The door opened with a soft swish as soon as Anakin pressed his palm to the chime, and Padme stood up from the couch. Her datapad fell to the seat cushion as she ran to him.

"Anakin!"

"Padme." He stepped fully into her apartment and let the door shut behind him, trying to smile.

It must not have looked quite right, because Anakin could feel her already-sharp concern deepen as she wrapped her arms around him and let him fold her into a tight embrace. For a moment they just stood there, barely inside the room, clinging to each other, Padme hiding her face in Anakin's neck and Anakin pressing a kiss to her hair.

Anakin knew he'd given her cause for concern. Five days had passed since he'd touched down on Coruscant - just him and a single-person fighter, no troops or command ships - and this was the first time he'd communicated with her. Even her carefully discreet holo-messages had gone unanswered, and given their usual pattern of seizing any possible opportunity to see each other, Padme had to have been worried.

"Ani," she said, pulling back slightly, just enough to run her hands down his shoulders and look into his face. "Are you- Are you all right?"

"I-" He couldn't say yes. "There's just been a lot to do. After this last battle."

The concerned furrow between Padme's brow didn't fade, and she led him over to the couch gently, as if she were afraid he might fall on his own. Did he look that bad? It was a good thing he hadn't come to see her earlier, then.

It wasn't that Anakin hadn't wanted to see her. Seeing Padme's face, hearing her voice, feeling her determined blaze in the Force, made him feel closer to balanced than he had in weeks. It just... hadn't felt right to come.

They'd been on Jabiim for almost two months. He'd showered again and again since returning to Coruscant, but he could almost still feel the mud caked onto him. The blood, and charred flesh. Trapped on that planet where even the low-hanging sky was their enemy, it was almost impossible to believe he was a luminous being. They were animals, snarling and ripping at each other, killing for survival and leaving the dead behind to be lost in shifting mud and forgotten.

He didn't...he couldn't touch Padme with hands that dripped blood and betrayal. Padme, who fought for peace. Padme, who was pure and rock-solid to the core of her soul. Padme, who had never been a monster.

Anakin's hands were clean as he cupped Padme's jaw, carefully traced her eyebrows with his thumbs, but they still trembled.

She pressed her hand against his larger one, trapping it against her cheek. "Anakin, what is it?"

There was one thing he had to tell her, Anakin knew. He hadn't said it out loud yet.

"We... on Jabiim..." He couldn't do it. "We lost. We lost everything. Everyone." Almost. Almost, just a single word changed- "I lost everyone."

Padme was still looking at him, eyes wide with sorrow and sympathy. "I heard, it was terrible. Unthinkable. Ani, I'm so sorry - I can't even imagine."

She was right. She couldn't imagine, and Anakin was desperately thankful for that. He nodded silently, pressing his lips together and looking away. "Obi-Wan-"

Stepping back a little, Padme clutched his shoulders. He could feel the dread a sudden suspicion had awakened in her heart. "Anakin? Did something - happen?"

He had to say it.

"Didn't make it back." He couldn't look at her. "He's gone, Padme. He's gone, and I-" Anakin stood, numb, and couldn't finish the sentence. What was there to say?

"No... Oh, Anakin." The wash of grief that filled Padme and the tears that sprang into her eyes surprised Anakin, but the way she gathered him tightly into her arms didn't. She and Obi-Wan had been friends too, after a fashion.

Anakin let himself melt into her, holding onto Padme like she was the only thing keeping him upright. He felt her silent tears against his neck, and finally the tight stranglehold he'd kept on his pain all through the battle and its aftermath frayed and snapped. The first wracking sob felt like someone had ripped out a piece of his chest, and more quickly followed. Padme held him, cried with him, until Anakin was wrung out and numb.

xxx

Anakin sat on the bed. His bed, he thought, only it wasn't.

