Title: It's In The Little Things
Rating: G.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Warnings: Possible OOCness. Is short a warning?
Category: Thought fic.
Pairings: None, except may be Anakin/Amidala. But only in Obi's thoughts.
Summary: Obi-Wan's thoughts after the events in "Whatever You Say".
Note: This was written partly as an apology for my saying that my
previous piece sucked. The other part is a thanks for everyone's
welcome and kind words. I really appreciate it. Shorter than my last
work, mostly just Obi's thoughts. That's okay, right? And it is a
rough draft but I wanted to post it to thank you guys for the warm
welcome. You guys are the greatest. I'm still blushing from your
compliments. Thanks! (Again.)

654

Obi-Wan sat up in bed and stared out the window. Anakin had been gone
for only a few days, yet it felt as though he'd been gone for months.

When he'd first been told by Master Yoda of this mission, he'd been
full of an ecstatic joy and a deep apprehension for his Padawan. There
was also relief that he would not have to lie to the Council about
what Anakin was doing. Though he would've done it, had it come down
to it.

While he knew it was wrong of him to do so, Obi-Wan knew that he
rarely denied Anakin anything.

And this mission was everything he knew his young friend had longed
for-and he knew that he had to let him go. For years, he had been
begging for this opportunity.

He hadn't been lying to his Padawan about how he felt about his
abilities, that was a promise he'd made to himself. There would be no
springing any surprises on his charge as Qui-Gon had so often done
with him.

Furthermore, he truly knew in his heart that Anakin was more than
ready for this chance. If anyone could do this mission, whatever it
was that the Force wanted him to do, it was Anakin.

But he worried over the emotional toil it would exact on him.

Of all the people he had known-and he included Master Qui-Gon into the
equation, Anakin felt things deeply. Anakin craved human companionship
and compassion in a way that baffled him. There was an almost
dangerous hunger, an ache for the things that most Jedi left behind
them.

His Padawan desperately needed the love and approbation of others,
something that troubled him deeply. Yet, there was nothing he could do
about it, except worry about what it would do to him the further on
into the training he went.

This was a personal trail, all Jedi faced them at one time or another.

But Anakin's was different, this one would bring him directly into
contact with his beloved mother. Shmi Skywalker had a firm hold on her
son's heart. If she chose to do so, she could change the course of
Anakin's life. The question was, would she?

Unlike his Master, he had no previous experience with her. All he knew
of her was her name and relationship to her son. Therefore, he could
not truly judge her, though he felt that she would not unduly
influence her son away from the path of Jedi.

At least, he hoped that was so.

From all that Anakin had told him, he knew Shmi had been the one who
had encouraged him to go. She it was who had actually given him one of
the lessons a Jedi must learn, to go forth and not look back. It would
be best to trust that she would do the same now.

Another twinge of worry hit him. Senator Amidala and Anakin's strong
and worrisome reaction to her. It was not normal for a Jedi to be
so...reactionary to a person. Yes, they had been through many things
together.

Imminent, life threatening danger had a way of bringing souls together
in life long bonds of affection and affiliation.

But that did not explain his attitude towards her. Nor did it explain
the overdeveloped sense of needing to protect her. And daring to call
her by her given name. Though it seemed like he had not heard it, he
had.

And, while he had not mentioned it, he had not overlooked that slip of
the tongue. These things signaled trouble for him for he had heard
that his charge had once said that he intended to marry her one day.

It seemed that those hopes had not dimmed one iota in the intervening
years. Not even after learning that Jedi were forbidden to marry for
marriage implied ownership and possession of something.

And then there was the Supreme Chancellor.

In him, Anakin seemed to have found the father he had not known he was
seeking. The Senator gave him the advice, counsel, and approval he
sought but had been denied by Obi-Wan himself.

There was a great deal of shame inside his heart as he thought of his
sins in regards to his precious Padawan. Duty had bound him to the boy
in the sacred bonds of Master and Padawan. An older law, that of
loyalty to his Padawan, bound them together.

Something that, while he honored in spirit, he rarely obeyed.

Fear had kept him silent when he should have spoken. It was not
something he was proud of. He knew it was something that he would
spend the rest of his life trying to rectify, all the while knowing
that he would most likely fail at it.

Shaking off thoughts of Anakin's troublesome emotions and their rather
tumultuous past, he turned inward and examined his own feelings. This
was something he had been putting off for fear of his own reasons
behind wanting time away from Anakin.

Well, not fear exactly. More like he was worried that he still
resented the younger man. That he still doubted, like Master Yoda did,
the wisdom in training him the way they had.

