Master Apprentice Archive In the Stillness of the Day Quick search:

Archive: yes to m/a

Category: Angst, Point-Of-View: Amidala, Vignette (is that a category?)

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: An/Am (with hints of Q/O and O/An)

Summary: Two people watching a third and not talking -- or not listening.

Sequel to: In the Quiet of the Night

Feedback: please, as detailed as you like. Flames will be laughed at.

Disclaimer: Lucas yadda all his yadda no money.

Warnings: follows canon.

Notes: Inspired in part by the discussion on m-a of Anakin, his motivations, and his relationship with Obi-Wan. This is my answer to how things might develop. Set a year or two before Episode Two. Thanks go to Sickleweed, Caly Rose, and Judy for beta: any remaining mistakes or problems are my fault and mine alone.

"Oh, how sweet."

Dala looked back over her shoulder to see Anakin's reaction to her words. For a long moment he didn't look up from where he lounged on the couch, tinkering with some mechanical...something, she didn't know what, and he'd refused to tell her. At last he set his gizmo aside, and swung his feet to the floor. "What?" he said.

"Come see," Dala said, smling as she turned back to looking out the window.

She heard, rather than saw, Anakin come up behind her to look out the window as well, but caught the shake of his head out of the corner of her eye. "My Master, you mean?" She couldn't interpret the tone of his voice.

"Playing with the dnai, yes," she said, trying to keep to her original thought. "I've never seen a Jedi *play* before." She smiled over at Anakin as he leaned up against the other side of the window, hoping to remind him of the time -- but he wasn't looking at her, he still watched his Master down in the courtyard below, so her next words came out more uncertainly than she'd intended. "I wasn't certain they even knew how to *smile*."

"You've seen me smile," Anakin said, finally looking over at her, lips curving into one of the disputed expression.

"Yes, but you're *you*." Anakin Skywalker, young and brilliant, always throwing his entire heart into whatever goal he chose. To her, he'd always be the sweet young boy who'd asked her if she were an angel. Besides, he'd never had that intimidating, uncrackable Jedi *serenity*. "Knight Kenobi always seems so serious."

"He hasn't had much to smile about."

"He's training you." How could Ani's company not make someone smile?

"I'm a duty, Amidala."

"He doesn't think of you as just a duty." Dala wondered why she was defending Kenobi so, and to Anakin of all people. She could count the number of true conversations she'd had with Obi-Wan Kenobi on the fingers of both hands. How could she say she knew the Jedi's mind better than Anakin, who had a bond with him through the Force? But Ani was *wrong* about this, she thought. "He cares about you, Ani."

"I'm not certain he cares about anyone."

"What?" Dala wasn't sure she'd even been intended to hear that muttered comment. Indeed, Anakin merely shook his head, and went back to watching his Master play. The faint sound of laughter drifted up from the courtyard.

"He loved Qui-Gon, you know," Anakin said suddenly.

"Who?" Dala said, startled out of formless, troubled musings on
Anakin's state of mind.

"Master Obi-Wan. He loved his Master."

"Of course he did," Dala said, frowning as she tried to follow this twist in the conversation. "He'd been Master Jinn's apprentice for years--"

"Not like that," Anakin interrupted, looking over at her again, dark eyes intent. "Like Baucis and Philemon in the song from last night. Like..." He hesitated, lips thinning on suppressed words. *Like I love you.* Words they hadn't said to each other yet, words she'd been reluctant to hear because of what would come next. She was the Queen. Emotions must be subsumed to affairs of state, or so she'd been told from the time she was three.

"I see," she said hastily, to fill the awkward silence that had developed, and returned her gaze to Knight Kenobi. She tried to summon to her mind's eye Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi together, as they'd first appeared on Naboo all those years ago. Nothing came, not so much as a shared look she'd seen between them. "I didn't know. He didn't cry at the funeral."

"There is no death, there is only the Force." The alien note was in Anakin's voice again, not quite wistful, not quite angry.

"So the Jedi do not grieve, but they do smile?"

She'd hoped to get a smile of her own with that, but Anakin only looked back down at Knight Kenobi. "I've hardly seen my Master smile," he said. "He can't forget, even if he should. He loved Qui-Gon, and now he'll never love again." The oddness was still there, stronger if anything.

"Of course he loves you," Dala said, taking a stab in the dark as to the cause of the dangerous mood. "You *are* loved, Anakin." *I* love you, she thought. But the words still refused to come to her lips. A long pause, as she watched Anakin watch his Master. Then Anakin said, "Will you marry me, Dala?"

"As soon as you're Knighted," she said.

Anakin looked up, a half-smile -- at last, at last -- lighting his face, and reached out to draw her across the window into an embrace, Dala's face hidden against the warm roughness of Ani's Jedi tunics. She nuzzled there for a moment, giddy with the free-fall of the promise made at last, then stole a glance up at her beloved.

He wasn't looking at her. He was looking out the window at his Master, and his eyes burned with something she dared not read.

-fin-