"I'm quite fine, Anakin," he pauses. "Have you ever heard that a watched pot never boils?"

Anakin's eyebrows scrunch together. "No?"

"Well, I suppose I never got around to teaching you how to cook, did I."

"You don't know how to cook, master."

"Precisely why I never could have taught you... Basically, it means if you stare at a pot, waiting for the water to boil, it will not boil before your eyes."

This doesn't seem to clear up anything for the young knight. He leans his elbows on his knees. "Wait, but isn't boiling just when water--"

"What I mean, Anakin," Obi-Wan looks back down at his datapad to avoid the gaze of his former padawan. "is that if you insist on hanging around me all day in case I collapse again, or start breaking down or whatever it is you think I'm going to do, it is likely it won't happen."

The young knight folds his arms across his chest, leaning back on the desk chair. "I'm not waiting for you to collapse, Master."

"Then why in blazes are you following me around like loth kitten?" his tone comes out harsher than he intended. He looks at Anakin, hoping to salvage his outburst, but he can see from the way his shoulders sag and his gaze flickers away that the damage has been done already.

"Anakin, I didn't mean--"

"No, I heard you loud and clear, Master. I'll leave you alone," he says bitterly, slamming the paperweight down on the desk and marching toward the door. He doesn't look back before leaving in a huff, even going as far as using the Force to slam the automatic door behind him.

Always the dramatics with that one.

He sighs, not intending to upset Anakin who was obviously just worried for him-- especially since Ahsoka was sent on a solo mission to a peace conference on Carlac. He's been looking for distractions. Obi-Wan stands, deciding to go after him and apologize for the ill-mannered comment. He'd honestly missed the company of having a padawan with him all the time.

As he gets to the door, his commlink rings. A message from Cody telling him to come to the bridge. Duty calls.

____________________

Anakin is yelling.

He's yelling with the tone of pure anger, but when Obi-Wan looks at him, there is a softness in his eyes more akin to a scared child than a pissed-off general. If Obi-Wan is being honest, the tone and body language of his padawan is really the only thing he can assess right now. Anakin is yelling about something, and Obi-Wan knows exactly what, but the words are like static hitting his brain. For a moment, he even questioned if Anakin had switched to Huttese in the midst of his tantrum. But he knows Huttese (to a degree) and his lack of comprehension is more of a testament to the short-circuiting going on in his brain, not a slip of tongue.

All Obi-Wan can really hear is the sound of his own heartbeat. Pounding in his ear, vibrating through his fingers and toes. He keeps looking at his wrists, wondering if he can see the pulsation pressing against the walls of his arteries, or if it's all in his head.

It's not until Anakin's gloved prosthetic hand clamps down on his shoulder that he looks up from the blank wall he was staring at and the world comes back into focus. He's sitting on his bed, his former padawan staring at him with those big blue eyes.

He's not yelling anymore. He's scanning over Obi-Wan's face as though the goings-on in his mind are written across it in Aurebesh. As Anakin's anger reaches a lull, the Force lets out a sigh of relief.

"Master, this isn't you," Anakin says softly.

"I don't know what you could possibly--"

"You could have killed yourself!" his voice cracks, and he withdraws his hand from Obi-Wan's shoulder, sitting back on his feet. "Don't even try to tell me you're fine because I can see the Force exhaustion. I knew you were self-sacrificing but this--"

"They were going to die, Anakin." Their mission was sidetracked. Hikers in the mountains near their base camp were caught in an avalanche. Obi-Wan could feel that they were near, that they needed help, so he made a decision. "That is what we are meant to do as Jedi, help people."

Anakin's anger is revitalized. "The informant got away. We lost our window--"

"We saved lives."

"That information would have saved thousands of lives."

"And we will get another chance," Obi-Wan stands, feeling talked down to from his seat. His vision swims as he walks toward his desk, subtly gripping the back of his chair to settle himself.

"That's not even why I'm mad."

Obi-Wan turns to him, raising an eyebrow. "Then what is this all about, Anakin?"

Anakin laughs sardonically. "You really don't see it? This is what I'm talking about, you have been acting so weird since Zygerria, and the council didn't listen to me--"

"Anakin..."

"The healing! Force, you would have killed me if I ever did something like that."

He turns back to the desk, staring down at his knuckles white from the exertion of trying to keep himself upright. Hmmm... right. The Force healing.

