darkforcerising | OPEN POST

The Negotiator.

He shook his head, very slightly and actually made a tsking noise. That part was a tease, but the teasing stopped quickly.

"You only superficially resemble - or feel like - Vader. You look and feel like you - and I do not mean who Vader was before he was Vader."

"He is in a very intimidating suit now." Anakin shook his head. "I don't have that going for me. Just... sarcasm and a high tolerance for sarcasm from others."

"I haven't seen it."

He hasn't even really heard much of it. He hasn't had time and he has had trauma and -

"I know you're continuing to banter. I know why. I think just this once and just for this moment I'm going to deflect the banter, instead of deflecting with banter. I've this strange idea this is something you're going to need to hear frequently: You are less like him than you realize - and some of those differences are reflected in how you look, even on the surface."

Anakin stayed silent for a few moments after Obi-Wan was done talking.

And he worked up the nerve to look at the lightsaber. Not a glance. But to look at it. He didn't look long, but for a few seconds he could and he didn't feel like the weight of his emotions would crash through the floor he was standing on.

"Tell me," he said. "If I ever start to seem more like him... I'm... much better about taking criticism this time."

"I will, provided you promise to remember that I am not unbiased and you'll need to be able to apply, at some point at least, some rational objectivity. I didn't throw you into a wall because you looked or felt particularly like him. I did it because I wasn't paying any attention." (Because he'd been terrified, in general.)

For example.

But Anakin was doing better, felt steadier, was making progress with something hard and that determination-

was... admirable.

Edited 2020-01-13 03:49 (UTC)

"The only reason I didn't chuck it through your walls is because I've gone through this kind of thing before and my brain defaulted to habit." A subtle hint that Obi-Wan was slowly going through the same process.

"As for being rational and objective... Those are two concepts I'm not very familiar with. I don't think I can make that kind of promise."

"Then you promise to listen to me if I return to rational and objective and apologize." That was pretty direct, at least.

Suddenly, it seemed, he realized that this was going to be a process, and while he is very good at dedication, work, practice, the idea just exhausts him. No anger, no resentment, not frustration even, just suddenly feeling heavy and tired. Like for one of the first times in his life he actually wanted to say 'I can't do this'.

He rubbed his eyes with one hand and then let the hand fall. His eyes landed on Anakin's work and his prosthetic arm. "...You could build better."

Edited 2020-01-13 03:58 (UTC)

He gave Obi-Wan a nod.

He felt that heaviness from Obi-Wan and realized without fully acknowledging over these last few days, he'd been open to and listening to the Force in a way he'd tried to stop himself from doing back where he'd been living. Maybe it was because it was really just Obi-Wan all the way out here so it didn't overwhelm him. Maybe it was just Obi-Wan Anakin was trying to gauge, he wanted to do right by him, so had fallen back on all the tools he had to make sure he could.

He recognized that heaviness. Had felt it himself before. It gets easier, he sent that reassurance out to Obi-Wan.

"I think we can put the lightsaber away for now."

And when the lightsaber was gone, he picked up Obi-Wan's observation. "I've been thinking about that. I could track down the Jawas again and get parts to make a new one. I still remember how I made it before."

He responds to the reassurance without finding anything odd about it at all, though he should have. He responded with some wordless gratitude, underlined by a slightly grim It had better, which was an admittedly weird combination.

He was grateful to Anakin.

They had thirty days.

Not to be okay, sure, but to be okay enough.

"I can help you track them down if you need it, but either way take anything here you need and make it happen. We're going to need as-" Not many advantages, but: "Few disadvantages as we can manage."

It wasn't like this was even going to be complicated, strategically, but they were going to be fighting themselves, too. No matter what.

Anakin agreed, he couldn't take offense at that because they needed to succeed.

"Could go out tomorrow. You look like you need to get out."

He paused, and then added, "We should also look for non-saber weapons to start sparing with. It'll be a few more days before I can calmly even hold mine. I don't think we should spar with lightsabers our first few times."

He nodded in agreement to the plan for tomorrow, without verbalizing. He also agrees to other weapons, but.

"I think we need to actually roll it back further. We can practice with other weapons but we're dangerous enough without any additional... instruments." Force ability. "If we're going to tip over and see one another as a threat, I'd much rather be unarmed."

