Anakin is taking an infernally long time to select a bokken.

They are all the same, Obi-Wan thinks, stymied, and then realizes that maybe he almost wants to chuckle at his apprentice's long hesitation. There truly can be no accounting for the workings of a child's mind.

"I would like you to show me the kata you and the other initiates have been working on with Master Drallig," Obi-Wan prompts. "I spoke to him yesterday – he was pleased with your performance in class last week."

Normally such praise would leave Anakin happier than a sabacc player with a new skifter, but today Anakin doesn't even appear to have heard the compliment, standing shiftily as he is in front of the racks of polished wooden practice swords. Obi-Wan frowns inwardly and addresses his apprentice. "Is something amiss?"

Anakin jumps a little. "No, master," he blurts, and hastily grabs a bokken from the rack.

But all is clearly not well with the very young Padawan. Obi-Wan can sense fine whiptails of distraction and unease trailing behind his apprentice's rough motions, and even if Obi-Wan were not Force-sensitive, the imprecision with which Anakin is performing a kata he ought to know well would be enough to give Obi-Wan cause for concern.

He crosses his arms over his chest, attempting to discern a reason for the boy's unusual struggle. Anakin's eyes seem drawn by a strange magnetism to the door, as though he is expecting an observer, or dreading the same, and the lack of focus shows in his footwork. After some stretch of minutes, when Anakin overreaches yet another step, Obi-Wan stirs. There is no benefit to continuing the exercise this way – with such an unrooted stance, any opponent would be able to knock Anakin off his feet with an orokeet feather. "Padawan," Obi-Wan calls firmly. "Stop."

Anakin stumbles a little. Privately, Obi-Wan thinks it is a wonder he doesn't fall flat on his face, the way he has been simultaneously attempting to both watch his feet and crane his neck towards the door. Trying and failing to disguise a scowl, Anakin lets the practice sword fall to his side, shoulders slumping.

"Tell me what is on your mind." Obi-Wan says. His tone, though characteristically moderate, leaves no room for refusal.

Anakin drags the tip of the bokken across the floor, hedging for time. His fingers are tight about the wooden saber's polished hilt.

"Padawan."

Anakin straightens automatically at the incontrovertible authority in Obi-Wan's voice, but his expression speaks to a wealth of reluctance. "Master…" he says. "I just…do we have to use the bokken?" He gestures at the wooden practice sword with poorly concealed distaste.

Obi-Wan keeps his expression carefully neutral, giving his Padawan a searching look. Here was something new. "What would you propose we use instead?"

Anakin says nothing out loud, but he is not quite quick enough to stop his gaze lingering over the rack of true training sabers against the far wall. At the sight of Obi-Wan's raised eyebrows, Anakin flushes. "All the other initiates my age are already using them."

Ah. "And?" Obi-Wan asks. "Why should their progress disturb you?"

"I'm not disturbed," Anakin protests. "It's just – " He stops, his inborn honesty clearly warring with the prudence a few months' residence in the Temple had begun to teach him.

"You may speak freely, Padawan," Obi-Wan grants. Custody of the tongue could wait until Obi-Wan had learned his way around the convoluted twists and turns of Anakin's mind a little better.

"It's just – bokken are for babies," Anakin says helplessly. "It's embarrassing. I don't like using them. The other initiates look at me like – it makes me feel like I don't know anything, master."

Obi-Wan regards him gently. "And do you know so much, Padawan, that you can truly dispute that point?"

Anakin's eyes widen in surprise, a shot of betrayal lancing through the Force. Obi-Wan feels a twinge of sympathy, but gives no outward sign. He knows full well Anakin had not been expecting such a correction from him, of all people, even when it had been delivered in such mild tones, but, he reminds himself, this is the Way. Obi-Wan had received plenty of this sort of instruction himself, and so too would Anakin. This is how we grow.

"Let us discuss this," Obi-Wan says calmly. He casts about the room, then, lighting on a smooth patch of wall beside the rack of training sabers, he points. "Stand over there, Padawan."

