In All The World

Summary: The story of how Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi tamed each other, from Naboo to Anakin's early days at the Temple. Slow-building Anakin/Obi-Wan friendship.

"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ." –The Little Prince, Antoine de St. Exupéry

PART I: THE EMPTY PALACE

Chapter One: The Fountain in the Courtyard

The palace was a sprawling complex; grand, with mosaiced walls and arches that swept up around him, so high up that Anakin felt small and insignificant in all that majesty. "There's nothing quite like it," said Sabé, and he heard the fierce pride in her voice. She ruffled his hair, her voice dropping to an almost-conspiratorial whisper. "The old kings and queens of Naboo used to add a wing or two to the palace, after their coronation. And soon enough, you have thousands and thousands of old wings and secret passages, and no one remembers them all."

"Wizard," he breathed, imagining it. But the thrill of adventure soon melted away; for each secret passage he imagined, he saw another empty hallway, a sort of palatial grandeur that seemed too much for him, that told him he was out of place here. And, he found himself thinking, if this was Padmé's home—if she was a Queen—why would she want anything to do with a former slave boy from dusty Tatooine?

The room they gave him was far too large; the elegant tapestries on the walls were in earthern tones and reminded him, with a sharp pang, of Shmi and of home. It had never seemed so unutterably distant from him than now; he lay down in the nest of warm blankets (had someone told them that he got easily cold?) and told himself he wouldn't cry. Shmi had asked him to be strong, to not look back. It was the least he could do.

He would never have landed the fighter if it wasn't for Artoo. Racing a Podracer was one thing; flying an unfamiliar fighter another, and he knew it was mostly blind luck and Artoo that had allowed him to figure out the controls and in the middle of all that fumbling, blow up the Trade Federation Droid Control Ship. When his fighter slid to a halt in the Theed hangar, Artoo letting out a reproachful series of chirps and whistles, the cockpit seal popped open and then Anakin found himself greeted, cheered, and whooped at by a group of exuberant pilots, who proceeded to triumphantly carry him on their shoulders and paraded him all over the hangar.

"The Hero of Naboo," they were beginning to call him, and something in him liked it, basked in their adultation. Day after day in Watto's shop had ground his face in the dust; reminded him that he was nothing more than a slave, easily replaced and worth less than a good droid. Not for the first time in the recent days, something in Anakin—something he could not put words to—stirred. It was the part that bade him endure as Watto's fist smashed into his face for a careless move, an expensive part broken. It was the part that bore deprivation and derogation with a stoic patience; that had spoken through his lips when he'd told Padmé, "I'm a person, and my name is Anakin."

And then, Obi-Wan Kenobi had emerged into the hangar, his expression set in a impassive mask, his eyes red-rimmed, and all Anakin could think was that he looked so broken, so weary, and like someone trying so very hard not to cry. Then it hit him: cradled in his arms was the limp form of Qui-Gon Jinn, the Jedi Master who had freed Anakin from slavery, the man who promised him he would be trained as a Jedi.

He was dead. Anakin knew this. Death was a reality that a slave grew numb to—but was never comfortable with. He knew from a single glance from the way Qui-Gon lay that the man was dead and he slipped from the pilot's shoulders and went over to the pair. He didn't know what he should say. Shmi, he thought all of a sudden, always had the words.

Without looking at him, Obi-Wan said, "Call a stretcher."

The hangar, Anakin realised, had fallen ominously silent. Some of the pilots had joined him; they held out their arms to receive the body. "See that he is treated with respect," Obi-Wan said, as he handed over his burden. And then, "I take it the battle has been won?"

One of the pilots—the man who had carried Anakin—nodded. "Theed is once again under the Queen's control."

Obi-Wan nodded, distracted. He only seemed to be half-listening to the pilot's words. "Good," he said, distantly. "Very good. Then I'll need to find somewhere quiet to contact the Jedi Council to inform them we've won."