Knowing that he shouldn't put this off any longer, he took himself
firmly in hand. Examining himself through a discriminating eye, he
found that the joy he had felt for his Padawan was not there for
himself.

Instead, what existed within was not joy, but a sense of a heavy
burden of guilt being lifted off his shoulders. A feeling of deep
relief that he could rest his weary shoulders and put that beast of
guilt to rest at long last.

It was not what he had thought to find and he felt relief that his
feelings were not entirely linked to getting rid of Anakin. What he
felt had more to do with something else he had been avoiding for some
time.

He well knew full well the reasons for its presence.

Since the death of his beloved Master and friend, he had not had a
moment to be truly alone to come to grips with what had happened on
that dark day so long ago. Now, he had the time to come to terms with
it, to gather himself together and make himself whole once more.

The Council had relieved him of all his duties, knowing that he would
needed this time to deal with the loss of an important part of his
life. To come to grips with the fact that his own sense of well being
had been shaken to the core.

To meditate and review their actions and life together. This was the
time to relax and put everything into perspective, to hopefully
recover what was lost and renew it in what he had now with his own
Padawan.

Yet, he could not enjoy the peace he had always sought while he had
been involved in the chaos of his life with his Padawan.

Though he had all the time to seek his own peace of mind, he found
that he could not. Many times in the past few days, he could be seen
staring out the window, contemplating a mission that was not his own.

His thoughts turned, not to the past and all its travails, but to
worries of the present. A thing he found slightly shocking for he had
always been a future thinking man, but not altogether surprising.
Through association with Anakin, he had found it necessary to adapt to
a more immediate pattern of thinking.

Something was...missing. A certain vital piece of his life and he was
all to painfully aware of what that was.

His Padawan's company.

It was amazing, he thought idly, tracing a pattern on the bench
beneath him. The amount of sheer reassurance one felt hearing the
sound of another's breathing in a room. It was such a little thing,
yet it meant so much to his own sense of self now.

He only really noticed its solid presence now that it was gone from
his hearing.

As he had passed through the days, he noticed the lack of the little
things that he usually ignored because they had always been there,
hovering in the background.

Every day, simple things that he took for granted. The very sounds
that used to annoy him and later came to mean that he was home, were
missing and silenced. There was a sense of being isolated within the
world he'd always known and found comfort in.

Obi-Wan found it more than a little disconcerting.

"That's because, my young Padawan, you always preferred hard facts
and figures to emotions. You believed that they could not hurt you for
they were set in stone."

Eyes flying open, he whirled his head about and scanned the room for
the owner of the voice. There was only one who would have said such a
thing to him with such authority. He almost welcomed the scolding for
he knew it was well deserved.

Yet, as he had expected, there was no one to be found there. Once a
Jedi left this life, they became a part of the Force. They lost all
trace of themselves into the Living Force. That was their immortality,
they became part of that which they had dedicated their lives serving
and lived on in the actions of those came after.

It didn't matter to him that he saw no one.

The words rang with a truth Obi-Wan could not in honesty deny or
refute. Not that he wanted to, for Qui-Gon had always seen into the
very heart of who he was.

They had always balanced each other, his logic to Qui-Gon's emotion.
His future based thinking countered with his Master's more present
minded ideas. The way he trusted to his own strengths while Qui-Gon
had trusted in the power of the Force, though he knew his friend might
disagree with that thought. They worked in a perfect kind of synchrony
that he rarely had seen with another.

In fact, it reminded him of something, something he had only now begun
to share with..."Anakin," he breathed the name out loud on a whisper
of sound.

A shiver ran down his spine at the sound of the name. Looking out at
the sky, he wondered how his Padawan was doing. The similarities
between his Master and his Padawan had never been so eerily apparent
to him.

He knew what Qui-Gon had been capable of. It had always made him worry
when he'd gone on solo missions, knowing of his penchant for finding
dangerous situations. Or, at the very least, indulging in some of his
more blatant oppositions to the Council.

For the first time in his life, he doubted the wisdom of the Jedi
Council's actions. In sending Anakin out without aid, had they
condemned him to failure?

It was not that he didn't trust him.

Quite the contrary-and he knew it would be to Anakin's surprise if he
were to know, he perhaps trusted him a bit too much. There had been
many times in the past when he would trust Anakin's intuition over his
own, even on the flimsiest of evidence.

It had never let him down in the past. His ability to trust in him had
eventually breached the fortified walls he'd put between them. With
the walls coming down, they had truly begun to grow into all that a
Master and a Padawan should be.

