Hero_With_No_Fear

[ihateflying]

There are precious few decisions that are easy.

When it comes to decisions regarding Anakin, even fewer of them are easy. The decision to never tell Anakin that his 'jokes' about Anakin being the death of him aren't really jokes? As near to easy as they come.

The decision to tell Anakin that Padme is pregnant? More difficult than any decision to date - except perhaps leaving Satine to stay with the Jedi. That he had made that decision - had that experience - may be making the decision harder. He knows what the consequences of this can be, and likely will be, and-

And allowing things to play out would be much more comfortable for him, on a number of levels. It may also well be the right thing to do.

But he has decided, so it's time to act.

He makes time to find Anakin, and says with simple directness but utter seriousness: "We need to speak. In private."

Comments

[ihateflying]

He tilted his head, and it looked like he was delivering some news today, after all.

"You didn't know? There are two."

[hero_with_no_fear]

"How... do you know that?" Anakin was still baffled about how Obi-Wan knew in the first place.

To be fair, Anakin's talents leaned towards the mechanical, while Obi-Wan was always better with living things.

[ihateflying]

He stared at Anakin.

It was, technically, a fair enough question. It wasn't as though he were omnipotent. He missed things all the time. It just also happened to sharply highlight how sometimes, in the most basic of things, they really did know very little about one another.

"Because she is currently three living beings, and unless I'm hallucinating or she's picked up a very vigorous parasite-"

[hero_with_no_fear]

These were things that made them complements to each other. It's why they were the team.

They'd just never had to deal with the Force and, well, pregnancy.

"I... just thought... she was having a girl." And a very genuine smile blossomed on his face. "But she's having twins?"

[ihateflying]

He smiled, and though it was slight and strained with worry it was sincere. He was happy for Anakin.

He was just also very, very deeply concerned.

"It would seem so. You're going to need more than one name." A pause. "More than one everything. You can work on it together. On Naboo."

[hero_with_no_fear]

It was... great, actually, to have Obi-Wan on his side on this. He and Padme weren’t alone.

But that didn’t change the problem of the Council.

“The Council won’t let me leave. They won’t release me from my current mission.”

[ihateflying]

"The council can't stop you from leaving. They may expel you from the Order, but they can't force you to stay on your current mission."

He does, however, understand the trouble with leaving things undone.

And the fear of leaving the order.

He'd certainly harped on both often enough.

[hero_with_no_fear]

"But if I'm expelled from the Order," Anakin said, his previous burst of joy dissipating. "Then I..." Lose you.

The Jedi were a secretive organization, the prohibition against attachments had the unfortunate side effect of cutting members off from outsiders. It was kind of an unspoken rule.

"If I leave the Order, I'm leaving you."

[ihateflying]

It was much easier to handle the practical parts - to see a problem and to offer a solution - than to deal with the emotional repercussions of both problem and solution.

Never mind to discuss those feelings.

He hadn't thought that he would be any particular factor in this. That the only feelings he'd have to handle in this regard were his own.

He'd been wrong, and it was much harder to pretend the feelings weren't they weren't only his own. When someone besides him would be hurt.

"Yes." That single word somehow managed to sound heavy, and sad. Anakin wasn't wrong. "I'll miss you. I'll live."

[hero_with_no_fear]

"But..." Anakin thought about it, or didn't really need to think about it to say, "No. I don't want that either. You're my..."

Why did the Jedi make rules like this, arbitrary dichotomies, and forced its members to choose. But there didn't need to be a choice.

"You're my friend, too."

[ihateflying]

"Yes, and I'll always be your friend." From somewhere else and a much further distance, physically and emotionally, but Anakin's friend. He couldn't comprehend anything else. Anakin's a huge part of the fabric of his life.

Of course, he also couldn't comprehend how there was any choice to be made, at all.

"I am one person, Anakin, and you aren't having prophetic dreams of my death, unless there's something you aren't telling me. Padme is currently three, and you very much are."

[hero_with_no_fear]

"No, okay, I'm not." Not having visions about Obi-Wan dying.

But that didn't matter.

"But you matter to me. I can't just leave you, either."

