Fourth part of work in progress: "Waking to Dream"
Title: Waking to Dream
Pairing: Anakin/Obi-Wan and Ewan/Hayden (if you sort of squint)
Rating: Uhm, probably R-ish???
Disclaimer: I own neither the lovely boys from Star Wars nor the gorgeous actors who play them, more's the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary voice that sounds like Hayden muttering away in the back of my brain and an often incomprehensible and yet mesmeric voice that sounds like Ewan who keeps interrupting when Hayden's talking and naters away at me whenever Hayden decides to act shy and clams up, which the brat does entirely too often . . .
Summary: Hayden may dream as Anakin and prefer those dreams to the nightmare he feels his life has become, but Ewan's so busy trying to daydream of a way to figure out Hayden and the way he feels about him that he's not adjusting very well to dreaming as Obi-Wan
Author’s Note: Sorry, but no beta yet -- just spellcheck and grammatik. And yes, I know, I know, it's not nearly done yet. Sorry, y'all! And I'm sorry it's split up into three pieces too, but it's already too long for one continuous post, according to the lj. In case anybody's wondering, this is the companion piece for "Dreaming to Wake" (Hayden's point of view) and I'm so busy revising it that I'm having a hard time getting anything done with Ewan's piece. Reviews and feedback are nice, but like I said, it's not nearly done, so please don't be upset if it takes me awhile to get back to you. I do read all comments and try to respond . . . eventually! OH! I almost forgot! I've been trying to stick with Canadian/British style spelling, so if anyone catches any obvious Americanisms, PLEASE point them out so that I can fix them!
You’re this close to panicking. Your body has so utterly betrayed you that you almost can’t control yourself for even the tiny amount of time it takes to get yourself turned around and back to your own door. Just the thought of him is enough to drive you to the brink, and you’re terrified that you aren’t going to make it back to your rooms in time and somebody’s going to see you, rushing away from Hayden’s suite with your sleep-pants clinging to you wetly. It wasn’t even this hard to keep control when you were a teenager! You barely make it inside before your release unhinges your knees and you hit the carpet hard, the rapidly spreading patch of wetness on your stomach running down your thighs as you huddle on the floor, so completely mortified that you want to cry. You so desperately want to either cry or lash out, to hit yourself or to punch something, maybe even break something, and you’re not like this, you know you’re not like this, and what the hell is wrong with you? You’d think you’d been drugged or something if you didn’t know any better, but of course you do know better, even if you don’t understand, and that makes it even worse. You don’t, you can’t, understand this, and if you’ve ever felt so ashamed before, you certainly don’t remember it. You’d have a full blown case of the hysterics if you thought it would do any good. Which it wouldn’t, of course, because you aren’t like that either, you don’t do stupid shite like that, you don’t have temper tantrums or meltdowns or any other such equally absurd and overblown displays of emotion. You aren’t one of those ridiculously egotistical yet incredibly brittle Hollywood diva star types and you never have been, you’ve never even been tempted to indulge in such naff behaviour and you sure as hell weren’t planning on starting to act like such a gobdaw now. Which only makes this already bloody nearly intolerable situation that much more awful, because you feel awfully damn close to genuine hysteria at the moment.
It takes way too much time for you to finally get a hold of yourself enough to get up, get cleaned up, and get dressed. And by the time you’re dressed, your body’s recovered enough that certain parts are starting to rebel again. You’re so angry that you almost rip the button off your jeans, but when you close your hand around yourself with deliberately punishing force, your mind flashes back to your dream - "Am I hurting you? Master, am I - ?" - and all you manage to accomplish is instant orgasm. You can’t even punish yourself for wanting Hayden without making things worse! You’d laugh, but you’re afraid you’d just end up crying.
Things pretty much go downhill from there.
When there’s no answer after five minutes of fairly steady knocking - you’d shout his name through the door but you don’t want to wake anyone else up - you’re forced to give up and go in. Hayden’s buried under the bedclothes, burrowed under them so far that only his head from the chin up and the grasping fingers of his right hand, tangled over the edge of the duvet - well, bedspread, actually. This is America, so it’s probably just a bedspread or a comforter, nothing so thick as a duvet, which is probably why Hayden’s snuggled so far under it - are visible. You try standing over him and saying his name, but he doesn’t even twitch. You’ve literally thrown your hands up and are about to grab him and shake him when you remember how badly bruised he probably is. Sighing, you redirect your hand away from his shoulder so that it lands gently on his face instead, and then you pat his cheek, repeating his name. He stirs then, a little, so you lean over a bit further and say his name again, a little bit louder, and when he opens his sleep-fogged eyes and blinks up at you muzzily, you immediately move your hand away from his face, hoping he’ll yawn and stretch and grumble at you and send you back to your room to wait for him and be so cranky about having to see a doctor that he won’t want to see you again after you get back and maybe you’ll be able to get your shite together then. But of course that’s not what happens. Because Hayden smiles and gives voice to a throaty murmur of "Master . . . ?" and then his arms are rising up out of the covers and he’s sitting up in bed, reaching out for you, and the next thing you know you’re being pulled down into the bed with him, one of his bare, golden-skinned arms wrapped around your neck and the other locked across your back and he smells so good and the warmth of his body against yours feels just so perfectly right that all you want to do is hold him right back and curl up next to him on the bed, that’s all, just be near to him like that and shut your eyes and drift off back to sleep with him so you can wake up like you’re supposed to, with him instead of alone, his arms and legs twining with yours, and -
What in the seven hells do you think you’re doing?!
You manage to jerk yourself back to reality by the skin of your teeth. Problem is, you literally jerk, as in jerk yourself up away from him. And it hurts him. Literally. And badly. You can tell by how suddenly his face drains of colour and how fully lucid his eyes so quickly become. He doesn’t make any noise, but you know you’ve hurt him. And when you see the bare expanse of his back as he awkwardly climbs up out of bed, when you see the way that the bruises are layered, one ugly mottled colour on top of another, across almost every inch of skin from his shoulders all the way down to where his spine curves away beneath where the waist of his loose sleeping-pants hangs, you want to kill yourself. You can’t get one of those pain pills out and into him and yourself back out of his suite so that he can get dressed in peace before you can manage to do anything else to hurt him (and you can preferably go and hit your head against something hard, several times, where no one else will notice) quickly enough to suit you. And yet, you’re such a lech that, by the time Hayden’s managed to get himself ready to go and come down to knock on your door, you still have to restrain yourself from shoving him back up against the door and attacking him with a kiss. He looks absolutely delectable, even in a loose-fitting old grey sweatsuit, and the way he’s smiling at you would unhinge your knees if you weren’t already sitting down. You had to take yourself in hand again not ten minutes ago - for the third time already this morning! - after leaving his room, and already you can feel your body wanting to react to him, ready to react to him. You have to bite back on a bitter laugh then not only because there’s no way you’d ever be able to come up with a way to explain it, but also because you’ve got a bad feeling that it would end up sounding like a sob. Hayden doesn’t seem to notice that anything’s wrong. In fact, Hayden just seems happy to see you, happy to be going somewhere with you - even if it is just for a unwanted visit to a doctor’s office. He’s already a bit fuzzy around the edges from the medicine, but the joy on his face is fairly clear. And you feel like such a selfish arsehole that you wish the ground would just open up and swallow you.
