2.

By the fifth day of the voyage to Coruscant, Obi-Wan didn't know whether he wanted to hit Master Qui-Gon or thank him. Naturally, Jar Jar was still an irritation. They couldn't very well space him simply for being annoying, so he continued to fumble around the ship breaking things and getting in everyone's way. But you eventually learned to ignore Jar Jar Binks, except when some of his quieter remarks alerted you that he had broken something particularly crucial and was truly concerned, rather than screaming in a silly bout of panic or surprise as usual.

Anakin . . . would not be ignored. He was useful in fixing the things Jar Jar broke. In that way, Qui-Gon's two new foundlings canceled one another out. In others, Anakin was by far the more troublesome of their guests.

By the third day, Anakin had adjusted to the temperature aboard the queen's ship. He still complained, but he no longer needed to be cocooned at all hours except when he had recently had a hot meal. He regained his mobility and subsequently showed himself to be possessed of even more than the usual reserves of energy available to a small boy. He was in constant motion, particularly his mouth, which never ceased asking questions.

Qui-Gon sometimes answered them. He would take half an hour each around breakfast and supper to check in on Anakin. He would tell him things about the Jedi Order or answer Anakin's questions about their journey so far. Ask what Anakin had found out each day or what he thought of it. Sometimes he would recommend an instructional holo or find some instructional diagrams of starship interiors for the boy, if he felt like putting in extra effort to keep Anakin entertained. But usually, Master Qui-Gon proceeded to his private quarters to read or meditate, or to the queen's chambers to confer with her and with her security team on their procedure moving forward. Anakin would be left to his own devices for the rest of the day. And Anakin, left to his own devices, would quickly put aside the holo Qui-Gon had set in front of him or the plans he had procured in favor of going to examine the actual engine and systems of their ship—or tagging along with Obi-Wan. Sometimes it was tantamount to having a second, very inquisitive shadow.

How did the pilot navigate the hyperspace routes between Tatooine and Coruscant? How did they avoid crashing into other ships along the lanes and exploding with enough force to split the galaxy? (Anakin, like many imaginative small children, could get particularly gruesome in his imaginings.) How did the water recycling system work? Would another class ship get from Tatooine to Coruscant any faster? Could the Sith trace them? If so, how did Obi-Wan think he would be doing it? What would the queen do when they got to Coruscant? What did Obi-Wan think Qui-Gon would do when they got to Coruscant? What was it like in the Jedi Temple?

Obi-Wan was flattered, even honored by Anakin's seeming trust and admiration for him. More than that, Anakin actually seemed to like him. Obi-Wan had never been a hit in his rotations to the Temple creche. He wasn't fun. He wasn't strong enough with the Force to be particularly impressive, nor was his master one of the more popular among the Temple set. Obi-Wan's adventures had not usually been the sort that were appropriate to share with the youngest of the Order, so they naturally assumed he had not had any. Younglings in general thought Obi-Wan boring. They followed his instructions when it was his turn to instruct them and perked up much more when their next instructors and minders came in.

Anakin, on the contrary, had difficulty following Obi-Wan's instructions, not usually out of any innate unwillingness but more often because he got excited about investigating something and forgot. And on only five days' acquaintance, with no foundation in experience or reality, he seemed to have developed the most exaggerated ideas of Obi-Wan's capabilities as a Jedi purely because he, Anakin, happened to know and like Obi-Wan. He seemed certain Obi-Wan was incredible with a lightsaber. He was always pestering to hear more about Obi-Wan's travels and adventures.

This was all rather overwhelming, if not completely unforeseeable. Qui-Gon had left the boy at loose ends, and Anakin liked people. As a lowly padawan, and closer to the boy's own age, Obi-Wan was easier for Anakin to follow around and chat to than Master Qui-Gon. What was stranger was the way the boy had begun to act immediately after his morning or evening sessions with Qui-Gon. Anakin liked to cross-reference the things Qui-Gon told him about the Jedi with Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan could understand Anakin wanting to incorporate a second point of view into his limited knowledge of the Jedi. It was an intelligent move from Anakin. Yet, Anakin often directed follow-up questions on his conversations with Qui-Gon to Obi-Wan instead of his master. This didn't make sense at all.

