- anakin wanders off while qui-gon and obi-wan talk to the council
- he find himself in the library, force guided
- a pair of jedi are there twi-lek and a wookie, they are basically the jedi equivalent of married, though no one says anything.
- the force all but wallops them over the head when anakin comes in and they are like “hey, we keep meaning to get a padawan, look, here is our padawan”
- the council and qui-gon try to argue but anakin is already being held by the wookie, who is making sure his new little padawan is warm, poor cub has no fur and was visibly shivering, why had no one gotten him a robe? He’s wearing clothing woven for a desert climate for force’s sake.
- Yavanna and Lowbacca are like, no, the force says this is our padawan, who we’ve been waiting for, he’s ours now, the jedi council should be able to understand the will of the force shouldn’t they?
- Yavanna to Qui-gon - yes you found him, but you have a padawan and he doesn’t need to be tossed to the wayside.
- Qui-gon tries to argue that Yavanna is essentially a researcher, she goes out to find old holocrons and texts and just, information on the force. She’s a very active librarian. Yavanna’s like, yeah, he won’t even need to stay here to get lessons since I’m a walking library. Lowbacca’s an expert ‘saber fighter, he’s even bested Master Dooku in a training duel. But Lowbacca’s main job seems to be pulling you out of trouble...so he’ll be able to pull our padawan out of trouble too.
- the council is like, uh two jedi can’t share a padawan...the force says we can
- by this point anakin’s fallen asleep during the arguing because Yavanna and Lowbacca’s force signatures remain calm and solid, and the training bond has already hooked up between them (anakin’s force senses had been trying to find stability and something to hold onto since he’d had to leave his mother).
- eventually Qui-gon and the council capitulate and Anakin is named Padawan Leaner to Knights’ Yavanna and Lowbacca.
- anakin wants to go with everyone back to naboo and Yavanna and lowbacca agree, this is essentially his first mission, as they wouldn’t have been able to get this far without the boy.
- things go pretty much the same way, only anakin is given some basic meditation training on the way over and a bit of a “here’s how to shove bad things away 101″ since they are taking a child into a warzone.
- anakin is still in the ship and still ends up engaging the auto pilot, however, with just a bit of instruction on how to focus, anakin is much quicker at destroying the control ship, with his awareness of the forces guidance heightened.
- qui-gon doesn’t die as he has two knights as well as his padawan to assist him in fighting darth maul.
- afterward anakin leaves with his new masters off to the first of many adventures
- and if the first adventure is on tatooine freeing his mother, well, Yavanna and Lowbacca must always follow the force and there are interesting caves that might have jedi/sith/force user stuff in them...
- and if they “forget” bags of rations and some blasters in those caves, after giving the newly freed shmi a scanner built after anakin had had his chip removed, and the boy was able to study it and to build the right kind of scanner, well, Yavanna wasn’t the most with it of jedi and something or someone might be able to put those useful resources to use.
- he learns a lot, in the following years, how to read and write and speak a variety of languages and dialects from ancient to current.
- they face fights, of course, some battles turn into peace talks, some into having to take prisoners, some, thankfully rarely, into death matches. Anakin learns how to fight in different ways, is he fighting to defeat? distract? defend? a combo? He learns to understand in seconds what his fights are for.
- he learns how to care for animals, and how to use the force to back down frightened or territorial ones. He even learns herding, as sometimes they need a local guide to find what they are looking for, and that’s often a child who has chores, and quite often, anakin gets to do those chores in their stead.
- it doesn’t bother him, sometimes it’s been lowbacca to stay back, when it was a larger person to lead them, and the wookie never acted like he was to good to mind children or wash cloths, or plow or harvest a field.
- sometimes anakin helps anyway, as waiting for Yavanna to translate a wall over months can be pretty boring, and if washing, minding live stock, clothes in a river or plowing a field isn’t the most riveting thing anakin’s ever done, it’s at least something.
- if there is any tech, anakin is much more in his element and is doubly welcomed, as he is clever with anything mechanical and many places they go don’t have the funds for new things.
- anakin learns basic field medicine, as well as local cures and remedies wherever they go, and is often asked to report to the healing halls on return as he’s good at remembering things and the healers are always interested in new ideas and new learning.
- he in point of fact finds himself half apprenticed to a healer, when he finds out that anakin was the closet thing to a doctor many of the being they interacted with saw, besides perhaps a wisewoman or shaman. Horrified, the healer commands anakin to report to him when he can so that anakin has better than field medic skills to offer
- anakin already new how to tend to children, but he still gets plenty of practice.
- anakin learns how to say goodbye, with each place they go, he often makes friends among the other children and depending how long they stay, can determine how tight their friendships become. But he learns to say goodbye, and that goodbyes are not always bad. He is not having to see a friend sold into slavery away from him, only that their paths are parting, it makes things easier.
- anakin learns how to let go, not, not feel, but how to feel and still let go. it’s a hard lesson, and learned many times, but it’s how life is. From an old woman who was kind to him, who passed in her sleep, and anakin attended the funeral, to having to leave behind an injured revolutionary (who was a good friend already) because it was needful that the information anakin had to get to the leaders and he couldn’t wait for the injured man. and even when he looses a patient, he has to contact master Ten-ri, his healing instructor, to aid him through that time. It was just a sickness, anakin had even managed to beat it in the village and discover a workable cure but the child was simply to weak, and she died holding anakins hand.
- anakin learns his value as a person in these years, and the value of others. Master Ten-ri tells him that not many seek to be healers, for it can be a painful path, but that he is proud of anakins work. Anakin learns that no job is to little or to big for a jedi, one may need to ask for help or instruction in it, but fixing the vaportors in one small desert village is just as important as aiding a planetwide revolution against a corrupt government.
- anakin is not held to ridiculous standards, he almost never sees the council or qui-gon, though he has gotten to see obi-wan off and on and he finds he really likes and admires the jedi. Who had been a bit distant at first but steadily warms up to anakin over time.
https://www.tumblr.com/roseunspindle/190603449072/a-different-path-2?source=share