And that pretty much sets the tone for the way things end up going from then on, at least while you’re all still stuck at Skywalker Ranch, bonding. Hayden is almost always at least just a wee bit fuzzy around the edges from his pain pills, though the fuzziness seems to gradually grow a bit less after a few days - thankfully, whatever it is about that particular medicine that makes the boy act like he’s at least slightly drunk or high or both pretty much erases most of the details from that first day at the Ranch and the disastrous night out in Nicasio. Actually, Hayden loses a lot of details from the first three for four days he’s on the pills, but it’s that first night that you’re grateful for. Although he admits to vaguely remembering a piano, he has a hard time believing you when you mention that he played a beautiful version of "Your Song," and when you finally convince him of it he stammers and blushes and ducks his head in such an honest show of embarrassment that you’re positive he can’t remember what else happened that night - but he is always undeniably happy to see you, happy just to be in your company, and you can’t stop wanting him so much that it drives you to distraction and makes you ache for him ceaselessly. And to make matters worse, every single feckin’ night you keep on dreaming you’re Obi-Wan fucking Kenobi, and your dreams are so vividly real and richly detailed that every blamed time you wake up you still initially think that you’re him. Between being in love with and often being allowed to physically make love to Anakin Skywalker in your dreams and being increasingly sure that you will eventually give in and do something to show how much you’ve fallen in love with Hayden Christensen, it’s a wonder you don’t seriously hurt somebody, especially yourself. But Hayden is just so bloody innocent - ! Episode II is going to be his first venture into the Hollywood scene, and it’s just so obvious that Hayden is new and vulnerable to a fault that you hate yourself for thinking that you might do anything to spoil it, to ruin him. He acts as if he’s enthralled with you, sure, but then again, he’s pretty well taken with everyone, especially those who have what Hayden calls the "pose, grace, and control of more experienced actors." He asks everyone about everything and then he actually listens and believes it all, every single word uttered, as though if he listens hard enough, he can absorb some magic from those of you who are "more experienced." The boy’s so bloody innocent you can’t help but be charmed, even though you’re frankly also alarmed at the thought of Hayden being so trusting and having some unprincipled arse take advantage of him. You want so badly to shelter him and protect him from all of the ugliness of this crazy business and to tell him about the good things, to show him the ropes, but your conscience picks at you so much it’s a wonder you manage to be as coherent as you do around him. Unsurprisingly, being an actor does have some advantages, though since you’re in this cocked-up situation in the first place because of this particular bloody profession, it’s hard not to want to laugh at the how hard you’re having to draw on your creative talents just to get by in everyday situations that involve Hayden in any way, shape, or form.
To top it off, every now and again you catch Natalie looking at you strangely out of the corner of her eye. It makes you nervous as hell. You’re certain she can tell that something’s off with you, but other than rather earnestly informing you a time or three that if you ever feel a need to talk about anything, that she’ll always be there for you, she thankfully doesn’t say or do much of anything to act on whatever suspicions she might hold. Nobody else seems to notice or even suspect that anything’s wrong with you. Of course, no one else at your little enforced actors bonding retreat has really worked with you much before either, except for Sam (and you barely had any scenes with him at all in The Phantom Menace so you honestly didn’t get to know him all that terribly well. You spent most of your time both on and off set either with Liam or with Natalie and maybe also Jake), so it’s not all that too terribly surprising. It’s undoubtedly a good thing, though. You’re a good actor but you’re honestly not sure you could keep this up if you had to worry about acting 100% positively normal all the time for everybody just as much as you have to actively worry about doing or saying something that’ll simply give yourself away to Hayden. Even without that added pressure, you still almost manage to give yourself away ten days into your two weeks at the Ranch, though not to Hayden. Well, not precisely, anyway. It’s those unnatural dreams. Somehow or another the topic of the Dark Side of the Force comes up in the conversation, and Natalie admits that she still isn’t sure what the difference is supposed to be between Dark Jedi and Sith Lords, and the next thing you know you’ve launched into lecture mode and are trying to deliver enough information to support an advanced thesis, all courtesy of your dreams as Obi-Wan and the access you never seem to lose to his word for word, eidetic recall of all the information he’s ever studied in the Archives. You go all the way back to the Great Schism and start explaining how the banishment of a band dissident Jedi who embraced the Dark Side of the Force, led by the first known Dark Jedi ever, Xendor, led to the eventual creation of the "Dark Lords of the Sith," who later evolved into the Sith Lords, because of an Empire that the banished scions of the Dark Side of the Force founded from their base on the planet Korriban, where a primitive Force-sensitive species known as the Sith lived.
You’re about halfway through explaining about the Sith’ari - the prophesied savior of the Sith Order, a perfect being who would not only rise to power and bring balance to the Force, but who would, in the process of rising up and destroying the Sith, return to lead the Sith and make them stronger than ever before - and the possibility that the Sith’ari and the Jedi prophecies of the Chosen One involve the same figure when Hayden all of a sudden bristles like an affronted cat and spits, "You’d think with all this wisdom in their Archives that the High Council would know better than to allow the growth of such Sith-spawned arrogance among the Jedi!"
You, moron that you are, unthinkingly respond by sighing and saying, "Padawan, we’ve had this conversation before. Unless you wish to take it up with my former Master - "
To which Hayden rolls his eyes and growls, "Just because I understand why and how a thing is, that doesn’t mean I can forgive its existence as if it were right, Master!"
At which point you smile and announce, "And that is why I love you, Padawan-mine," as you unthinkingly reach out to tug on a Padawan braid that’s simply not there.
