But then, just as the moment passed, Obi-Wan saw sadness in Anakin’s eyes. He caught the same feeling. It was no longer possible to fix things between them with a joke, a light moment. Things ran too deep for that now.

Anakin saw Shmi rise and fall, rise and fall. He felt the familiar need, the familiar guilt. The feelings overwhelmed him and Obi-Wan had to leap in front of him to protect him from a detonator heading his way.

He is the opposite of me, Obi-Wan thought. It has always been difficult for me to speak what is in my heart.

It was hard for Anakin to sit in a cockpit and not fly fast and expertly.

Anakin found a bench and sat. He felt something he had not felt in a long, long time, not since he was a little boy nestled in his mother’s embrace: peace.

"Jedi can be tricked, my young Padawan," Obi-Wan said. "They can be wrong. They can make mistakes. Do not forget that. We try to minimize those things by following our feelings and connecting to the Force. Yet we are not infallible."

Rage bloomed in his chest. Obi-Wan absorbed it and let it go. He did not need rage to fight this. He needed discipline. Calm.

"Good fight," Ferus said, sticking the training lightsaber in his belt. "Except for one thing." "What one thing?" Anakin asked, irritated. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. Ferus only smiled. Then he walked off.

To be a Jedi was to follow his feelings. But if his feelings tortured him, what was he to do with them? Grief. Guilt. Resentment. Shame.

He was not naïve enough to think that evil announced itself by knocking on one’s door with an iron fist. But he had not expected evil to come cloaked in quite so much charm.

Obi-Wan had never seen such speed. Even he could not fully track his apprentice’s movement. Balancing on the lip of the cruiser, faster than sight, Anakin reached in and grabbed the transmitter from Omega’s clutches. "Whoops, no more button," he hissed at Omega.

He is so different from me, Obi-Wan thought again, bemused. If he is so different from you, why do you treat him as though he is a younger version of you? Why do you act as you think Qui-Gon would have acted with you as his Padawan?

He remembered the lessons he had learned from Soara Antana, the great Jedi Master. The Force comes from stillness, she had said. Find your still center, even in the midst of battle. He saw time unspool before him like a ribbon. He saw it freeze like ice on a river.

Anakin treasured his Master. But sometimes he wondered what it would have been like to have Qui-Gon as a Master instead. Would Qui-Gon have shared his feelings more easily? Anakin had felt a connection to Qui-Gon from the start. It had taken more time with Obi-Wan.

Palpatine understood this; did his Master? Obi-Wan was so cautious. Anakin glanced at Palpatine, admiring how he moved through the Senate halls. He did not exaggerate his power but he did not diminish it. He accepted it and accepted the ways in which he would have to use it.

His Master could always find an opportunity for a lesson, even while waiting to land in a crowded spacelane.

"Yes, Ferus is reluctant to risk too much. Not like Anakin," Siri said. "He’s willing to risk everything." She meant it as a compliment, Obi-Wan knew. Siri admired Anakin’s daring, his sureness, how fluidly he used the Force.

Anakin did not lose his sense of frozen time. He was the master of time. He did not worry about the laser cannons any more than he’d worried about the attack droids. It all seemed so easy.

"Are you picking up anything about the mission ahead?" Obi-Wan asked him curiously. His Master often asked the question as soon as they stepped foot on a planet. Sometimes he even asked it before they landed, if he sensed that Anakin was swept by intuitions about the mission.

He had said that Anakin wanted to control everything. Anakin’s gift of seeing inside beings could turn dangerous if he tried to control the feelings he found instead of just observing them. But that was a Jedi lesson ingrained in every Padawan. Anakin knew that.