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The tiny red light flickered against the wall. It danced around the crease with the floor, shot quickly up to the ceiling, and warily settled around knee-height.
It waited for one long, baited breath, and then...
THUD.
Obi-Wan was rather surprised that such a tiny body could make so much noise. But there the kit was, sandy brown ears twitching with anticipation as he carefully lifted one of his hands from the wall, sharp little kitten nails flexing as he examined his palm. The kit frowned and made a whiny mewl of displeasure when he was unable to spot his quarry.
But then his ears perked up and his tail froze as he laid eyes on it again – this time, the red dot was bouncing around the floor only a scant few steps away. The kit fell still, his whole body silently tensing as it prepared for the burst of movement and then-
Anakin's pouncing skills were truly admirable. Obi-Wan wasn't sure if it was normal for a lothchild to achieve quite so much height at such a young age, but then, he had nothing to compare to, and Anakin had already proven himself to be exceptional in most things.
Did he necessarily have to jump his own body height into the air just to pounce on a laser dot two feet away from him? No, but Anakin was already showing a certain flair for the theatrical.
"I almost got it!" Anakin cried out as he checked his hands again, a healthy combination of proud and frustrated. He had told Obi-Wan rather haughtily the first time they played this game that he knew that he couldn't actually catch the laser dot – stars, he wasn't a kitten, Obi-Wan – but that it "made his brain happy to hunt it."
Obi-Wan would do anything he could to make Anakin happy, even if that meant spending hours every day directing a laser pointer around the room for his young – far too young – Padawan to chase. He'd never much been a fan of flying, but flying blind like this was far worse. Within the same moment he had lost his mentor, become a knight, and gained not only a student of his own, but the most powerful and controversial Padawan learner in recent or distant memory.
And that wasn't even taking into account his lothchild heritage – and the fact that, according to Qui-Gon's reports, the boy's mother was a perfectly average baseline human, and swore profusely that no father was involved in her son's conception – lothchild or otherwise.
"I guess the Force wanted its Chosen One to have cute ears and a fluffy tail," Master Windu had said sardonically.
Truly, Anakin was going to have to deal with enough scrutiny already with his allegedly divine provenance and frightfully powerful Force presence. It made Obi-Wan's temples throb just imagining the hardships the boy would have to face due to his...more visible differences.
Lothchildren weren't entirely unheard of, but they were rare and exceptional enough that many in less populous or well-connected areas thought they were a fable. Most sentients could go their entire lives without ever encountering one, and with good reason – the ones who didn't keep themselves and their families hidden and well-protected often found themselves as an attractive target for slavers. Given their rarity, lothchildren were a status symbol for the wealthy and bored, who would often veil their purchase of kits as becoming their "benefactors," as if they were patrons to a struggling artist.
It was still a better fate than whatever would have eventually befallen Anakin as a slave on Tatooine. Honestly, Obi-Wan was surprised that his new Padawan was as bright and chipper as he was, given the horrors he'd faced in his young life.
Horrors that, according to Anakin, hadn't quite ended when he'd arrived at the Jedi Temple.
"They keep trying to step on my tail!" he'd hissed earlier today as he'd thrown himself onto the sofa next to Obi-Wan and proceeded to attempt to burrow into his side as if he could build a den in his robes. He'd butted his head roughly against Obi-Wan's shoulder while holding his own tail in his lap, hands stroking fretfully along the long, sandy fur.
Today had been Anakin's first day of classes with his agemates, and apparently some of them needed further education in diversity and respecting each other's bodies. They were certainly at an age where they knew not to touch another's lekku or other "different" body parts – surely they could understand that Anakin's ears and tail were no different?
"They know better," Anakin had grumbled darkly when Obi-Wan voiced this thought aloud. Obi-Wan hated to speak poorly of Anakin's classmates, lest he further the boy's disdain for the concept of his classes in general (it had been a battle enough just to get him to detach from Obi-Wan's side today to attend classes in the first place), but he couldn't say that he disagreed, and so he said nothing at all.