He stooped down and picked up the lighter of the two discarded robes from the hangar floor, draped it loosely about his shoulders, and left. At no point did he look at Anakin. It was as if he wasn't even there.

It felt like a nightmare, only Obi-Wan knew he wasn't going to ever wake up. Only this morning, Qui-Gon had been alive, had reached out to touch his shoulder and told him that he thought he would make a great Jedi Knight. And now, Qui-Gon was dead, and the knowledge that he'd slain his Master's murderer was cold comfort.

It was his training—hard-won Jedi discipline—that held him together now, as he struggled not to crack. He found what looked like a deserted storeroom adjoining the hangar, walked into it, and closed the door quietly behind him. It was dark; he reached out blindly until he found the light switch and flicked it on.

He drew a long, slow breath to centre himself and licked his dry lips. It was, thought Obi-Wan, like pulling a sheet of mediplast off a wound: best to do it once and quickly, and to get it over with. He commed the Temple, waited patiently as his call was patched through to the Jedi High Council chambers with the help of a priority code.

"Master," he said, into the comlink, and waited to see which of the Council members was on comm duty this time. Comlinks couldn't transmit holograms, and for once, he was glad for that.

"Padawan Kenobi," came Mace Windu's stern voice, at once both reassuring in its normalcy and a painful reminder of what had happened. An icy knife that swept through Obi-Wan's chest. Was he going to be reassigned to another Master? The Council had insisted he was not ready to be a Jedi Knight. And how was he going to live with, train with, to swear to obey and honour another Jedi Master—whoever it was—whose only fault was that they weren't Qui-Gon Jinn? He realised he'd drifted off in his thoughts as Mace Windu repeated, impatiently, "Padawan Kenobi, report."

"The blockade has been broken," he said. "Queen Amidala has managed to regain control of Naboo. And we encountered the Sith Lord my Master spoke of. I killed him." And then, belatedly, "I regret to report that Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn has fallen in battle."

There was silence; nothing more than the crackle of comm static, and for a while, Obi-Wan had begun to wonder if he'd lost connection to Coruscant when Mace Windu finally replied. "How?"

"The Sith Lord killed him," Obi-Wan said. "He was…dangerous, and highly-skilled in the Force and in lightsaber combat. He used an old model of lightsaber—a two-bladed version, and he fought with extreme aggression."

Mace Windu said, "So you support your Master's report that this was a Sith Lord."

"I do."

There was another silence; shorter, this time, as if Mace Windu was conferring, his voice hushed, with someone else. Or perhaps he was simply coming to a decision: the best he could. "Under the current circumstances," he said, "I feel it best that the Council sends representatives to Naboo, to assess the situation for ourselves." He said it kindly, but it stung all the same. "For the moment, as the only Jedi remaining on Naboo, you are to consider yourself the Order's representative. As such, please arrange for the Jedi funeral and cremation of Qui-Gon Jinn."

Obi-Wan swallowed. There seemed, he thought absently, to be a tight lump in his throat that stubbornly refused to go away. If he relaxed his focus, it would overwhelm him. "Yes, Master Windu."

But Mace Windu wasn't finished. "Although the blockade has been lifted, your assignment to protect Queen Amidala of Naboo still stands."

"I understand, Master Windu."

More gently, Mace Windu said, "He was my friend. For all we fought."

Obi-Wan didn't know what he could say in response to that; he choked out something that might've been thanks or acknowledgement of that admission from the stern Jedi Master.

At last, Mace Windu sighed. "May the Force be with you, Kenobi."

"May the Force be with you, Master." Obi-Wan murmured, and switched off the comlink. He allowed himself the luxury of burying his head in his hands for several long moments, breathing, trying to gain control of the large empty pit that had somehow opened up in his chest, until he felt like facing the world and all its responsibilities again.

Anakin gave up trying to sleep.