The hikers were in bad shape. He was worried they wouldn't make it off the mountain. Obi-Wan is no healer, but he knows a few tricks. Enough for some emergency battlefield medicine.

So he helped heal a few hikers. Ensured they would live to make it on the medevac that was still a little ways away.

"I just had to make sure they were stable enough for the airlift," he replies, his voice tight. "I don't see what the big deal is. We have a few days in hyperspace, and I will be good as new for the next mission."

Anakin sighs. His anger has deflated once again. "That's the thing, Master, I don't-- for Force's sake will you sit down?"

Obi-Wan hadn't noticed he was shaking until he opened his eyes (he also didn't notice he had closed his eyes) and saw the violent tremor going through his body. He slips down into the desk chair as a wave of exhaustion hits him.

"This is just proving my point. I don't think everything is going to be okay. You've never done this before."

"Heal people in need?"

"Jeopardize the mission. Botch it even."

"Nobody is perfect, Anakin."

"Yeah, but I've known you for a decade and you're pretty damn close," he rifles his hand through his dark hair. "Master, the way you've been acting... it's been scaring me. You're taking risks that are putting yourself in danger, and don't even seem to realize it. I don't know exactly what happened on Kadavo, but I did read Rex's report--"

"We are peacekeepers," Obi-Wan blurts out, his voice shakey and thick. "Servants of the public, so why in blazes is it so outrageous to save the lives of people who need us? It's our duty-- our true duty as Jedi, after all, and yet-- Anakin, you must remember how things used to be? When you were very young and before there was all this war and the imbalance in the Force. We helped people."

His words hang heavy in the air. Not as eloquent as he'd prefer, but the emotion bubbling in his chest isn't allowing for such permissions.

"We help people by fighting this war, too," the knight says carefully. "We fight so they have their freedom."

"Perhaps, but it's a distraction. And the Togruta people suffered the consequences of the order spread thin." There's bitterness in his tone. Anakin stares at him, his eyebrows raising and lips parting ever so slightly.

"Master..." he steps forward, his tone low and careful. "The people the slavers killed... it wasn't your fault."

Anakin's words echo in his head, but like his tangent earlier, they don't seem to stick. Obi-Wan folds his hands together to mask their shake. "I only wanted to help-- I wanted to help them, but anytime I--" he chokes, covering his mouth with his hand to suppress the sob that tries to escape. "They murdered them because of me. To torture me. I couldn't even look at them-- oh Anakin, I only wanted to help."

When Obi-Wan breaks, Anakin is there. He wraps his arms around him, tucking his head under his chin. He cries for the first time since they were pulled out of that hellhole. Open mouth, undignified crying that he is eternally thankful is occurring in the privacy of his quarters.

He watched so many die. All to drive down his will. The slavers knew exactly what they were doing. No combination of beatings and whippings and hard labor would ever have shattered him as thoroughly as watching the light flicker out of those innocent eyes. There was nothing he could do because if he did, they would only kill more.

The Force flows through all living things, binds and unifies the galaxy together in one energy field, and Obi-Wan holds the power to this at his fingertips. But no amount of power, no amount of training and practice in wielding the Force could stop those lives from being lost so meaninglessly. That feeling of powerlessness cut him straight to the bone.

"I wanted to help those hikers," Obi-Wan says into the fabric of Anakin's robes, "because I was there. Because they needed help and I... I just needed-- I needed to do something."

It was worth it. No matter what Anakin or the council says, it was worth it. Losing the asset, the Force Exhaustion, all of it. Six lives were saved. It does not make up for the Togruta lives that were taken because life itself is not an exchangeable currency-- but it's six lives. Intel is retrievable. He will work overtime to make up for what his actions lost in that mission, but he will not apologize for his decision.

Anakin is speaking softly, saying the same thing over and over. "It wasn't your fault."  He has the fabric of Obi-Wan's cloak balled up in his fists, his body at an obviously uncomfortable angle, but he shows no sign of moving anytime soon. It makes him feel guilty that his padawan has to see him like this. He is meant to be the mentor and caregiver, but here he is sobbing into Anakin's chest.

He knows Anakin doesn't mind. He can feel it in the Force despite his exhaustion. Along with the soothing feelings he sends, there is a quiet undertone of validation in his former padawan's mind. Relief. Worry. Love. The realization nearly makes him start bawling all over again.

When he collapsed in the hallway, his body was the part of him that had broken. He was exhausted and in pain and it became too much. But now, his whip marks are healed and the infections are cleared. It's his mind that has caught up.