(Untitled)

[notyourlight]

Characters: Anakin Solo, OPEN
Location: The New Jedi Order Headquarters aka the former HQ of the Crimson Terror
Planet: Coruscant
When: uh... now?
What: Anakin's offering lessons in lightsaber combat to any and all.
Rating: PG for now

Comments

[sand_wormie]

After that time local Jedi had cornered him, Jaina had taught Luke how to sort of shrink his presence so it didn't practically announce him through the Force. He saw it as sort of like wrapping a coat more tightly around his body so the air didn't catch at it; sure, that wasn't it at all, but it took about the same amount of effort to keep up. It seemed to work; they didn't stop whatever they'd been doing when he passed by anymore.

A couple weeks back... on his own... Luke had figured out something else. Three years ago, lost, meeting Ani, they'd been out in the worst sandstorm in a hundred years. And they'd come off worse for it, but it seemed now like a lot of the blowing sand hadn't hit them, and the wind had been blunted a little. Like there'd been a transparisteel canopy over them.

If that could happen to sand, far too many individual particles to just catch telekinetically, and maybe to wind, which was a movement through gas... why not other things? Why not curiosity

[notyourlight]

"You gonna come in or am I giving you your first lesson outside," called Anakin from the center of the circle. He had taken the opportunity to quietly deactivate the droids and remove the blindfold.

He refused to let on how much seeing Luke so disturbed bothered him. Instead he pushed it deep down, hoping to let it go later on. With everything going on lately it was growing more difficult to hide his frustrations. The fact that the person he so often looked to as an example was right in front of him... being the child he once was.

Anakin wasn't ready for this. He couldn't be the master Luke was or would become. He should be hunting Revan not training a new generation of Jedi. Not training his own master. He breathed out and let some of the tension building up in his shoulder release along with the air.

"I think you'll like the training saber I built you."

[sand_wormie]

Luke's hands tightened, bunching up the cloth near his pockets. Of course it hadn't worked, not on Anakin; when Luke looked out of the corner of his eye in just the right way there was a kind of cord between them, jagged and interrupted but very there, and the metaphor pretty much fell apart because it had nothing to do with sight, nothing at all. He let the defenses fade or collapse, so his scarcely-trained presence rushed back into a level of bright obviousness.

He could hear his heartbeat, faster now, and a more abstracted part of Luke wondered if this just always happened when he was... he knew the real reason, even if he'd covered it with anger last time. When he was horrified, and afraid - afraid the way he never was usually. Like the first time, when he and Biggs found that Tusken camp with the bones and that awful feeling rose up.

He'd told Anakin about that, Luke remembered. And Anakin had greeted him with Master, taunting him even then. Why had he even come here? But he'd felt like he should trust him, there; did that mean

[notyourlight]

"Of course you do," he sad matter-of-fact. "You'll always have a choice."

Luke's emotions rushing back were almost unbearable in just how powerful they were but Anakin had learned long ago how to process and even block another's emotions with the Force. "You don't have to worry. Sensing your presence isn't how I knew you were there."

He walked over to the door and motioned outside before stepping out onto the busy sidewalk anyway. He stopped in the center of the moving crowd and sat cross-legged on the ground before gesturing to a spot in front of him. All the while he ignored the irritated pedestrians that now had to make their way around him. "Sit. I want to show you something."

[sand_wormie]

He did come outside. Luke tried to mask his dismay and faced him. The Force reflected his unshielded indecision - go, go, go beat like small wings against solid stay as tiny don't want me want who I'm supposed to become lingered.

In the end - after a long moment - stay won out, and ignoring passersby he went before Anakin and sat, knees defensively to his chest. "How did you know, then?" he said warily, half a challenge.

[notyourlight]

"Tatooine has a certain smell to it. And before you get all defensive no that does not mean you stink," he said with a grin as he cracked one eye open briefly. He pats his own knees, trying to convey how he wanted Luke to sit. "Like me. You need to relax in order to do this."

[sand_wormie]

"I was not getting defensive," Luke protested. It was a poor lie, as these went. "Besides, I've been here like two months. And I thought you were human."

He was stalling, a little, and realized it. A flash of guilt weighed on his mind as he thought of Windy, crying and shaking in half-frozen terror when the two of them had gotten cornered by a small krayt dragon in the Jundland Wastes. Luke hadn't understood that kind of fear, then, and had just been frustrated by his friend. He understood a little better now.

Not that he was going t o freeze, or break, or cry for anyone. He was apprehensive all right, but could control himself. Luke settled with the boneless grace of youth into a similar pose and laced his fingers together in his lap.