There was a consistent murmur in the background that kept distracting him the moment he reached the state of exhausted blankness that bordered sleep, dragging him back into grudging wakefulness. He stood up and padded barefoot across the room, wincing at the cold marble of the floor. The sound was coming from the balcony. They'd locked the access door, but Anakin had been playing with electronic locks since he was three. It was child's play to bypass the lock. The glass access door slid open at his touch, and he stepped out onto the balcony.

Carefully, he gazed down, peering through the wrought iron grilles of the balcony. He barely came up to the top of the rail. Whoever it was in charge of things had placed him in the room overlooking a wide, open courtyard, lined with trees. The night breeze brought scents Anakin couldn't recognise, and he wondered if Sabé or Padmé knew what they were. They probably would, he thought. Padmé was the sort of Queen who'd be good at everything, who'd know everything in her domain. He didn't know how he knew that, just that it was true.

In the centre of the tiled courtyard stood the culprit: a small fountain, spraying shimmering droplets of water in the moonlit night. It had been the murmuring of the fountain that had kept him from sleep; that frustration, now, was overwhelmed with delight. Tatooine was a desert planet; dusty, with the sand finding its way into anything and everything. He'd had to remember he didn't need to shake the sand from his shoes when he put them on. And water was everywhere here: it wasn't rationed, it wasn't expensive, and people did all sorts of strange things with it (wasteful, said the part of him that remembered being a slave) like make fountains that murmured at all hours of the night, water running over cool, coloured tiles to make pretty displays.

Since he couldn't sleep, and he wasn't about to head down the hallway to where Obi-Wan's room was, for all they'd told him that Obi-Wan was there, as if Obi-Wan was Qui-Gon and supposed to take care of him, Anakin peered carefully at his balcony. There was, he noticed, something gleaming in the darkness, and closer inspection proved it to be a drain pipe. Without pausing to think, he cautiously clambered over the edge of the balcony and clung to the drain pipe. It was cool and slick in his hands and he bit back a Huttese curse, one of Watto's favourites.

He did want to see the fountain close-up, and so Anakin bore with it and patiently shimmied down the drain pipe, dropping the last few inches to the paved ground. He scraped his hands a little but ignored that, running over to the murmuring fountain. The water ran over his scraped hands, and it was cool and slightly painful; but altogether a strange and unfamiliar feeling. It seemed, he thought, to be the kind of thing he could've watched for hours, and Shmi always had difficulty making him stay still. There was something hypnotic about the feel of water pouring through his hands, watching it wash over the coloured tiles of the courtyard, murmuring over smooth, polished black-and-white stones arranged in a pattern Anakin couldn't quite make out.

He yelped as a cloaked figure he hadn't noticed emerged from the courtyard shadows and said, in a wry voice, "Couldn't sleep?"

"Bantha poodoo!" Anakin blurted out, and then regretted it. "What are you doing here?"

"My pardon for startling you." The figure cast down his hood, and the tired, cloudy blue-grey eyes of Obi-Wan Kenobi glanced at him. There were dark smudges under his eyes. "I was drawn, as you were, to the fountain." He hesitated before adding, "I was hoping to meditate here."

"What's that?"

He almost bit his tongue as he saw something flicker through Obi-Wan's eyes; cold, shuttered, and incredibly distant. He was about to trudge back to his room, the moment ruined, when Obi-Wan heaved a sigh, and said, "Meditation is the source of a Jedi's power."

"Mister Qui-Gon said it was the Force that gave a Jedi power," Anakin replied, cautiously.

Obi-Wan stood very still. He could've been one of the marble statues in the palace, Anakin thought, too grand to touch, too much stone; the human worn away by the sharp lines of the sculptor's tools. "He wasn't wrong," he said, at last. "I misspoke. Our connection to the Force is the source of our strength. But such a connection can be easily…clouded, disrupted, for the want of a better word." He bent down, and picked up a handful of dust, and threw it into the running fountain water, before Anakin could protest.