So, trusting in Anakin was not the problem...and yet it was.

Resting at the heart of his worries was the fact that he had relied
upon that boy, no. Not a boy. He hadn't been a boy for a long time.
No, the young man Anakin was for an emotional compass to understand
and judge things.

Instead of dampening down his more impulsive bursts of passion, he had
encouraged it. Though it worried him, he had seen what it could do. At
times, they had needed what it could do.

That boundless emotion he felt helped him do his work. It guided him
through the labyrinthine maze of power to higher abilities. Contrary
to what he knew, that innate ability to feel things so deeply was
Anakin's greatest strength.

It was also his greatest weakness.

Great, he thought, resting against the cool glass. Now I have a whole
new load of worries to fret about. A whole new set of ways in which I
have spectacularly failed my charge.

"Well, I wouldn't say failed, Padawan. More like, placed an unhealthy
burden upon him that you did nothing to counter," Qui-Gon said. "And
you have made an effort to rectify that mistake."

"Of course you would, all seeing one," he muttered. "Tell me, did you
have something to do with this mission?"

"It is possible," the reply was teasing.

"That's what I thought, meddlesome Master," Obi-Wan complained. This
is a surreal kind of conversation I'm having with my previously silent
friend, he thought. "Tell me, don't you think that my life was
complicated enough?"

"No. I actually believe that your life could be a great deal more
complicated," he retorted. Obi-Wan knew that if he had really been
there, a mixed look of sternness and affection would be on his face.
"As for Anakin, someone needed to do something. The Jedi Council and
you were making a mess out of this whole thing."

"And I suppose that you think some vague confession of ambiguous love
will fix it?" he skeptically asked. "Forgive my extreme disbelief of
your innocent belief, Master."

"Why?"

"What?" He stopped mid rant, unable to understand the question in the
context of what they were talking about.

"I asked why," he obligingly repeated. "Why would I forgive you for
speaking your mind and the truth? To repair what damage has been
wrought will take more than mere words, Obi-Wan. It will take actual
love and hard work. It will take accepting Anakin as he is, not as you
think he should be. It may mean loving him even if he falls into the
darkness. And he may just do that. Can you do this? Is your love for
him real? Or were they words that you spoke because you felt that they
needed to be said?"

"I do try not to say anything that I can't live with," he dryly
replied.

"Padawan," Qui-Gon sternly reproved him. "That is not what I asked you
and you know it."

Frustrated, for he was not sure what Qui-Gon wanted from him, he never
could figure out what it was his Master had wanted from him. He let
his head fall back against the wall and closed his eyes. After taking
some time to think, he slowly conceded that he did not really know why
he'd said it. "It is a fair question to ask, Master. I shall spend
some time in meditation upon it."

"Not all answers are to be found through meditation," he replied.
"Still, if it is the only way for you to see, then I will say no
more."

"You were always to content to live in the present," he said with an
affectionate smile.

"And you were so focused on the future you have rarely lived in the
moment."

The room filled with an eerie stillness after their conversation
ended. He found it hard to figure out if that had actually happened.
Or if he had missed his friend and mentor so much, he had imagined the
whole thing.

Obi-Wan supposed it didn't really matter, the words of counsel he'd
received were things he needed to hear. It would figure, he thought,
that my conscience would sound like him. I suppose it could be worse,
it could sound like Anakin.

That thought made him give a little laugh. It was only a matter of
time before it did. Opening his eyes, he studied the dawning morning.
While he did this, he pondered some of the revelations he'd had.

He knew that he loved Anakin, it had become natural to him in their
days together. It was so normal, that it did not register to him. It
was just something he did. Not that it was an obligation or anything,
it was part of him. Part of who they were.

He just had to trust in what they were. Had to trust that his Padawan
would be safe within the arms of the Force. That he would make the
right decisions in this test. It was something he found hard to do,
trusting blindly in what he couldn't touch or see.

Even unquestioning trusting to the Living Force was impossibly hard
for him. It had been one of the things that had held him back from
completing his training. This inability to just let go separated him
from others, including Anakin.

Anakin could blindly trust that power and throw all caution to the
winds because he knew, just knew that something would be there to save
him. Whether it was Obi-Wan or a passing ship or something else, he
knew that he'd be safe in the hands of the Force.

Obi-Wan was just going to have to trust in that.

"Anakin," he spoke softly, watching the stars wistfully. "Be
safe, my young Padawan, wherever you are. Listen to that inner voice
of calm, though I hope you will not disregard your intuition."
Somehow, he felt that Anakin could hear him and take strength from
their bond.

It was enough.


END


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