Instead, when Anakin headbutted his arm again, Obi-Wan gave in and placed a tentative palm on top of his hair. This was apparently the correct decision, as Anakin leaned heavily into the touch, rubbing against Obi-Wan's hand and twisting until Obi-Wan's fingers were forced to drag along the downy fur of one tufted ear. After a moment Obi-Wan relented and began carefully stroking and scratching along the ear, and Anakin made a happy chirping noise and sighed, slumping into Obi-Wan's side like one touch to his ears had drained the fight from him.
It was a display of trust that still humbled Obi-Wan to his core. The confirmed knowledge of lothchildren as a species was woefully sparse and full of superstitions and folklore, but a general consensus was that they were by nature a secretive and distrustful species – a necessary adaptation given how many other sentients sought to use them. Most who attempted to live in larger societies would take steps to hide their true natures, keeping ears and tails hidden underneath modest clothing and filing down their claws. The eyes with their uncanny slitted pupils were more difficult to hide, but with medical interventions and basic cloaking devices, it wasn't impossible.
But those with kits usually sequestered themselves away from outsiders, forming cloisters that could protect their young children from those who might seek to harm them.
Obi-Wan might have thought that Anakin, growing up without a lothchild parent, may have simply failed to inherit this instinct for secrecy and distrust due to lack of exposure to others of his kind, if he hadn't witnessed his Padawan hissing as ferociously as a nine year old could the first time a crèchemaster attempted to so much as pat him on the head.
"I swear I wasn't trying to touch his ears!" she'd protested to Obi-Wan, clutching her faintly bleeding hand to her chest – the thin, parallel scratches perfectly matching Anakin's claws.
"I know," Obi-Wan had said, both to the crèchemaster and to the angry kitten in his arms who continued to hiss at her while half-burying his face in Obi-Wan's neck.
He'd carted a still-pouting Anakin to the archives with him that day, and they'd spent many an hour pouring over any and all records Master Nu could locate on lothchildren – well, Obi-Wan read, while Anakin sat on the floor under their table intermittently rolling around a small rubber ball that Quinlan had gifted him or batting at Obi-Wan's boots.
"I don't know how to read," Anakin had snarked when Obi-Wan had offered him a storybook about lothchildren – perhaps entertaining if not entirely factual.
Obi-Wan raised an unimpressed brow. "I've seen you read droid manuals. I know you know how to read Basic; you just don't like to read things that don't interest you."
Anakin had shrugged like that was the exact same thing. "Why do I need to read some boring old stories to tell me about myself when I already know who I am?"
And it was that question, though sulkily delivered, that had given Obi-Wan something of an epiphany.
Sure, he was a researcher by nature, always eager to learn, to seek out new information, and certainly he wished he'd had more time to prepare for the task of taking on a child when truthfully he sometimes still felt like one himself.
But Anakin had a point: what was the purpose in exploring shoddy and often fabricated information on a reclusive species that took extra lengths to mislead others in order to keep themselves safe, when a member of the species was right in front of him, ready and more than willing to tell Obi-Wan what he needed? True, Anakin was an anomaly even for his own species given his upbringing and Force ability, but that just spoke even more to the importance of letting Anakin tell them what was good for him, instead of making assumptions based off of legends.
With that goal in mind, Obi-Wan had ceded some control to Anakin, allowing his Padawan to tell him about how he saw himself.
"I'm a really good hunter," Anakin had said excitedly, peering at Obi-Wan over the top of a dining chair in their quarters and then springing over the back of it as if in example of his prowess. "I was always really good at finding food for me and mom, even when nobody else could, because I have the best ears and I could hear the bugs moving under the sand and they couldn't."
The bugs. That had been. Well, it was a learning experience for Obi-Wan, but the more Anakin spoke the more he learned that this was perhaps not only a lothchild thing but a Tatooine staple. Granted, according to Anakin his mother refused to eat insects raw (he said this with a moue of distaste and utter disbelief), but she could cook them into some excellent stews and curries.
Obi-Wan couldn't say it was something he'd considered trying before, but for his Padawan, he could make the effort. They'd have to be very cooked and very dead and not look like insects anymore, but he could try it.
(If Anakin rooted around in the soil whenever they visited the Temple gardens, Obi-Wan would avert his eyes and respond with appropriate praise and enthusiasm whenever he heard Anakin's cries of victory. It was important to encourage a child's achievements and natural instincts, even if he didn't share in them.)
