bakerstreet | (no subject)

You wake up, and you're living a different life. Whatever you had before, whatever you'd accomplished before, is gone. In their place is something familiar, but not the same. Maybe your friends are your enemies, your enemies your friends. Maybe it's the whole world, maybe it's just your household. The only thing you know for sure is that something's changed, and you're the only one who's noticed. But who changed? Them... or you?

1. Domestic bliss. You may not be used to being married to this person or anyone, but now you are. Who are they? Someone you know? Someone you don't know at all? Whatever it is, you seem to have made a life together here.

2. Black is white, white is black. Whatever side you used to work for, you don't anymore. Your friends may have just become your enemies (or maybe they're there with you, working for a cause that you remember as wrong wrong wrong). You might want to step lightly here, though. No one likes an apparent defector.

3. Career changes. Well, your resume's really fucked now. The job you've been doing for the last x years? Never happened. Your awesome space marines team now work at a Wendy's. Or a bookstore. Or maybe you and your retail buddies are now saving the galaxy. Who knows? Whatever, hope you pick up new skills quick!

4. Pet platoon. Oh christ, now you're not even the same species. Your life has been reinterpreted into animal-life. Whatever, human life sucks anyway. Go chase a squirrel!

5. Back in time. Most of the details are same, it's just the setting that's changed. Did you live in 2000? Hope you like the 1800s! Good luck with that whole 'no indoor plumbing thing'.

6. The time of my life. You've seen this movie. One minute you're living pretty as a twelve-year-old, next minute it's eighteen years later and you have to hold down a job. Or maybe you've just been slingshoted to when you were younger. At least you'll totally breeze through algebra this time, right?

7. Wildcard. Make up your own, suggest your own. Do whatever you want. The universe is yours! (Sorta.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

And like that, the tentative truce was broken for Anakin.

He set his jaw, crossed his arms and looked away.

“Right. Got it. Their perspective is the one that matters, not mine.”

"I neither said, nor implied, that your perspective did not matter. It might change a bit if you attempted to understand someone else's. If you aren't interested in that, then I've no idea why you keep asking me these questions. Do I think the Council has always been fair to you? Absolutely not. Have I? No, but not for lack of trying. What exactly is it you expect me to say?"

This. This he remembered. There was no way to win in this scenario. He wasn't sure, in the end, the Council and particularly Yoda's first assessment hadn't been right. Anakin didn't fit. Anakin wasn't wrong, either. No one, including Obi-Wan, got him. Obi-Wan, at least, literally couldn't.

Well, he wanted to hear just that, really. That someone besides himself recognized the Council was unfair to him. It certainly made him lower a few defenses. Though, it hardly made him trust the Council more, just Obi-Wan more.

He shook his head and looked down at his crossed arms for a moment.

“I know you try.”

"I'm not... excusing them or myself when I attempt to explain. It doesn't change our failure, but it is not and has never been an act of malice. From anyone, and most especially not from me."

If he could change the way his mind worked, he honestly thought he might, but he didn't have anything to ground that in. He could understand in the intellectual, but practically? No, not really.

Anakin wouldn’t agree the choices of the Council were far off from being malicious – if the end result was the same, did it really matter? Maybe it did by degrees, maybe it mattered because one was more easily rectified. He didn’t really know. But he held this thought back, he was already getting more out of Obi-Wan now than he’d received in the last ten years from any other Jedi.

“If I’m not wanted here, if I don’t belong, then why would the Force tell me to come here and join? Why is it telling me to stay…” He paused because what he wanted to say next was not going to go over well with his Master, he already knew that. But they were both exercising trust, weren't they? “Why is it telling me to stay and be with Padmé?”

Because Anakin would bring a sort of balance to the force, and his child would build something better for everyone, at a guess. He didn't much like that guess and wasn't going to acknowledge it.

"I'm not telling you that you should leave, Anakin, and I can't begin to guess why the Force tells anyone anything." That much, at least, was true. Even here for the second time he was more than half-blinded. The only thing he had was the roughest guess. "In the end, regardless, we all make and choose our own paths."

“That’s not helpful.” He shot Obi-Wan a look.

“I know they are contradictory, but I know I’m supposed to be a Knight and married Padmé. I’ve known that longer than I’ve known you. Longer than I’d been given a choice to come here. But that wouldn’t matter to the Council, would it?”

"If I had better answers, I'd give them to you." He was even somewhat apologetic about that. "If you know that's what you're meant to do and certain of it, and it's the will of the Force, does it matter what the Council thinks?"

No, because balance was going to be re-established no matter what, and apparently the best way to that was the utter destruction of everyone save Anakin's twins. That was really, really defeatist. "If you believe it will help, I will have a discussion with them. They may be less... unyielding than you expect."

Anakin blinked at Obi-Wan for a few seconds, because really, he wouldn’t believe the Council could be ‘less unyielding’ than he expected until he saw it for himself. He didn’t know what had made the Council change their decision about training him, but he knew a few of them still regretted backing down. And letting Anakin marry wasn’t a rule change – it was a Code change. A world of difference.

“Yes, it matters what they think,” he finally said. “I can’t be a Jedi if they say I can’t. I’m not even a Knight yet.”

Well, he had trained Anakin, hadn't he? Then, the Council had technically agreed, even if Yoda had not. None of them had been particularly good about it, in many regards, but he hadn't ended up exiled or tossed out on his ear, and he hadn't been more than barely a Knight at the time.

"Well, sneaking around before you ask isn't going to help anything." That much he was sure of. "Clearly stating what you believe, what you know, and what you intend to do sometimes has some remarkably good results." Like, oh, training Anakin.

Wait, no. That was remarkably bad in the end. Still. They'd let him do it.

Anakin couldn’t argue with that. And it’s not like he could do that now anyways. Obi-Wan knew his feelings about Padmé, and Anakin knew Obi-Wan wouldn’t condone nor help him hide a relationship with Padmé from the Council.

He nodded and looked down. Obi-Wan sounded optimistic, but Anakin didn’t feel the same way.

He felt small and lost and frustrated. Because he didn’t know what he was supposed to do and the obstacles before him seemed not just immovable but also insurmountable. And at the end of any attempt to conquer those odds, he was sure he was going to lose something of value to him.

“If I’m expelled,” his voice lacked the confidence he normally projected. “Will you really still stay friends with me?”

"Anakin, you have my word that no matter what the Council decides or the future holds I will always be your friend." That Anakin even felt the need to ask broke his heart and made him realize even more fully the things he had missed the first time he had been in this place.

He even, briefly, contemplated telling Anakin that he was expelled that he would go with him. He wasn't sure that was a good idea, but he was prepared to use it as leverage with the Council. Of course he was also prepared to tell them precisely where forcing Anakin to choose would leave.

He'd changed over the years, for good or ill he didn't know. "Nothing and no one will stop that."