It was a padawan bed, in a padawan room identical to the one he'd slept in since Obi-Wan had brought him to the Temple from Naboo. "This was my room," Obi-Wan had said, managing to smile. "Now it's yours." Jedi did not possess anything, and this room was the same as his own. The same walls, desk, bed, and carpeting. The only thing that it lacked was Anakin's imprint left in the Force from years of living, sleeping, studying, and feeling there, and Obi-Wan's from the many years before that.

Whoever had lived here before, he didn't know, but their soft resonance was all-pervading in the Force. The unfamiliarity of it made the room around him, identical as it was to his own, seem surreally stange.

Jedi possessed nothing, but the Force was always their ally. The Force could never be taken away. That's what Obi-Wan would tell him, if he were here.

Anakin squeezed his eyes shut. As a comfort it felt like nothing, like worse than nothing, but for his master he would try to believe it was enough. For Obi-Wan, he would try.

"Padawan?"

Anakin's eyes flew open - he jumped to stand. "Master Mundi."

Ki-Adi Mundi brought with him a brisk calm, the same cool peace that permeated every room in these quarters, but it did not soothe Anakin's startled shame. Master Mundi had come looking for him. He was late - how long had he been sitting there?

"No need for alarm, Padawan. The hour at which we are to meditate has not yet arrived."

Anakin was shielding tightly and they had not yet established a training bond, but Obi-Wan had always told Anakin that no one needed the Force to know what he was thinking when it showed on his face like a holoprojector. He nodded, trying to smile. "I apologize if I am... distracted, Master Mundi."

Master Mundi inclined his pale head, stepping closer to Anakin and touching his shoulder briefly. "There is no failure here that you need apologize for. I know that you and Master Kenobi shared a deep bond, and its loss is an act of violence to the soul. It is right for you to feel its pain, just as you would from an act of physical violence. Your body would not be working correctly if you were injured and felt nothing, and just so neither would your soul."

"Master Yoda told me that I shouldn't mourn. That I should rejoice for... for those who join the Force. That I shouldn't... m-miss them," Anakin stammered, swallowing past the lump in his throat.

He'd had this conversation before, with Obi-Wan, and had quoted Master Yoda with bitterness then. Now, he repeated the words almost desperately. If only he could rejoice. If only he could see past the awful, yawning hole that had been ripped into his life, to the hope that all his teachers seemed to think lay beyond it.

When his mother had died in his arms, he had been sure that all the light in the universe had been extinguished with her. Her loss had consumed him, filled his whole being with agony so acute he had thought he would surely die of it; instead, it had been the Tuskens who died. This was different, because his life continued almost as it had before. He might be able to walk through a whole day feeling almost normal, and then suddenly doing something as ordinary as making himself some tea would have choked panic filling his throat and tears blurring his eyes.

How could he live, when he would never again be able to hear Obi-Wan complaining about his taste in tea? When he would never be able to make his tired, exasperated master a cup of tea exactly how he liked it, and see his eyes crinkle, and know he'd just taken the edge off whatever punishment he was about to be sentenced to? How could they expect him to live, much less rejoice?

Anakin set his mouth, blinking and trying to breathe evenly. He would not humiliate himself in front of Master Mundi.

"And so you should," agreed Master Mundi after a minute's contemplation. "Death is a part of life for all beings, and so is loss. All wounds must heal - if they fester, they will lead to death. But even healed wounds do not leave you unmarked, and," he said with a slight smile, "Master Yoda did not say you should do it immediately."

"He sounded as though he did."

"Not to be glib, but you may have noticed that Master Yoda is rather old. I've found that his perception of time can be rather different than that of those of us with rather shorter lifespans."

Anakin did smile at that, surprised at the humorous glint in placid Master Mundi's eyes. "If it's not time to meditate yet, Master Mundi, did you want me for something else?" he asked.

"Yes, I just wanted to speak with you for a moment. We are to go on together from here, and I want us to understand each other."

Anakin nodded, frowning. "What about?"

