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Rush by Love and Rock Music. (TCW) The first half of "Destroy Malevolence," as Anakin and Padmé make their way towards each other. |
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Storms
by FernWithy
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"Storm's coming up, Ani... you better get home quick."
Anakin awoke from a thin, restless sleep, old Jira's voice still ringing in his ears. He heard it often. The dream only came back to him in fragments -- her warning, the storm rolling up over the desert, the fire...
He shuddered. The fire was the worst of it. It seemed to come with the storm, to rain out of it. His face...
"Are you all right?"
He jumped at Kenobi's voice, then chastised himself for it. How distracted was he, to not feel a presence as strong and distinctive as Kenobi's coming into his small sleeping room at the Temple? Focus. Learn focus. "I'm all right," he said. "Nightmares."
"I
know. They've been getting worse over the past few months, haven't
they?"
There
wasn't much point in arguing. Anakin had been Kenobi's padawan for
almost three years now, and if he'd learned nothing else (and he
sometimes thought he had learned nothing else), it was that he
couldn't lie to Kenobi once the man got in his head to find the truth.
And, at any rate, Anakin hated lying, and had never done it well in
any case. He nodded. "What does it mean?"
"I
can't tell you what your own dreams mean, Anakin. Particularly when
you tell me so little about them."
Anakin
started to say, "I can't remember," but stopped. There were
ways a Master could help remember dreams... but something told Anakin
that he didn't want to remember this dream in Kenobi's presence. There
was something about it, some shameful secret, some...
Kenobi
was looking sharply at him. "Anakin?"
Tell
him now, and let him help. "It's just dreams."
"You
should not ignore your visions, Ani. With your talent... "
The
rest began to simply wash over Anakin. At first, it had felt good to
be told he was special, that he was supposed to have all this talent
and destiny. Now, it felt oppressive, like a huge
(stormcloud)
weight
bearing down on him. And it made him sad -- Kenobi was a good Master,
he thought, and sometimes a good friend. But when he talked like
that... Anakin felt like he'd stopped being Anakin Skywalker, and
turned into some stranger named "The Chosen One," who would
never be anyone's friend. Certainly not someone who could be bothered
by plain old bad dreams, or someone who just needed to be told that it
was safe to go to sleep again.
He
shook his head. He was thirteen. He was too old to need the human
equivalent of a nightlight, anyway.
Too
old to be homesick (was there ever a right age to be homesick for a
waste of rock like Tatooine?).
Too
old to still miss his mother.
Mistake.
Her face rose in his mind -- wise, tired eyes, sad smile, gentle
touch...
"Anakin!"
There
was real concern in Kenobi's voice, and Anakin noticed that Kenobi's
hands were on his arms, pushing him back. He was confused for a moment
-- why was Kenobi pushing him? -- but he looked at himself and
understood. Kenobi wasn't pushing him; he was catching him. He
himself was leaning forward bonelessly. "I'm sorry," he
said, embarrassed. "I guess I need to go back to sleep. I'm
tired."
"Tell
me what you saw."
Anakin
shook his head. It wasn't a refusal. He just couldn't think of what to
say. "My mother," he muttered. "That's all I
know."
Kenobi's
grip loosened, and he let Anakin slip back down into sleep.
*********************************
Tatooine, again.
Storm's
coming up, Ani... better get home quick.
He
stands at the edge of the desert, and hears the voice, but he sees no
one. Padm� was there a moment ago, holding his hand, but now she has
been swept away, and he can't find her. He can feel her heart beating
inside him, somehow, and knows she is alive... but she has disappeared
into the rising wind. Beyond, the harsh sail of sand and dust and
rocks is sweeping across the Dune Sea, coming at him with inexorable
patience. There was a ship out there, but it has already been
swallowed. Perhaps that is where Padm� has gone. Maybe she's gotten
away.
He
has a moment's hope, then something shimmers in the sky, and the
howling wind tosses the ship into the face of the cliff. He hears a
scream in his mind, then the storm is upon him...
Anakin
looked across the meditation room. No one else seemed to be disturbed.
That was good. The first time he'd tried to see through the Force,
he'd called it so loudly that half the other students in the Temple
had heard, and had snickered about him being clumsy. He felt worse
that some of the younger children had caught the edge of what he saw
-- he never seemed to see anything pleasant -- and had been frightened
by it. He'd gone to try and comfort them by telling the nice stories
his mother used to tell him when he was upset, but the older padawans
had sneered at him for it, and Yoda had explained to him (more gently
than he'd expected) that the children needed to lean on the Masters or
on themselves when they were troubled. "A kind heart you have,
Skywalker, but a stranger's heart here. Learn our ways of living, you
must."
He
had done his best. Now, he could call a vision without disturbing
every Jedi on the planet. Lots of progress. He also never told the
little ones stories anymore (well, okay, almost never), and
most of them had stopped asking.
In
the three weeks since Kenobi had caught him dreaming, he'd determined
to find the root of the dreams, to remember them awake and be able to
explain them to himself. Once they were explained, they would go away,
like the monster that had turned out just to be a pile of old droid
parts in his room when he was little. He'd accidentally left a small
fan running, and it had malfunctioned in the middle of the night and
made the whole junkpile seem to be breathing loudly, and it had
frightened him until Mom came in and turned on the light; they'd found
the problem together and --
He
saw an older student looking at him, and clamped down on the thought.