It’s at this point that Natalie noisily drops her fork into her salad bowl, startling everyone at the table and saving you from your moment of dumbfounded shock when you realise you’ve slipped into Obi-Wan’s role as naturally as if you were dreaming - and Hayden just as naturally responded to you as Anakin, a fact that takes a wee bit longer to sink in because you’re just so damned shocked at how easily you assumed Obi-Wan’s mantle. Natalie continues to unwittingly cover for you, demanding to know just when you got all of these extra details on the Star Wars ’verse and if it was from one of your packets then what on earth makes George think that it isn’t the kind of information a Senator from Naboo would be interested in and oh, by the way, the character exercise seems to be working - you and Hayden were a pretty darn convincing teacher-student duo there for a moment - and would they mind if she tried a Senator Amidala with them sometime? But oh! Don’t you stop explaining about the way these Sith Lords evolved from out of the Dark Jedi, "Master," because this is fascinating stuff and quite insightful and inquiring minds want to know! To which you respond with something vague about outside research that you did with Liam back during the first movie - which is only half a lie. You actually did try to do some research with Liam online and in some of the printed Star Wars manuals and whatnot during the first few weeks of shooting, since most of the material George had given you to read over was sketchy and somewhat confusing at best. You just didn’t learn much of anything you’d just spouted off from that mostly frustrating fragmentary exercise, is all - and then laugh that you didn’t really plan to slip into character but that it seemed like a good idea at the time, like something Obi-Wan would do, and you weren’t really expecting Hayden to join in, but you think he’s getting a good handle on Anakin and wouldn’t she agree?
Your attempt at diversion only half works - you get a few moments to resettle yourself and mentally double-check your facts while Hayden distracts Natalie by blushing and grinning and ducking his head in that wonderfully charming manner he has - because Natalie refuses to let your "free history lesson on the birth of the Sith" go entirely, but you finally appease her by promising to type up some notes about what you remember if that’ll make her feel better so long as she promises to remember he’s writing from memory, and that does the trick because the next thing you know she’s joking about how she’s heard you got to showcase some wonderful typing abilities in Black Hawk Down and is going on about how she’s heard that it’s going to be one of the best, most realistic war movies ever. Of course, before dinner is over with you get roped into several planned character exercises, but considering how George’s been hinting lately that he’s thinking about cancelling some of those ridiculous "trust exercises" he’s had planned out for the lot of you and arranging some exploratory sessions for your Star Wars characters (character exercises, in other words) instead, you think you’ve gotten off fairly lightly, all things considered. You find it a bit puzzling that no one laughs at you or accuses you of making the whole "history lesson" up, but the significance of that won’t sink in until much later. Just then, you’re too busy being relieved that nobody’s looking at you as if you’re crazy or anything, spouting off about Xendor, Dark Jedi and father of the Sith, and prophecies of the Sith’ari like that. And, truth be told, you’re also a bit distracted by the fact that Hayden, who normally has a fairly typical appetite for someone his age (meaning that he’s hungry for everything all the time) hardly eats anything on his plate after Natalie ropes them into letting her practise being Senator Amidala with them. Instead of sensibly worrying about keeping a lid on your inner Obi-Wan, you spend most of the rest of the meal wondering if Hayden might not suspect something or if your response - "that’s why I love you" - might’ve discomforted him and fretting that you’ve finally managed to upset him.
When the time comes to pack up and head for Australia for filming to start, your vague concern about Hayden’s lack of appetite has grown to the point where you’ve actively trying to get him to eat more. You don’t say anything about it to him or to anyone else, not yet, mainly because he’s made it quite clear that he’s so nervous and excited about finally getting to get started on the film that you’re honestly a bit surprised he’s not more of a nervous wreck than he is. Aside from being put slightly off of food, he’s keeping his jitters almost entirely under wraps. You’re oddly proud of him for that, though not nearly proud enough to stop trying to get him to eat more. Filming with Lucas often turns out to be an exercise in frustration and in tenacity, as you very well know, and so far you know of about half a dozen different locales Lucas plans on shooting in - Fox Studios Australia, in Sydney; the Royal Palace at Caserta and the area around Lake Como and Villa Balbianello, in Italy and northern Italy; Tunisia, of course; the Plaza de España in Seville, Spain; and both Elstree and Ealing Studios, in England - so you’re expecting a long, wild ride of it, especially since Lucas is determined that the entire film will be shot with those fancy new digital cameras he’s so in love with. Lucas is often quite particular about what he wants to get recorded, even if he’s shite for explaining to the lowly actor peons precisely how to go about giving him that, and even the most seemingly insignificant of scenes can easily turn into gruelling marathons of endless retakes. Even the "more experienced" actors often need help keeping the old energy levels up and enough wits together - not so much to remember lines, since the dialogue’s often so stylized or overwrought or just downright cheesy that it’s incredibly hard to forget it, even when you’re trying, but instead to recall all the myriad little emotions and shades of meaning Lucas expects everyone to be able to read between the lines of his scarily sketchy scripts and to automatically know how to interject pretty much with body language and inflection and expression alone - to get the job done right. You really don’t want Hayden to pass out on set from exhaustion some day halfway through a scene or a reshoot because he’s too nervous to remember to eat properly. Since he always seems to be either bounding along with you or else trailing along behind you everywhere you go anyway, you think you’ll be able to get him to eat enough without having to embarrass him first by actually saying something to him about it. Of course, you also think that his nerves will wear off by the time the first week or so of shooting’s finished, something that doesn’t exactly happen, so what the hell do you know anyway?
Hayden’s nerves don’t get better once you’ve gotten settled down in Australia. Sure, Nick Gillard’s working everyone pretty hard on the lightsaber training so he can get a good enough handle on everyone’s style to get all of your individual moves mapped out and taught to you before they actually have to choreograph and start shooting any of the fight sequences. But the physicality of the training’s not nearly enough to explain why Hayden’s getting so quiet and - well, maybe not pale, precisely, but certainly drawn. Drawn and withdrawn, to tell the truth. It can’t be just because of the training. Nick can be a bear about his precious practice ’sabers, but the things you all actually use during the first few weeks of training aren’t really lightsabers at all, being lengths of slightly rounded off, unpolished and unground (and therefore appropriately edgeless) narrow bars of strangely light-weight metal that’s been painted appropriately and attached to copies of the corresponding lightsaber handles. They’re just a bit heavier, if a shade more slender overall, than the actual "good" practice ’sabers, but they’re also much more sturdy, meaning you can really have a go with ’em and not have to worry about getting screamed out for damaging one of Nick’s babies. Of course, it also hurts more if you get hit with one of them, incredibly light-weight or not, but as Nick says, it’s really just incentive to learn how to make your moves better and faster. The demonstrators and the trainers Nick brings in to try to find just the right styles of fighting to tailor to each individual who has to fight during the course of the movie are all professional martial arts fighters or swordsmen, and they’re all very businesslike and matter of fact about what they do and what they want to teach people. They’re always incredibly careful about trying not to hurt anybody. And Hayden’s a quick study at this. When he’s not tripping over air because his mind apparently still isn’t entirely used to the fact that his body’s as tall as it is, he’s weirdly graceful and quick, with a very fluid style of movement that reminds you of a girl you used to date several years back who ended up going to Juliard for dance. Despite his numerous claims to klutziness, Hayden’s not actually uncoordinated. He does have his clumsy moments - some of them truly spectacular - but he’s quick, he’s strong, and most of the time he’s quite light on his feet. Besides which, you’ve heard Natalie talking about how Hayden gave up a tennis scholarship to some university so he could take this role, and you’ve also heard that he was in a Canadian made-for-tv movie a few years back where he spent most of his onscreen time on the ice, as a hockey player, so you know he’s a capable athlete. You’re therefore not surprised to discover that he’s a good fighter, too. If anything, you’re a bit surprised at how incredibly easy Hayden makes it all seem, and how, as you spend more time with him on the practise mats, you discover more and more that he’s naturally moving in ways that eerily echo the memories you have - courtesy of your nightly sojourns as Obi-Wan Kenobi - of a younger (sometimes a much younger) Anakin Skywalker, learning the basic katas of Form I and Form III lightsaber combat. If you concentrate, you can trace the paths of each specific kata every time his body begins to flow into one. Nick is certainly so happy with Hayden’s ability that he hardly ever yells at the teen, not even when Hayden temporarily loses control over his feet. So you’re sure it’s not the training that making Hayden act so nervous and withdrawn.