Of course, Anakin couldn't just limit his hunting to tracking dust motes in the sunlight or creeping after loose spiders in the corners of their quarters. Without appropriate diversions, he started hunting people.
It sounded much worse than it actually was, even if Master Mundi bemoaned it endlessly the one and only time Anakin managed to quite literally get the drop on him.
"He's such a big target," Anakin had protested as Obi-Wan hauled him away, profusely apologizing over his shoulder. Surely if he walked quickly enough he could just pretend that the whole thing never happened. "His head is so shiny!"
"And when you've felt the urge to pounce on me at least thrice a day for the past week?"
Anakin rolled his eyes and went limp in Obi-Wan's arms, a dramatic protest for the injustices against him.
"That's different."
"How so? Does my hair shine too much for you?"
He didn't like the way Anakin had perked up, eyes narrowing as he assessed Obi-Wan's hair that had barely grown out of its own Padawan cut.
"Don't answer that," Obi-Wan hastily amended.
Anakin made a production of rolling his eyes again, but this time he snuggled into Obi-Wan's hold, rubbing his cheek against Obi-Wan's hair.
"You're different," he muttered, and Obi-Wan attempted not to flinch as he was decidedly sniffed. "You're clan."
In the many years that followed, Obi-Wan never actually did find out if the concept of clans was true for all lothchildren, or was simply a concept that Anakin had created to put words to his urge to identify and be close to people that he instinctually viewed as "his."
There were legends of lothchildren having clowders like their lothcat counterparts, but Obi-Wan figured it was probably more than a little offensive to compare a sentient's family structure to that of an animal. Anakin's concept of a clan was somehow both broader and more intense than the concept of a family. His mother, he had explained, was both his family and his clan. His friend Kitster back on Tatooine was also clan, and he was like a brother to Anakin, but he had a family of his own and was not a part of Anakin's family.
Yet both Shmi Skywalker and Kitster Banai were, in Anakin's eyes, permanently and unequivocally his.
Anakin was more than a little possessive of his belongings. Growing up in a slave community, he had a well-developed sense of sharing for the greater good, for helping a friend or neighbor in need when you had nothing yourself, but he also had a very distinct mental line delineating those who deserved to be shared with and those who did not. And he jealously guarded his own meager belongings from his agemates, who decidedly did not deserve to be shared with.
So far it had been an uphill battle to keep Anakin from swiping his claws at an agemate who took his favorite (communal) training saber, and yet Obi-Wan had to pile Anakin's plates with double the food that the Temple healers had recommended for him, because Anakin would inevitably try to share at least half of every meal with Obi-Wan, regardless of what Obi-Wan put on his own plate.
"You're clan," he'd scoffed with a ubiquitous eye roll. "I have to take care of you because you're so bad at it."
Quinlan and Bant had made similar comments about Obi-Wan's ability to care for himself, but that didn't mean he wanted to hear it parroted by a nine year old who ate live insects and became agitated that Obi-Wan wouldn't allow him in the refresher with him while he showered "to make sure you don't drown."
Because, as Obi-Wan had rapidly discovered, somehow in their rather brief acquaintance, Obi-Wan had not only become clan, but he had also become family. And to add insult to injury, as if Obi-Wan didn't already have enough stress about his failure to properly teach his Padawan about the dangers of attachment, Anakin also saw himself as the leader of this clan.
"You're nine," Obi-Wan had said, maybe with a little more of a protesting whine in his voice than he'd have liked. "You're a child. I take care of you."
Anakin had snorted into his breakfast and given Obi-Wan the most condescendingly paternal smile that a nine year old had ever worn. "Of course you do."
He patted Obi-Wan's hand.
How could anyone expect him to work under these conditions?
The more that Obi-Wan allowed Anakin to take charge in their relationship, to tell him what he needed from Obi-Wan, the more that Anakin's confidence flourished and the more agreeable he was to settling into life at the Temple. It was how Obi-Wan had finally convinced him to spend a day in classes, away from Obi-Wan for the first extended period of time since he'd arrived.
