[for Obi-Wan (with special guest Nathan)]

[fifthbeatle]

It happens sometimes, though Vanya doesn't necessarily want people to know.

She's not ashamed -- not of him, anyway. As is usually the case, any shame is her own, about what she is and what she might be versus who she wants to be. Most people can fuck up in their lives and stand back on their own two feet with minimal damage. Not Vanya, powered instrument of destruction, taught nothing about the truth of her life and how to live with it. She has her family's enduring support. Still, sometimes she can see it so clearly: that little flick of fear behind their eyes. They're not scared of her, but of what she might do without meaning to. She does her best not to use her powers around them, save for the ripples of power that surge when she plays music. It's just a whisper of wind, sometimes just a feeling. To her, it brings a sense of unparalleled rightness. Pushed too far, the feeling becomes something else, something terrifying -- and that feels right, sometimes, too. But she can never tell her family that. Why share knowledge that would only make them afraid?

Nathan is not afraid. Nathan is - and she believes this with the gentlest, most complete fondness in her heart - an idiot. He doesn't know that her powers ended the world (almost twice), but he knows she's afraid of what she can do. Still, he treats her like his favorite roller coaster, hitting her up whenever he's ready to take flight for no reason. Immortality affords him this idiocy. Maybe he's not the best person in the world, but he trusts her and she can be honest with him. Her powers have a way of making him happy. There is no end to the value in that. And she can't hurt him.

She got close once, when the space between her potential and her control widened too far, and she started to take. Not enough time passed to kill him. Nathan didn't even seem to notice. Like the most precious drill sergeant to ever goad a nuclear bomb, he'd only barked at her for dropping him. Anger pressed itself into her chest, but she breathed. And stared at Nathan with clear, cold eyes. And breathed. He didn't seem to notice he was in danger. What a great and terrifying thing.

They're at a different park today, one with slightly less trees for Nathan to get tangled up in. Visibility is better, too. Less safe for Vanya, but probably a better view for Nathan. It's okay. This has been going on long enough, doing it safe enough that she's managed to forget it's wrong. They're just two friends chatting in a park about life, about Darrow, about nothing in particular as one of them suspends the other in the air and tosses him around.

"Are you done yet?" Vanya asks, the smallest, fondest smile on her face. Looking up at him, her skin extra pale, colorless eyes following his trajectory, she feels oddly content.

Comments

[larger_world]

"Just a walk," he answers, looking at Vanya with a barely restrained expression of amusement. "Are you expecting me to scold you?"

It seems as though she is. Obi-Wan is not the right man for it, certainly not in this situation and maybe not at all. While he is happy to offer guidance and advice, he failed his own Padawan to the extent that undid the entire Galactic Senate, undid the democracy they had been working so hard to protect. Anakin's powers are ones Obi-Wan understands completely and still he had failed.

He won't presume to be the one scolding Vanya for using powers he can't possibly begin to wrap his mind around.

[fifthbeatle]

"A little," Vanya undercuts, freeing a hand to tuck some hair behind an ear before placing it back in her coat pocket. Obi-Wan looks the Jedi equivalent of ready to burst out laughing, which makes Vanya laugh.

"This may come as a surprise to you, but I am not used to understanding." Of course, it will be no surprise to him at all. Putting the obvious influence of her father aside, she explains, "musicians and music teachers aren't known for their patience, either."

There's another matter, something she can never find the right words to talk about. What is the right way to practice with powers that can devastate? When she finds herself wanting destruction sometimes, too?

[larger_world]

"I'm not much of one for scolding regardless, but it would be a little hypocritical of me, given just how far I once threw Plo Koon during our training," he answers, giving Vanya an easy smile.

"Because training is necessary," he says. "For Jedi and for you. Even if this may not be the most traditional way in which to do so, I can't say it isn't working for you. Especially if your friend is a willing participant who can't really be injured by your powers. It seems to me you're doing the best you can."

Obi-Wan's gaze goes to where Nathan has disappeared and says, "He's an interesting fellow."

[fifthbeatle]

Vanya laughs again, more subdued the more she settles into the comfort of not being a disappointment. She thinks better of it and asks, "they were okay, right?" She imagines so, since Obi-Wan dropped this little nugget of a memory like it was no big deal.

More of that increasingly familiar, welcome content warms through her. She's not sure there are words for how grateful she is for Obi-Wan's infinite patience, his gentle strength. All she can do is murmur quick thanks and regard him with a fond little smile.

"Nathan's one in a million," Vanya agrees, glancing back toward where he'd just been before. "Even without powers." Not like Vanya, who was a drop in a bucket of average before she knew who she was. It seems like so long ago and yet, just new.