You’re this close to giving up and cornering the lad somewhere private so you can ask what’s eating at him when it happens. Nick’s scheduled you and Hayden for a bout of freeform practise while he sits up in the booth and watches the footage to make sure it tapes right so he has something he can study for the way you both move later on, and Hayden shows up looking like death warmed over but projecting such a fierce air of cheerfulness (you can practically see "I am fine!" tattooed in big bold black letters on the lad’s forehead) that you clamp your teeth over your tongue to keep from asking what’s wrong and silently vow to take him to the side later and demand to know what’s wrong until he lets you help fix whatever it is. You try to go easy on him, but it’s surprisingly hard to hold back, once you’ve started into the forms and your inner Obi-Wan rises and starts taking over control of your fine motor movements, directing your body more fully into the flow of the katas. You’re so busy fighting yourself, fighting to slow the pace of your moves, fighting to pull the weight of your blows, that it takes you a good while to notice that you’re fighting an intent and wholly focussed on winning Anakin Skywalker, not a tired and distracted Hayden Christensen.
You’re so shocked that you’ve unconsciously stepped fully into the forms before you can even finish processing what the thought that you’re fighting Anakin, not Hayden, might mean. The steps of the katas flow back across the room like the steps in a dance. Sand Scours Stone. Water Flows Downhill. Wind and Rain. The Falling Leaf automatically meets Watered Silk. Moon on the Water meets the Wood Thrush Dancers. Ribbon in the Air meets Stones Falling from a Cliff. You move about the room as if to a perfectly choreographed rhythm of elegantly flowing moves. He presses you harder, the pace of the flow increasing. The Swallow Takes Flight meets Parting the Silk. The Cat Dances on the Wall meets the Bear Rushes Downhill. Lighting of Three Prongs meets Leaf on the Breeze. Then he glides forward, attacking all out, every movement of his ’saber is an attempt to reach you. The Boar Charges Down the Mountain. In an instant, you move to face the Boar, knowing what you must do. You are halfway into a move that will drop you to one knee, your ’saber out-thrust for a slashing double-attack that is meant to both disarm and behead an opponent - honourable sun djem and final sai cha - when it occurs to you where you are, who you are, and what you are about to do. And you desperately throw yourself back from the pull of the form, luring you towards completion. You nearly lose your own head - well, perhaps not your head, but the integrity of your unbroken neck, at the very least - as you are forced to fling yourself violently and inelegantly to one side in a rolling tumble that brings you to your feet to meet Boulder Falls from the Mountain with a hasty and ill-timed block. You stumble, having completely lost the matched rhythm of the dance, and as your body continues forward along an unintended path towards a Hayden Christensen who seems entirely possessed by the soul of Anakin Skywalker, he, in turns, moves purposefully towards you, his left hand lashing out to latch onto the hilt of your ’saber as his body sways forward to twist up underneath your now nonexistent guard. You’re so stunned that you can’t even think to resist as he wrenches the hilt away from you and twists you about, throwing you down, hard, to the mat, so hard that only your suddenly empty and out-flung right hand keeps you from crashing down onto your shoulder and hip instead of merely falling to your knees.
The threat of the two practice lightsabers crossed before you, the greatest part of their lengths off to either side of your neck, trapping you as if between the blades of an enormous pair of scissors, and the demand, "Do you yield, Master?" delivered with a triumphantly flashing grin, jolt you from your shock and fling you headfirst into an anger so unexpected that your mouth is open and are shouting at him before it has time to register that it’s Hayden, only Hayden, and it’s not his fault you’re channelling your bloody character so hard that you’re seeing Anakin bloody Skywalker smirking at you. Which accomplishes very little besides making Hayden stare at you with his eyes all huge and dark and his lower lip trembling like you’ve just murdered his favourite pet puppy right in front of his eyes. Fuck all! Nothing you do is right, and first the boy backs off and runs from you like some poor spooked wild creature and then he comes back and is as cold and composed - and falsely brittle - as if he’s been dipped in a thin layer of ice, which means that you have to go chasing after him when Nick - who’s so ecstatic about the damn footage of the bloody fight that he’s practically chomping at the bit, desperate to get back to watching and rewatching it - lets him leave, believing him when he claims to just be feeling a bit under the weather. You’re so damn angry that by the time you catch up with him you’ve managed to lose sight of the fact that this entire mess is mainly your own fault.
"So you think hurting me’s going to help with whatever it is, is that it, you bleeding git?"
For someone who has just been walking so painfully slowly that a body could hardly be blamed for thinking him entirely exhausted, Hayden certainly turns about quickly enough. You blink at him for a moment, startled, while he stands there blinking at you owlishly, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. "S-sorry," he finally stutters, "I really didn’t mean to."
"Yeah, well, that’s neither here nor there, now is it? It happened and it will happen again, if you keep on like this, bottling everything up like you are. Dammit, Hayden, this isn’t healthy!" you insist, once again brushing aside his attempts to apologise for throwing you down at the end of the match.
Hayden just frowns and, even though you try not to, you can’t help staring at him, at the slight dampness of his hair, where he’s been sweating, and at the slightly shaking arms that are still held rigidly at his sides, the movement of his ribcage closer to heaving than to its normal gentle rise and fall due to his ragged breathing, his shirts clinging to him, the tee-shirt soaked through underneath another one of those damned white dress-shirts he bloody well always seems to be wearing. You have to shake your head a little to make yourself stop staring at the way that what you can see of his tee-shirt is hugging him, you want so much to be able to touch the gold skin it’s stuck against so wetly. But these are dangerous thoughts, thoughts you most definitely should not and must not indulge, not now, not here in this otherwise empty training room, here on the far side of the exercise building, with him less than a metre away from you. This has got to stop. Now. You tell yourself that it has absolutely got to stop now. You can do better, you will do better, than this. You won’t embarrass him or yourself by behaving like some fucking pervert. You just want to help him. He’s hurting. He’s obviously hurting. You just want to help. Why won’t he see that? Why won’t he let you in? Force take it, if he opens his mouth to make one more damned mealy-mouthed false excuse - !
