boy could go into a life with the Jedi without the drawback of knowing his mother still suffered. Alternatively, he could return to Shmi to a new life in freedom.

"'m sorry," Anakin muttered, rubbing his eyes.

"For what?" Obi-Wan asked. "You have done and seen a great deal in a very short period of time, Anakin. You should give yourself some time to rest and recover. I'm not certain I would not be a similar disaster if I had nearly died in a podrace, left my home, nearly been run over by an assassin, then left my entire planet with a ship full of strangers, and all within the last standard rotation."

"Been pretty intense," Anakin agreed.

"When I've gone through a lot in the past few days, I usually look for something to eat," Obi-Wan suggested. "That can help things feel a bit more normal."

"Qui-Gon showed me the mess over there when I came aboard," Anakin said, wrinkling his nose and jerking his head at the community table and the window into the galley. "Nothing there looked or smelled much like food."

"Military rations," Obi-Wan said. "And deep space supplies. Let's see if we can't whip something up with them anyway." He rose and called back over his shoulder. "Bring the blankets, if you like."

He probably cooked more of the supplies than he should, trying to figure out what Anakin would (or could) eat. Obi-Wan's first instinct was to offer Anakin dehydrated fruit—fruits were good for humans, and all children loved sugar—except Anakin did not love sugar, and the sweetness of the fruit Obi-Wan offered him nearly set him vomiting. The boy was very nervous about boiling anything, and it wasn't until Obi-Wan persuaded Anakin to try and clean himself (after a final meal of seared protein blocks and hardtack, with far more spices than Obi-Wan would have thought to add initially), that Obi-Wan realized why. Then, he wanted to kick himself.

Any water on Tatooine had to be farmed in a high-labor, highly tech-intensive process. Even then, water was reserved first for drinking and then for coolant to keep the machines working. Using it to bathe or cook was an unthinkable luxury for someone of Anakin's class. They went dirty, or took the odd communal shower beneath sonic heads that were faulty as often as not.

Anakin, who had relaxed still more over dinner and cooking dinner, had a panic attack when he saw Obi-Wan was asking him to take an actual water shower.

"Nu-uh! What will we drink?! It could be a whole week to Coruscant, Mister Qui-Gon said, and I—I'm not worth it, Mister Obi-Wan. Just hand me a damp cloth or something, I'll be fine—"

"Anakin!" Obi-Wan broke in with effort. He went down on his knees in front of the boy, which actually left him several centimeters shorter. He grasped Anakin by the shoulders—the boy had finally left his blankets in the mess, although he still shivered intermittently. "The water doesn't vanish, Anakin," he said, once he was certain the child was listening. "It goes to tanks beneath the floor of this level. Then pumps carry it to a purification chamber within the inner workings of the ship. The water is recycled, and we can use it again."

Anakin's eyes were wide and frightened. He gripped Obi-Wan's arms right back, and his fingers held with impressive strength. He was silent for a moment, and Obi-Wan pushed his pain aside, waiting. "That—that makes sense," Anakin said finally. "Yeah, that makes sense. Sorry, I—that was dumb, I—"

"Naboo, where this ship is from, actually has very large oceans and a semi-aquatic native species," Obi-Wan told Anakin. "All their ships come well equipped with water to spare. Some Gungun vessels even have entire rooms for swimming."

"I'd like to see that!" Anakin said. "Have you seen a lot of starships, Mister Obi-Wan?"

"A fair few," Obi-Wan admitted. "We can talk about it after you shower, perhaps. You smell like sweat and engine oil."

"It's not that bad," Anakin said defensively. "I've been dirtier!" Obi-Wan looked at him, and Anakin shrank. "What if I drown, though?" he asked in a smaller voice.

"I'd advise not breathing in the water," Obi-Wan said. "It should be easy enough to avoid. Showers usually rain down enough water to get you clean, without making it difficult for you to access air."

"Can you—" Anakin started. He stopped and looked down at his feet.

"Can I what?" Obi-Wan asked.

"Can you wait for me here?" Anakin asked finally, gesturing around at the fresher's antechamber where they stood, by the ship's three community sinks. "Can you listen? Just—just in case?"

