Two Halfs of One Warrior • Obikin/Vaderwan One-Shots

Prayers and Proclamations

• Summary: Anakin is on the cusp of thirteen and his eyes swim with starlight. It isn’t his fault. He can’t help that The Force made him this way, birthed him to a human mother by necessity but claims him as her own in all else. He is human in only the loosest sense of the word, as if at any moment he could shake off the exterior holding all that Force inside and spread wings.

They want to collar him, but a leashed tiger is no more a housecat than the eye of a storm is safety.

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There is something deeply, intrinsically, wrong about Anakin Skywalker.

It cannot be unlearned, cannot be tempered, and most certainly not controlled by the ignorance of the Jedi Council. They’re too weak for it, far too unequipped, to ever come close to being enough for a boy like Anakin - who had shunned even the first Master’s naïve and presumptuous attempts at a bond. Qui-Gon was not prepared, could never have been, for the sheer intensity of this boy. The aura of otherness that crashed off of Anakin in frothing waves. To say Anakin was darkness would be a lie, but neither was he the paragon of righteous light the Council demanded of him. He was, in the purest sense, the exact balance that The Force commanded.

A boy that seemed to shine just a little too bright, with eyes too seeing for such a young child. From the moment Obi-Wan first met him, first felt the tendrils of Anakin Skywalker reaching into his mind, he’d known that nothing would ever be the same again. Felt it down to his very marrow that something had drawn him to this boy by design. As if, perhaps, he’d been born already belonging to Anakin Skywalker.

Years ago, at the beginning, Qui-Gon had frowned at the sight of nine year old Anakin absolutely refusing to give up his clinging grip on Obi-Wan’s hand. Small tanned fingers held snugly in his own, he’d been a delicate little thing that looked like a strong breeze could’ve blown him down - but the uncanny dart of his summer blue eyes left one feeling flayed apart. Not simply seen so much as dissected, like an insect pinned beneath glass. Their Master, or rather Obi-Wan’s for Anakin never once accepted Qui-Gon as his own, attempted to force them apart. Chiding the boy against forming attachments, in a voice fairly threatening. Disappointed.

Anakin had held fast to Obi-Wan’s hand, peering up through the fall of his shaggy bangs, and defied the pretentious demands as surely as a river wears stones smooth. “I am not a slave anymore, you don’t own me.”

Qui-Gon’s wry disappointment turned to Obi-Wan, a scowl on his face, as if somehow his own Padawan devised this behind his back. “Show Skywalker to his rooms, we will speak on this later.”

He knew that meant being in trouble. It felt, in Obi-Wan’s miserable acceptance, that he was always in trouble these days. That trouble would not stop now, not where Anakin was concerned. Part of him knew that this would happen, not so much premonition as it is knowing the way Anakin behaves after only a short few days together, so he is still awake – like some animal part of his brain has been waiting in anticipation, when the door to his room creaks and Anakin quietly slips inside.

The boy is an inky blot in the darkness, too much somehow. As if the darkness around him is even more pitch than the rest of the room - the same way he seems nearly luminous beneath the sunshine. They don’t speak, Obi-Wan just shuffles over in bed and holds the covers up for the boy who carefully crawls underneath. Qui-Gon shares this same room, as all Masters do with their Padawan's, and will be…unhappy when he finds Anakin sneaking in to sleep with Obi-Wan.

Attachments.

Yes. He is attached to Anakin. It is clear in the way he holds an arm out, waiting every night for the boy to take his rightful spot at Obi-Wan’s side, so he can hold Anakin close in the dark. To soothe the nightmares that frightened other children when Anakin’s night terrors seemed to shake the very foundations of the building until he was forced awake. At times the fear would leak out of him as he slept, stirring the other children into tearful bouts of ill rest and now they are thankful for the boy escaping to Obi-Wan every night. He hushes gently and he hums quiet tunes into the sweat-damp crown of the boy’s hair.