darkforcerising | (no subject)

(no subject)

Who: Canon Anakin, AU Earth Anakin
What: Cross universe shenanigans continue - the two Anakins work on fixing a starfighter
When: now
Where: aboard the Resolute
Rating/Warnings: Probably low

Well it seemed as if Anakin was stuck back in this universe for the time being and he might as well use it to the fullest advantage. Being allowed to remain free, he set out wandering and quickly found the hangar bay. Listening to his music, he walked the perimeter a while, just looking at all the ships that were both so familiar and distant in memory for him. It was the weirdest form of nostalgia.

He stopped next to a currently-decommissioned fighter and rested his left hand on the metal hull. There was something about just feeling the cold metal against the palm of his hand. After a brief pause he started tracing a finger along the seam of a panel. It was so strange how a machine could feel so alive to him. And having twenty-four years of recent experience with the absence of that connection only made the feeling now so strong in contrast.

Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and he noticed another familiar form working on another ship in disrepair. Without invitation, Anakin walked over.

“These were fun,” he said when he was close enough to be heard. He was referring to the Delta-7B Aethersprite-class light interceptor in front of him. “I remember them.”

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The laugh was both reassuring and very much not.

Still, he kept glancing at the tool, making sure it was being done properly.

"I never did understand what they wanted, really. I'd try to not let them control, I can see where that is a problem, what I'd done when anger was controlling me. But I don't see how letting them lead me is dangerous. It seems like when I trust that lead, that's when everything goes just right." He's not really looking for reassurance, he's looking for understanding. Because he hasn't gotten it, because he didn't understand himself why one always lead to disaster, but he kept doing it and why the other always lead to success and how to make it happen more often.

“That’s the trick, isn’t it? And there’s so many of them and they never seem to stop.” Ya, he understood.

The final piece of the tool clicked into place, and then Anakin started working backwards again. Taking it apart.

“There are two really important skills you need when it comes to emotions - knowing when to act on them and knowing how to sit with them when acting on them is wrong or impossible. Which means you have to know how to identify what you’re feeling... I can see why the Jedi think repression is easier. Doesn’t excuse them, but I get it.”

"Everything bad I feel just feels like anger, doesn't matter what's happening. And there's so much of it. It feels almost like when I'd try to meditate, and got pushed to look deeper, and all there was was something large, frightening, that felt like it was going to explode on me." So how the kriff does he identify that?

"...I'm not going to be able to stay with the Jedi, am I?" Deep down, he knows it's not the right place for him, he's never fit, like someone trying to force the wrong size screw into a nut. He knows. He's said, more than once, he was going to leave. He had an out in Padmé. And yet, here he was.

“Well, anger isn’t wrong. It just is. It might help to think about what it signifies. We get angry when we encounter injustice - someone has done something wrong and it needs to be addressed or fixed. So what’s at the root of the emotional response?”

Anakin considered how to answer that next question.

“The Jedi need to change. They’re part of the problem of imbalance... Why do you want to stay?”

"I don't know." Jealousy, betrayal, grief, fear, anxiety - all too big to name or even feel properly. So he couldn't really answer the question. He wished he could.

"Obi-Wan." There was no hesitation. Whatever other reasons he had, and he did have a few, Obi-Wan was the chief one. "He had to fight so hard for me. He gave so much to me. I can't just abandon him. I don't want to. I don't want to hurt him, or disappoint him like that."

"Ya," Anakin said. He finally opened his eyes and reached out and grabbed the tool. He was done fidgeting with this one. He wanted another. So he went over to the cart and started rummaging.

"The Jedi don't really like their current members maintaining any connections with those who leave. And Obi-Wan is Obi-Wan. You can't find a more Jedi Jedi than him." He said it affectionately enough that it wasn't an insult. "It would be difficult to leave him."

"Might as well climb up here if you are going to take things apart." There was room, after all, and it seemed unlikely that his twin could break something in a way one of them couldn't fix.

"Ya." It was an echo. "I don't want to lose him."

"What do you want me to work on?" Anakin stayed at the tools for now.

"And you aren't willing to walk away knowing he's still here- alive and fine, but adhering strictly to what the Council will or won't let him do?"

"The wiring needs rerun, last firefight fired the display." So having more than one set of hands would make it go faster.

"I don't think so, no." For as long as he had a choice anyway. Which he knew he might not always. "I'm not as attached to the Order as they'd like me to be. But I'm more attached to him than they'd like me to be."

Anakin picked out the tools he’d need and then climbed up, taking up station on the other wing. It felt like home up on the fighter.

“You’re choosing to stay in an impossible situation. The Council won’t hesitate to punish you if they found out... if they find out anything you’re keeping from them. Do you think Obi-Wan would be more or less disappointed to find out through the Council rather than through you?” Ya, that was a low blow, but a reality that needed to be faced either way.

''You'll be expelled from Jedi Order' Obi-Wan had shouted.

'I don't care!' He'd yelled back with certainty that hadn't really faded with time.

"I don't think he'd be surprised either way. And he's on the Council, remember? He'd be a part of it regardless." Anakin huffed, turned himself back to working on his ship. "Windu would be the worse person to find out from. Followed by Yoda."

"Yoda is a pointy-eared space goblin and Windu is a judgmental asshole." Anakin didn't have to think long and hard about which insults to level at either Council member. It was almost a knee jerk reaction.

He started unfastening a panel.

"So why not tell him yourself?"