He could not start remembering his mother. They always knew. And they
didn't like it.
He'd
narrowed the dream down to a few elements:
It
was always Tatooine, and there was always a storm.
Jira
always warned him about it, just as she had on the day Qui-Gon, Padm�
and Jar Jar had first wandered into Mos Espa.
He
always seemed to be looking for something, but he never knew what it
was.
Other
than those, the elements changed. Padm� was sometimes there; other
times, he wasn't thinking about her (he found that he could sometimes
go a whole day or two without thinking about her, though as soon as he
noticed that he hadn't thought about her, he could think about nothing
else for at least twice as long). Obi-Wan was almost never there, but
sometimes, he showed up, and once he'd actually taken Anakin by the
hand and walked him straight into the storm. Watto sometimes made an
appearance, and so did Sebulba. Kitster had shown up in one version,
and told him about some of the other people they'd known. The other
students in the Temple frequently traipsed across the desert, skilled
and carefree.
Qui-Gon
was there about half the time, but Anakin had not been able to narrow
down what he was doing. All he could remember clearly was the cry he'd
given in real life -- "Anakin, drop!" In the dream, as in
life, he did so. He was glad when Qui-Gon showed up in the dream. The
storm always passed right over his head when Qui-Gon was there; when
he wasn't, it hit, and it burned, and he couldn't breathe, and nothing
was left when it was over.
Tatooine.
The storm. Jira. Searching... but for what?
********************************
"I
need to go back to Mos Espa," he said, standing at the center of
the design on the Council Room floor.
Mace
Windu's eyes narrowed, and he looked over Anakin's head, at Obi-Wan.
"And your opinion of this, as his Master?"
Obi-Wan
spoke quietly; he did not want to cause Anakin any more trouble, but
he had been asked a direct question, and Anakin knew he would answer
it. "Anakin and I disagree on this. That is why we wished to
bring it to the Council."
Mace
looked back at Anakin. "Your Master holds such decisions in his
own hands, young Skywalker. We will not contradict him."
"I...
" Anakin swallowed hard. "I've had nightmares of Tatooine.
Visions."
"Which
is it?" Yoda asked. "Nightmares, have you, or visions?"
"I'm
not sure, sir. That's why I need to go back. I need to know."
The
Council exchanged glances, and Anakin could feel thoughts passing from
one to another of them. It occurred to him to wonder, for the first
time, if he could eavesdrop on them, but that seemed not-very-nice.
Not quite down there with the level of the mind trick, which he'd
learned but refused to use (Kenobi had finally stopped arguing with
him), but still not nice.
"And
your refusal, Obi-Wan Kenobi, is based on what?"
Kenobi
gave him a sorrowful look. Gone was the Master insisting on
interpreting every image as an utterance of the Chosen One. As soon as
Anakin had made his petition to go home, Obi-Wan had decided the
dreams were merely childhood wishes. "Master Yoda, I believe
strongly in Anakin's talent. But I also know that he is still too tied
to his past, and I am not convinced that his dreams of home are
visions... "
Don't look back...
Anakin
felt his eyes widen as Kenobi went on. That was it. He had been
following his mother's instruction so well that he'd even followed it
in his dream. The one person who never appeared... because she was the
one who was always there. The one he was searching for.
"It's
my mother," he said, barely noticing that he'd interrupted his
Master in front of the Council (in fact, barely remembering that he
was in the Council room). "The dreams are trying to tell me that
I need to find her."
There
was silence. And he felt their eyes on him, cold and appraising.
Ki-Adi-Mundi spoke gently. "It is well that you love your mother,
Anakin, and it is my guess that your dreams are about her. But
you need to learn to separate dreams from visions. You say yourself
that you are not certain?"
Anakin
nodded glumly. "Yes, sir."
"Then
I see no reason to refuse your Master's authority," Mace said.
"In
Kenobi's hands, it is," Yoda agreed.
They
were dismissed.
Anakin
stood with Obi-Wan on the walkway overlooking Coruscant. Obi-Wan
leaned forward. "Anakin, I have not trained a padawan before.
Perhaps I am making a mistake." Anakin didn't bother
letting his hopes rise. "But I must do this as my instincts
suggest. I need you to be fully here, not torn between worlds. You
need to accept the life of a Jedi, as the other students here
do."
"Yes,
Master." Obi-Wan put an arm across his shoulders, and he was glad
of the weight of it. Whatever else was true, he did want to be
a good padawan, and he wanted to be a Jedi knight, and go back and
free his mother and the other slaves. And he had to trust Obi-Wan's
judgment. Obi-Wan knew more than he did. "I'm sorry for my
behavior. I shouldn't have questioned you."
Obi-Wan
smiled. "You have been spending time with me, haven't you?
Never mind. Questioning is not a bad thing, and I will always hear
your questions and think about them carefully. But I need you to
accept the answers I give to them."
Anakin
agreed, and they walked back to the living quarters in comfortable
silence. Anakin would trust Obi-Wan.
(storm's coming up, ani...)
He
had to.
(better
get home... quick)
-
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