[larger_world]

"Plo Koon?" Obi-Wan asks, then smiles, quick and bright. "Oh, he was fine. A bit sore for a few days, but he certainly repaid me a few weeks later and we were only... eight or nine at the time. Children tend to bounce back a little quicker, don't they?"

Master Yoda, on the other hand, hadn't been especially pleased with young Obi-Wan, who had a tendency to bend the rules until they almost snapped just before backing off and claiming innocence. The rules he broke were the ones no one tended to realize.

"He felt... chaotic," he says. "Your friend, that is. Like a storm of selfishness and selflessness all at the same time. A dangerous combination, were he a Jedi."

[fifthbeatle]

"Usually," Vanya agrees, unable to keep that tinge of melancholy from her voice. The children she taught were resilient, but she never treated them the way she'd been treated at their age. How well did Klaus bounce back? Or Ben? God, she wishes she could stop thinking about him and how everything feels like that rainy evening all over again every time she catches a glimpse of his open door down the hallway.

"Chaotic is a good word to describe him." Selfish, too. Vanya hasn't seen much selflessness, but she supposes she hasn't been given the chance. Would Nathan stick his neck out for her if she asked him to?

Trick question: Vanya would never ask. She may have built up the confidence to take space in public, but she is no closer to asking for help from anyone that isn't a Hargreeves (or in her present company).

"He's handsome. Reminds me of someone, but I can't figure out who."

[larger_world]

"Hmm, he did seem very familiar and yet..."

Obi-Wan trails off, smiling a little. It surprises him less than it might someone else, likely because he's seen his own face here in Darrow, in Dan, and Harley had mentioned a man in her life, too, who looked just like him.

"Young, though," he says. "He can't be much older than Anakin, if he is at all." And somehow Anakin seems like much more of an adult, but he has been on the serious side since he was a child.

[fifthbeatle]

Vanya doesn't respond, at first. She doesn't know a lot about Anakin: only who he is to him and that he's in Darrow. Anything else is conjecture. It seems like there is something fraught about their relationship, but Vanya's never asked, like she is tempted to do now.

"Anakin who you trained, right?" Vanya ventures. She laughs. "Can you imagine training Nathan?" Lightsabers for dicks and a lot of bitching, no doubt. It's funny to imagine, as long as they're saying this side of serious.

[larger_world]

"Yes, I trained Anakin," Obi-Wan answers with a nod. "Though not only me. When the Jedi are young, they live and learn at the temple on Coruscant. They're taught by many of the Jedi who have come before them and once they're of a certain age, if they've become proficient, they're chosen by Jedi Masters as Padawan."

But it was always going to be the case that Anakin was his Padawan. Obi-Wan had promised Qui-Gon, after all.

He smiles a little and says, "Oh, I don't think our friend Nathan would be cut out to be a Jedi."

[fifthbeatle]

"You chose him," Vanya extrapolates thoughtfully. Instead of keeping her thoughts to herself, she reports them to Obi-Wan. "I can't imagine what The Umbrella Academy would have been like if it had been run more like the Jedi Academy. With, like, real teachers and measurable results. Instead of a robot programmed by an absent father figure." Mom, as many called her. Vanya finds it difficult to call her that, just as she finds it troublesome to recall Pogo's place in her young life. She hates him with the same blind rage that hates Reginald. Obviously.

All three of them are gone now, two of them by Vanya's hand. The worst days aren't the ones when she misses them: they're the ones where she's sure she'd do that much all over again.

[larger_world]

"I believe Anakin was always meant to be my Padawan. I promised my Master I would train him as he died," Obi-Wan admits. "I think, even if I hadn't, I would have wanted to. Anakin was... is special. One of the most powerful Force users I have ever encountered, but he was and still is prone to outbursts of anger, which is very dangerous for someone with such great power."

Obi-Wan tilts his head slightly and says, "I don't believe your father had any interest in shaping people who would be fulfilled, happy, and skilled, to be quite honest. With the way you and your siblings speak of him, it seems as if he wanted a team to make himself look good because of his achievements."

[fifthbeatle]

It's difficult not to relate to this person she doesn't know as he's described. It makes her wonder what he's capable of, what he's done. She would like to meet someone like that, just to know they exist. She may not be the most powerful -- from what she'd seen of Dad's journal and what's happened with Klaus in Darrow, many of the Hargreeves have powers they've yet to discover -- but she's the most careless. Vanya is the least equipped and the most likely to cause devastation of them all. Did people say the same thing about Anakin? What happened?

"That tracks," she says of her father with a small, apologetic smile. She's had enough therapy to have stopped wondering why their father did the things he did. What she can never seem to stop wondering about is how or why she was born, and what poor, unsuspecting person she could more rightly call Mom is like.