"Why don't you ask Master Qui-Gon some of these things you're so curious about?" Obi-Wan laughed one evening, half-amused and half-despairing. "He is my master, after all, and I am just the apprentice." One of the first things he had explained to Anakin was that "master" meant "teacher" to the Jedi and not "owner" or "overlord." Anakin had accepted the definition without difficulty but still seemed to prefer the still courteous but more informal degradation of "Mister" for Qui-Gon, and often applied it to Obi-Wan as well.

"Yeah, but you already know a lot," Anakin replied blithely. He threw a small ball Padmé had found for him somewhere up at the ceiling and caught it again as it came down. "Anyway, an apprentice helps the master, right? You're Mister Qui-Gon's helper. He's like the captain or designer of a ship. You're like its engineer. Mister Qui-Gon decides where to go and what to do. You make sure everything works. Anyway, you don't mind answering, do you?"

He asked it like a question but was so confident in Obi-Wan's answer that Obi-Wan almost bristled. "Sometimes I don't know the things you want me to tell you, Anakin."

Anakin shrugged. "Then you find out," he said. "Or I ask Mister Qui-Gon the next day, or we don't know."

Obi-Wan peered at the child. He had indeed done more than a few late-night holonet archives searches in the past few days to answer some of Anakin's more arcane questions. He hadn't thought Anakin had noticed.

"It's okay when you don't know stuff," Anakin told him. "I don't know lots of stuff. I just ask more questions or play around until I find out what I don't know. That's what an apprentice is supposed to do, right? And I'm gonna be a Jedi apprentice. Like you!" He tossed the ball to Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan caught it and tossed it back. "I suppose you have me there."

Anakin grinned. "Then I'll just keep asking you more stuff," he said. "Anyway, you like it when you do know. I can tell. You even like finding out when you don't know." Anakin rolled his eyes on the last sentence.

Obi-Wan knew that despite his casual manner, Anakin was not particularly enjoying his position of near-total ignorance about the Jedi. He was much more comfortable explaining to the mechanics and engineers aboard the ship how he had done things differently when he built his pod. Everyone enjoyed ruling over their own spheres of competence. Study and research was not one of the more popular ones. But it was interesting that Anakin had noticed that Obi-Wan did enjoy it. Sometimes, Anakin was nearly charming enough to make up for all the questions.

Obi-Wan arranged a few hours for himself to work on other matters each day by persuading the pilot and engineer aboard the queen's vessel to let Anakin spend time poking around the systems. He talked Padmé into "persuading the queen" to allow Anakin to share Padmé's maintenance duties on the R2-D2 astromech as well. The droid needed some care after its exposure to the sands on Tatooine, and both Anakin and Padmé enjoyed this time. For Padmé, it was an hour of escape each day, where she didn't have to concern herself with what was happening to her home planet or what she or anyone else would need to do about it, where she didn't have to do or be anything but a girl, a girl barely into her teens. As for Anakin, he adored the droid almost as much as he adored Padmé and always came back to Obi-Wan full of praise for both. Padmé was nice, Padmé was smart, Padmé wasn't boring at all like some girls could be. Padmé smelled nice, and Padmé liked him. She said he was the smartest, bravest boy she knew. And did Obi-Wan know R2-D2 had magna-locks on his legs and multidirectional rockets? Had Obi-Wan seen the logic programs on that droid? Padmé said the queen wouldn't even mind if Anakin adapted them, so Artoo could solve problems when a starship wasn't even in a battle. Anakin could make him into a real war droid, probably. Upgrade his laser and some other stuff, and no one would even know all the stuff Artoo could do because he would still look like just an astromech. Artoo could be like a secret agent droid for Padmé and the queen, and if he got hurt, they could just fix him again, or Anakin could do it for them.

Sometimes Obi-Wan thought Anakin would be much better suited for one of the Jedi assistance corps than he was for the Order itself, despite his strength in the Force. The boy truly was a genius with ships and machines. He had expected the pilot and the engineer to complain about all the questions Anakin asked, the systems he wanted to dismantle and analyze while their ship was still in flight. Instead, Varel, the ship's engineer, expressed considerable regret that Anakin would be leaving them when the ship docked on Coruscant. "If he were six years older, I'd hire him in a heartbeat," he told Obi-Wan. "Kid'd probably work me out of my job in two months, though, even working part-time after academy or something. D'you think he talks to them? The engines? The machines? That something you can do with the Force?"

