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Rating: PG

Archive: Yes, M-A and http://www.wyomingnot.com/rita/rita.html

Category: angst, Obi/Bail

Timeline: Anakin is twelvish

Summary: Anakin begins to wonder who his father might have been.

Warning and spoiler: it's minor, really, but click here

Disclaimer: Who da man? George Lucas da man!

Feedback: handwritten in blue or black ink on unlined paper, the way Miss Manners likes it. Or by email.

Thanks: to the Amazing Wonder Beta, Lambda Draconis. She had some very insightful things to say about this story, all of which I ignored. Not that it wasn't good advice, but the story ended up going in a totally different direction, and I didn't know how to get it back on focus. Therefore all weaknesses in this story are doubly reprehensible, because I was forewarned.

Story order:
Perhaps
Maybe
Falling
Back for Seconds - Obi-Wan and Bail
Bailing Bail
Padawan Games
Greener Pastures
Forgiven
Reality Check
Better Than Destiny
A Cross-Cultural Affair
Deconstruction
Reconstruction
Rewoven
Night Visitor
Father Figure <--You are here
A Model Padawan
Not All Dreams Are Visions
You Don't Bring Me Flowers
Dangerous Fame
Labyrinth
Private Lessons (off-site link)
Owner's Mark
Epicenter
Duty
Penumbra
Nightfall
Batter My Heart

It's funny, the odd things a person will take for granted as a child.

Growing up on Tatooine, Anakin had thought all worlds had two suns and no grass. It had seemed ordinary for him to be a slave. He had only barely begun to understand what it really meant when he was freed. He just assumed that his life was normal. He had no ambition or desire for things to be different. It was what it was. He either liked it or he didn't. It never occurred to him that things could be otherwise. So it never bothered him that he did not have a father. Slave families were unstable. Family members could be sold off at a moment's notice, never to be seen again. His mother never talked about his father, so Anakin just assumed that he'd never had one.

Even as a child Anakin had not been entirely ignorant of sex, though he had been a little unclear about where babies came from. When he was older, Anakin learned that most nine-year-olds knew next to nothing about sex, but as a slave he had not had the luxury of such ignorance. The sex he knew about, however, was rather public. Prostitution had been quite visible in Mos Espa. No one growing up there could remain sheltered from the more sordid aspects of life. Anakin had known the brothel district well. In fact, he liked visiting it. The sex workers wore nice clothes of shiny fabrics in pretty colors. They had more money and more free time -- at least during the day -- than most of Mos Espa's residents. They would pay the children to run errands for them, buying snacks or magazines. It was a great way for the kids to earn enough money to buy a fizzy drink or a sweetpie. So Anakin knew about sex. Not that anything actually happened on the streets, but enough preamble occurred for him to get the general idea.

Sex was also one of the few forms of recreation available to slaves, and given the lack of private space, it was inevitable that a curious child would come across couples in various stages of coitus. Anakin had a more accurate concept of the mechanics of sex than most cultures would have deemed appropriate at such a tender age.

But while he knew the mechanics, he was largely unaware of the meaning. He saw sex primarily as a form of exploitation, and secondarily as a sweaty exercise that involved a lot of grunting and groaning. It didn't look very fun to him. He had no real concept of sex as a form of intimacy. After all, his mother never had a lover. How would he know?

But now he was beginning to get the idea. It had taken him a while - far too long, he had to admit - to figure out that was why Bail spent the night at their place. His master and the prince weren't friends, they were...ick. It bothered Anakin, and not just because the thought of kissing a guy seemed gross. All that moaning and groaning seemed beneath Obi-Wan's dignity. Surely Obi-Wan didn't do that. The prince must be imposing on him somehow, and that just wasn't right. Who was Bail to interfere? Obi-Wan should be thinking only of Anakin and no one else. He could not love anyone else. It wasn't right. Anakin had put up with it for a long time, had tried to be tolerant, but he was starting to think it was high time for Bail to move on.

But this reality of sex in his own home, however discreet, finally got Anakin to wondering. Of course, the last thing nine-year-olds want to think about is their parents having sex, but he wasn't nine any more. He knew now where babies came from, which meant that he had to have had a father, but his mother had never said anything. If she had been married, why had she never told him? Why had she never given him even the tiniest hint? It was as if....

As if she didn't want to remember.

Some horrible dark place deep down inside him began to whisper a possible truth, to draw together various facts he did not really want to put together into a single picture. She never mentioned his father; she didn't want to remember; she was a slave. Anakin knew all too well what sometimes happened to slaves, who did not have the right to say no.

His mind could never quite follow through to that conclusion. Whenever those awful whispers started to lead him down that path, he'd balk, violently recoiling, his stomach churning with fear and hatred so powerful and acidic it threatened to burn him up from the inside. No, that couldn't have been what happened to his mother. It couldn't. He would not let it. He would not permit it.

NO.

No, he realized now what it must have been. His mother had never married, but she had loved someone. They had been together for only a brief period of time, but she had loved him. Not like whatever weird thing went on between Obi-Wan and Bail that Anakin didn't like to think about. Obi-Wan certainly didn't act like someone in love, but Shmi -- she must have known true love, like in the stories. Another slave, perhaps, and they had been sold apart, separated, her grief at the loss so great that she never spoke about him again, carrying his memory close to her in her heart. Another slave, or....

Or perhaps a free man. Someone who had come all too briefly into her life, and then had to leave. Someone always on the move, who never stayed in one place long. But he must have been a wonderful man to have captured Shmi's heart in such a short time. Strong, kind, generous, noble.

Someone very much like a Jedi Knight.

It made sense, really, didn't it? Anakin had such a high midichlorian count. Living now among Force-sensitives, Anakin knew what they felt like, knew his mother had not been particularly Force sensitive. So it seemed quite possible his father might have been a Jedi, maybe even a Jedi he knew.

Or had once known.

Wasn't it just possible -- really, didn't it make sense that his father might have been... Qui-Gon? His mother had seemed awfully fond of him, had trusted him quite eagerly. And Anakin remembered the warm, tender expression on Qui-Gon's face whenever he had looked at Shmi. Yes, it was quite possible. After all, Anakin had blue eyes, much like Qui-Gon's, and everyone said he was going to grow very tall, perhaps as tall as Qui-Gon. Really, it was entirely possible, wasn't it? After all, why had the Jedi come to Tatooine? Might not the Force have suddenly prodded Qui-Gon to seek out his own son? It made perfect sense.

The more Anakin thought about it, the more he was sure what had happened. Qui-Gon had been on a mission. He had met a beautiful woman, and they had fallen in love. She was a slave, but he had been unable to free her, and duty called him away. But in their too brief time together she had conceived a child, a living symbol of the love she had shared with the noble Jedi.

Years later their paths crossed again, and her lover wanted to free her and their child. But he could only take one of them, and Shmi had sacrificed herself so that Anakin would no longer be a slave. "Take him," she had told Qui-Gon. "Train our son to be a Jedi. Then one day he will come back to free me, and we will all be together." So Qui-Gon had reluctantly agreed to part with his love, taking Anakin and vowing one day to return. But tragedy had intervened, and his mother would never be reunited with the man she had loved all those years ago.

Yes, that had to be it. That burning tenderness in his heart told him it must be true. It had to be true. Qui-Gon Jinn was his father.

It was the only truth Anakin would allow.