pronker

Part One Hundred One

It wasn't until Obi-Wan woke up Anakin by calling brokenheartedly for his mother that Anakin truly began to worry.

It happened directly after the picnic, before they generally awoke anyway, on the cusp of the day. Temple routines being what they were, dawn became the preferred awakening time for humans or humanoids or near-human Jedi. Yoda slept when he could, which was more, lately, now that the Dark Side shaded away from smothering black into chiaroscuro. Dooku's smaller blight on the Force would embarrass his considerable pride when the Count of Serenno was taken into custody. Yoda would sleep even better then.

"Mom! Mom!" Obi-Wan's mumble became a shout. "I'm not too late! I'm not!"

Anakin slept heavily in just-post-adolescent slumber, but not heavily enough to sleep through this. "Master, what ... "

"Mom! Don't die! I'm here! Nonononoooo ... "

"Master Obi-Wan, wake up!"

"Mom, I'm a Jedi! I came for you just like I said I would, please stay with me!"

Crack! The baseboard heater came on and the temperature change made its usual metal plate crack-hissss noises. Anakin jumped. "Obi-Wan! Wake up!" Birds twittered, a brook babbled. Scents of flameflowers tickled Anakin's nose. The Wake Up Naturally, Every Time! program got into full swing with a click! from the kitchen, the caf brewer going off. A moment later, caf's delicious aroma filtered through to their bedroom. Anakin's mod to the program, The Morning March's brass from the Jedi Drum and Bugle Corps,would come next. Anakin raised his hand and stopped every part of the program with the Force.

"Mmmmm. Padawan. Hi. 'Morning." Obi-Wan scrubbed drool from his beard with the back of his hand. "Mmmmmrggghhh. Our leftover protato salad gave me indigestion."

"Master, you were dreaming."

"Really?" Obi-Wan hacked his way into a more normal voice, sniffling as his sinuses dictated most mornings. "Sorry to wake you up. Was I snoring again, too?" Stayed out in the night air watching fireworks until late. Obi-Wan, you congested hedonist.

"I don't know, but you were having a nightmare, like, like" --- one of mine --- "your mother was dying."

Obi-Wan's eyes opened fully. He rubbed the sand out of their corners. "Anakin, I never knew my mother. I've not dreamed about her before."

Not even to dream about a mother's love ..."Never?"

"Never. I've wondered about my parents, like all initiates do at one time or another, nothing else." This is shocking you. You haven't the sweet memory of being rocked in the nursery by Tahl, on nursery duty before all her troubles began.

Anakin stayed calm. "Could you have been dreaming about mine? Master, do you think our imprinting could be causing this?"

Obi-Wan considered before replying, the way that he usually did. Anakin counted his own heartbeats until he reached twenty. "No. It's an proven imprinting technique Koon showed me on holovid. Its proponents claim that it works when they test it in crowded venues like the scramball finals matches or even simple shopping excursions at the Glitannai Esplanade. Jedi in the field have averted disastrous separations with it. It's a tool that the Force allows. I'm all for it." Don't ever want to risk separation from you for long. "Let's shower and eat and leave. It's that day again. I know I'm on leave, but this isn't strenuous."

"Take Your Padawan To Work Day," that's right. "What's left to show me? I've visited the highest spires and the sump pumps in the Menagerie in the basement, the refectory's water recycling processor and the cleaning bot dump, the Archives' holocron display and the Council chamber. I've been in battle at your side. I'm a Senior Padawan, nearing Knighthood, right?"

"Mmmmm." I don't know about that one. "We'll see. Since my appointment with Luminara is today and she requested to see you, too, I'll take you with me for my Visiting The Sick duty in the infirmary. The usual chatting up adult patients, playing dumbed-down pazaak with the younglings and giving any unfortunate ill infants new faces to look at. Show me your baby-smile face." Anakin smiled a wide toothy smile. "Should impress any Trandoshan younglings. Come on, up and about, as they say."

"Please wait. I don't think you're taking the dream-coincidence seriously enough. Why would you dream about my mother?"