Obi-Wan counted to five inside his head. This should be Qui-Gon's job, he thought. His master was most likely with the queen's security team or with the queen and her handmaidens, planning their next moves when they returned to Coruscant. This was all very well and good, as their actual mission now was defending the queen. But Qui-Gon had picked this child up off his homeworld, and Qui-Gon should be the one making certain the boy didn't implode in a chaos of fear and anxiety in the aftermath. Instead, he had simply left Anakin to his own devices. The boy was free! He had been rescued from a dire predicament, and, as usual, Qui-Gon had assumed that was enough.

There were docs to prepare, that soldier's shirt to cut and size down for Anakin back in his quarters. And Obi-Wan really did need to write that secondary report for the Council, even if the Council would only truly care about Obi-Wan's impressions of the last five minutes of their detour to Tatooine. He really did not want to spend the rest of his evening holding Anakin Skywalker's hand—metaphorically—through his first water shower and, at this rate, likely through his first whole night off his homeworld. The boy had raced the Boonta Eve Classic. Surely he could handle a bit of water falling from the ceiling.

But . . . it was Anakin's first water shower. And if Qui-Gon wasn't going to hold his hand, someone had to do it.

"I'll stay," Obi-Wan promised.

Forty-five seconds into his shower, Anakin Skywalker stopped yelling about drowning and started to enjoy himself. From the other side of the privacy wall, seated on a maintenance stool, Obi-Wan talked Anakin through the intricacies of using soap, and by the time Anakin swore he was cleaner than he'd ever been in his life, he sounded as disgusted with the whole process as Obi-Wan would have expected from any other boy his age.

Obi-Wan tossed a towel around the privacy wall for Anakin. The boy grumbled about how much easier things were in a sonic, and came out fully dressed, albeit with small wet spots spreading on his dirty clothes. He held the towel, which was, naturally, completely dry.

"You use that to dry off," Obi-Wan told him, nodding at the towel.

Anakin shook his head. "I didn't want the water to get trapped," he explained. "If it doesn't go down the drain, how can it be recycled in that tank thing you talked about? Hey, can you take me to see that?"

"The towels are washed too, eventually, just like you are," Obi-Wan said. "Your clothes as well, for that matter. The water from that wash goes back in the tanks. And aren't you wasting water now? The water that is seeping into your dirty clothes?"

"I stamped as much as I could off," Anakin said. "I told you the sonic was easier. There's so much left over in that shower. And what about the tanks?"

"I don't know where they are on this class of starship," Obi-Wan said. "Only that they exist. We could go speak to the engineer tomorrow, perhaps."

"Like I wanted before," Anakin agreed. "It should be easier, now I'm ad-just-ing to the c-c-c—" he broke off, shivering again, harder than he had since supper.

"Another thing that towel does is keep the water from cooling down your body temperature too much," Obi-Wan observed. He snatched it from Anakin's hand and draped it over the boy's head and shoulders. "Rub your hair with it," he instructed. "It takes longer to dry than the rest of you. Let's head back to where you left your blankets."

"Sure," Anakin said, wringing out handfuls of his hair into the towel with one hand. His other reached out to take Obi-Wan's hand. Obi-Wan tensed for a moment and missed half a beat on his next step. He hadn't been expecting the easy affection from a boy of Anakin's age. Younglings in the creche often craved, even needed physical contact. On volunteer shifts there, the crechemasters had taught Obi-Wan to give it to them. By Anakin's age, they had learned a measure of propriety with older Jedi. Looking forward to their own future apprenticeships, they sought to present an image of duty and self-control to anyone who might be looking for a padawan or know someone who was. Their affection was kept to their own peer group.

Anakin didn't know. He was ignorant of Temple etiquette and mannerisms. Until yesterday, he had been an ordinary little boy living with his mother, unbothered with the necessity of keeping to his place within the Order hierarchy.

And within the Force . . .

Obi-Wan swallowed. Within the Force, at the moment, Anakin was a beacon of peace and contentment. At the moment, his fears and sadness and anxieties were forgotten. He blazed with trust and courage, with hope for the future. With Light. Obi-Wan's headache had gone. His spirit eased, curled up within his chest, and sighed—both with a surge of his own satisfaction and contentment and a small, farther-off part of him that noted he had a lot of work ahead.

He wrapped his fingers around Anakin's hand, and the two of them walked on.

A/N: Cross-posted on AO3, this is the single most popular story I have ever written. I originally kept it exclusive to that site, but then I thought some of you over here might enjoy it too. I hope you do.

Love,

LMS