[ihateflying]

He felt like he was trying to do advanced astrophysics with a concussion. He'd know, he's tried to do advanced astrophysics with a concussion.

"I don't understand what one of those things has to do with the other. I'm not asking you to leave me in danger, I'm asking you to do what you want to do and also to protect Padme and your children."

He was not being deliberately obtuse.

Or at least it wasn't his deliberateness making him obtuse.

[hero_with_no_fear]

Anakin did have a habit of making things more complicated than they had to be, despite how simple it all seemed to him. Or at least, should seem.

"Why does it have to be a choice?"

[ihateflying]

There was a faint wave of reassurance from him, because the question - simplicity of it - reminded him so strongly of a much, much younger Anakin.

"Sooner or later, there would be a conflict between the Jedi and Padme - or Padme's position as a senator. You can't serve two purposes at once, no one can. You have a point in the unfairness of having to give up friends because you've left. That does seem unnecessarily extreme."

But it also is

[hero_with_no_fear]

"That's not true at all," Anakin said. "People have families and jobs and friends all the time. This is just a Jedi rule."

[ihateflying]

There was a lot wrong with the Jedi, as they stood now. So many things that didn't sit well with him.

Not this, though.

This, he understood.

"The Jedi hold a unique place in the galaxy, Anakin. We belong to no one and answer only to ourselves. That comes with its own set of problems, but it is also why we are called upon and trusted. If we have close ties outside the order, there's the potential for us to be seen as being used to further a personal agenda. Or to actually be used to further a agenda, Force knows we aren't infallible."

[hero_with_no_fear]

Anakin didn't have anything to rebut that, he just knew it in his gut it was wrong. What was the point of being conduits of the Force if they didn't connect with living people? It made them, the Jedi as a whole, care less about individuals in need than about philosophical ideologies that didn't really help people - if they did help people why did slavery and injustice thrive right there in the Republic, in ways the Jedi even supported if it benefited the Core? The Jedi had stopped caring about the right things, Anakin wasn't sure he'd ever seen them do it right in all his time. He'd joined, hoping he would see it, and then stayed hoping his hope would pay off one day.

But this was an argument he knew he couldn't win against Obi-Wan, they had argued about it in so many different ways.

"I'm not leaving." He wouldn't settle for 'being friendly' with Obi-Wan - they were friends. He wasn't going to let that go.

[ihateflying]

That was incredibly frustrating.

Being incredibly frustrated by his incredibly stubborn student was not a new experience.

He sighed, softly, but when he spoke there was some steel in his voice. "Then it is time to remind the Council of just who my Master was."

[hero_with_no_fear]

Anakin had been expecting pushback, that was the way with them. A choreography he was used to. But this felt like acquiescence. Or so it seemed. Anakin wasn't quite sure. It threw him.

"What... what do you mean?"

[ihateflying]

"I mean, Anakin, that all things told the entire Jedi council is probably less stubborn than you are once you've made up your mind, and since I can't make you listen to reason I'm going to have to try to bully and stonewall them into some sort of compromise you'll accept."

That's what he meant. That was exactly what he meant.

Agreement? No.

But this felt an awful lot like trying to keep not just Padme and her children, but Anakin, alive.

[hero_with_no_fear]

"You would talk to the Council... on my side... about this?" Anakin asked cautiously, not yet believing what he was hearing.

[ihateflying]

"I believe I am allowed at least one irrational act of rebellion regarding you per decade or so." He smiled faintly. "I've dug my heels in with them regarding you before, you know."

He actually had no idea if Anakin knew.

[hero_with_no_fear]

"You... have?" even more dubious than his previous question. It was safe to say Anakin did not know what Obi-Wan had done for him back on Naboo.

[ihateflying]

"I have."

He smiled, but it was a sad smile. The memory would be fond - in some ways was, anyway - now, if not for being so inexorably linked to Qui-Gon's death.

"You knew they weren't eager for Qui-Gon to train you. They were less eager for me to do it, given that I wasn't even really a knight. I just didn't give them very much choice. I told them I would train you with or without them."

And he had.