"I don't know that I did, but if I did, let's let the Healers deal with it. Up, now." As Obi-Wan sunnily began his shower, Anakin clenched his mechno-hand, then unclenched it. Master Lu would know what to do next.

xxxxx

"Depa. Master Billaba. Depa." Anakin remembered a kind person, spiritually aflame within the Force. Though no friend to him, she remained a familiar Temple presence, supplementing the powerhouse of the Force that was the Temple. Nothing. A black hole has movement, at least. She has nothing. A blank two-dimensional plane with infinite height and width loomed in front of his Force-sense. He stretched out with all his might, hoping to come to the edge of the plane and slip behind it to the one hiding there, hoping for a whisper, a shout. Nothing. He wiped a string of drool from the corner of her mouth with the tissues at hand and walked away.

The river feared.

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Part One Hundred Two

Not one Jedi truly believed that Depa Billaba would awaken from her coma anytime soon, yet she was cared for without anyone ever quite giving up hope. Jedi lived beyond hope many times in their careers, and Luminara put it away from herself resolutely this morning. She paced in her office, a Master in her realm of bodies, souls, and minds. Don't feel Masterly at the moment. Luminara dreaded telling Anakin of Obi-Wan's diagnosis, yet to tell the Padawan who was intimately involved in the diagnosis could spare her patient further trauma. She and Plo had spent the night here together, researching esoteric databases in unusual cultures, meditating on their findings, draining cup after cup of caf on Luminara's side, while Plo spritzed dozens of shots of the trace gas his species needed into his antiox mask until he talked extremely fast. As she suspected, even more than Plo did, that Anakin himself was "the complication" Plo had mentioned at the picnic, apprising Anakin of that fact was fair to Anakin and protective of her patient. She only wished herself and Plo to be fully, sublimely wrong about the whole thing. She put away her pride and opened her heart to the young man in her waiting area as widely as she opened her door. "Come in, Padawan."

When Anakin was seated, his spine did not touch the back of his chair. Can't be helped, it's a tense day. "Anakin, you're here because Master Koon and I have enumerated Obi-Wan's symptoms and come up with a partial diagnosis."

"Why aren't you telling Master Obi-Wan first?"

"Because I am your Healer as well as his and in this instance you're part" --- of the problem --- "of his cure. When Master Koon telepathically confirms this diagnosis, our first steps in treating your Master will be clearly laid out for us. It seems Obi-Wan's hypersensitivities aren't limited to hoi-broth and various allergens." Go easy now. "In many ways, he is mirroring your characteristics and he simply is not right for it. It might --- please wait till I finish --- be placing too great a strain on his entire system and I think the root of it is your imprinting."

"He's been having some things happening before that, things that started on Trow. Like stuttering and weird dreams and almost reading ... my ... mind ... " This would not happen. No.

"You see it, then."

I can't be the source of Master's illness. It's not possible. "Master Lu, he's sensitive, I know that, even 'hypersensitive,' as you term it, but, hypersensitive to his own Padawan?" Master had sensitive spots all over him: the places hidden by his modesty, the places inside that only Anakin had savored, the spot on his scalp where his Knight's tail used to be and where Anakin scratched with his ungloved fingers to make Obi-Wan almost purr. "It's something I want to ask Master Yoda about. You and Master Koon could be wr-- in error about this. It's too important not to ask Master Yoda." Master Yoda would know, if Master Lu and Master Koon failed in their attempt to vivisect his Master today. Vivisect. Just because it's his mind, doesn't mean that term doesn't apply.

Luminara knew that this morning wasn't going to go well. "Naturally, Master Yoda is the next necessary step, but even if we wind up consulting him, he will need research to base any conjecture upon, Anakin, and our diagnosis is based upon solid research. When you two were on Tatooine, I spent my spare time on this case." Obs, what would you say to your Padawan, if you were me? Go for the drama? "Master Koon is a telepath, a fellow Jedi, a scholar. If, as I believe, his Force-imprinting technique has gone awry in your case, he can fix it. This case would be one of three unsuccessful imprintings, if my surmise is correct. He has cured others. Let him do his job and help me help my friend."

She's putting things in a nice way, but this isn't a nice situation. Master's mind is, is, him. "Will Master Koon's methods hurt him? Make him ... different?" Like Depa?

"No, it's like a diagnostic on a droid. It changes nothing, merely shows a static picture of a point in time in the mind. Minds can change, minute by minute, but this will give us a baseline for our work." Don't fight me, Anakin. We're on the same side, like on Ansion.

