mace windu and anakin skywalker: lessons, in trust and other things
In another world, Obi Wan has to leave for a mission after Naboo. He agrees to go only after the council promises to let him train Anakin, and only because he sees that a battlefieldâanother one, at leastâis no place for a young boy to start his training. He tells Anakin before leaving, and Anakin waits.
In another world, Mace sees Anakin sitting on the steps that line one of the larger training rooms. The boy is quiet, intensely focused on the training droid ten feet away, eyes not even glancing down as his fingers fly over the programming tablet. The droid is holding a staff, like the one Obi Wan described to the council when he came home without a master. The sabers are blue, but the movements make it obvious whose technique Anakin is so determined to learn and defeat.
Mace shifts and Anakin looks up, fingers already stuttering to a hesitant standstill over the pad, mouth already opening on unsure words: to apologize, to explain. To defend before attacked.
In another world, Mace sees a young boy spending the few moments he has to himself selflessly, for a man heâs known for a handful of days at best, and only after he has completed what is expected of him. Mace sees an initiate who will need to forge a unique path among the jedi, and he remembers the way he too, in a sense, had made his own way in the Order. In another world, Mace senses this boyâs tumultuous fear, and remembers how hard, how differently, heâd worked to get through his own.
He steps inside, closes the door behind him, and tells Anakin to add another lunge at end of the programâs third attack. This is how they start: small steps, and smaller words. Itâs enough.
Mace does not train Anakin, but he helps.
In another world, when Mace Windu sees inside the heart of a newly freed slave child who has suffered too much, he breathes in and thinks, shatterpoint. Mace, who has seen the ugly scars left by slavery and imprisonment in the outer rim, knows Anakin needs more than what the old set ways of the jedi will give him. His compassion outweighs his caution, and he teaches Anakin how to work with the things inside him that the jedi warn against.
In another world, Mace Windu does not give into the councilâs fear.
He remembers that sometimes hatred, too, is a right, one they cannot thoughtlessly strip from a boy who grew up with the threat of a chip ready to explode inside him. He teaches Anakin how to channel the fear and anger and cracked bits of hate, how to use their own energy to loop them away, and eventually, how to catch and direct that darkness in a fight.
Itâs like winding up thread, Anakin says once. You have to wrap it so it doesnât tangle when you pull it out again. I used to do that for my mom, sometimes. Mace blinks. It is not inaccurate, and Mace tells him so. Anakin smiles, carefully proud. He doesnât hold his motherâs memories territorially close to his chest yet, and in another world, it isnât Mace who makes him start.â
He feels Anakinâs attachments, sees Yodaâs narrowed eyes, and decides there are enough masters to tell the boy to let go. He focuses on teaching Anakin what he knows best. Anakin still trains in Shien So, but in another world, he has more than a working knowledge of Vaapad, too.
In another world, Maceâs soft spot for younglings and new padawans is not lost to the war.
Mace Winduâs guidance is not that of master over apprentice, but it is enough. It is enough to loosen the knot of mistrust choking young Anakinâs every thought in front of the council, and it is enough to slacken Obi Wanâs mercilessly demanding standards for himself in front of Anakin. Anakin finds someone to remind him that his master is young and new and imperfect and will not begrudge Anakin his weaknesses or differences, and Obi Wan finds someone to remind him that his apprentice is young and new and imperfect and will only find comfort in Obi Wanâs own uncertainty.
Mace and Anakin. In another world, theirs is a relationship of distant, reluctant affection. Thereâs a genuine bond between them, but itâs quiet, left unsaid. Mace leaves the voicing of such things to Obi Wan. Obi Wan, no longer solely responsible for teaching Anakin Skywalker, finds it much easier to voice them.
Small things change. During the Clone Wars, when Mace thanks Artoo, Anakin still has something to say. But instead of thatâs more than I ever got, itâs a thank you and a smile? That means he really likes you. Mace still shakes his head and looks away. But this time thereâs amusement in the tension at the corner of his mouth, and Anakin knows how to read it. Small things change, and those changes add up.
In another world, Mace Windu trusts Anakin. He talks with Anakin about seeing further than most, and being unsure what to do, which path to take. Anakin still dreams of his mother, still returns fissured and aching from Geonosis and Tatooine. Mace does not understand completely, but he listens. He respects Anakinâs lossâhis sacrificeâand he trusts Anakinâs grief. It is enough.
In another world, Anakin trusts Mace. That trust means Anakin isnât afraid to talk to Obi Wan, even when it seems there isnât enough time, about his past and his mother and his weaknesses, about Padme and Dooku and all those moments when something terrible tried to unfurl in his chest. In another world, one day Anakin trusts Mace with these things too.
In another world, Anakin Skywalker and Mace Windu know that they will never agree completely, but they do not arrange these differences into a minefield between them.
Mace sees the more shadowed parts of the Force become still with anticipation when Anakin and the Chancellor meet. In another world, he lays out his fears in front of Anakin, discusses them with Anakin as equals. Mace acknowledges his own attachment to the republic, how his faith is breaking, how he houses a weaker echo of the same monstrous fear as Anakin. Anakin, already intimately familiar with the tangled threads of Force visions and shatterpoints and gifted sight, listens. He listens, and because he is trusted, he doesnât need to stay.
In another world, Anakin still grabs Maceâs hand, desperate for a right answer in this maelstrom of wrong wrong wrongâ
Mace still asks where Anakin has been injured, still asks whatâs wrong, still puts an arm around his shoulders and helps him sit. But the concern runs deeper this time around. Anakin still falls apart in front of Mace, still shakes with the burden of too many stars and people, still struggles to articulate his discovery of the sith when all his voice wants to do is scream and scream and scream.
But this time: when Anakin Skywalker begs for answers, Mace pauses to give them. It is a handful of moments, it is years of trust, of respect. It is hours and days and months spent together in the training rooms, it is instance after instance of their pain and anger and attachment, all spoken out loud and addressed and smoothed. It is enough.
It is not Obi Wanâs presence, but it is enough to hold the tide.
In another world, in an office with huge windows and too high a fall, Mace tells Anakin not to listen, and Anakin doesnât. Anakin tells Mace to have faith, and Mace does. It is enough. It is more than enough.
Mace Windu brings change to the Jedi Council, in another world. He learns from Anakin, in this; tradition will only carry them so far, will only tide them over so long, will not do what open arms can do. Mace learns to let go. He relaxes his too-tight grip on the past, and the Force breathes easier for it. He argues with old friends, pushes for new thought, for revision, for softer judgement. The Order, too, breathes easier. It becomes a different kind of home for its newest members, who were raised in a war-torn world, whose lives and families are already too full of sacrifice to ask for more.
In another world, when a boy with burning dreams and too much in his heart puts his trust in the jedi, they do what they were always meant to do: they make him family.
Anakin Skywalker passes on Maceâs lessons to countless others. And his own lessons, too. Itâs about time someone started a new form, Mace tells Obi Wan as they watch Anakin smile and adjust a young padawanâs stance. I was getting bored.
In another world, Mace Windu sees a scared, hurting child unsure of his place, and he does what the jedi were always meant to do: he brings him peace.
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