"He is almost certainly using the Force to augment his understanding of where the pieces of the whole are and how they work together," Obi-Wan said, "but the desire to do so, the love of the machines, the work—that's all Anakin, from what I can tell."

Varel regarded the boy where he crouched over the open casing of the ship's hyperdrive. "Yeah, you said it, Kenobi. The kid loves this. The machines, the work. I've seen captains love ships like that kid does. Or mechanics who've been in the job for fifty years. Ships and droids'll sometimes respond to them like they do to that kid—they'll say the machines tell them what's wrong. But Skywalker knows at his age, about everything. Stuff he doesn't own, systems he's never even seen or heard of before." He shook his head. "Damn, if he was six years older, or even the queen's age, maybe. He could make so many credits."

Anakin was with Varel the morning they were scheduled to land on Coruscant. He had expressed interest in what would happen to the ship as they came out of hyperspace, navigated into orbit around the planet, and began the landing sequence at the docks between the Senate building and the Temple. Obi-Wan was using the time to finish adding the details on Anakin's application for a Republic citizenship and birth certificate when Qui-Gon knocked upon the open door frame.

"Always busy, aren't you, Obi-Wan?" he said.

Obi-Wan looked up. "Did you need me for something, Master?"

Qui-Gon smiled. "Not as such, though it feels as though I've seen little enough of you this journey. I expected you would have more interest in Queen Amidala's plans for her address to the Senate."

"Whatever plan survives contact with the enemy," Obi-Wan replied. "The Trade Federation's grip upon its allies in the Senate will make response to her pleas difficult. I imagine the Senate will be more concerned with the economies of the systems the corporation serves than the lives of a few billion Naboo and Gunguns, particularly as the Gunguns do not yet have their own representative. Besides, if there were anything I needed to know, I expected you would tell me. Or Padmé Naberrie might."

Qui-Gon's mouth twitched within his beard. "You've picked up on their subterfuge, have you? Sabé, a rather terrifying bodyguard with a superficial resemblance to Padmé, is the name of the handmaiden who sits the throne when Padmé feels she is most useful elsewhere. Or that she is in danger. And sometimes when she simply cannot stand the ceremony any longer. You and Anakin have been kind to her these past few days."

"Anakin doesn't know," Obi-Wan said. "I'm certain he would endeavor to persuade Queen Amidala to abandon her royal duties for an hour each day to tinker with that pampered astromech even if he did. Most likely, he would succeed."

Qui-Gon agreed. "Yes, she has a fondness for droids, and developed one for Anakin back on Tatooine. At first, I wasn't happy that she insisted upon joining us for our excursion to Mos Espa—she would have been safer on the ship. But in retrospect, it probably helped Anakin to find a friend closer to his own age when we met. I believe he has found you easy to relate with as well."

Obi-Wan frowned. "If I've overstepped, Master—"

"No, Obi-Wan, I've been grateful," Qui-Gon assured him. "It's been many years since I've been around a child Anakin's age. You were older when you came to me . . . and rather different."

"That's one way of putting it." Obi-Wan's apprenticeship to Qui-Gon had not had the most auspicious beginning, nor had Obi-Wan himself been in the best frame of mind to begin, the first or second times. It had taken years for the two of them to grow into a working partnership. Things generally worked well now. Obi-Wan had learned a great deal from Master Qui-Gon, and he believed he was useful to his master more often than not. But he knew he had not been the easiest apprentice to train. Sullen, angry, untrusting, stubborn. The master who trained Anakin would deal with a whole other set of challenges.

Qui-Gon raised his eyebrows. "You, for example, had much greater focus and respect for tradition than I believe Anakin will," he said. He had sensed the train of Obi-Wan's thoughts.

It was a rare compliment from his master. Obi-Wan accepted the praise with grace and let it pass, still preoccupied with the problem of Anakin. "No, Anakin comes wholly ignorant of traditions most masters don't even consider their students will have to know," he said. "I've been wondering whether he might be better off in basic lessons with the initiates or privately tutored until he's up to speed. There are benefits and drawbacks to either scenario. The one might help him gain more rapid acceptance and assimilation into the wider Order, but, on the other hand he is rather—" Obi-Wan hesitated.