And of course, that’s what he does. You can see the falseness of the words he’s about to say twisting his mouth out of true even before he can fully part his lips to speak. And you’re so blindingly furious that you brush those words aside and take the one step closer that you need to be to grab him by the shoulders tight and just shake him, really shake him, because you’re so angry that if you don’t shake him you’ll hit him, and you can’t, you can’t do that, so you have to hold on to him and shake him, as if you’re some cliché heroic love figure stepped out of out of some ridiculous classic romance and he’s some flighty little fluff for brains heroine and you’re going to shake sense into him even if you have to snap his neck trying. You’re gripping him too hard. You know you are. You can practically feel the bones of his shoulders grinding together under the pressure of your hands. And you’re shaking him far too violently, making his head snap back and forth on his neck so sharply that you know it has to hurt him. But you can’t help it, you can’t stop yourself, you’re just so damned tired of all of this bloody run-around shite - !
Hayden’s twisting away from you, his chest rising and falling like a bellows, the breath rushing in and out of him so quickly, so violently, that you’d think he was the one who’d just completely lost his temper. Then he’s spitting words at you, shoving them through his tightly clenched teeth and biting them off as if he’s killing each word by saying it, his voice so low and dangerous that it doesn’t even sound like him (though it does, a little voice in the back of your head remarks quietly, sound exactly like Anakin Skywalker that time Mace Windu told him about how Padawan learner Obi-Wan Kenobi was once tried for murder and sentenced to life in jail and tried to pass his subsequent return to the Jedi Order off as if it had come about only due to Qui-Gon’s political savvy and cleverness and not Obi-Wan’s actual innocence in regards to any such crime). "You absolute ass. Don’t you ever do that to me again!"
"Hayden, what the - "
"I said I was sorry! I’m feeling a bit off! That’s all, that is it, so do us both a favour and fuck off before what’s left of my stomach decides to redecorate your shoes!"
Hayden’s practically snarling at you now, one arm curled protectively across his supposedly upset stomach, and at that you're once again so angry that you almost can’t even see straight. "Now, look here, you little - "
"Dammit, Master, look at me! I’m taller than you! When will you stop calling me little?"
That manages to break through your anger. In fact, that shocks you so badly that you almost lose the ability to speak, and even when you do finally gather up enough wits to respond, you can’t think what to really say to him. "Ah, mate . . . "
"Fine. Let me use small words so that you can understand me. I am sick. I am tired. I am not in the mood for this shit. Nick told me to go lie down and get some rest, and that is what I am going to do. Now would you please get out of my way."
He is not requesting that you move aside and you know it. Your hands knot into helpless fists at your sides with your failure, but you still carefully take one step back and one step to the side, and Hayden doesn’t waste any time before moving, striding past you and on out the door, so quickly that it’s not until he’s already gone past and his spine suddenly goes rigid that you know he’s heard the words you whispered as he stalked past you, the words that are a solemn promise: "I will find out what’s wrong. It’s only a matter of time. I promise you that."
Pairing: Anakin/Obi-Wan and Ewan/Hayden (if you sort of squint)
Rating: Uhm, probably R-ish???
Disclaimer: I own neither the lovely boys from Star Wars nor the gorgeous actors who play them, more's the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary voice that sounds like Hayden muttering away in the back of my brain and an often incomprehensible and yet mesmeric voice that sounds like Ewan who keeps interrupting when Hayden's talking and naters away at me whenever Hayden decides to act shy and clams up, which the brat does entirely too often . . .
Summary: Hayden may dream as Anakin and prefer those dreams to the nightmare he feels his life has become, but Ewan's so busy trying to daydream of a way to figure out Hayden and the way he feels about him that he's not adjusting very well to dreaming as Obi-Wan
Author’s Note: Sorry, but no beta yet -- just spellcheck and grammatik. And yes, I know, I know, it's not nearly done yet. Sorry, y'all! And I'm sorry it's split up into three pieces too, but it's already too long for one continuous post, according to the lj. In case anybody's wondering, this is the companion piece for "Dreaming to Wake" (Hayden's point of view) and I'm so busy revising it that I'm having a hard time getting anything done with Ewan's piece. Reviews and feedback are nice, but like I said, it's not nearly done, so please don't be upset if it takes me awhile to get back to you. I do read all comments and try to respond . . . eventually! OH! I almost forgot! I've been trying to stick with Canadian/British style spelling, so if anyone catches any obvious Americanisms, PLEASE point them out so that I can fix them!
You’re this close to panicking. Your body has so utterly betrayed you that you almost can’t control yourself for even the tiny amount of time it takes to get yourself turned around and back to your own door. Just the thought of him is enough to drive you to the brink, and you’re terrified that you aren’t going to make it back to your rooms in time and somebody’s going to see you, rushing away from Hayden’s suite with your sleep-pants clinging to you wetly. It wasn’t even this hard to keep control when you were a teenager! You barely make it inside before your release unhinges your knees and you hit the carpet hard, the rapidly spreading patch of wetness on your stomach running down your thighs as you huddle on the floor, so completely mortified that you want to cry. You so desperately want to either cry or lash out, to hit yourself or to punch something, maybe even break something, and you’re not like this, you know you’re not like this, and what the hell is wrong with you? You’d think you’d been drugged or something if you didn’t know any better, but of course you do know better, even if you don’t understand, and that makes it even worse. You don’t, you can’t, understand this, and if you’ve ever felt so ashamed before, you certainly don’t remember it. You’d have a full blown case of the hysterics if you thought it would do any good. Which it wouldn’t, of course, because you aren’t like that either, you don’t do stupid shite like that, you don’t have temper tantrums or meltdowns or any other such equally absurd and overblown displays of emotion. You aren’t one of those ridiculously egotistical yet incredibly brittle Hollywood diva star types and you never have been, you’ve never even been tempted to indulge in such naff behaviour and you sure as hell weren’t planning on starting to act like such a gobdaw now. Which only makes this already bloody nearly intolerable situation that much more awful, because you feel awfully damn close to genuine hysteria at the moment.
It takes way too much time for you to finally get a hold of yourself enough to get up, get cleaned up, and get dressed. And by the time you’re dressed, your body’s recovered enough that certain parts are starting to rebel again. You’re so angry that you almost rip the button off your jeans, but when you close your hand around yourself with deliberately punishing force, your mind flashes back to your dream - "Am I hurting you? Master, am I - ?" - and all you manage to accomplish is instant orgasm. You can’t even punish yourself for wanting Hayden without making things worse! You’d laugh, but you’re afraid you’d just end up crying.
