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Now, Obi-Wan Kenobi is not old. He’s not even thirty yet. But still, it’s strange that after one round of light sparring he’s doing completely fine while his twelve year old padawan is on the floor gasping for breath. It’s not the first time this has happened in the last few months either, and it’s getting worse.
No, there is clearly something wrong with him. Actually, there are a great many things wrong with Anakin, he hears that constantly from other Jedi, healers and disturbingly often from the high council themselves. He’s emotional, unstable, prone to anger and violence. He’s too old to join the temple, and too young to be a padawan. He never listens, but knows too much. Except when he knows too little and refuses to learn. Or rather refuses to admit he tried to learn and failed.
But Anakin is not wrong or right, he’s everything. The Force sings around him, swirling with infinite futures and unlimited potential. He will be a Jedi, and if Obi-Wan is the only one who’s willing to see it through, he can’t let his own fear of not being enough affect the boy. Even though he clearly isn’t able to help him with whatever this is, and the Force isn’t exactly singing with certainty right now as much as it is wheezing like the child in front of him.
“Anakin, are you alright?” he tries, for what feels like the hundredth time in half as many days.
“I’m fine,” the boy spits, with even more disdain than usual.
“Clearly you are not. I don’t know what’s wrong, but it’s getting worse.”
“There’s nothing wrong, I’m just tired.”
And usually Obi-Wan would sigh, let the boy recover and drop the subject, trusting him to ask for help when he was ready, like Qui-Gon had always done for him. But as usual, the traditional methods applied when training padawans, the advice he gets from other knights and masters who keep pushing him to accept and foster his student’s self-reliance are proving insufficient.
“Have you been to see the healers?”
“I told you, I’m not sick. They can’t help me.”
“Someone has to. If you don’t want to trust me with whatever this is, I can take you to master Yoda, or the mind healers, but you need to talk to someone.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“If you’re not able to train properly, there is.”
“I am! Look, I’m fine,” Anakin says, jumping up to his feet and igniting his saber despite still looking an unhealthy shade of red and swaying slightly where he stands.
“No,” Obi-Wan shakes his head and puts away his own training saber. “I’ve let this go on for too long. You told me you were fine, and I trusted you to figure out whatever this is on your own, but I won’t have you endangering your health. We will stop training until you’re better. You can use that time to focus on theory.”
“What? You can’t do that!” Anakin exclaims in a tone so upset his history masters would surely take offence.
“I can, and I will.”
“Then I’ll just go train with someone else.”
They stare at each other in a momentary stand-still, until Obi-Wan realises he’ll have to corner the boy to make him talk. He doesn’t like doing it, but he sees no other option.
“Then I will go to the council to ask them for help, since I am clearly not equipped to deal with this issue. I won’t have you injuring yourself.”
“Don’t!” Anakin shouts, panicked far beyond what the situation calls for, drawing the attention of other padawans training around them.
“I should have gone to them earlier,” Obi-Wan continues calmly, trying to hide the hint of triumph threatening to show in his voice. “If you can’t deal with this yourself and I am not able to help you, maybe someone else can.”
“You can’t tell them,” Anakin mutters, his knuckles white around his saber, his breath shallow and his voice hollow.
“It’s either going to be the council, the healers, or me, but you will discuss this with someone.”
“Fine,” Anakin sagged, bleeding defeat and choking fear into the force. “Fine, I’ll tell you, just not here,” he added, glancing at the other people in the room, who were very blatantly pretending not to eavesdrop on the scene. “And you have to promise not to laugh.”
They make their way back to their quarters in tense silence, Anakin casting nervous glances to the side, as if he’s looking for an escape route, and Obi-Wan sending wave after wave of reassurance through their bond, never quite managing to break through the wall of panic surrounding him. This is clearly more serious than he’d thought. He lets Anakin stay quiet when they reach their rooms, making tea, oversteeped and over sweetened, just like Anakin likes it, hoping it will provide enough comfort to get him to open up. They drink on the couch, the tension rising until it nearly turns into a visible hum in the air.
“Anakin,” he starts finally, after as much time as can be reasonably called a moment to gather their thoughts, and then a few more minutes for good measure. “Please, talk to-”
“I’m growing tits, okay?” Anakin cuts him off, the force exploding in desperate panic.