Qui-Gon nodded. "Yes. Off Tatooine, his presence is even more overwhelming than before. Coruscant, the Temple, the other Force adepts there will camouflage him somewhat, but the Force adepts there are also more likely to be sensitive to his broadcasts. Baji, the queen's medic, mentioned he's had to give you several painkillers."

"Have you not had to take any?" Obi-Wan asked. "Anakin is—he's—"

"Yes," Qui-Gon said again. "And yes, a few. I have not been spending the time with him that you have, however. One of the first lessons Anakin will need is how to shield himself from other Force sensitive beings."

"He'll need more than that," Obi-Wan said. "I suspect he'll need an entirely custom curriculum. You can't plop him in the basic classes across the board: He's so advanced in maths, mechanics, and robotics he could contribute to the corps as is or make a fortune in new patents, and he's already thinking on a level with children several years his senior. He will be bored and miserable if he is entirely relegated to an education with our five- and six-year-old comparable initiates, and the questions he is certain to ask may harm them. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure he's even literate. He knows next to nothing about the Jedi ways or a being's rights under Republic law. History, diplomacy, etiquette—by his age, an initiate in the Temple would have been well on in the first lightsaber form and begun on one or two others that interested him. Anakin hasn't started learning even the earliest katas. If you place him with a master immediately and send him out to learn things in the field, he is bound to misrepresent Republic law, Jedi culture, or both, and do more harm than good."

Obi-Wan picked up a second datapad he had been working with the past few days. "I've written out some ideas, places the Council or a master could start with Anakin. Along with the vaccinations and medical treatments he is likely to need—we'll want the surgery to completely remove his detonation chip, certainly. It's deactivated now, but explosives within his body could be hazardous on a mission, and it would certainly be beneficial to Anakin's state of mind to have them out. If you could take a look—"

Qui-Gon took the datapad. He looked it over, and his eyebrows rose again as he did. Then he looked back over at Obi-Wan. "This is substantial work, Padawan. You truly have bonded with him, haven't you?"

Obi-Wan could feel himself start to flush. He released his embarrassment into the Force. Qui-Gon wasn't accusing him of an inappropriate attachment as he sometimes had done in the past. His master's tone was complimentary. Pleased. "Someone had to handle the details of taking Anakin from Tatooine, Master. I suppose I'm just used to feeding the foundlings you bring into our lives."

"Padawan—" Qui-Gon started, then broke off. He looked back at the list Obi-Wan had made. Obi-Wan sensed a shift in the energies between them, in Master Qui-Gon's feelings. "Obi-Wan, what would you say if I put you forward for your trials upon our return to Coruscant?"

Obi-Wan blinked, confused. "I didn't believe you thought I was ready," he answered. "You're always telling me how much more I have to learn."

Qui-Gon smiled. "No master ever truly believes his student ready to leave his tutelage. There is always more to learn. But we learn as knights and masters too. Master Windu is still developing his personal form of lightsaber fighting. Master Yoda spends so much time among the younglings because he says they see things in fresh new ways. So you, too, will learn, even apart from me. It might be good for you, to have to figure things out for yourself. Work with other Jedi."

Obi-Wan felt hurt, and he did not understand why. He had been working toward this moment for years, dreaming of the day when Master Qui-Gon would say that he was ready to be a Jedi Knight. But now— "Are you dissatisfied with the work we do together?"

"Not at all," Qui-Gon assured him. "I have been, at times far in the past, when you needed to grow more than I felt I could teach you at the moment or were otherwise unreceptive to my teachings. Or, perhaps, when I failed you. But for several years now you've been a great help to me. We are very different Jedi, but I am proud of the person you have become and honored, I hope, to call you friend."

"Of course, Master," Obi-Wan said hastily, embarrassed once again. "But you're right that I have much to learn—I cannot connect with the Living Force as you do—"

"Your strengths may lie in other areas," Qui-Gon said. "Obi-Wan, you are capable. Never think you are not. You have grown wise, insightful, and compassionate. You're a gifted swordsman, diplomat, and tactician who knows more of war than most. If the Sith have truly returned, the Jedi at large will need you more than I will. And perhaps someone else as well." He tapped Obi-Wan's datapad and handed it back.