Things pretty much go downhill from there.
When there’s no answer after five minutes of fairly steady knocking - you’d shout his name through the door but you don’t want to wake anyone else up - you’re forced to give up and go in. Hayden’s buried under the bedclothes, burrowed under them so far that only his head from the chin up and the grasping fingers of his right hand, tangled over the edge of the duvet - well, bedspread, actually. This is America, so it’s probably just a bedspread or a comforter, nothing so thick as a duvet, which is probably why Hayden’s snuggled so far under it - are visible. You try standing over him and saying his name, but he doesn’t even twitch. You’ve literally thrown your hands up and are about to grab him and shake him when you remember how badly bruised he probably is. Sighing, you redirect your hand away from his shoulder so that it lands gently on his face instead, and then you pat his cheek, repeating his name. He stirs then, a little, so you lean over a bit further and say his name again, a little bit louder, and when he opens his sleep-fogged eyes and blinks up at you muzzily, you immediately move your hand away from his face, hoping he’ll yawn and stretch and grumble at you and send you back to your room to wait for him and be so cranky about having to see a doctor that he won’t want to see you again after you get back and maybe you’ll be able to get your shite together then. But of course that’s not what happens. Because Hayden smiles and gives voice to a throaty murmur of "Master . . . ?" and then his arms are rising up out of the covers and he’s sitting up in bed, reaching out for you, and the next thing you know you’re being pulled down into the bed with him, one of his bare, golden-skinned arms wrapped around your neck and the other locked across your back and he smells so good and the warmth of his body against yours feels just so perfectly right that all you want to do is hold him right back and curl up next to him on the bed, that’s all, just be near to him like that and shut your eyes and drift off back to sleep with him so you can wake up like you’re supposed to, with him instead of alone, his arms and legs twining with yours, and -
What in the seven hells do you think you’re doing?!
You manage to jerk yourself back to reality by the skin of your teeth. Problem is, you literally jerk, as in jerk yourself up away from him. And it hurts him. Literally. And badly. You can tell by how suddenly his face drains of colour and how fully lucid his eyes so quickly become. He doesn’t make any noise, but you know you’ve hurt him. And when you see the bare expanse of his back as he awkwardly climbs up out of bed, when you see the way that the bruises are layered, one ugly mottled colour on top of another, across almost every inch of skin from his shoulders all the way down to where his spine curves away beneath where the waist of his loose sleeping-pants hangs, you want to kill yourself. You can’t get one of those pain pills out and into him and yourself back out of his suite so that he can get dressed in peace before you can manage to do anything else to hurt him (and you can preferably go and hit your head against something hard, several times, where no one else will notice) quickly enough to suit you. And yet, you’re such a lech that, by the time Hayden’s managed to get himself ready to go and come down to knock on your door, you still have to restrain yourself from shoving him back up against the door and attacking him with a kiss. He looks absolutely delectable, even in a loose-fitting old grey sweatsuit, and the way he’s smiling at you would unhinge your knees if you weren’t already sitting down. You had to take yourself in hand again not ten minutes ago - for the third time already this morning! - after leaving his room, and already you can feel your body wanting to react to him, ready to react to him. You have to bite back on a bitter laugh then not only because there’s no way you’d ever be able to come up with a way to explain it, but also because you’ve got a bad feeling that it would end up sounding like a sob. Hayden doesn’t seem to notice that anything’s wrong. In fact, Hayden just seems happy to see you, happy to be going somewhere with you - even if it is just for a unwanted visit to a doctor’s office. He’s already a bit fuzzy around the edges from the medicine, but the joy on his face is fairly clear. And you feel like such a selfish arsehole that you wish the ground would just open up and swallow you.
And that pretty much sets the tone for the way things end up going from then on, at least while you’re all still stuck at Skywalker Ranch, bonding. Hayden is almost always at least just a wee bit fuzzy around the edges from his pain pills, though the fuzziness seems to gradually grow a bit less after a few days - thankfully, whatever it is about that particular medicine that makes the boy act like he’s at least slightly drunk or high or both pretty much erases most of the details from that first day at the Ranch and the disastrous night out in Nicasio. Actually, Hayden loses a lot of details from the first three for four days he’s on the pills, but it’s that first night that you’re grateful for. Although he admits to vaguely remembering a piano, he has a hard time believing you when you mention that he played a beautiful version of "Your Song," and when you finally convince him of it he stammers and blushes and ducks his head in such an honest show of embarrassment that you’re positive he can’t remember what else happened that night - but he is always undeniably happy to see you, happy just to be in your company, and you can’t stop wanting him so much that it drives you to distraction and makes you ache for him ceaselessly. And to make matters worse, every single feckin’ night you keep on dreaming you’re Obi-Wan fucking Kenobi, and your dreams are so vividly real and richly detailed that every blamed time you wake up you still initially think that you’re him. Between being in love with and often being allowed to physically make love to Anakin Skywalker in your dreams and being increasingly sure that you will eventually give in and do something to show how much you’ve fallen in love with Hayden Christensen, it’s a wonder you don’t seriously hurt somebody, especially yourself. But Hayden is just so bloody innocent - ! Episode II is going to be his first venture into the Hollywood scene, and it’s just so obvious that Hayden is new and vulnerable to a fault that you hate yourself for thinking that you might do anything to spoil it, to ruin him. He acts as if he’s enthralled with you, sure, but then again, he’s pretty well taken with everyone, especially those who have what Hayden calls the "pose, grace, and control of more experienced actors." He asks everyone about everything and then he actually listens and believes it all, every single word uttered, as though if he listens hard enough, he can absorb some magic from those of you who are "more experienced." The boy’s so bloody innocent you can’t help but be charmed, even though you’re frankly also alarmed at the thought of Hayden being so trusting and having some unprincipled arse take advantage of him. You want so badly to shelter him and protect him from all of the ugliness of this crazy business and to tell him about the good things, to show him the ropes, but your conscience picks at you so much it’s a wonder you manage to be as coherent as you do around him. Unsurprisingly, being an actor does have some advantages, though since you’re in this cocked-up situation in the first place because of this particular bloody profession, it’s hard not to want to laugh at the how hard you’re having to draw on your creative talents just to get by in everyday situations that involve Hayden in any way, shape, or form.