He was worried about Anakin's reaction to him. Anakin had reason to have a terrible reaction to him. He was also worried about him having a bad response to hurting or feeling as though he were hurting Anakin. He was not concerned that he might have a problem with reacting to aggression leveled toward him by Anakin (or anyone else).

That was going to bite him, later. Probably.

This made absolute sense. No one here wanted to hurt the other. But it could happen. It could happen purposefully on accident.

"We'll take it slow. I know that we have a timeline. But I can start practicing forms on my own also before we try anything together."

"Do what you need, as you need. The timeline here is yours to set. I have the information, regardless. If your timeline doesn't match up, we change the plan and your role within it. This is straight forward. If I have to, I can do it alone." There was no... martyrdom there, right now. It was just a statement.

And in truth?

He didn't want to do it alone.

But he absolutely could.

"Obi-Wan," Anakin said. "We're a team. We'll do this together. Not realizing we were better together was a mistake the Jedi made. We won't make that mistake."

Anakin said that because he didn't want Obi-Wan to go alone. What if Obi-Wan didn't come back? Anakin was better about 'letting go' but if he didn't have to, then he'd rather not.

"I can tell you about the Dark Side user that will be aboard the ship."

They were better together, though he wasn't entirely: "All right, but potential alternate plans stay on the table," he said, firmly. Not with any air of authority or lecture, just him... digging in his heels on the point. "Please tell me what you know."

Okay, time for some more hard truths.

"Palpatine brought back the rank of Inquisitor shortly before everything fell apart. I was in charge of them, I used them as assassins to help hunt down the remaining Jedi.

"The one that will be on this mission just goes by the name of the Grand Inquisitor. He was the first one. He was a Temple Guard before everything that happened with Ahsoka's expulsion, but he became disillusioned with the Jedi after that and Palpatine used that to his advantage and snatched him up.

"His lightsaber is unique. It's doubled bladed, but it spins on its own. I can draw up the specifications. I think they are obnoxious and actually one of our best advantages, the hilt has more surface area to strike and disable it. It'll also be harder to wield in a ship's corridor."

There was s a... flicker that's almost flash, really, of incredulity from him.

It was the sort of situation and feeling that his Anakin would have interpreted in Obi-Wan doubting him.

In reality? He believed Anakin, trusted the information. He accepted both the situation, and the necessity of action and his role in it. He understood the information that was laid out and how it had come to be.

That didn't mean it made any sense to him. In spite of being perfectly competent - even very good -at both strategy and combat, being a soldier - or general or assassin - fit him about as well as as being a Jedi had fit his student.

He did not dissociate entirely this time, at least. The shift in mental gears wasn't entirely smooth (thunk), and his emotional response to the factual information fell back and away before it happened, but he was still present.

"I'm going to need them. Double bladed doesn't concern me, especially as you said, in a confined space. The overly complicated design also indicates some tendency toward more... flash than is likely well suited to close quarters. The rotation may be a problem. If nothing else it's going to generate an enormous amount of momentum and add power to any attack." His forearms hurt thinking about blocking that nonsense. Possibly because they'd been recently broken. "Though as you said, the hilt's vulnerable and we can use the ship's topography. We will need to make sure to at least move as far into the interior of the ship as possible. Especially with a plan of keeping the ship."

"They are incredibly flashy and only that," Anakin scoffed, derision overly present in his response. The fact that he, Anakin, lover of all things that went boom, found the showy weapons obnoxious, said something about their efficacy. "They really only work because most Jedi have discarded their lightsabers in an effort to hide."

Which brought up another thing Anakin had been thinking about.

"If we can, I want to try to keep the kyber crystals. The Empire has already seized Ilium, so getting new ones right now will be difficult."

He rubbed his forehead, and -

It hadn't been all that long since they had gone from the 'saviors' of the Republic, seduced into a role they'd never been meant for, to enemies of the Empire to be executed.

He didn't blame the Jedi for discarding their weapons - and he ever much did.

He did not have Anakin's ... hindsight to act as foresight, but he knew Jedi. Not just the very good examples, but the people.

"Yes, and some of them will have cut themselves off from the force entirely, for similar reasons." Similar. Not the same. He won't deny understanding the temptation of that.

