darkforcerising | OPEN POST

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)

Caught up in the moment, Anakin didn't notice the flash point of Obi-Wan being triggered. Didn't realize the reason he could follow through with the throw was because Obi-Wan had stopped.

Didn't realize until he was throwing Obi-Wan that the maneuver had been drastically too easy compared to everything else they'd been doing.

His memories changed from the controlled mats of the Temple training rooms to the platforms of the mining facility on Mustafar. His vision bled molten red. The suns' heat now felt suffocating. And his emotions boiled from a rage he didn't want to own.

Obi-Wan wasn't lying in the sand of a desert planet, Anakin was holding down an enemy on the control room floor.

"Fuck!" to borrow the phrase from his new life.

He let go and backed up, kept repeating the expletive.

"Obi-Wan, I'm sorry. Fuck!"

A step forward because he wanted to help. But he'd done this! So a step back again.

Force, what had he done?

The absolute utter laxness in his body - the passivity - meant that he didn't make hitting the ground harder or more likely to be damaging by tensing up. It also meant that he didn't do a damned thing to mitigate how hard he hit the ground - not physically, not with the force.

The sum total was that the throw didn't do any damage to him, but it did mean that he hit the ground hard, and his teeth snapped together so hard it was audible, and he bit his tongue in the process.

The taste of blood was nauseating.

The choking rage around him, and terror in him, were more so.

He continued not to respond to Anakin (or anything else) when Anakin initially backed off. He stayed exactly where he landed, tasting blood and staring without blinking into the still brightening Tatooine sky.

His name made him blink, take a breath again after having the wind knocked out of him, and roll over onto his side. "Not your fault," he murmured. He meant it.

Then slowly climbed to his feet.

He made it exactly one step toward Anakin before his head spun and he fell back to his knees. He was going to need a second here.

No, no, no, no!

Anakin didn't know what to do.

Shit!

He wanted to rush to Obi-Wan's side. He had so many good memories of being there when Obi-Wan got knocked down - by someone not him - and checking on him. As his master, Obi-Wan had a tendency to never stop to address his own health, but as his padawan, Anakin had unconsciously developed a habit of being the one to look out for those needs.

Obi-Wan needed that now. But Anakin was afraid he'd hurt him more.

And they were the only two people for kilometers. They didn't even have a droid he could use as an intermediary.

Fear usually made Anakin act, but not this time, not when he was pretty sure acting would just injury Obi-Wan more.

He stayed down for another moment or two. Stayed on his knees, dropped his head, closed his eyes and breathed. Slowly, deliberately, intentionally.

No mindfulness exercise going on, because that wasn't his world - but did he take a second, drop down, and at least established physical control of himself. Got his heart rate down, stopped himself shaking, pushed nausea out of the way.

Then he pushed himself back up to stand again.

He had not lost track of Anakin, or Anakin's frantic fear.

He walked over to Anakin, himself, and put one hand on each shoulder - very lightly.

"Anakin." Softly. "Breathe. Just. Breathe."

Obi-Wan was still out of his head, in most regards, shaken and sick and afraid - but priorities.

Anakin noticeably flinched when Obi-Wan touched him. His first instinct was to back up, put distance between them. Do no more harm.

"I'm sorry," he choked out. He tried to follow instructions, but he was shit at it. Breathing was extremely difficult for some reason. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize- I should have stopped. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

He kept his touch light enough to give Anakin room to flinch, but he didn't remove his hands. Just waited out the flinch before he let them settle, then slid one around to the back of Anakin's neck and pulled him lightly in.

He was starting to shake again, and he wasn't even sure if it's his own emotions rearing up again, or him being affected by Anakin's.

"I know you are. Look up. Straight up." Look at the sky, Anakin.

This was easier to follow, looking up.

And when Obi-Wan pulled Anakin in, it was like a switch had flipped and Anakin just clung onto Obi-Wan. Maybe it was because Obi-Wan was shaking and Anakin wanted to make it stop. Maybe it was because if he let go they would both slip away. And they couldn't slip away, they had a goal, a mission to complete. They had to stay present.

Slowly, breathing became easy again.

"Are you okay?" he finally asked. And then mentally scolded himself for not putting that first.

Anakin clinging to him helped. He closed his eyes as Anakin started breathing again, and turned his head in toward Anakin. His grip on Anakin stayed pretty light, but he was definitely, finally, allowing himself to lean into him a little. Not so much physically, though that whole 'touch to ground himself' thing was becoming a habit, but still a cautious lean.

As evidenced by his quiet: "No." He was not okay. But: "It still isn't your fault."

Anakin responded by holding Obi-Wan tighter. Maybe he shouldn't cling to him so much, but he was here now and letting go wasn't a concept he could stomach right then.

