Choose Your Words || A Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker Story

Chapter 6: Tell Me

He is twelve already and he is just allowed to go to the Crystal Caves of Ilum now.

His lightsaber has been lying in his drawer – fully constructed but empty and powerless – for almost a year now. Waiting for her kyber crystal.

All the other Padawans of his age had their Gathering ten months ago. But not him. Of course not.

It didn’t matter that he had been training a hundred times harder than any of them, that he had shown more skill with his training lightsaber than all of them combined. It just didn’t matter. To the Council he was still an abominable bastard child they never wanted. Too old for the training. Too emotional to concentrate on meditation. Too powerful to control.

No wonder they didn’t let him have his own lightsaber when all the other Padawans did.

But he is twelve now, and they can’t deny him any longer.

So here he is, in the Jedi Temple of Ilum, determined to overcome any obstacles to find his crystal and finally power his lightsaber.

Unlike the other Padawans, he is confident that he will succeed. He must. There is no other way. He needs a lightsaber to be able to conquer the world for his Master, and he will have it – even if he has to bring this whole Temple down to get his crystal.

He isn’t too worried about Master Yoda’s warning either: it doesn’t matter if the waterfall covers the entrance to the cave. The little green goblin must not be as wise as they say if he really thinks that some wall of ice can stop him from coming back to his Master.

Anakin grins to himself and ventures forward, into the frozen labyrinth. He fears nothing!

Or so he thought.

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Oh, it’s gonna be so easy! he thinks at first. The crystals are all around him, gleaming with soft green and blue. All he needs to do is reach out and take…

But when his hand closes around one of the crystals, it doesn’t even melt like ice and snow into water the way they say kyber crystals might in unworthy hands – no, it bleeds.

It melts into blood – scarlet and hot – in his palm, until there is nothing left of it.

Anakin stares at his blood-stained palm for a moment.

Whoa, ominous much? he thinks in irritation.

Does this stupid cave think he will faint just at the sight of blood? Or that he will take literal blood on his hands as a bad sign and turn back?

Anakin wipes the blood on his Jedi robes without much care as he mumbles, “Stupid crystals.”

He reaches for another one.

Then another. And another.

The beige of his robes starts to get dark red pretty soon. But it doesn’t seem to bother Anakin in the slightest. He keeps grabbing and breaking the crystals, crushing them in his bare hands, one by one, while they sing quietly, vibrating all around him in lamentation.

Anakin doesn’t care that the kyber crystals reject him, showing him with such cruelty that they are not meant for him, the child of the Dark Side. He is pretty used to it by now. Nothing in the Jedi Temple, in the Jedi Order, in the Jedi world is meant for him. Nothing but his Master.

So Anakin will just destroy the stupid crystals until one of them yields and stays in his palm – a jewel shining cerulean like his Master’s mesmerizing eyes – raw infinite power in such a tiny little thing.