Chapter Text
When you cut a hole into my skull
Do you hate what you see like I do?
She wasn't brilliant, agile, or powerful. She was just another Jedi who had barely made it, saved by the same master who had initially rejected her because she was not extraordinary.
Therefore, the only thing she could do was create within herself a perfect obedience that could not be questioned, one so robust and immovable that it left no room for doubt.
She would become the perfect vessel of the Force. Vessel, vassal. It was no coincidence that the words were so similar. She would be the embodiment of both. Vessel, vassal. Her body would no longer belong to her, but rather, it would be placed at the infinitely wise will of the Force. In that way, she would never doubt her worth again, as her worth was closely tied to her submission to the Order. Everything about her would be anchored to the words of the Code. There would be no mistakes, only degrees of discipline. There would be no tears, only the expectation of transcendence.
Or so she thought as a child when she could still accept magical thinking. Before Anakin, of course. The great schism in her life.
Yes, that was the perfect word to describe it: schism.
Fracture. Wound. It's something that opens and is impossible to close, stop, or impede. It could only be witnessed.
Years before landing on the scorched desert of Tatooine, Master Qui-Gon told her that wounds could not be controlled, only witnessed.
At the time, Obi-Wan was unable to grasp the significance of his words. They had seemed like a truism. One of those axioms her master used to spout, pretending it was advice, but which proved ineffective when faced with the chaos outside the secret communion between her and the Force. This communion unfolded inside her and was a secret to the rest of the world.
Outside and inside. Everything could be explained by that dichotomy.
At that moment, for example, Obi-Wan was standing outside Anakin's room, fully aware that Anakin was not inside.
Maybe that's why she remembered her Master, Qui-Gon, and his cryptic phrases. Maybe that's why she remembered herself as a child asking the Force to enter her and never leave. Because Anakin, separated from her, was beyond her control, only her to witness.
Obi-Wan had dismissed the foolish, cyclical explanations that led nowhere and decided to position the body better to avoid the blow. She put her hand in front of her apprentice's head before it hit the ground to prevent her from hitting her forehead. She held her by the robe to prevent her from falling into the void. Obi-Wan wanted to find her before something more serious happened and she could not help her.
Obi-Wan came to think of her role as a Jedi Master as just that: not to prevent her apprentice's falls, but to heal her injuries.
The reasons didn't matter. There were many—infinite—and they were all equally impossible to avoid. The skin is so fragile and gravity is so strong that sometimes the only thing left to do is wipe away the tears, put your thumb on the cut, blow on the burn, and repeat the lies adults tell: "It's all right. It doesn't hurt. Nothing happened. See? You're as good as new. You'll be fine. Just listen to me. I know what I'm talking about."
But Anakin was fragile because she was real. She was infinitely light and always jumping as if, from one moment to the next, she were going to detach herself from the surface and eject into the clouds. She was always in motion—an ungraspable lightning bolt, a telluric movement—and sometimes Obi-Wan could not understand her.
If she thought about it too much, her fingertips would tingle, and she would feel the need to build a cage with her fingers so that the Padawan wouldn't run away or get hurt.
In her mind, Anakin was a diffuse phenomenon, like a quantum particle. She always existed in a state of perpetual damage and astonishing strength. Perhaps it was because everyone considered her the Chosen One of the Force, the one who would save them from imbalance. Or maybe it was because Obi-Wan had seen firsthand how easily her skin broke.
When Anakin was young and had just arrived on Coruscant, Obi-Wan would run after her, her stomach in knots. Anakin didn't know the temple, but she walked inside as if she did. She liked to go to the gardens, throw herself into the wet grass knees first, and stick her face in the dew. She would roll in the dirt, crawl to the roots of trees, and climb them. She would hang on a branch like a golden apple out of her teacher's reach.
"Come up with me," she would say, and Obi-Wan would think about it for a second. She would take a step and touch the tree trunk with her palms.
She imagined that she was Anakin's size and age, climbing the branch with her. They would stay there all afternoon, laughing at anything and everything, sharing berries and discovering their spectacular resemblance to each other. She imagined that she could be the friend she never had: an equal and an accomplice.
But then she could see the body. She could see the hands with their gnarled fingers. She could feel her skinny, tired legs; her slightly bulging stomach; and her heavy breasts under the robe. She was not a child. She would never be one again. She could never be the child Anakin wanted her to be because she was her master. Anakin was not going to become the adult she wished she already was for many years.