"Why did you do that?" Anakin exclaimed, but Obi-Wan said, "Look."

For a moment, the fountain water was clouded, murky, and then as more water spilled out, it cleared up again, regaining the pellucid clarity that he had been admiring in the moonlight. "Fear, anger and hatred," Obi-Wan said, "Are like the handful of dust. They cloud your connection to the Force." He closed his eyes, for a moment, and Anakin thought: grief, too, though the older man hadn't mentioned it. "Meditation opens you to the Force, invites it in. It's like the fountain continuously pouring fresh, clean water out, washing away the dust."

"So the Force washes away your anger?"

Obi-Wan considered it. "Perhaps the analogy is imperfect," he said. "As all analogies are. The Force can help you wash away your anger, but only if you allow it."

"And grief?" Anakin asked, before he could think the better of it.

It was so quiet, he thought. Beneath the murmur of the fountain, he heard Obi-Wan's slow, release of breath. "Perhaps," said the Jedi. "Or perhaps only time can do that."

Mum, the thought came, driving a splinter of pain through him. He didn't know if he wanted to let go, for the thought of her to come one day without the accompanying pain. Wouldn't that be the final betrayal?

There wasn't anything more that could be said, so instead, Anakin shyly reached out, and took Obi-Wan's hand. He felt the Jedi pull away from him almost instantly, but then Obi-Wan stopped, caught his hand, and flipped it over, revealing where he'd scraped his hands against the paving stones.

"You're hurt," Obi-Wan said.

"Just scraped it," Anakin replied, trying to pull away.

Obi-Wan sighed. "Boys," he muttered, rolling his eyes. "It's always 'just a scrape'. I suppose you scraped it climbing down that drainpipe."

Anakin blinked. "You saw me?"

"No," Obi-Wan admitted. "But I made it a point to check the points of entry and exit to this area." He added, a beat later, "I just didn't expect you to climb down the drainpipe. They did tell me the balcony had been locked."

"It was locked," Anakin felt compelled to defend the people in charge of palace housing. "They just didn't use a good one."

"So you bypassed the lock," Obi-Wan surmised. "Why am I not surprised?" Despite his words, he reached out and took Anakin's other hand, held it under the running water of the fountain. "Either way, boy, you may consider this 'just a scrape', but we're going to get it cleaned and bandaged. You don't know what's on all of that," he gestured disdainfully at the drainpipe and the paving stones.

"My name is Anakin."

"I know that," Obi-Wan muttered, not unhappily. He reached into one of the many pouches on his utility belt and produced a capsule, which he tore open with his teeth. Anakin watched, fascinated, as Obi-Wan proceeded to sprinkle the contents of the capsule—a thick, viscuous and translucent gel that Obi-Wan curtly identified as 'bacta' on his scrapes and then shook his head as he considered them. "You nearly took the skin off your hands, b—Anakin."

Anakin shrugged. "I've had worse," he said, feeling self-conscious under the Jedi's regard.

"I don't doubt you've had," came the dry reply. "Now, I could wrap it up in a bandage, and give your admirers something to coo over tomorrow. Or we can wait here for the bacta to dry so you won't be smearing bacta all over the Queen's palace. Which will it be?"

Anakin bristled at the dismissive way Obi-Wan had spoken of his 'admirers' (they weren't, he thought, annoyed) but said, "I'll wait."

"Good," said Obi-Wan.

As the bacta dried on Anakin's hands, replacing the stinging pain with a cool, numbing feeling that wasn't exactly unpleasant, the silence that returned was an awkward silence; far from companionable.

"It's dried," Obi-Wan spoke up, then, after a cursory examination of Anakin's hands. "Off with you, now."

Anakin trudged away. The fountain had been beautiful, he thought, and maybe he would sleep better now, even with the irritating murmur in the background. But Obi-Wan had a parting shot for him. "Anakin?"

He mumbled acknowledgement.

"Next time, use the stairs."