To top it off, every now and again you catch Natalie looking at you strangely out of the corner of her eye. It makes you nervous as hell. You’re certain she can tell that something’s off with you, but other than rather earnestly informing you a time or three that if you ever feel a need to talk about anything, that she’ll always be there for you, she thankfully doesn’t say or do much of anything to act on whatever suspicions she might hold. Nobody else seems to notice or even suspect that anything’s wrong with you. Of course, no one else at your little enforced actors bonding retreat has really worked with you much before either, except for Sam (and you barely had any scenes with him at all in The Phantom Menace so you honestly didn’t get to know him all that terribly well. You spent most of your time both on and off set either with Liam or with Natalie and maybe also Jake), so it’s not all that too terribly surprising. It’s undoubtedly a good thing, though. You’re a good actor but you’re honestly not sure you could keep this up if you had to worry about acting 100% positively normal all the time for everybody just as much as you have to actively worry about doing or saying something that’ll simply give yourself away to Hayden. Even without that added pressure, you still almost manage to give yourself away ten days into your two weeks at the Ranch, though not to Hayden. Well, not precisely, anyway. It’s those unnatural dreams. Somehow or another the topic of the Dark Side of the Force comes up in the conversation, and Natalie admits that she still isn’t sure what the difference is supposed to be between Dark Jedi and Sith Lords, and the next thing you know you’ve launched into lecture mode and are trying to deliver enough information to support an advanced thesis, all courtesy of your dreams as Obi-Wan and the access you never seem to lose to his word for word, eidetic recall of all the information he’s ever studied in the Archives. You go all the way back to the Great Schism and start explaining how the banishment of a band dissident Jedi who embraced the Dark Side of the Force, led by the first known Dark Jedi ever, Xendor, led to the eventual creation of the "Dark Lords of the Sith," who later evolved into the Sith Lords, because of an Empire that the banished scions of the Dark Side of the Force founded from their base on the planet Korriban, where a primitive Force-sensitive species known as the Sith lived.
You’re about halfway through explaining about the Sith’ari - the prophesied savior of the Sith Order, a perfect being who would not only rise to power and bring balance to the Force, but who would, in the process of rising up and destroying the Sith, return to lead the Sith and make them stronger than ever before - and the possibility that the Sith’ari and the Jedi prophecies of the Chosen One involve the same figure when Hayden all of a sudden bristles like an affronted cat and spits, "You’d think with all this wisdom in their Archives that the High Council would know better than to allow the growth of such Sith-spawned arrogance among the Jedi!"
You, moron that you are, unthinkingly respond by sighing and saying, "Padawan, we’ve had this conversation before. Unless you wish to take it up with my former Master - "
To which Hayden rolls his eyes and growls, "Just because I understand why and how a thing is, that doesn’t mean I can forgive its existence as if it were right, Master!"
At which point you smile and announce, "And that is why I love you, Padawan-mine," as you unthinkingly reach out to tug on a Padawan braid that’s simply not there.
It’s at this point that Natalie noisily drops her fork into her salad bowl, startling everyone at the table and saving you from your moment of dumbfounded shock when you realise you’ve slipped into Obi-Wan’s role as naturally as if you were dreaming - and Hayden just as naturally responded to you as Anakin, a fact that takes a wee bit longer to sink in because you’re just so damned shocked at how easily you assumed Obi-Wan’s mantle. Natalie continues to unwittingly cover for you, demanding to know just when you got all of these extra details on the Star Wars ’verse and if it was from one of your packets then what on earth makes George think that it isn’t the kind of information a Senator from Naboo would be interested in and oh, by the way, the character exercise seems to be working - you and Hayden were a pretty darn convincing teacher-student duo there for a moment - and would they mind if she tried a Senator Amidala with them sometime? But oh! Don’t you stop explaining about the way these Sith Lords evolved from out of the Dark Jedi, "Master," because this is fascinating stuff and quite insightful and inquiring minds want to know! To which you respond with something vague about outside research that you did with Liam back during the first movie - which is only half a lie. You actually did try to do some research with Liam online and in some of the printed Star Wars manuals and whatnot during the first few weeks of shooting, since most of the material George had given you to read over was sketchy and somewhat confusing at best. You just didn’t learn much of anything you’d just spouted off from that mostly frustrating fragmentary exercise, is all - and then laugh that you didn’t really plan to slip into character but that it seemed like a good idea at the time, like something Obi-Wan would do, and you weren’t really expecting Hayden to join in, but you think he’s getting a good handle on Anakin and wouldn’t she agree?
Your attempt at diversion only half works - you get a few moments to resettle yourself and mentally double-check your facts while Hayden distracts Natalie by blushing and grinning and ducking his head in that wonderfully charming manner he has - because Natalie refuses to let your "free history lesson on the birth of the Sith" go entirely, but you finally appease her by promising to type up some notes about what you remember if that’ll make her feel better so long as she promises to remember he’s writing from memory, and that does the trick because the next thing you know she’s joking about how she’s heard you got to showcase some wonderful typing abilities in Black Hawk Down and is going on about how she’s heard that it’s going to be one of the best, most realistic war movies ever. Of course, before dinner is over with you get roped into several planned character exercises, but considering how George’s been hinting lately that he’s thinking about cancelling some of those ridiculous "trust exercises" he’s had planned out for the lot of you and arranging some exploratory sessions for your Star Wars characters (character exercises, in other words) instead, you think you’ve gotten off fairly lightly, all things considered. You find it a bit puzzling that no one laughs at you or accuses you of making the whole "history lesson" up, but the significance of that won’t sink in until much later. Just then, you’re too busy being relieved that nobody’s looking at you as if you’re crazy or anything, spouting off about Xendor, Dark Jedi and father of the Sith, and prophecies of the Sith’ari like that. And, truth be told, you’re also a bit distracted by the fact that Hayden, who normally has a fairly typical appetite for someone his age (meaning that he’s hungry for everything all the time) hardly eats anything on his plate after Natalie ropes them into letting her practise being Senator Amidala with them. Instead of sensibly worrying about keeping a lid on your inner Obi-Wan, you spend most of the rest of the meal wondering if Hayden might not suspect something or if your response - "that’s why I love you" - might’ve discomforted him and fretting that you’ve finally managed to upset him.