Obi-Wan stared as he realized what Qui-Gon was implying, what it was that he thought he had seen. A dawning panic began to rise inside him. "You mean Anakin? Master, it wasn't my idea to remove Anakin from his planet and his mother. You did right—yet I foresee great difficulties in ever training Anakin to be a Jedi Knight. He is a wonderful being who risked his life to do us all a great service. He deserves a future free of poverty and slavery and abuse. A future where he can achieve all the great heights of which he is capable. But training that—that's for you and the Council to figure out."

The thought of being charged with that—day in and day out, wrestling all of Anakin Skywalker's uncontrolled ability into some kind of order—why, the task would be nothing short of heroic, daunting and uncertain for even a master with decades of experience, let alone a fresh knight. Obi-Wan knew he had his uses in the Order, but his abilities in the Force were mediocre at best. Master Qui-Gon had kept Obi-Wan for years after many of his friends had passed through their trials. He had known he needed to. Obi-Wan had left the Jedi twice! He was no teacher for Anakin!

"And yet, it seems you've already put quite a lot of work into the problem," Qui-Gon pointed out, gesturing toward the datapad.

"Only because someone had to! In the middle of all that is happening with the blockade, I judged you were too busy!" Obi-Wan protested. "I never attempted to—I wasn't trying to be his master, or tell his masters what they should do, I—"

Realizing he had, in fact, laid out a plan doing exactly that, Obi-Wan fell silent.

Qui-Gon put a hand upon his shoulder. "Calm yourself, Padawan. You've done well with this, with him. Anakin obviously trusts and admires you. He is comfortable and content within your company, and everything written here—and I suspect over there—" he indicated the other datapads on Obi-Wan's rumpled comforter. Obi-Wan suppressed a wild urge to hide them. "It did need to be done," Qui-Gon finished. "As I've said, I'm grateful, but I suggest we meditate together on why you felt the urge to do it."

"I just—" Obi-Wan growled and turned away. "You bring something home. I take care of it. It's how it works! I never meant to—"

"Padawan," Qui-Gon rebuked him.

"Yes," Obi-Wan agreed. His emotions had overrun him. He fell into an easy breathing pattern and released his confusion, irritation, and sudden sense of dread into the Force. His master was right: they needed to meditate together on this.

He was also interested in examining the roots of his own feelings of anxiety upon being told he might be ready for his trials. He had been preparing for this for years, had wished for the day when his master would deem him adequate. Why now did he fear to stand alone?

Perhaps because the reason Qui-Gon Jinn finally seemed to think he had grown up was he'd gone and made some lists on how to handle Anakin Skywalker and now Qui-Gon was under the impression that Obi-Wan might be able to do the handling! Obi-Wan had a sudden desire to cry and laugh at once. There was a reason Obi-Wan was old for the trials!

"To my quarters, I think," Qui-Gon said, eyeing Obi-Wan's closet beyond the pair of them. "I doubt there's room for you to sit on the floor beside your bed, let alone the both of us."

"As you wish, Master." Obi-Wan fell into step beside Qui-Gon, and the two walked the five paces down the corridor to Qui-Gon's larger room, a decent guest cabin with a single bed and its own private half fresher and clothing cabinet. Qui-Gon folded himself down into a meditation position, and Obi-Wan sat opposite his old master.

"If you're going to put me forward for the trials anyway, you should take him," Obi-Wan said quietly. "I agree he won't be one for tradition. That should be just your style. Anyway, you're the one who thinks he might be the Chosen One of the prophecy."

"You don't?" Qui-Gon asked, surprised.

Obi-Wan looked down at the ground between them, half searching his feelings and half wishing to bury them. The latter feeling was unworthy of him. His fear was unworthy. "I don't know," he admitted. "Anakin is . . . something. Something I've never seen or felt before. But the prophecies have always been uncertain. All I know is that he needs and deserves to have our help."

He felt Qui-Gon's pleasure and gratitude at the statement ring and echo in the Force like the tolling of a bell. His master stroked his beard. "And suddenly, I wonder if that's not all Anakin really needs," he mused. "Someone who sees that in him, without all the additional expectations. Come. Let us meditate. We will search our feelings and ask the Force for guidance on what must be done for Anakin."