Obi-Wan tried to meditate. First, he contemplated the fountain, and tried to use the murmuring of the water over the tiles and stones as an invitation to move deeper into the self, to open himself up to the Force. The Force washed over him, arid and fetid like the breath of the tattooed Sith Lord on his cheek. He gave that up as a lost cause, eventually. And then he tried kneeling before the fountain, assuming the unorthodox position that Qui-Gon had favoured, had trained his Padawan to meditate in.

He found little success that way, either. And finally, Obi-Wan sat cross-legged, in the most basic meditation position that Master Yoda always taught all younglings, and breathed and tried to sift through his emotions, to slowly breathe them out one by one.

They shifted but clogged up his head and his heart, and he couldn't seem to budge them. He thought of the dust, stirred about in the fountain, and then washed away, but the anger and the hatred and the grief remained, tightly-wound into his being, and he didn't have the strength to get rid of them.

Perhaps the analogy is imperfect, he had told Anakin.

"The Jedi," Qui-Gon had said, "Is like this stream." Obi-Wan was kneeling obediently by his Master; a part of him, grieving, older, knew this was a dream, a memory, nothing more, but this Obi-Wan was barely thirteen, had yet to stop fidgeting with his new Padawan braid.

There was nothing unusual about the stream, except that they weren't in one of the meditation rooms, or in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. Today, Qui-Gon had taken him someplace else, to a wing of the Temple that Obi-Wan had barely seen, within the housing spire, and into a disused room somewhere between the Knight's dormitory and the senior students' dormitory.

He couldn't help but feel as though he was intruding, but Qui-Gon had firmly led him into what Obi-Wan was beginning to realise was a conservatory. The stencilled plaque by the access panel named this the Memory Garden, but he swallowed his questions. He was still too newly Qui-Gon's Padawan to feel comfortable about asking.

He realised Qui-Gon was waiting for some form of reaction from him, and so he nodded.

Satisfied, Qui-Gon continued. "Understand this, Padawan." He reached out and scooped a handful of dirt and casually dumped it into the stream.

"Master!" Obi-Wan protested, and then quickly bit his lip. It isn't your place to question your Master, he thought.

"Watch," Qui-Gon said, sitting back on his haunches. Obi-Wan peered into the stream.

"It's all ruined now," he murmured, watching as the swirling handful of dirt clouded the limpid beauty of the stream, turned the water murky.

"Watch," Qui-Gon repeated, implacable.

Obi-Wan obeyed. He watched as the dirt was washed out as the water fed into the stream, and eventually, there was no sign that his Master had thrown a handful of dirt into that stream. "Fear, anger, hatred," Qui-Gon said. "They are as the handful of dirt in the stream. They can cloud your connection to the Force, Padawan, if you let them."

"And the new water?"

"The Force itself," Qui-Gon explained. "Opening yourself to the Force allows the Force to reach into you, to help you cleanse yourself of the dirt." His blue gaze was steady, willing Obi-Wan to understand. "You are the stream," he repeated. "If I throw a stone into the stream, what happens?"

Puzzled, Obi-Wan replied, "The water flows over the stone."

"And if I throw a very big stone?"

Obi-Wan thought about it. "The water is obstructed," he said, beginning to see. "It can't flow, so it piles up before the stone, like a dam."

"You are the stream," Qui-Gon said, for the final time. "You can be a stream with stones in it, so the Force can't flow in you. Or you can be a clear stream, through which the Force can flow, washing out the dirt." Deliberately, he dipped his hands into the water, washing off the last traces of the dirt that clung to them. "This is your first lesson, Padawan. Which are you going to be?"

"Master Jedi?"

Obi-Wan blinked, realised he had dozed off. It was a new first, he thought, disgruntled. He hadn't fallen asleep while trying to meditate since he was sixteen, and now, his body felt stiff. Had he fallen asleep by the fountain all night?