"What happened?" he asked. "What do you need?"

He nudged his forehead against Anakin's jaw, without looking up or moving much - though he absolutely responded to the tighter grip by relaxing physically, in a way that wasn't... forced.

"Exposure therapy, probably," he said, dry as the desert around them. "Probably restrained."

Obi-Wan relaxing triggered the same response in Anakin - if Obi-Wan was okay, or gradually becoming more okay, Anakin could do the same.

He choked on a small laugh.

With his head clearing again, now that he was breathing again (oxygen helped in that way) he knew that wasn't really an answer. The trigger needed to be named.

"What triggered you?" he asked quietly.

He did not want to talk about this.

He did not.

There was no level at all upon which he saw any benefit in talking about this, and spelling out what had happened.

Because he didn't want to.

He knew Anakin asking was for a reason, that it could help avoid it in the future - or diffuse it - but he didn't want to know it.

He actually growled under his breath at Anakin, not from anger but frustration. At himself. At the fact that he has to use something that is not exactly... approved, emotion wise, as leverage to talk.

"You grabbing my wrist."

Anakin thought about that, closed his eyes and tried not to get lost in the memories that explained to him why that would affect Obi-Wan.

"I'm sorry.... I should have known."

They needed more than each other. They needed someone to practice with who didn't bring with them horrible shared experiences that popped up like booby traps whenever they tried to move forward. But they only had each other right now.

"Can we try something?"

Anakin's apology and feeling self-recrimination, combined with lingering adrenaline and frustration at himself and his physical closeness to Anakin resulted in a completely novel experience for Obi-Wan.

For the first time in his entire life, he actually briefly considered biting someone.

He didn't.

He considered it very briefly.

"We can try anything you want."

There was a strange spike of... not quite irritation from Obi-Wan that Anakin dismissed, because he was very used to irritating people.

He unwrapped his arms from Obi-Wan and stepped back to give them room.

Anakin held up his right hand, palm up.

"Can I see your hand?"

He stepped back as well, though he did it with a very faint shiver that was barely there before it was gone.

He tilted his eyebrows up a little, but he did in fact give Anakin his hand. Facing each other, so his left hand to Anakin's right.

He lifted his left hand, but waited. "Can I touch your wrist?"

"I told you less than a minute ago that we could do whatever you wanted. That stands. Yes. You can touch my wrist."

He knew why Anakin was asking and appreciated it. Ironically holding onto each other wasn't a problem and if this hadn't come up in the context of sparring-- he wouldn't even think about it.

Now he still wasn't afraid of Anakin, but he was worried about it happening again. Which meant in spite of the almost caviler phrasing, he was... uneasy.

He ...was going to save that question for a bit, he decided.

Anakin would only do this with consent, which meant Obi-Wan should prepare himself for that question to be repeated

"Think about this as a diagnostic check on a droid's primary motivator. You're going to get annoyed with how many times I ask the same question, but humor me, okay?"

He didn't grab Obi-Wan's wrist, but just use his fingers first, followed by the palm to just rest on his wrist. He was avoiding the same way he'd gripped and pulled during that fight on Mustafar.

"How's that? How do you feel?"

He gave Anakin a flat look.

He understood the analogy. He understood what Anakin was trying to do pretty quickly.

"Annoyed."

Smart-assery as deflection? Obi-Wan? Never.

He closed his eyes and took a breath and self-assessed anyway, though. Fine. Fine.

"Very vaguely and very distantly threatened." That might explain the snark, too, actually. "But when I say very vaguely I mean extremely vaguely."

Anakin could smile at that.

"Systems are functioning normal, then."

He could be a smart ass, too.

He didn't change the position or force of his hand, just held it there, letting new, positive memories override older ones.

"That's good. Tell me when you're ready for me to move."

"Is there a version of this that won't take eternity? Maybe something where you just grab hold and snarl at me until I get over it?"

Because this was-

He wasn't impatient, he was uncomfortable and for multiple reasons. One of them...

"What triggered you?"

Because that rage was....

Bad.

"Nope," he said. "Forming memories is easy, organizing and processing them is difficult. Reorganizing them... more difficult... There are other methods. Eye movement and desensitization and reprocessing is another method, but you aren't very skilled yet at describing your own emotions, so that would more difficult for you, I think, and it's very exhausting. You have to vocalize the details you can remember of the traumatic event and all your emotions you felt during and after."

He moved his hand so he could rub his thumb along the inside of Obi-Wan's wrist.

"...Hurting you." For him, it was easier to tell Obi-Wan. He had more practice at this. But his voice did get quieter. "Realizing I was hurting you."

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