It was good to find some quiet beside his master again, Obi-Wan thought. It had been a long, difficult week. He fell into an appropriate breathing pattern, focused on the feeling of the floor beneath him, the hum of the ship's engines, and the feeling of being together with Master Qui-Gon, focused on a single objective. He felt the ship's drive to move within the Force, the worries and concerns of the beings aboard her. He connected with the crystal inside his lightsaber and touched the crystal inside of Qui-Gon's. He felt his lungs fill with air and release it and his heart beating inside his rib cage and let his mind drift away, and as it did, the Force unfolded before him.

Qui-Gon made a noise of discomfort then, and Obi-Wan winced. Both of them opened their eyes and turned their heads to look at the small boy standing in the open doorway, the hot, blazing curiosity that had only just come into their orbit. As ever, Anakin was comparable to a nova or some other great celestial event within the Living Force. At the moment, there was also a tangle of loneliness and envy at his center as he looked at them, mingled with hints of anxiety and fear.

"Something was happening," Anakin explained. "I . . . I felt it, across the ship. What are you guys doing?"

"We were reaching out to the Force together, Anakin," Qui-Gon told him. "Quieting our minds and finding a sense of calm, then stretching out with our feelings to determine our next steps regarding you when we return to the Temple."

Anakin's anxiety spiked within the Force. The emotions around him whipped and swirled. "What do you mean, next steps? I'm gonna be a Jedi, right? You told me I was gonna be a Jedi."

"Certainly you will join our Order in some capacity, Anakin," Obi-Wan said, "but there are still many questions as to how. Will you become an initiate or a padawan learner? Who will be your teacher, or teachers, and how should we prepare them? Will you be happiest as a Jedi knight, like Master Qui-Gon, or perhaps in one of our service corps as a pilot or an engineer? You have many skills, but also many needs that are unique to you. We want to be sure we can recommend to the Jedi Council the best way they can help you. Know that, whatever happens, you are free now. You will be cared for, educated, and provided for. And none of the friends you have made on this ship will forget you or what you have done. I am certain all of us will be happy to know you far into the future."

Anakin walked into the room. He sat between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, though turned mostly toward Obi-Wan. "You guys have pilots and engineers in the Jedi? Do they fight with lightsabers and help free planets like Naboo too?"

"Sometimes," Qui-Gon answered. "Some of the corps specialize in piloting or mechanical support, as Obi-Wan has said. Some Jedi Knights and masters choose to develop other talents and interests as well. We are a diverse order, Anakin. There are diplomats and covert agents among us, warriors as well as scholars. There are Jedi who spend their entire careers in a single system, and Jedi who never stay on any planet for more than two months together. Jedi who fight with one blade, or two, or eschew a lightsaber altogether in favor of a staff or some other weapon. We have Jedi who enjoy cooking, Jedi who paint, and Jedi who fly and fix starships. You could find a place among us. You are bright and gifted within the Force. You just as easily could determine, when you learn more, that the tenets, or rules, of our Order are not for you, and you would prefer to join one of the corps, who live honorable and often exciting lives but are not bound to as strict a code of behavior as we are."

"So, I could be a Jedi and a pilot too, and go to all kinds of worlds someday," Anakin summarized, "but you're saying there's a lot of rules. And these corps maybe don't have so many, but they aren't Jedi Knights like you and Obi-Wan either."

"I'm not a knight, Anakin," Obi-Wan corrected him. "I have yet to pass my trials to earn a knighthood."

"I do think he is ready, however," Qui-Gon put in. "That is another thing upon which we were about to meditate."

"Could I do it too?" Anakin asked. "Meditate, or reach out to the Force, or whatever? It's something I'll need to know if I join the Jedi, right? And since you're asking what to do with me and all—"

"Certainly you may join us, Anakin," Qui-Gon said.

"Wizard! Thanks! I don't know how, though," Anakin admitted, looking to Obi-Wan. The question was implicit.

Obi-Wan's first instinct was to answer, but he'd no sooner opened his mouth before he shut it again with a snap, looking over at his master with a new wariness. To answer Anakin's questions when Qui-Gon was busy was one thing, but it would be a poor example to set of the Order hierarchy if he did so when his master was right there. Obi-Wan knew his place and his capabilities. He did what was necessary.

He didn't have ambitions or designs on Anakin. The boy was just going to have to learn to look to masters who could do him some actual good.