Master Mundi paused for a moment before speaking. Finally, he said, "A padawan's task is to seek the path to understanding; a master's task is to clear and light that path. It is a journey they take together - a partnership, if you will. You come to me having already made much of that journey with another's guidance, and, no matter what follows after, that will always belong to you. To both of you."

He was looking at Anakin gravely, and Anakin bowed his head in acknowledgement, even though he wasn't quite sure that he actually understood.

"Master Kenobi was very proud of you, and I know he looked forward to seeing you knighted. I simply wanted to express to you that is my honor to walk with you what little way there is left to go - and I expect that you will wish to honor Master Kenobi by completing building on the good foundation he has laid."

"Yes, Master Mundi." He could say that much absolutely truthfully.

"Good. Then I will leave you to yourself until it is time to meditate."

Anakin gave a short bow and Master Mundi turned to go. Before he reached the door, Anakin remembered something he'd been thinking about yesterday as he worked himself to exhaustion in the training salle. "...Master Mundi?"

Master Mundi turned expectantly, and Anakin hesitated. He probably wouldn't have said something like this to Obi-Wan, worried more about avoiding the lecture and difficult advice that would follow than he was about the problem itself, but... Anakin swallowed, setting his jaw. If he was going to be a Jedi, he was going to have to get himself there. If he was going to be a Jedi, it was time to start acting like one because he knew he should, and not because Obi-Wan made him.

"I - I'm not just sad," Anakin admitted. Sad was a meaningless, tiny word that came as close to summing up what he felt as a cacta bush on Tatooine came to being an Alderaanian forest. "I'm angry and - and I'm... ashamed."

"What of?"

"Myself. I'm angry at myself and - and the Force, I guess, but mostly myself. I didn't really... I made my master's life hard, when I didn't need to. I didn't listen to him, and I - I was selfish, almost always. I'm sorry and I wish... I wish I would have done better - I wish I could try again, but I can't, and - and he did so much for me and he was so important to me, but I didn't show it, and I'm so sorry and I won't ever get the chance to tell him." His words were running away with him and the tears were starting again. Anakin clenched his jaw and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, covering them. "And I don't know what to do."

Master Mundi was quiet for a minute, and the burn of tears behind his eyelids was all Anakin could feel.

"What do you think Master Kenobi would say to you, if he were here?"

Anakin sniffed, smiling despite himself. "He'd say, 'You'll be taking all this back when I wake you up tomorrow morning'," he answered instantly, with a watery laugh. Scrubbing one hand across his eyes, he blinked rapidly and tried to focus on Master Mundi's slight smile and not the fact that he would never again be awakened by Obi-Wan's voice and a gentle tug on his padawan braid.

"And after that?"

Probably who are you, and what have you done with my padawan, but Anakin assumed Master Mundi meant for him to skip past all the banter. He pictured Obi-Wan, how he would soften when he was about to be serious, at his most gentle when he was about to be most grave. Anakin took a deep breath.

"What is the difference between self-pity and remorse, Padawan?" said Anakin finally.

"And what is that difference?"

"Self-pity refuses to let go of the past - true remorse changes in the present."

Master Mundi smiled again. "An adaptation of Master Yarocel's Treatise on Suffering."

Was it? Anakin had certainly never read it, though it did sound like Obi-Wan's idea of something interesting. "My master would tell me to accept greater self-knowledge even if it is painful, and keep my mind on the present." He hoped Obi-Wan might also tell him that he forgave him.

"You have your answer, then?"

Anakin nodded slowly, still thinking. "Yes, Master Mundi." He knew that the way he couldn't bring himself to simply call Master Mundi 'master', the way he couldn't speak of Obi-Wan as anything but 'my master' was a glaring vestige of still-raw attachment, and he was fine with that. Whatever Master Yoda might think, Master Mundi had said it was all right not to be completely adjusted immediately. Perhaps he would get there eventually. Not today.

"Thank you," he added suddenly. Master Mundi paused to incline his head and smile, before the soft swish of the door left Anakin alone with his thoughts.