EAST OF EDEN ( anakin s. ) ✔️

015 | Scared of Judgement..

━━━━━━ ༻ 🌄 ༺ ━━━━━━
" scared of judgement "
...
━━━ ༻ CHAPTER FIFTEEN ༺ ━━━

          THEY SAY THE WORK OF A TEACHER is never really over. That a mentor's labor does not stop regardless of age, of success or failure, but rather perseveres with time, expanding and shrinking, morphing and molding itself with each student's mind that the tutor's influence has a privilege to touch. Obi-Wan Kenobi was not frightened to remain a teacher for the rest of his life, he was frightened of the plague of lack of progress instead.

That fear had been paused, if not even momentarily vanquished, first by Anakin's fruitful trip to Anope which undid some of his most destructive habits that Obi-Wan could not subdue in order to leave room for a stronger connection with the Force. A second submersion was caused by the coming of the war, turning lessons into battlefield tactics, a dangerous game which revealed warfare to be embedded not only in Anakin's veins, but in Obi-Wan's too. 

It was a barbarity hidden in this crude discovery of talent in the art of war.

Very few Jedi were actually good generals and commanders when the war started. Because their training made them seekers of peace, rather than defenders relying on violence against machines, very few in the Senate trusted Jedi could raise above their rules and loosen up the collars of their moral stones. The scales of expectations have been changing since and, one year into the struggles of battles, Obi-Wan was uncertain of whether the necessary actions excused the nature of those changes to their lessons and ways.

Padawans knighted on the field, trained directly onto battlefields, living amongst soldiers and violence, instead of temples of tranquility. It was almost inevitable for Obi-Wan's fear of stagnation to be revived... Gradually, through Ahsoka and all the padawans he saw baptized in the fires of battle, he felt they have strayed too far. The second Anakin's fiery nature shone through the other day, Obi-Wan had been suffocated with that fear stronger than ever.

He's been harboring a suspicion that there was more to the cordial care Anakin displayed for Eden since all the way back before Geonosis. The war has given him too little time to actually trace that hunch further, follow it to its root and help his apprentice build a line of distinction between his affections and his duty to justice and the Order. Now Obi-Wan sensed there was little left for him to do in order to spare them both the heartache and the stinging consequences.

He wished not see his student whom he loved like a brother fall in a storm of emotions and he could not bear the thought of Eden being ripped apart in that carnage either.

A heavy sigh was Obi-Wan's faded companion whilst walking at a slow pace down the interminable corridors of the Jedi Temple. Carried between its pillars and over its polished floors, his mind was pounding on these thoughts, sustaining a crease on his forehead. It was so early in the day that the pure light of the sunrise came from somewhere way behind him, on the floor below, where the main hallway opened up to the staircase and the Processional Way. Ahead was a golden hued obscurity, reflected off of clean surfaces in a radiance that filled the silence with a distant hum.

The halls were quiet. More quiet than they would have usually been, even so early in the morning, and far more silent than Obi-Wan remembered them to be years ago, when he was but a youngling too. His light steps were the only taps for miles and miles of walking and though the Force still murmured in the walls, it seemed even that energy was holding a eulogy to the losses of war.

Eventually, he came to an even slower pace, taking a turn onto a side hallway and coming up to Anakin's room. It was there that Obi-Wan pushed his morning contemplation aside for a much more significant and urgent inner debate: How should he approach Anakin about this?