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Qui-Gon Jinn’s body burned and Anakin’s future burned with it. The hair caught first, then the clothes. The body had been doused with some sort of accelerant, but the flesh was still slow to burn. The stench of overcooked meat and broken promises turned Anakin’s stomach and made his eyes water.
Anakin tried to blink back his tears, feeling sorrier for himself than he did for Master Jinn. The Jedi was gone, all his troubles ended, but Anakin was stuck with all his troubles just begun. He took a shuddering breath, his lip quivering. If only the man had kept his promises. Anakin would become a Jedi and Master Jinn would free him. That was the deal, the whole reason he’d agreed to leave his mom, but it was all just a steaming pile of bantha shit. The Jedi didn’t want anything to do with him, and now Master Jinn couldn’t free Anakin if he tried.
Anakin began to cry in earnest. The Jedi were gonna sell him for sure. He may be too old and too dangerous to keep around, but he was worth a lot of money. Probably even more now that everyone knew what a good pilot he was. If he was lucky, they’d sell him to racing team, but if he was’t he’d end up with someone worse than Gardulla the Hutt. Unless the Jedi didn’t own him at all. Who knew who Master Jinn’s heir was? Anakin hoped it wasn’t Obi-Wan. The man hated him so much he was sure to sell him someplace awful.
Obi-Wan turned to look at him as though drawn by Anakin’s thoughts. “Anakin, what’s wrong?” he asked like they weren’t at a funeral. Obi-Wan’s eyes were as dry as Tatooine and his face was almost eerily calm. These stupid Jedi were so against loving people they didn’t even know how to mourn properly. Except, come to think of it, Anakin had heard him call Qui-Gon master. Anakin figured he’d have a hard time faking sad if Watto had died.
“Our Master’s dead.” Anakin rubbed his leaking nose with his sleeve. “Who even owns me now?”
Obi-Wan recoiled like Anakin had slapped him, his eyes widening in horror. He swallowed hard, his face paling. “What? No. You-” Obi-Wan jerked his head back around towards the fire. His hood hid his face, but Anakin sensed grief, guilt, and anger. He considered apologizing on the off chance that Obi-Wan really was his new owner, but then the man said “No one owns you, Anakin. You’re free.”
“Oh.” A slow smile spread across Anakin’s face. Master Jinn had kept his promise after all.
Freedom was a funny, hollow feeling, like a day without food crossed with that moment between an engine failing and the start of a fall. For the first time in his life, Anakin woke up the morning after Qui-Gon’s funeral with no master to give him orders. Or at least not any orders he had to obey. Obi-Wan certainly tried to boss him plenty. It was all “do this”, “do that", “go wash up,” and “stop fiddling with that droid and eat some breakfast.”
Anakin did most of what he was told cause there was no reason not to, but then Obi-Wan told him to stay in their suite while he ran an errand. Well, that wasn’t happening. Anakin didn’t know much about being free, but he did know some things. If you didn’t have a master paying for your food, you needed to buy it yourself. Anakin would have to get a job for that and he certainly wasn’t going to find one here. He’d miss Padmé, but fancy castles didn’t have much need for pod racers or scruffy mechanics. Besides, as long as the Jedi were here, it wasn’t safe to stick around.
They thought he was dangerous, and Anakin knew how the galaxy worked. He’d found a nest of Sand Strangler eggs in the junkyard back when he was six. Anakin had been all for letting them hatch, but Watto wasn’t having any of it. “You don’t let little dangers grow into big ones, Ani,” he’d said. “You crush them before they can crush you.” Then he’d gotten a big old hydrospanner and done just that.
Well, Anakin wasn’t waiting around to get crushed. The second Obi-Wan was out the door, he abandoned the broken battle droid he’d been messing with and started packing. He’d need his tools, of course. After a moment’s hesitation, he scavenged the droid for some of the rarer, lighter parts. They weren’t much use outside of the droid, but he might be able to sell them for some food if he couldn’t find work. He tossed in his second set of small clothes and extra pair of socks. Lastly, he added the rolls and fruit he’d managed to filch from the breakfast tray while Obi-Wan wasn’t looking. He felt bad about stealing the napkin he had wrapped them in and hoped Padmé would forgive him.