"What will happen if he goes on as he is? New lessons, different, stronger medicine ... "

Luminara stood her ground. "I'll not treat him with drugs until I know the full diagnosis. It would be unethical to push anti-spastic drugs into him for a chronic illness. Then he would change, Padawan, and not to your liking." With Obi-Wan's sensitivities, these drugs' listed side effects of mood swings, loss of mental acuity, and possible psychosis would not be the "rare" side effects, they'd be "highly possible" side effects.

More. I want more data. Unifying Force, I need everything you can give me. "Tell me why I haven't any symptoms, then."

"How have you felt since your imprinting?" Plo said the one Master/Padawan imprinted, um, couple, had half of it affected, the other half not.

"Fine. Great." Except for finding out about my Sith friend Palpatine and my unfaithful friend Padmé, who is also my wedded wife. "With Master Obi-Wan, I mean, I'm great. He's the best, the best ... I, I don't have the words to say it ... "

" ... he's being overcome by his hypersensitivities, Anakin, the blinking of his eyes because lights are too bright, you've told me about his broadcasting at times so that you can sense his memories, he's experiencing your level of Force-awareness without your shields or merely your everyday acclimatization to your abilities. In short, he is becoming you."

Luminara's words faded. Master would always be there for him. That would not change, ever, and with the cutting of his braid, they would be equals. Sharing quarters, going on missions separately or in tandem, attending Republic Day Annual Picnics together with their fellows, his planned life stretched before him in a broad stream, like Gitchy. Full of eddies and whirlpools, no doubt, a waterfall or two, some sluggish spots, yet continuing to flow indomitably to the end of their days. Padmé was an undercurrent pulling unevenly at his construction, yet her presence added to its diversity and always would. With their married relationship in its current disjointed state, her undercurrent might flatten out to an attenuated layer of cool riptide --- Anakin was aware that riptides were oceanic, not riparian, as he struggled on with his metaphor, but continued anyway --- but he didn't see himself completely splitting up from his wife. His status with her would remain second to her work, as he had known almost from the beginning. With Obi-Wan, he was second to the Force. He could think about that more easily. When Anakin's nightmares showed Obi-Wan's death, the event came about through battle or accident or illness, and once in a bittersweet fading away from old age. Never did he dream of a fading away of all that consisted of Obi-Wan occurring in life, a relentless progression to nothingness with the body still present to mourn over endlessly. It was too much to take in, and he cringed. Insanity terrified him like nothing else did.

"No, you're wrong, Master Lu. Master isn't in danger of losing his sanity. It must be something else. Find it!" He was speaking to a Master, but he didn't care. She must be wrong.

Luminara noticed that the fish huddled in a corner of their tank, as far as they could get from Anakin. She rose as he did, standing as straight as could be while Anakin leaned over her desk, fists planted widely, brows drawn down. He glared at her, the Force gathered in a cloud about him, but he had not accessed it yet. It stood at the ready, though. "Padawan Skywalker, remember who and what you are."

I'm Obi-Wan's, is who, and what, well, we'll see soon enough. There was danger in her infirmary, not of illness of the usual sort, but illness of a soul should its owner's most heartfelt wish not be granted. Luminara would not tolerate tantrums of any sort, from any age Jedi. If she could withstand a Phlog initiate's breaking through her tile floor to the level below in a fit of pique, she could withstand this. She blazed in the Force in her determination to have order in her realm. The Force was with her, too. "Anakin, hear me. Master Koon will bear witness to this diagnosis."

"Master Lu, there must be better news than this. Find it for me. And for him. I'm not leaving here until you do."

This was her infirmary. "Boy, I'm throwing you out. He's my friend, too. I, however, am the Healer and I'm healing this situation. Get out, Anakin."

Anakin raised his flesh hand and Pushed. Luminara blocked it after a stumble backwards in shock. She Pushed down on Anakin's occiput none too gently and his neck bent forward until the rest of his body had to follow or risk injury. He dropped to one knee and gripped the edge of the desk, a flare of power beginning in his eyes.

Frantic to escape their rectangular prison, the fish leaped as one into the suffocating air.

The river trembled.