But ceding that control also meant that the nine year old thought he was in charge, and Obi-Wan wasn't quite sure how to set that straight.
"Have you never met a lothcat before?" Quinlan had laughed when Obi-Wan groused to him about it. Maybe that was his own mistake, thinking to go to Quinlan for advice, but Aayla was only a few years older than Anakin, and as much as Obi-Wan hated to admit it, she was extremely well-adjusted for a Padawan assigned to Quinlan of all people.
"That's an offensive comparison," Obi-Wan pointed out, but he was summarily ignored.
"They always think they're in charge," Quinlan continued. "They think they take care of you, but you know you're the one taking care of them. He's just a kid, it's cute that he wants to look out for you. Give him the little stuff, let him feel like he's taking care of you so he can get his confidence up, and then, you know."
"Secretly be in charge?" Obi-Wan asked dryly.
Quinlan smirked. "Be the adult."
That was so much easier said than done, when Obi-Wan barely felt like the Jedi Knight he allegedly was.
The laser pointer trick had been an accidental discovery. A fortuitous one, perhaps the most important one Obi-Wan had ever made, but purely an accident. Truthfully it was probably more Anakin's discovery, but it was Obi-Wan who had made it into a game, and so he was going to take credit for it and for all of the headaches it had saved him.
Anakin had begun hoarding old machinery and droid parts the moment he realized that he had a space to himself to store all of his belongings, and it wasn't uncommon for him to drag Obi-Wan to the Temple engineers' workshops to harass them for old or discarded parts. On the way back to their quarters from one of these trips, Anakin had fumbled the box he was carrying, straining under the weight of his haul. The motion had jostled the parts and triggered a small red laser light affixed to one of the droids, apparently intended to be used as a guide to keep materials level during building.
It had only taken one glance of that red light off of the corridor wall and Anakin was flinging the box on the floor and diving after the light's trail.
Was it opportune for this to happen in the middle of a hallway, surrounded by other Jedi who may have happened to get in the way of Anakin's "hunt"? No, but Obi-Wan was past caring who was screaming or crying this time about getting pounced or scratched, because he now had something worth its weight in kyber: a quick, easy, healthy way to distract his Padawan.
And so now, every time Anakin was upset, or anxious, or filled with aimless energy and a desire to race in rapid circles around their small quarters and dive off of ever piece of furniture at the same time, Obi-Wan would pull out a little laser light and make it dance on the floors around Anakin and everything would be forgotten but hunting that bouncing red light.
Seeing how happy it made Anakin, how his face would turn red with excitement and exertion, how he'd be well and truly tired out afterwards and finally sleep through the night without waking up screaming or shaking from night terrors – Obi-Wan would be willing to spend days playing with that laser pointer for those results.
It meant that he was doing an okay job at this raising a Padawan thing. He was keeping his kid happy. He was being the adult, even if the nine year old insisted that he was the leader of their "clan."
"Obi-Wan?"
He startled as Anakin's ears appeared in the top of his vision as his Padawan climbed the sofa behind Obi-Wan and curled over the top of his head, making eye-contact upside down. Thin, callused fingers – nails carefully retracted – prodded at his cheeks.
"You forgot my light," Anakin chided, but the scolding was completely ruined by the fond way he rubbed his cheeks over Obi-Wan's hair. Sure enough, Obi-Wan had let the laser pointer turn off in his rumination, and it lay uselessly in his hand.
"Oh, I apologize, dear one," he mumbled. He rubbed a hand over his own face, only to have Anakin grab hold of his hand so that he could rub his cheeks over Obi-Wan's palm as well. "I could never forget you."
Anakin hummed, sounding far more pleased and content than he had when Obi-Wan retrieved him from his final class of the day. It made something warm settle low in Obi-Wan's chest, something he wasn't quite ready to release into the Force.
"Of course not. We're clan; we take care of each other."
He climbed the rest of the way over the sofa, unceremoniously curling himself into his favorite spot against Obi-Wan's side as his hands were already reaching for some droid part to fidget with, and Obi-Wan was helpless to do more than to watch the proceedings, feeling like his chest was so tight he could barely breathe.
"Yes," he said quietly, breathlessly, "Yes, I suppose we do."