"No, Anakin. Get down. You're going to hurt yourself. We have to get back to class."
"Don't be boring."
"Listen to me, Padawan. Get down. Now."
Anakin dropped from the tree, and Obi-Wan opened her arms to keep her from hitting the ground. She held her tight against the certainty of her own body. If Anakin was flimsy and brittle like reeds, then Obi-Wan would be a net, a rampart, a gazebo made of fingers to always trap her in. That was the agreement.
Anakin: Small and golden with wild hair that was rebellious even to the constrictions of her ponytail and Padawan braid. Her uniform was always dirty, stained with engine grease, green grass, or, worse, her own blood—red and dark.
When her Padawan fell, she would always come to her. Her jade eyes would be filled with tears, and her brow would be furrowed in frustration at the pain she felt. "Sorry," she would say. And Obi-Wan always felt that she didn't say she was sorry because she regretted disobeying her, but because she knew that the wound hurt not only her, but her master as well.
But Obi-Wan never asked.
She never asked why she disappeared at night or why she returned early in the morning, limping with a split lip and bruised knuckles, yet smiling with strange satisfaction. She never asked why she insisted on getting lost hundreds of levels down or why she didn't listen when she threatened to close the temple door on her. She never asked why there seemed to be no common ground between them for years now.
Perhaps because she had never bothered to tell herself, to accept that they had lost the flimsy balance they had possessed when Anakin turned 10 and came to her room with wet hair, barefoot, and wrinkled hands, very pink, and asked her if there was anything she could do to stop the blood coming out between her legs.
Obi-Wan remembered: sitting on the edge of her bed, ashamed of her body because she knew her period would start soon. She was too embarrassed to walk to the nurse's office for a box of tampons. She had rolled up paper and placed it over the bridge of her panties, hoping neither Siri nor Bruck would notice. She was afraid to move and stain herself. Sweating copiously, she wondered if it was possible she had been sterilized at thirteen to spare her the terror of bleeding and thereby prove she had become a woman at the same time she had become a Padawan. She should be happy. But in Obi-Wan's hands, happiness always turned into something else: worry about the future, anxious reflection, abandonment, having to let go, smoke and nothingness.
Ten was too young for her menarche. She told Obi-Wan that she had noticed the blood while showering, and that she had barely managed to put on her clothes before running to her room.
Obi-Wan imagined her standing tall, hands clenched into fists, walking the halls like an icy little fury, not caring what others thought of her. It touched her to think that instead of being paralyzed by fear, the first thing she did was look for her. Her: Obi-Wan, her master. The substitute woman. The one who had stood in place of Qui-Gon and her mother. She couldn't be her friend, even if she wanted to. She was angry that she couldn't climb trees with her. Now, she had to show her how to put on a tampon and explain the labyrinths of her body, the confusing dates, and the arbitrary rules. She had to teach her not only to be careful of what was on the outside but also of what was on the inside.
He pulled a towel out of her closet and placed it on her. Anakin pouted. She remembers that well: Her little-girl face. She also remembers how small she looked to her. Her face was still round, her teeth were big and uneven, and her blond hair was thin and stuck to her face.
"Are you in pain?" she asked, wondering if they would need to go to the infirmary for an anti-inflammatory medication.
"No, but I don't like it."
"Well, it's not the most pleasant feeling, but you'll get used to it."
Anakin shook her head and stepped back in irritation when Obi-Wan tried to dry her hair with a towel.
"I don't want to get pregnant," she said with certainty. It was a certainty she had never had before, and it amazed her when she heard it come out of her little apprentice's mouth. "I don't want anyone to try to make it happen. I need you to take me to the infirmary and tell them to remove it."
"Anakin, I—I assure you, no one here—No, Anakin. You don't have to worry about that."
She wanted to tell her that the temple was not Mos Espa. No one was going to force her to do anything. She was there to protect her from having her body's sacred boundaries violated. But she didn't say anything—she just stood there, stunned, seeing the honest anger in Anakin's glassy eyes.
"It doesn't matter. I don't want kids anyway—it's the worst thing in the world. You get a swollen belly, can't train, and everyone thinks you should be locked up. I don't want that. I want to be a Jedi. It's what I've always wanted, and I can't bear to let this stop me." She began to cry while touching her belly. Her feelings welled up inside her in a way analogous to the blood of her first menstruation. "I don't want this. It disgusts me. It's too much for me. Do something to make it go away."