The near reflexive insults made him laugh, because he had long agreed. Yoga might know a great freak about the Force and Windu might be a great warrior, but Anakin firmly believed Obi-Wan was more knowable and better than either of them. He stuck his hand inside the opening fruition the panel, feeling for the wiring board.

"I guess I don't know what to say. After Ahsoka left it was. So hard. I promised him I wouldn't hurt him like that." He'd meant it too. Even if he left the Order, all Obi-Wan would need to do was ask. He'd be there.

"People change, and promises are broken," Anakin pointed out. "And people move on from it all the time."

He started checking connections along the wires on his side of the ship.

"The alternative is just... changing the entire Order so that it is accepting of," he gestured in a way that encompassed all of his twin, "you and your needs." And then he shrugged, like it was no big deal.

"I mean. That sounds better. I'm not the only one they didn't find "in time" and I'm not the only kid they just abandoned to the Outer Rim. And after what happened with the attempted kidnapping of the possible younglings, letting them speak with their families will encourage more trust." He knew the likelihood of that happening however. "I doubt they would see why, but what they want me to do. Things have to change." Anakin carefully plucked a couple wires from the panel and one by one started to wind them back for replacment.

"What's the uniform you're wearing on the picture of you and mom?"

“They’ll change or the Force will let them be destroyed.” He said it so casually. He knew he should be more shocked about that realization, but knowing what he knew now, it was such a glaringly obvious conclusion to the Chosen One prophecy.

“Formal uniform for the Air Force - a branch of the military of the country I lived in on Earth. That was graduation.”

He IS too casual about it. For all he doesn't fit, he also can't imagine there not being a Jedi Order. It's enough that Anakin fumbles for his wire cutters for a moment. "I don't want that."

"How is it different, from this?" Is it a change of topic? Probably. But it's easier territory.

"I'm not advocating for it either." But could he stop fate? He was going to find out if he was stuck here long term.

"Well, most armies on Earth don't accept children as soldiers. That's a war crime. Enlisting is voluntary, right now. In America - the country I lived in, they have a draft but aren't in any official wars - only conflicts. You can be seventeen to enlist, but you don't start basic training until you're actually legally an adult."

He was happy to give them a topic change while they worked.

"You can probably guess by the picture, families aren't forbidden. There are rules about officers and subordinates not having relationships, but ya, families.

"It's not the best. It's hard to be in the military with a mental disability. Health care is terrible. Health care on Earth probably all looks terrible for anyone here- we don't have bacta, we don't have neuro-interfaced cybernetic prosthetics. So losing my arm made staying in the airforce impossible. I was out after that."

It was both easier to listen to this and somewhat harder. He'd been in combat situations as a child, but didn't think there had harmed him - even if his reaction to Ahsoka had been a firm 'no' at first. But that had rapidly changed.

"That does sound terrible. Not having proper prosthetics is bad enough - and it's not like some people don't have a prejudice against them," Like Dooku, "but no bacta? It's not like slaves get it or colonies but none at all?" Anakin shook his head. Primative. "It's. Having multiple governments on one planet, that just seems ripe for conflict too."

He continued to work, chewing over something his twin had said. "Mental disability?" It's quietly asked.

"Conflict all the time. America is the worst at it... Thinking about it now, I wouldn't make the same choice to join now that I did when I was seventeen. But the government pays for your education if you join. And I wanted to fly...

"But... I messed that up. Can't even fly commercial after I lost my arm." He still wasn't over that. Even if it was his fault.

"Oh, ya. I have ADHD. uh, attention deficit and hyperactive disorder- it's a cognitive neurodevelopmental disorder affecting attention, impulse control, emotional control, hyperactivity, oh and the perception of time- that last one is always the weirdest to me. I have no internal concept of the passage of time. Without some kind of external device, I can't tell if five minutes or an hour has passed."

"But-" Anakin motioned at his twin's arm. Clearly now it was changed?

Several of those words flew over Anakin's head. But 'impulse control', 'emotional control', 'perception of time' - those made sense to him, they were things he had always gotten dinged on. "Can you explain more about that?"

"I don't let authorities know I have this," Anakin said, looking affronted. "I'm not Earth's science experiment. I don't need that in my life."

But he didn't have a problem with explaining his brain in detail.

"Ya, sure. So my brain developed differently from most humans. It doesn't produce or regulate dopamine and norepinephrine like it should. And because of that, I have difficulty staying focused on certain things like reading for a long time or lectures. I have trouble controlling impulses - saying whatever pops into my mind or doing things on the fly with very little consideration for consequences. And my emotions are always large and provocative. And the time thing I already explained. To manage all that I take a few different medications, and I've been in therapy since I was like ten."

"How did you get it then?" Speaking of saying the first thing that popped into your mind.

"You might want to figure out how to get more of them." But none of this was anything Anakin had ever heard of, even if the behavior described was very very familiar. "What did therapy do?"

"Ya... figured I'd talk to Obi-Wan about that. Part of figuring out what to do with myself now that I'm here. I know the chemical compounds so shouldn't be too hard to have someone here synthesize more for me."

He was starting to realize maybe this conversation with Obi-Wan might be more difficult.

"Cognitive behavioral conditioning. Figured out how to process my emotions given the disadvantage my brain presents. Coping techniques and strategies for those things I said before - inattentiveness, impulse control, that kind of thing."

"Probably not." Anakin kept working at the wiring, seemingly intensely focused on the task at hand.

"I'm not sure I want him to know. Maybe we could talk to Padmé? She has a med droid." He started to fidget, shifting his weight a little and playing with the tools he had at hand. He was very uncomfortable with Obi-Wan being brought into the discussion.