Master Apprentice
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Rage Against
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Title: Rage Against
Author Name: Gail Riordan
Fandom: Star Wars - Prequels
Characters|Pairing: Obi-Wan, Anakin
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 945
Disclaimer: George Lucas &etc. Not me. No harm, no foul, no money.
Summary: Obi-Wan reflects on the eve of battle
Warnings: None
Archive: M-A yes, anyone else please ask.
Challenge/Fest/Cause: Sweet Charity fall 08
Prompt: A scene demonstrating Obi-Wan's awareness of/discomfort with the path he's trying not to see Anakin go down.
Author Notes: Written for Dreamlittleyo for the Sweet Charity fall 08 auction.
Many thanks to Temve, Gloriana and Reshcat for encouragement, editing and commentary.
Anakin is angry. Angry and afraid. Oh, not that he would ever say or admit to such un-Jedi-like feelings. He doesn't feel anger, or fear, or the need to prove himself over and over and over. He doesn't feel them because they have always been there, and there is no conception of another way of being.
Qui-Gon saw in him the potential, the capacity for greatness, the way the Force swirls and dances about him, through him, is shaped by his very presence. He did not (chose not? I cannot know, cannot ask) see the equal capacity for disaster. Anakin is a nexus, a knot, a vergence in the Force, but he can summon Dark as easily as Light, should he so choose. The Council, it seems, sees only the disaster waiting to happen, and sets rings and wards and walls around him that will not - cannot - hold. Can they not see that they are only feeding the anger, the fear, with their rigidity and caution? Yoda certainly sees, councils moderation, balance, advertence to the Force, but does not act.
I can only guide him, and only for as long as he will listen. My fear is that one day he will no longer choose to heed me, hear me. I fear for him.
I fear that his world is too binary, too stark, divided into rigid and unflexing parts. He was building droids (the logic of machinery, of yes and no and absolutes within the limit of a very narrow view) before he ever knew that there are shades of grey (that freedom is not free and not all bonds are slavish). His maths is elegant, precise, unyielding; equations that must balance. (He understands the trade-in-kind, that actions may be bought as goods, that life, for some, is nothing more than service-over-time, a commodity to be bought and sold — how could he not? He was far too old in slavery - free to dream but not to act - before he ever came to us to trust the concept of what freedom truly means.) That we have spent so much time on Coruscant, in the very halls of politics and the heart of might-makes-right (I never knew that I would miss the ponderous and intricate dance that was the Senate under Valorum, the slow and careful movement, decisions weighed and not pushed blindly, swiftly through; perhaps it is merely that I am growing old) cannot have helped him learn that there are abstract principles worth holding to and pursuing, and that the idea of freedom (of choice, of thought, of body) is one of them.
(He is far too ready to think of the body - his or another's - as coin, intimacy of the flesh as something to be traded for power-safety-influence, or given as proof of subservience, attachment or the like. I hope he never knew how appalled I was when (far too young) he came to my bed and offered himself, as if I had the right to use him because I was his teaching-master. I hope I made the right choice in letting him take what comfort he could from my presence (for I could not give him more). In all the years since his going into the Force I have never missed Qui-Gon more than I did on those nights Anakin slept beside me then. What we had had been different, even beyond that I was a man grown and brought up in the rituals of the Temple before I chose to approach him, but I have never been able to put in words the difference. I suppose it comes down to that I was free to choose, and somehow, Anakin was not.)
And still Anakin surprises me. His verve, his drive, his unalloyed joy in speed and flight, in challenging his skill against all comers continues to astonish and delight. His desire is to please, but also to advance. There is so much of good in him, of light and life and capacity for love. I see his beauty and his fire, his willingness to reach and strive and wholly enter into action he sees as right. He is dedicated and persistent, tenacious to the end.
(That is another thing I fear. There is a knot in him, a holding hard, a fist that will not let go. His love is absolute, encompassing all aspects of affection, loyalty, desire and respect. What he loves is his and must be as he sees it. Woe betide the person - thing - idea that tumbles from the pedestal, that fails to live up (or down) to expectation. I suppose it is just as well that he truly loves so few.)
If I could give him but one thing, it would be moderation, a concept of ambiguity, of things not (or more than) as they seem, that his ardent spirit might not flame too high and wreak destruction where he would have light. In all the time I've known him he has not grown less dangerous.
But then, neither have I.