The sky was beginning to grow light; streaks of scarlet stained the clouds. He wondered how long it would take before he stopped seeing the bloodshine of the Sith's lightsaber in the clouds at sunrise.

"Yes?" he croaked. His throat was dry; he tried to clear it, and with a muttered apology, drank some of the water from the fountain. It was cool and slipped down his throat like soft rain. "What is it?"

The man who had spoken to him was unfamiliar, but wore the uniform of palace security. "Captain Panaka sends his compliments and would like to know if you could speak to him right away, Master Jedi."

"Jedi Kenobi," Obi-Wan corrected. It had been funny, once, to listen to people refer to him as 'Master Jedi'. But that Obi-Wan Kenobi had had a Master, had not killed a Sith Lord, had not felt laughter die in him. He stood up, stretching out stiff muscles. "Will you take me to him, then?" He made sure Qui-Gon's lightsaber was secured to his belt with a faint pang. In the Force, he could still sense echoes of his Master's presence, as if some trace of Qui-Gon's large hands had imprinted themselves onto the hilt after decades of use.

The palace guardsman nodded. "At once, M—Jedi Kenobi," he said, and Obi-Wan caught the quick correction.

He smiled at the man; a gesture that felt odd and stretched. "Lead on, then."

The guardsman led him down a series of twisting and winding corridors. Obi-Wan frowned and resolved to study the blueprints of the palace at length when he had the time. It seemed to him that such an arrangement was going to be a security nightmare for anyone tasked with protecting the Queen, as he currently was.

Do not forget, Padawan; you have resources at hand. It is no shame to ask for help. That admonition came in Qui-Gon's voice; Obi-Wan ground his teeth together. Yes, Master, he thought.

Captain Panaka was in charge of the Queen's security, and he had spent years protecting the rulers of Naboo in their palace. No doubt the Captain would be able to help him with the unfamiliar layout of the palace, perhaps by providing a guide.

For now, Obi-Wan contented himself with memorising the passages he was led through, noting tiny distinguishing details and fixing them in his memory. In any event, the guardsman sent to take him to Captain Panaka remained silent, and Obi-Wan preferred it that way.

Finally, they reached the annex that seemed to be serving as the headquarters of the royal guard. The guardsman knocked on the heavy wooden door, and then motioned for Obi-Wan to precede him. Captain Panaka, looking somewhat worse for the wear, glanced up from a pile of reports, with an expression of surprise. "Master Jedi," he said. "What brings you here?"

Obi-Wan frowned. "You sent a guardsman to inform me you wanted to speak with me immediately," he said.

His suspicions peaked as the Force screamed a warning. He was whirling around, hand going to his Master's lightsaber.

The door slammed shut with a solid thud, before Obi-Wan could think to do anything about it. He reached into the Force, tried to pry the door open but it held fast. How? He didn't think there were bolts on the outside of the door.

Captain Panaka was on his feet at once, reports forgotten, his hand going to a blaster strapped to his thigh. "An assassin," he growled.

In the Force, Obi-Wan said, unsurprised, "He's improvised an explosive device. He's trying to blow the two of us up."

A/N: This is the beginning—a bit of a teaser, really—of a new long fic I'm working on. I can't guarantee I won't go back and revise some of this. A quick note for all readers—I've never watched the Clone Wars, and I've deliberately chosen to play a little with the timeline established by Jude Watson, so if you're expecting me to obey canon in either of these areas, this isn't the right fic. I've chosen to take the movies as the key authority when writing this fic, and it'll show in places.

So why read this fic? Read it if you like it. Read it if you want to see Anakin/Obi-Wan friendship that doesn't immediately spill over into them being a proper family. Read it if you want a fic that breaks—a little deliberately—from some of the conventions used in Old Jedi Order fics. And read this fic if you want a fic that takes its time, but gets to the heartwarming, with a side-dose of action.

And if you really like it, maybe drop me a review. I'd appreciate it.

-Ammar.