Oh, Obi-Wan thinks, of course.
Anakin hit a growth spurt about a year ago, surpassed most of his human agemates, then quickly settled and has been steadily getting outgrown by most of them since. His voice has been dropping slowly, but never cracking. He’s thin, but that could be attributed to his recent refusal to eat. Even when Obi-Wan can hear his stomach growling, he refuses anything more than half portions, despite how intensely he throws himself into training. He’s unusually modest, always covered up from head to toe in thick robes and leather, and Obi-Wan always assumed it was a holdover from Tatooine, both a habit of protecting his skin from sand and sun, and a way to ward off the colder air of the temple. Now, Obi-Wan knew all of these facts separately, of course, he’s just never had a chance to put them together until now, when they all click into place and he laughs in relief.
Anakin lets out a sharp cry of anguish. “You promised! I knew I couldn’t trust you,” he sniffles, then bolts to his feet, but Obi-Wan stops him with a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry. I understand, believe me,” he says, but Anakin doesn’t look convinced. “In my defence, you did say it in a funny way.”
Anakin still looks a bit like he might either cry or run any second, but he seems frozen enough in his seat for Obi-Wan to take his hand off his shoulder and pinch the bridge of his nose instead. Not that long ago he’d watch masters do the same thing and assume they were doing it for show, but now he’d come to realise that it does in some small way help him deal with the utter exhaustion and helpless feeling that training a padawan often brings on. Or at least gives him time to find a way to deal with it and something to do with his hands. So maybe he is doing it just for show. He sighs to complete the picture and looks back up at Anakin, who is perched so precariously on his seat he might as well have already left the room and be halfway through packing for a life on the run. It might be time to say something, but ‘why didn’t you tell me’ is bound to get the wrong reaction.
“How is it even possible that the healers don’t know about this? I know there are at least three tests you should have had over the years that would have revealed it.”
“I… I never had them. They told me to come back later and I just didn’t.” Obi-Wan’s raised eyebrow was enough to get the full story. “I’ve been deleting the messages off your comm every time they summon me.”
“Anakin…”
“I knew you wouldn’t hide this for me.”
“Why would I… Did your mother tell you to hide this?”
“Of course she did. Freaks aren’t exactly treated well on Tatooine,” Anakin says, glaring at the couch cushion.
“You’re not a freak, Anakin,” Obi-Wan replies absentmindedly, focused on the awful suspicion rising in his mind. Whenever Anakin mentions his life before the order it’s mostly the details of day to day life with his mother, not the larger cultural trends, but he knows enough to make a guess. Not enough to phrase it gently though, because what comes out is, “did she tell you to hide that you’re a girl, to protect you?”
“I’m not a girl!” Anakin shouts, finally getting up and backing away towards his room. “You said you’d understand.”
“I’m sorry.” Obi-Wan has never wanted to hit himself as badly as he does in this moment. Even Qui-Gon handled this better. “I do, I really do. You’ve seen my scars, Anakin, I thought you knew.”
“What scars?” Anakin asks, with one hand on the door to his room.
Obi-Wan sighs, decides he’s not going to be able to talk himself out of a conundrum he just talked himself into, and pulls his tunic’s collar aside to show Anakin the faint pink lines on his chest.
Anakin’s jaw drops, and so does his hand from the door handle, as he takes a half step forward.
“Are those?” He asks, hope and confusion alternating on his face.
Obi-Wan fixes his robes, sits back down and waits for Anakin to join him before answering. “When I was about your age I started, as you say, growing tits too. And a few years later when I realised I didn't want them I went to the healers,” like a sane person, he doesn’t add, “and had them removed.”
“They can do that?” Anakin asks, his voice teary again, but in an entirely different way than before.
“Yes, and more. Finish your tea, and we can go talk to the healers later. Actually, no, go take off whatever contraption you’ve been using to strangle yourself first. You can wear your cloak, they’re very good for hiding,” he preemptively interrupts whatever Anakin was going to say.
“Yes, Master,” he smiles, hope still shining bright in his eyes, and leaves Obi-Wan to wonder once again how he’s supposed to guide someone with such a different approach to even the simplest things, and how every time some issue arises he feels like he just barely managed to avoid a crisis, like he’s always a few months too late to really help.