EAST OF EDEN ( anakin s. ) ✔️

001 | On Planetary Arrest..

━━━━━━ ༻ 🌄 ༺ ━━━━━━
" on planetary arrest "
...
━━━ ༻ CHAPTER ONE ༺ ━━━

          "IS THE SILENT TREATMENT what the Council has decided you employed to teach me a lesson this time around, Master?" Anakin Skywalker decided to poke after several good minutes into a hurried walk one step behind Obi-Wan Kenobi has revealed him close to nothing as to just how much trouble his stunt during their last mission has brought upon them. He's verbally claimed full responsibility for the damage brought to the farming fields, but it seemed not to matter much in the eyes of his Master or the eyes of the Council. This much he has learnt over the decade spent training to become one of them: they did not take kindly to apologies.

"It's how I've decided you deserve to be treated after disrespecting a direct order, Anakin," Obi-Wan's raspy tone was plenty sufficient to give away that he was still upset about the whole ordeal. "You did not seem to care much about what I had to say before, so why should that be any different now?"

"I didn't actually mean to set off that fire and you know it," Anakin argued, hurrying his pace to get by his Master side and hopefully catch a glimpse of just how stern his expression was. "I was trying to help stop the thieves from getting away-"

"And did you?" Obi-Wan gave him no time to assess the gravity of the Council's decision, because he turned his gaze away through a disapproving shake of his head. "Just because you didn't mean to do it, it doesn't absolve you of the fact that you should have known better by now. Our job was to recover the goods stolen and set a perimeter that the farmers could maintain to protect themselves from the common thieves, not capture those hooligans or teach them a lesson ourselves."

Anakin scoffed, "We call that justice?"

"We call that peace," the correction came without missing a beat. "You may be stubborn and reckless, but you are not stupid, Anakin. Stopping crime is only as important as preventing it from happening." Obi-Wan only momentarily halted his step before the doors to the docking area, as always presenting themselves with a one second delay in sensor refinement. 

Finally taking notice of where their fast paced walk has led them, Anakin gladly set aside the dispute from their previous mission. "Were we assigned a new task?" he inquired. It was perhaps the last thing he would have though the Council would decide to do after the small incident was brought to their attention, but unsurprisingly, it was definitely what Anakin would have considered to be the best case scenario resulting out of this hiccup. He hoped they would see reason that they indeed had no time to dwell on mere mistakes when subversive actions were agitating the galaxy and there were, currently, too few Jedi to maintain the peace.

"I was, yes," Obi-Wan nodded.

So much for the hope Anakin harbored. The spark of curiosity was extinguished from his expression and almost instantaneously replaced with an outraged glare. "You're sidelining me?" With barely any effort, he stepped in front of his Master and blocked his path. Finally, Obi-Wan was forced to look him in the eyes.

If the idea of being cast aside infuriated him, then the distinguishable nuance of disappointment he found within his Master's gaze piercing his was a pill of bitter sadness. He couldn't remember the last time Obi-Wan has looked at him with different eyes, far less so with pride. It felt suffocating to live in the shadow cast by never being able to uphold the expectation of someone whose respect he wished for.