"We'll salvage everything we can, and while I appreciate the intelligence and insight, and it is needed, I'm not sure I can take more than twenty years of in at once." It's self-depreciating, but also lightly humorous on the surface and in the tone but he meets Anakin's gaze seriously. There was a warning there, but not a threat. It was just... that there was a limit to what he could onboard if Anakin wanted him to 'stay with him'.

Edited 2020-01-13 18:26 (UTC)

Anakin reached across to Obi-Wan's hand, like he'd done before earlier in the evening. It was a thing now that they could do. He squeezed his hand and then started collecting the pieces of their project.

"We need to get up early tomorrow to find those Jawas. We should probably go to sleep."

A year ago being touched this much would have been... trying. Now being touched this much wasn't enough.

Amazing what a year, betrayal, and wholesale slaughter could do.

"We should." He followed Anakin to his feet, and helped make sure that project could be picked up again. "Which means we should go to bed."

It had been a few days since his lightsaber had first been brought out. Only just the previous night Anakin touched it for the first time. It was not a fun process, but he hadn't thrown it through the wall, and he was still here, work at conquering these issues.

There trip to the Jawas had been successful. They were able to get parts for him to build himself a new arm - it wasn't finished yet, but he was confident he would get it installed and kinks mostly worked out by the time they rescued Master Unduli.

He had started practicing the lightsaber forms on his own, though without his lightsaber for now. And he tried to do it mindful of Obi-Wan by utilizing the early mornings and evenings some distance away from the hut. The footwork was the easiest part, practicing mostly with his left hand was more difficult.

Today, however, they'd agreed to try sparring together - without weapons - for the first time.

It was early morning, the suns were just peeking over the horizon. It was still cold, but not freezing, and they would be sweating soon enough even with the temperature.

He squared off across from Obi-Wan and planted his feet in the first of the most simplest forms for non-weapon, hand to hand combat.

"I'm ready." Maybe. Right now, he felt fine. He hoped this wouldn't set them back.

He wasn't ready.

There was another one of those seconds, one of those hang-fire points, where he actually again came close to saying 'I can't do this' and just turning and walking away.

Some of that, he realized in that exact second, was just that he had ...given up the rest of his life on the Tantive IV. Not in the sense of dying, but he'd said he'd spend the rest of his life looking over look and he'd been okay with it. Because it served a purpose, because it was necessary, but -

The plan for the rest of his life wasn't far above some sort of half-life and now he was....

Doing something else entirely.

Once he realized that, it got a lot easier to stop thinking 'can't' , on any level, because he knew it for what it was: passive resistance to the idea that he wasn't really all that done.

He looked across at Anakin, gave him a moment, and then went in after him. Fairly slowly, more telgraphing, pretty formalized. Something he would have used with a 16 or 17 year old padwan. Not easy to the point of condescending, but something that would let him gauge where Anakin was, before going any further.

Anakin prefered the simplicity for this exercise. This simple form recalled memories of training at the Temple when he was just a Padawan, rather than that final battle on Mustafar. The forms had been difficult when he was first learning them, but the only negative feelings associated with those memories were of frustration over learning to grasp new concepts. But that was a matter of a lack of skill.

The problem now was conquering emotions.

So far, the first strike from Obi-Wan didn't send his emotions spiraling, he just followed the form into a block, then a retreat. From there he followed through with his own strike.

They did okay.

Obi-Wan dodged, deflected, and then came back at Anakin again. They found a rhythm.

They - or he at least - gradually pushed both difficulty and tempo. Turned the sparring session into something that was still relatively straightforward (for them, at least), but it turned into an actual sparring session and a workout, and honestly? It felt pretty good.

Until it didn't.

Which was the second Anakin grabbed hold of his wrist. At that second the pressure around his wrist and something about the angle of it may as well have transported him to the control room in Mustfar. He could smell ash and singed electrical circuits, hear Anakin screaming about being sick of lectures and all but feel the bones in his arm starting to splinter under impossible force.

Just fine to absolutely, but silent, screaming terror.

His heart-rate shot up, from mildly elevated to racing out of control, his vision swam, his pupils dilated, and he -

-stopped.

Stopped moving. Stopped reacting. Stopped responding. Stopped breathing. His hands fell open and he went completely, utterly, passive.

Because passive, instead of fighting back, was just about all he had enough even remotely functioning brain to be able to do to protect Anakin.

Edited 2020-01-13 20:58 (UTC)

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