Anakin looks dubious, the Force around him still churning with hurt feelings, but he goes.

"On your hands, Padawan," Obi-Wan clarifies.

Anakin stares at him as if he has uttered the most bantha-brained command in history, but obligingly tips himself upside down onto his palms, boot soles bumping up against the wall slightly.

"Master?"

The student's body suitably distracted, Obi-Wan makes a play for the more important realm of the mind. "Good. Now. How many months have passed since you joined us here at the Temple?"

Anakin's stubby braid dangles down from behind his ear, brushing against his cheek. "Three?"

"Is that a question?"

"No, master. Three."

"And how much would you say you have learned in that span of time?"

Anakin's arms wobble with a sudden burst of enthusiasm. "Loads, master! Tons of stuff!"

"Such as?"

"Four shii-cho velocities, and moving pebbles around, and – and meditation, and how to use the airbuses, and swimming, and…reading the Aurebesh, too, I guess – "

"And how would you evaluate your progress?"

Anakin scrunches up his face in thought for a while. "Good…I think it's good, master. I couldn't do any of that stuff when I got here."

"I agree. And yet we are meant to progress not only in ability, but in understanding. So let us move closer to comprehension." He pauses for a moment. "How long has Master Yoda been here with us, do you think?"

That surprises a grin out of Anakin. "Forever!" he laughs. "I don't know, master – he's really old, isn't he?"

Obi-Wan allows himself a slight smile of his own. "Nearly nine hundred." He paces a calm half-circle about Anakin's periphery. "Now. Would it be right if, say, Master Muln were to criticize me because I cannot yet do what Master Yoda can do?"

Anakin is already pink with the prolonged effort of being upside down – the handstand is a new, unpolished skill, but one he had attacked with characteristic enthusiasm – and the boy flushes further with indignation at the imagined insult to his master. "Master!" he exclaims. "No way!"

"Why not?"

"Because. It's not fair. Master Yoda got more time."

"And is it then right for us to look down on you because you cannot yet do what your classmates can do? They too have nearly a decade's experience on you."

Silence.

"Come down from there," Obi-Wan commands. Anakin folds awkwardly back to his feet, and Obi-Wan crouches down in front of him, the better to meet him at eye level. "Look at me."

Anakin does. Obi-Wan holds up a finger. "Humility first," he says quietly. "Feeling like you know nothing is not, as you seem to believe, an unfair burden placed upon you by the glances and gossip of others. At this stage in your training, it is an accurate observation of reality. You do have much to learn, Padawan."

Anakin, a heated embarrassment crawling up from the collar of his tunics and coloring his face, wrenches his gaze away to stare determinedly at the floorboards. Obi-Wan places a finger under his chin and lifts the boy's face back up to meet his eyes again. "Second," he says more gently, "compassion. For oneself as well as for others. Willful ignorance is a flaw, but it is not any flaw of yours. You are a student. You are meant to know nothing." He brushes at their nascent bond in the Force, infusing it with a splash of warm humor. "I myself know only next to nothing, which is apparently just something enough to allow me the privilege of teaching you."

Anakin tries to smile. "And Master Yoda?"

Obi-Wan regards him gravely. "Even Master Yoda would say that next to the Force's infinite mysteries, his knowledge is as a child's."

Anakin seems to struggle with this idea for a moment, then, finally, nods. Obi-Wan holds his gaze. "You see comparisons where there are none to be made. I hold you up against only your past and future selves, not the accomplishments of others."

Anakin lowers his eyes again, this time not in embarrassment, but contemplation. "I understand, master," he says soberly. "I just thought – well." He waves a hand in the direction of the rack of training sabers against the wall. "I already know how to use all kinds of tools, from working at Watto's shop. Dangerous ones and everything. I thought maybe it would be okay."

