Title:Geonosis
Author: helgaleena
Rating: G
Category: POV Obi-wan
Summary: Obi recalls Geonosis and ponders the significance of Ani-Padme-Obi-Qui.

She fell right out of the transport. And Anakin lost it.

Up until then she had held her end up, admirably really, as we kept ourselves alive in the arena. She snatched up a rifle from a downed battle droid. Under cover of Anakin's light-sabre gyrations she demonstrated good marksmanship, enough to maintain us among the handful of survivors that were relieved by Yoda and the clones.

The transports whisked us away from the ring of droidekas that Dooku and his Federation goons had set on us, and the ragged remains of the Jedi rescue force. Mace and Yoda went to oversee the disabling of the space fleet still on the ground. But Ani caught sight of Dooku himself on a swoop bike, slithering away on his own, and we were off. Level-headed Padme wanted to fetch help, but the big Master here, I mean myself, thought Anakin and I could handle him. We might have, such is the power of our bond, but Ani lost it.

Little did we know Dooku was heading straight for Coruscant. The line he had been trying to hand me, about a Sith lord controlling the Senate, was the truth. We might have prevented a war if we could have moved as a team against him. But the Force had other plans. The transport hit turbulence, and Padme fell out.

She rolled a few times after she hit the dune, and didn't get up. Anakin began to scream for Padme, again and again. He told the pilot to set the ship down; I told the pilot to keep going. His eyes were blazing; his mouth was snarling. I thought they would leap right out of his face. He would have jumped out of his own skin to get to her, he was so distraught. I had to hold him back bodily, and somehow get his soul back too.

"Anakin!"

"Put the ship down now!" he shrieked again.

"Anakin---"

"I can't leave her!"

I knew it. Since the day we were assigned to protect the Nubian senator from asassination, it's no longer been Anakin, Qui-gon and me. She's the fourth corner of our little polygon. On the spirit level, that is our domain. But we can't live like that. The society of this world does't countenance it. Because she's not Jedi, it counts as attachment; the Jedi don't allow that. Anakin was too upset to be sensible about this. He was too busy trying to be in two places at once.

"You will be expelled from the Jedi Order!" I shouted over the impellers' whine.

"I don't care!" I told you he was not himself. Where was the boy who strove to be the greatest Jedi ever? I had to fix this. If he wasn't himself, I couldn't be myself either, and Dooku would slice us to ribbons.

"Anakin, think!"

Suddenly he looked like a little boy again. I didn't know yet that he had just buried his mother, back on Tatooine, the same day R-4 and I had slipped the message out to him before our capture. I told him those dreams would pass. He'd been pulled by those dreams of her dying clear accrosss the galaxy from Naboo, before they could fade. The only reason he was composed enough to function right then was Padme. You could say she stood in for me, to balance him, as he put himself through all that.

Most padawans don't miss their parents. I don't even remember mine. But Anakin was the only child of a single woman, and old for a padawan. He had a mother-sized hole in his defenses. That is why the Force arranged it like this, with Qui-gon, Padme and I as the corners of his shield. It was her right to call out to him, but I wish he hadn't heard.

She got her dying wish, to see him again, and he never forgave himself for loving her at a distance. He told himself she wouldn't be dead if he had been there. That isn't true. We all die eventually.

But he didn't tell me all this. I found out later, and not from him. He had begun to have secrets. He started tainting thoughts with his emotions when they should not have mixed. He was doing it now. He was ready to brain me for countermanding his order to the pilot.

"What would Padme do if she were in your position?" I shouted into that wild face.

I think he heard me that time. He began to breathe again. His chest heaved as his body fought for the air he'd been denying it. That beautiful fearsome snarl began to tremble around the edges. The murder began to drain from his eyes. He looked away from the gaze with which I held him. His voice was harsh and breaking as he forced out the obvious answer.

"She would do her duty."

On that note, we managed to reach Dooku's private hangar. I thought, as we raced in with borrowed weapons to confront the fork-tongued Separatist, that Anakin had recovered himself sufficiently. I was wrong. The first words out of his mouth were of revenge, of making Dooku pay for those he'd killed. He was still off-balance. I couldn't get through to his mind! I was reduced to grabbing at his arm, to issuing verbal instructions right in front of our adversary.

I was too late. He leaped at Dooku in a blind rage. And my beautiful padawan was slammed against the cavern wall by Force lightning.

It saved our lives.

While Anakin was pulling himself back to consciousness in the corner, Dooku was amusing himself with me. I was no match for him on my own, and we both knew it. He had me flat on my back, disabled by painful minor wounds, in no time. That meant he could be leisurely about the killing blow. But somehow my Anakin's light-saber appeared between me and that crooked Sith blade at the crucial moment. I think Qui-gon was helping him; he was up, and he was centered again.

I tossed him the extra light-sabre I could no longer use. All I could do was watch. Anakin was nearly as tall as Dooku, and about seventy years younger. There was hope. They had taken one another's measure now. But my padawan, for all his innate ability, was not yet proficient at the two-sabre styles. Dooku soon had his wind back, and swatted one light-sabre away in sputtering pieces. And this was Anakin's first duel with a Sith.

A Sith's evil is hypnotic. It imbues their every action. Dooku would be sorry to spoil an exploitable commodity like Anakin, but he would do it. He kept up an insidious pressure. I saw my padawan's eyes widen in amazement. He began to be mesmerized bu the whirling of the red and the blue sabres. That was the trap.

The next instant, Anakin's sabre arm was a smoking stump, and a force push landed him, groaning, accross my legs. His agony spilled into me. Dooku gloated a little then, and paused to get his breath; he'd actually exerted himself. Would he bother to torture us? He was in a hurry.

We had spent enough of his time for Master Yoda to arrive, and save our skins. Even so, the great rat got away, because he knew his old master's compassion would not allow us to be crushed like nutshells by falling equipment.

Then we heard Padme coming. She cried out to him, and he somehow managed to stand. They were oblivious, taking no more heed of the setting than approaching poles of two magnets. But if they were north and south, Qui-gon and I were east and west. We could not touch this. It was vaguely tetrahedral-- all points touching on only one dimension. I don't think Anakin was noticing that aspect of things at all...

Of course she was perfectly fine, and had brought reinforcements. He had lost it, and she had been in nearly no danger, compared to our last few days. He had lost it over nothing, only a fear. I hoped he would take the lesson to heart. I'm not sure he did.

We didn't do everything right at Geonosis. But we did our best. And still the Clone Wars began. They aren't over.

Anakin's new hand works perfectly; he has diligently applied himself to mastering its use until the Force flows through it freely. It actually enhances our combined abilities as a team. As for our quadratic bonding withthe non-Jedi and the dead, I sometimes wonder what will manifest in that mysterious space between, where we cannot touch.

Our missions are almost all war, now. Almost every Jedi has become a general, and our padawans also command. Ani's good at it-- good at leading, at strategy, and efficient at killing. If it weren't for our ties to Qui-gon and Padme, I would fear that. I don't like padawans to have to excel at these things.

But he's our Anakin, and he does. In battle he is like a magnificent bird of prey. He's so powerfull now I've seen him bring down whole buildings with the Force.

Sometimes as we wade through the carnage, through the miasma of abandoned bodies and the fog of the suffering maimed, I wonder how he can remain so beautiful. But it seems that as long as his Padme is safe, nothing can more than temporarily inconvenience us.

That isn't really true. We all get hurt eventually.


END

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