Unfortunately, Qui-Gon Jinn had his own ideas about Obi-Wan's capabilities, or else this was some sort of pretrials test, because Qui-Gon simply said, "Why don't you tell him, Padawan?"

Obi-Wan shot his master a look, then turned back to Anakin, breathing in and shoving his annoyance out into the Force. "Sit straight, Anakin, with your hands in your lap or on your knees, but relax your body. Close your eyes and focus in on the sound of my voice. Then move past that and focus on how I feel to you. Can you sense me and Master Qui-Gon with you? In the room, but also our emotions, our essences—our selves within the currents of energy aboard the ship?"

The sensation was rather like being pawed over by an enormous psychic hand. Obi-Wan grit his teeth against it and tried to leave himself open to Anakin. He extended a tendril of thought toward Anakin, a much smaller, subtler psychic hand, and felt Anakin take hold. "Hey, is that you?" he asked, his excitement and eagerness filling the Force with Light. "This is weird! Wizard, but weird!"

"Can you feel me breathing, Anakin? Can you breathe in the same pattern?"

"No problem!" Anakin promised.

Immediately, Anakin slowed his breaths. "Good," Obi-Wan started, then he frowned as he noticed other changes in the boy across from him. "Anakin, are you trying to match my heart rate as well?" he asked.

"What?" Anakin asked, surprised. "Oh," he realized. "I didn't know I could do that. I was just trying to do what you were doing, Mister Obi-Wan. Hey, you think I could speed it up, like if I knew I had to move real fast in a hurry and wanted to be ready?"

"I wouldn't advise playing with the rate at which your heart beats until a much later stage in your training," Obi-Wan told him, trying to keep both the awe and concern out of his voice and his mind. Anakin was very close to him at the moment. It wouldn't do either to alarm the boy with what he could do to himself with this newly discovered talent, or to let him know how extraordinary his intuition was. "It's a useful ability, particularly when you are learning to add to your physical capabilities within the Force. It's good that you can do it. But it can be very easy to make dangerous mistakes, and after all, there are many reasons your heart works just the way it does. For now, breathing in the same pattern as me and Master Qui-Gon is enough."

It was harder for Anakin to loosen his focus on Obi-Wan enough to let his heart resume its normal pattern now that he had inadvertently instructed it to slow, but eventually he managed it.

Obi-Wan walked Anakin through exercises to relax his body, to attune his senses to his surroundings and use his senses of them to clear his mind. Despite how easily he had been able to sense Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon within the Force, Anakin seemed to find the stillness and focus meditation required much more difficult. His body wanted to be in motion. So did his mind. His knees jostled, his thoughts stewed and meandered and came back around again, and as Obi-Wan repeatedly urged him through the same relaxation exercises, his frustration mounted.

"Do not be discouraged if you can't get there today," Obi-Wan told him. "It takes many initiates months to learn to reach a satisfactory meditative state. Several continue to struggle to hold one for more than a few minutes for years into their apprenticeships. You're doing well."

"I want to meditate with you guys," Anakin complained. "So I can ask the Force what I should do too. I've been able to do everything else! Why can't I get this?"

"You've hardly been at it for ten minutes," Master Qui-Gon pointed out. "Meditation is a difficult discipline for many of the Jedi to learn. You need to forgive yourself, Anakin. Allow yourself time and grace to learn."

Master Qui-Gon spoke calmly, but there was an undercurrent of pain in his voice. Obi-Wan understood. To Obi-Wan, Anakin's frustration was hot and abrasive, like a sandstorm on his homeworld of Tatooine. Through the Living Force, the sensation would be even worse. From where their minds connected across the training bond, Obi-Wan could sense the ache building in Qui-Gon's temples, the pain he felt experiencing Anakin's pain.

"With me, Anakin," he said, extending Anakin another tendril of thought. At the same time, he projected a sense of encouragement, optimism, and peace toward the boy. You're doing fine. Anakin breathed in deep, outside of the pattern, but a tangle of frustration and fear inside him came unknotted—the fear of rejection, of failure. In its place, gratitude and relief blossomed into being. The boy's muscles relaxed, and as they did, so did his mind.

"Good," Obi-Wan said. "Now, I want you to concentrate on what you feel between us—between you and I and Master Qui-Gon. Focus on the energy that binds and flows between us and—" he broke off. Anakin had found it, or it had found him.