"Ah." So there is another lesson to be delivered today. Obi-Wan pushes himself to his feet and steps back from Anakin, who moves as if to follow him, but Obi-Wan shakes his head. "Stay there."

His lightsaber snaps to life in his hand, not one of the rack-stacked training sabers Anakin so covets, but the one that hangs at his own side, its solid weight reassuring against his hip, a constant companion. He sweeps it in a slow arc across his body, the Force stilling into sudden clarity, smoothing into the peace that always comes to him the moment his fingers curl around this perfect instrument, self and body distilled down to a single note, trappings of the outer world seeming to fall away into obscurity, into a place where everything is Light. A power greater than his flows through his veins, warms his limbs.

"A lightsaber is not a tool." His voice echoes in the near-empty dojo. He makes an experimental circle with the blade, spinning it about his wrist in a loop close to his side, once, twice, three times. "A Jedi is a tool, of the Force. The saber is an extension of yourself. You do not use it. The Forces uses you, and through you, your blade."

With Anakin so omnipresent and needful, he has had precious little time to practice on his own, to grow accustomed to the changes that have marked his weapon of choice as surely as they have marked his life. Small disturbances break the surface of his trance-like stillness, sending out unsettling ripples. The heft, just this side of too heavy, the hilt, fashioned for hands larger than his. He allows that discomfort to exist, float to the surface, hang there for a moment, be acknowledged. And then dissolve, released. It is not the end of everything. He will learn. He always does.

He brings the blade forward, across his body, level with Anakin's gaze. The boy has, consummately obedient to Obi-Wan's directive, not moved so much as an inch, but his eyes are round, fiercely attentive, the green light playing over his features making him look like he is glowing, lit from within. "The saber is a symbol of your oath, and a marker of your service. It is meant to be wielded only in the defense of life, but make no mistake – " He lowers the tip of the saber to the already scarred and pitted dojo floor, and though the blade is locked onto its lowest power setting, there is a hiss and a flurry of sparks. "It can kill you if you are not careful."

Obi-Wan deactivates the saber, dojo falling abruptly back into a much duller cast. "With a bokken, at the very least there is no danger of decapitation. Imagine my chagrin should my own apprentice lose his head because his foolish master allowed him to overreach his abilities." Obi-Wan hopes the dry humor is not lost on Anakin, who is still watching, transfixed.

He holds up the saber hilt, briefly. "You will touch one when you are ready." Clipping the saber back onto his belt, he sidles back over to Anakin. "And that," he says, giving the child a little shake of the shoulder, "is quite enough to absorb for today. Come. We will meditate on it."

Anakin blinks, shakes himself, and trots after him. "Master? Who decides when I'm ready?"

From any other Padawan, such would be an inexcusably impertinent question, but Anakin's curiosity is genuine. Obi-Wan suppresses another recurring flicker of panic at the staggering number of things Anakin does not know, reminding himself – with dubious success – to stay in the moment. In the future there would be questions – hundreds of questions, thousands of them, many of which he might possibly find himself unable to answer – but in this moment, there is only a single query, one he is well-equipped to respond to. "I do," he says, and with that there is a reaffirmation of responsibility, of still-burgeoning confidence. I do.

"And I'm not ready now."

"Not even by the most convoluted stretch of the imagination, Anakin."

They pass through the dojo doors, Anakin appearing to mull it over. At the end of the corridor, Obi-Wan allows Anakin to call the lift, surreptitiously checking to make sure he has remembered the correct floor. There had been more than a few lost-Padawan episodes during their first few months together, though such occasions had now become mercifully few and far between. The boy is learning.

As the lift approaches, Anakin gives a forceful tug on Obi-Wan's sleeve, looking up at him with an uncharacteristically mischievous glance. "Master?" he says. "How about now?"

"Curb your cheek, Padawan," Obi-Wan remonstrates. But the corners of his mouth twitch upwards regardless, and the two of them board the lift in a comfortable accord, both secure in the knowledge that they are, at the very least, ready for whatever the next moment may hold.