Saga "Broken" -- Obi-Wan Kenobi. "...with the agony of a broken heart that's still beating..."

Title: Broken
Author: Estora (Thaumaturgist on FanFiction.Net)
Characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, Anakin Skywalker.
Rating: PG.
Genre: Angst, drama, meta-fic, one-shot / vignette.
Time Period: Pre-TPM, TPM, pre-AotC, AotC, RotS, post-RotS/ANH.
Warnings: None.
Summary: Meta-fic. "...with the agony of a broken heart that's still beating..."
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by George Lucas. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Author's Notes: I wrote this one-shot because people hating on Obi-Wan upsets me...this is a small attempt to help those who don't understand his character, or who have never tried to, sympathise more with him. I love and understand both Anakin and Obi-Wan equally and I hope to encourage this amongst the fandom. I'm in the process of writing a companion piece from Anakin's point of view, which should be up in a few weeks' time. Please enjoy this one-shot!


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BROKEN



1. You're very young when you're taken to the Temple, but not so young that you don't remember the sound of your ma's voice singing you to sleep, and her hand rubbing your back. It's all you've ever known, and for the first time in your short life you're alone at night. You cry, and cry, and cry, and the only person who comes doesn't pick you up and hold you, or rock you in her arms. You're patted on the back and told to go to sleep. It's the same, night after night. No-one picks you up, or touches you with warmth and caring, or sings to you the way your ma did, ever. So eventually you just stop crying, because somehow you know, in this strange place, it's wrong to want your ma, or anyone else.


2. There is no emotion, there is peace. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Attachment leads to the dark side. Dreams pass in time. Duty must always come first. A Jedi craves nothing, and only exists to serve the Force. This is what makes a Jedi. This is what you are told, day after day in the crèche. Everyone around you believes it, and no-one argues with the Jedi. You believe it too. If you don't, does that mean you aren't a Jedi? You have to be a Jedi, because if you aren't a Jedi you don't know who else you are.


3. Through feeling attachment, you betray the Order and the Code. Just because you shouldn't feel something doesn't mean you don't. Qui-Gon is like your father and despite everything you've been taught, you love him. You never say it out loud, because the lessons of childhood kick back in and remind you, again and again and again, that love is forbidden for a Jedi. So you push it down and pretend you're like the other Jedi who don't have the same problem you do, and try not to feel that guilty pang whenever you hear someone else reciting, "There is no emotion?"


4. It isn't the boy's fault. It isn't little Anakin Skywalker's fault that his midichlorian count higher than Yoda's. It isn't Anakin's fault that Qui-Gon is besotted with him. It isn't Anakin's fault that Qui-Gon wants him as his Padawan without apprehension and unwillingness like there was with you. It isn't Anakin's fault that Qui-Gon wants him, and not you anymore. It isn't Anakin's fault. Maybe if you repeat that to yourself enough times, you'll start to believe it. (You're not jealous. You're not jealous.)


5. "Train the boy," Qui-Gon begs of you, and then you're left alone, hearing the last words the man who was as good as your father echo in your mind for days after. The boy. The boy. It's wrong to be jealous, it's wrong to be resentful, it's wrong to cry, it's wrong to be attached because attachment is making you feel all of this, everything you shouldn't. The Jedi Code is right: your attachment blinded your ability to think rationally. Your attachment only ended up hurting you. All attachments end up hurting you. Cerasi. Siri. Now Qui-Gon. No attachment. The rule is there for a reason. Duty must always come

 

I like it. You touched on Obi-Wan's thoughts rather well.

 

So true. Obi-Wan was a product of his environment.
How to act and think was drummed into them from an early age.
He did the best he could with the training he had.
He loved Anakin, but didn't know how to show it openly.

 

very well done. If only the actual dialogue in the screenplays could convey what you wrote here

 

My apologies for taking so long to review this story after you posted it up (and for not posting on sw_meta yet) - Darth Real Life took over completely for the past week and a half.

I definitely agree with the points you make here - Obi-Wan's environment, come to think about it, was certainly not ideal for raising someone to be able to understand and identify with "normal" people outside the Jedi Temple, and certainly not with an initiate like Anakin who was taken in so late and thus had far more connections to the outside world than Obi-Wan had at his age.

I can't explain why, though, but to the Obi-Wan of my imagination, many of the points you make here, such as why he stops crying for a mother as a child, why he has to be a Jedi, his feelings that his attachments have ended up hurting him, etc., would have been unconscious, rather than conscious thoughts, and thus it feels somewhat strange to have these points mentioned so explicitly, because I personally feel that some of these have never consciously crossed his mind before! Perhaps this is because Obi-Wan is the character in Star Wars to whom I feel most connected, so that I find myself naturally thinking from his point-of-view; a partial consequence of that was that when reading this meta-fic, I actually felt further from and less understanding of Obi-Wan than usual, which bothered me somewhat. I'm very interested in reading your companion fic from Anakin's point-of-view, to see whether it's the point-of-view of the fic that's creating this problem for me...

Good job on the meta, though - it isn't often that we take such a big step back to analyse so thoroughly what the problems in Obi-Wan's upbringing were!

 

Very well done. I think you did a good job with Obi-Wan's thoughts, and as a PP mentioned, he was a product of his environment. I've always sympathized greatly with Obi-Wan; IMO it's the environment that was the problem.

I really like the part where Obi-Wan explains why he told Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered his father. Made perfect sense; from Obi-Wan's POV, it was the absolute truth.

 

Heartbreaking. You did well showing the contrast between Obi-Wan and Anakin with the two pieces. Very nice!

 

In MY personal POV of canon, I think Obi-Wan cared very much & perhaps too much, so like a reserved person and a trained Jedi, he kept it under control. So, while a part of disagrees with how you're written this - it is brilliant, piercing, and heartbreaking.

Anakin is a difficult teenager to understand. He doesn't have the same foundations the other Jedi do ? the same foundations you have. He's passionate, and wild, and argumentative, and disrespectful, and forms attachments, and doesn't think before he acts, and possesses an admirable ? sometimes frightful ? sense of justice. Justice which can easily be warped into vengeance. He talks back at you and compares you to Qui-Gon. He's impertinent. He's frustrating. He doesn't make sense. He never seems to accept that attachments are forbidden. You teach him the ways of the Jedi, but he doesn't learn. And yet?he makes you laugh, feeling amusement and joy in ways you've never felt it before or thought possible. He's full of life, so vibrant, so bright. And for however many times he hurts you with that inevitable phrase, Qui-Gon would have, it's obvious he cares about you. The way he acts when you get hurt, the way he rushes to your rescue as though you're the Padawan, not the Master. He cares about you, and you can't find it in yourself to explicitly state that he shouldn't, because eventually?you start to care about him as well, until you're at the point where you can't imagine a life without him, leaving you wondering how you let that happen.

This just really got to me.