Before he had left Tatooine, his mom had slipped a japor snippet in the front pouch of his satchel for luck. Anakin took it out now and pressed it to his forehead. “I’m coming back,” he whispered. It wouldn’t be today, and he wouldn’t be a Jedi, but he was going back to Tatooine. Just as soon as he had a ship and a chip scanner, he would steal his mom and Kister and anyone else who wanted to come. That was a promise. He kissed the snippet and dropped it back into the pouch. Then he went to the door and looked up and down the hall.
In addition to putting Anakin in the same suite as Obi-Wan, Padmé’s staff had given the Jedi rooms right across the hall. They would stop him for sure if they caught him trying to escape. It seemed like the coast was clear, but then he heard it, the tap, tap, tap of the little green troll-man’s cane on the floor. Anakin ducked back into the room just as the troll and the bald, dark-skinned human man rounded the corner. They were talking too quietly for Anakin to hear, but what they were saying didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were blocking his only way out of here.
Or were they? Anakin’s room had a window overlooking the city. It was a long way to the ground, but there were two lower towers in between like steps in a giant staircase. Anakin raced to his bedroom and threw open the window. The air outside felt strange, cool and damp with the sharp smell of ozone. The sky to the west was turning dark. Back home that would have meant a sandstorm was about to blow in, but Anakin had no idea what it meant here. Naboo didn’t exactly have a lot of sand.
After a moment’s hesitation, Anakin hoisted himself up through the window and onto the narrow ledge. He nearly overbalanced with the weight of his satchel, but managed to catch himself on the window frame. “Whoah,” he gasped, his heart pounding. He was a lot higher up than he had thought, and the lower tower wasn’t exactly close either.
Biting his lip, Anakin glanced longingly back at the room over his shoulder. If only the Jedi would leave, but he could sense them in the Force, waiting. He couldn’t just walk out the door, he had to make this jump. It was like his mom said, wish all you want, but work with what the galaxy gives you. Anakin took a deep breath and turned back. Qui-Gon said he had Force powers and Qui-Gon had never lied to him. He could do this. The Force was with him. His focus determined reality.
Gripping the window frame, Anakin leaned back to build up some momentum. His hands were slick with sweat. Focus determined reality. “The Force is with me, the Force is with me,” he chanted and flung himself into the air.
“Wahooooo, ugh.” Anakin’s breath was driven from his lungs as he slammed into the dome of the lower tower. He started to slide down, but, after some frantic scrambling, managed to pull himself to the top. The wind had picked up and the sky was a dark grey, but it didn’t feel ominous. If anything, the cool breeze felt refreshing after the terror of the jump. The next tower was even farther away, but Anakin knew he could make it. There was plenty of space for a running start, and besides, the Force was with him.
The last tower was a story-and-a-half to the ground. Anakin fell like a feather and landed on the softest grass in the galaxy. They sky opened up the second he touched the ground. It took him a second to realize what was happening. He’d heard spacer stories about it, but he’d never imagined rain like this. Every drop felt like a wet kiss across his face and hair. It was a welcoming, a blessing. Laughing, Anakin spread his arms wide and let the rain wash away the last dust of Tatooine and slavery.
Despite his best efforts, Obi-Wan didn’t make it back to the palace before the rain. It had proved ridiculously difficult to find a child-sized Jedi tunic in Theed. Of course the Council hadn’t brought one, and it seemed that not even Naboo peasants would be caught dead wearing something so plain. The seamstress Obi-Wan had eventually found to make it had asked him repeatedly if he was sure he didn’t want another color or at least some embroidery before finally taking his word for it. Anakin didn’t need a Jedi tunic. They could do the Padawan-bonding ceremony in the same foul clothes he’d worn since Tatooine, but Obi-Wan wanted this done right. He owed Qui-Gon that much.
Shaking the rain off his cloak, Obi-Wan stepped into the suite. “Anakin,” he called as he dropped the cloak to the floor. Qui-Gon would have made him hang it up to dry, but he could do that while Anakin got changed. Where was that boy? “Anakin?”
The broken battle droid he’d been mucking around with was still sprawled across the sitting room floor, but the boy was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had taken a nap. Thunderstorms often made Obi-Wan sleepy, maybe they had the same effect on Anakin.
Obi-Wan tapped on the bedroom door, but received no reply. He huffed and knocked harder. “Anakin, get out here right now. I have something for you.” Still no answer, so he opened the door and stepped inside.
Anakin wasn’t there. The cold rain blew in through the open window to form a puddle on the floor. Anakin’s tunic slipped from Obi-Wan’s nerveless fingers. “I have a bad feeling about this.”