"Oh, dear," Obi-Wan murmured.

Anakin Skywalker pulsed within the Force. He expanded and took off like a Corellian luxury jet. Power gathered around him in a swirling, roiling cloud of energy and emotion. At first, there was a sense of elated discovery from Anakin, and then a growing fear: Anakin was close to being lost, buried beneath the storm of the power he had to call upon.

Across the circle, Obi-Wan felt Master Qui-Gon reaching out for the boy, felt his master's mind swept aside by the Force winds around Anakin's consciousness. Obi-Wan felt his master's own growing anxiety. Master Qui-Gon had suggested Anakin might be the Chosen One of prophecy. They had both felt the boy's strength within the Force. But neither of them had been prepared for this.

A tiny extension of thought from Anakin, a cry for help: Obi-Wan! He was too far away now to form it into actual words.

Obi-Wan took hold of the tiny piece of Anakin caught up in all that mess and sat. Gritting his teeth against the howl of the Living Force, the tossing, turning currents of raw power and possibility around Anakin Skywalker, he pushed his own shields out. It was like lifting the largest boulder he had ever attempted lifting in the meditation gardens and worse. But Obi-Wan withstood it. He pushed back against the current, beating it back with his defenses and taking them with him, down the line to Anakin Skywalker. He imagined the boy he knew, not the Child of the Force but the grease-stained, overly energetic, overly inquisitive towheaded scrap from Tatooine who had fallen into their laps. Obligate carnivore who enjoyed his meat spicy enough to burn a hole through the tongues of lesser creatures. No longer convinced he would drown in the shower yet still allergic to soap and water waste. Always in motion, always curious. Kind and brave and full of enthusiasm, with a handful of tools and parts and a headful of ideas on how to use them to fix first the machines and then the entire galaxy. Anakin.

Obi-Wan?

Obi-Wan reached the core of the maelstrom of power that had collected around the boy and held tight, wrapping his own shields around the boy's mind, spinning the power away at one remove. A moment later, he'd found Master Qui-Gon. He started to do the same but felt Qui-Gon's disagreement in his head.

Obi-Wan. Thank you. Just keep shielding Anakin, please. Keep the power at a distance.

Under the instruction were faint currents of amazement at Anakin's power—Master Qui-Gon had not expected this, and guilt—he felt as though he should have. It occurred to Obi-Wan he might have expected it too, but even as he had the thought, the power around Anakin shifted, and he had to refocus on the boy, on holding his sense of Anakin's identity in his mind and his own shields around the pair of them. In doing so, he realized Qui-Gon would be shielded from the worst of Anakin's emotions but retain access to the power Anakin had summoned through their joint meditation.

He heard Qui-Gon and Anakin saying something but couldn't make sense of it. Instead, he simply held. Held onto Anakin, held onto his shields. Obi-Wan felt sweat break out all over his body. He began to tremble.

Obi-Wan felt and knew that his own power was a guttering candle beside Anakin Skywalker's active volcano within the Force. But the thing was, the Force was as much the energy binding all things within the universe as it was the energy each particular object in space had to give. A Jedi, open to that energy, did not have to rely upon his own abilities. He was not so much a vessel as a conduit. Obi-Wan was not limited by his midi-chlorian count as compared to Anakin Skywalker's. He did not have to yield. And he would not.

He held.

He held until a shout from both Master Qui-Gon and Anakin broke through the pounding in his head.

"Obi-Wan!"

Obi-Wan opened his eyes. The storm had passed. Master Qui-Gon and Anakin sat across from him, watching him. He felt gentle concern from Qui-Gon, something like awe from Anakin. Anakin was back in possession of himself, and the sense of the Force around him was no worse than usual.

"Well," Obi-Wan said, managing a laugh, and managing not to fall back on his back in exhaustion, both with difficulty. "That was a disaster."

"It was?" Anakin asked.

"Forgive us, Anakin," Obi-Wan said. "We should have made sure you were prepared for the power of the Force, shielded to access it without being overcome by it, before we embarked—started upon a meditation. I'm afraid with all that happened just now, we didn't get any answers."

"On the contrary," Qui-Gon said. He exchanged a glance with Anakin, and both of them looked back to Obi-Wan. "I believe we did. Very much so."