"All right. Let's go to the infirmary and see what we can do," replied Obi-Wan, unsure and not wanting to promise something that couldn't be done or that seemed like an imposition. Anakin hugged her, and Obi-Wan clung to the dampness of her small body and hair, and she didn't mind that the girl left her robe wet with tears, nor did she mind that she went back to bathe in her shower, or when she discovered her little white panties, stained with bright, thick blood, next to the trash can at night. She folded them carefully and tenderly, tossing them into the laundry chute with a heart swollen with an understanding beyond words.
The following day, the two went to the infirmary, where Obi-Wan signed a consent form to inject Anakin with a subdermal contraceptive in her thin arm. She watched as Anakin caressed the small lump left under her skin, her brow furrowed as if annoyed by the mark. Obi-Wan remembered feeling irritated by the girl's apparent lack of satisfaction. She wanted to tell her that it was over, that she would never have to worry about it again. She wanted to tell her to stop making that face. She wanted to tell her that she was safe and that her home was now the temple. She wanted to tell her that she no longer had a mother but a master and that she needed to get used to it.
Then, Anakin turned to look at her with large, uncertain eyes.
"Did I do well?"
"Of course it is. It's your body, Padawan. Only you know what's right for it."
"Do you have it, too?"
"Yes, but I put it on later. So don't worry; nothing will happen to you."
"Understood. I just want you to think I'm doing a good job."
Her heart softened immediately.
She sat her down between her legs, carefully parting her hair and combing it with her fingers as if it were a brush. Obi-Wan redid her Padawan braid and tied the rest of her hair in a ponytail. Then, she let her go to her classes. When she turned to see her, Anakin just smiled broadly, showing her all her little white teeth. Surprised at how easy it was to love that bright little girl, she smiled back.
Yet, she was left with the feeling all day that she should have told her something else.
Maybe she shouldn't have trusted Obi-Wan as much as she did.
Obi-Wan knew nothing. She pretended to know and played her role as master perfectly, without corrections, without notes. She knew how to get a passing grade and how to talk so they would be convinced she was right and had done well. Beyond that, however, things became vague and impossible to describe.
She knew nothing about bodies. In fact, she often wished she didn't have one. She wished she was made of smoke, a concept. She wished she didn't hurt, bleed, or sweat. She didn't want breasts or to be looked at by men who only saw her as an object. Now that she was in charge of Anakin, however, she had to accept it: she was learning alongside Anakin.
Besides, she knew nothing about love because she had never experienced it. Or maybe she had, but never as Anakin loved her mother. It made her anxious—sometimes when she felt most vulnerable—to know that Anakin knew and felt more than she did. She had spent her entire life inside the protection of Coruscant, beneath its glass dome like an insect in a jar.
Maybe she should have shared more about how she felt when she started taking birth control. She should have told Anakin that she was so lucky and that Obi-Wan had to go alone and in secret. She should have told Anakin that no one had advised her what to do and that she understood her better than anyone else in the world. When they were together, sitting face-to-face with their eyes closed and letting themselves be carried away by the warm breath of the Force, Obi-Wan saw and thought of no one but her. That was a gift, not because it was Obi-Wan sharing this with Anakin, but because true companionship and understanding were harder to find than midichlorians.
Now, remembering those days of clouded companionship, she felt a pang of nostalgia, even though, at the time, she had been overwhelmed by the enormity of being responsible for a child who would inevitably suffer everything she herself had suffered.
Obi-Wan consoled herself with the thought that perhaps Anakin did not feel as alone as she had, without friends and, later, with a master who refused to understand the challenges of the female body.
Although she never asked.
She felt happy knowing that Obi-Wan also bled like her. She didn't ask—and never would—if, for her, too, happiness lasted only a moment before evaporating between her fingers like softly spoken words lost in a crowd's murmur.
Now that Anakin was no longer in her room, again, Obi-Wan wondered if their relationship was inevitably headed for separation or if there was a way to remedy the detachment.
When she peered into her apprentice's empty, darkened room, she knew that she no longer knew her, and that tasted bitter in her mouth.
It was unfair. She didn't know what to do. She wondered if Qui-Gon would have known what to do or been able to instruct her. But a wound cannot be controlled, she thought. It can only be witnessed.
Obi-Wan turned around and headed to the exit of the temple with learned resignation to look for her again. Despite the fights, that was their agreement. And if Anakin didn't go up to the temple, then Obi-Wan had to go down, to put her hands between the floor and her head, to keep it from shattering into pieces, away from her.