When the time comes to pack up and head for Australia for filming to start, your vague concern about Hayden’s lack of appetite has grown to the point where you’ve actively trying to get him to eat more. You don’t say anything about it to him or to anyone else, not yet, mainly because he’s made it quite clear that he’s so nervous and excited about finally getting to get started on the film that you’re honestly a bit surprised he’s not more of a nervous wreck than he is. Aside from being put slightly off of food, he’s keeping his jitters almost entirely under wraps. You’re oddly proud of him for that, though not nearly proud enough to stop trying to get him to eat more. Filming with Lucas often turns out to be an exercise in frustration and in tenacity, as you very well know, and so far you know of about half a dozen different locales Lucas plans on shooting in - Fox Studios Australia, in Sydney; the Royal Palace at Caserta and the area around Lake Como and Villa Balbianello, in Italy and northern Italy; Tunisia, of course; the Plaza de España in Seville, Spain; and both Elstree and Ealing Studios, in England - so you’re expecting a long, wild ride of it, especially since Lucas is determined that the entire film will be shot with those fancy new digital cameras he’s so in love with. Lucas is often quite particular about what he wants to get recorded, even if he’s shite for explaining to the lowly actor peons precisely how to go about giving him that, and even the most seemingly insignificant of scenes can easily turn into gruelling marathons of endless retakes. Even the "more experienced" actors often need help keeping the old energy levels up and enough wits together - not so much to remember lines, since the dialogue’s often so stylized or overwrought or just downright cheesy that it’s incredibly hard to forget it, even when you’re trying, but instead to recall all the myriad little emotions and shades of meaning Lucas expects everyone to be able to read between the lines of his scarily sketchy scripts and to automatically know how to interject pretty much with body language and inflection and expression alone - to get the job done right. You really don’t want Hayden to pass out on set from exhaustion some day halfway through a scene or a reshoot because he’s too nervous to remember to eat properly. Since he always seems to be either bounding along with you or else trailing along behind you everywhere you go anyway, you think you’ll be able to get him to eat enough without having to embarrass him first by actually saying something to him about it. Of course, you also think that his nerves will wear off by the time the first week or so of shooting’s finished, something that doesn’t exactly happen, so what the hell do you know anyway?
Hayden’s nerves don’t get better once you’ve gotten settled down in Australia. Sure, Nick Gillard’s working everyone pretty hard on the lightsaber training so he can get a good enough handle on everyone’s style to get all of your individual moves mapped out and taught to you before they actually have to choreograph and start shooting any of the fight sequences. But the physicality of the training’s not nearly enough to explain why Hayden’s getting so quiet and - well, maybe not pale, precisely, but certainly drawn. Drawn and withdrawn, to tell the truth. It can’t be just because of the training. Nick can be a bear about his precious practice ’sabers, but the things you all actually use during the first few weeks of training aren’t really lightsabers at all, being lengths of slightly rounded off, unpolished and unground (and therefore appropriately edgeless) narrow bars of strangely light-weight metal that’s been painted appropriately and attached to copies of the corresponding lightsaber handles. They’re just a bit heavier, if a shade more slender overall, than the actual "good" practice ’sabers, but they’re also much more sturdy, meaning you can really have a go with ’em and not have to worry about getting screamed out for damaging one of Nick’s babies. Of course, it also hurts more if you get hit with one of them, incredibly light-weight or not, but as Nick says, it’s really just incentive to learn how to make your moves better and faster. The demonstrators and the trainers Nick brings in to try to find just the right styles of fighting to tailor to each individual who has to fight during the course of the movie are all professional martial arts fighters or swordsmen, and they’re all very businesslike and matter of fact about what they do and what they want to teach people. They’re always incredibly careful about trying not to hurt anybody. And Hayden’s a quick study at this. When he’s not tripping over air because his mind apparently still isn’t entirely used to the fact that his body’s as tall as it is, he’s weirdly graceful and quick, with a very fluid style of movement that reminds you of a girl you used to date several years back who ended up going to Juliard for dance. Despite his numerous claims to klutziness, Hayden’s not actually uncoordinated. He does have his clumsy moments - some of them truly spectacular - but he’s quick, he’s strong, and most of the time he’s quite light on his feet. Besides which, you’ve heard Natalie talking about how Hayden gave up a tennis scholarship to some university so he could take this role, and you’ve also heard that he was in a Canadian made-for-tv movie a few years back where he spent most of his onscreen time on the ice, as a hockey player, so you know he’s a capable athlete. You’re therefore not surprised to discover that he’s a good fighter, too. If anything, you’re a bit surprised at how incredibly easy Hayden makes it all seem, and how, as you spend more time with him on the practise mats, you discover more and more that he’s naturally moving in ways that eerily echo the memories you have - courtesy of your nightly sojourns as Obi-Wan Kenobi - of a younger (sometimes a much younger) Anakin Skywalker, learning the basic katas of Form I and Form III lightsaber combat. If you concentrate, you can trace the paths of each specific kata every time his body begins to flow into one. Nick is certainly so happy with Hayden’s ability that he hardly ever yells at the teen, not even when Hayden temporarily loses control over his feet. So you’re sure it’s not the training that making Hayden act so nervous and withdrawn.
You’re this close to giving up and cornering the lad somewhere private so you can ask what’s eating at him when it happens. Nick’s scheduled you and Hayden for a bout of freeform practise while he sits up in the booth and watches the footage to make sure it tapes right so he has something he can study for the way you both move later on, and Hayden shows up looking like death warmed over but projecting such a fierce air of cheerfulness (you can practically see "I am fine!" tattooed in big bold black letters on the lad’s forehead) that you clamp your teeth over your tongue to keep from asking what’s wrong and silently vow to take him to the side later and demand to know what’s wrong until he lets you help fix whatever it is. You try to go easy on him, but it’s surprisingly hard to hold back, once you’ve started into the forms and your inner Obi-Wan rises and starts taking over control of your fine motor movements, directing your body more fully into the flow of the katas. You’re so busy fighting yourself, fighting to slow the pace of your moves, fighting to pull the weight of your blows, that it takes you a good while to notice that you’re fighting an intent and wholly focussed on winning Anakin Skywalker, not a tired and distracted Hayden Christensen.
You’re so shocked that you’ve unconsciously stepped fully into the forms before you can even finish processing what the thought that you’re fighting Anakin, not Hayden, might mean. The steps of the katas flow back across the room like the steps in a dance. Sand Scours Stone. Water Flows Downhill. Wind and Rain. The Falling Leaf automatically meets Watered Silk. Moon on the Water meets the Wood Thrush Dancers. Ribbon in the Air meets Stones Falling from a Cliff. You move about the room as if to a perfectly choreographed rhythm of elegantly flowing moves. He presses you harder, the pace of the flow increasing. The Swallow Takes Flight meets Parting the Silk. The Cat Dances on the Wall meets the Bear Rushes Downhill. Lighting of Three Prongs meets Leaf on the Breeze. Then he glides forward, attacking all out, every movement of his ’saber is an attempt to reach you. The Boar Charges Down the Mountain. In an instant, you move to face the Boar, knowing what you must do. You are halfway into a move that will drop you to one knee, your ’saber out-thrust for a slashing double-attack that is meant to both disarm and behead an opponent - honourable sun djem and final sai cha - when it occurs to you where you are, who you are, and what you are about to do. And you desperately throw yourself back from the pull of the form, luring you towards completion. You nearly lose your own head - well, perhaps not your head, but the integrity of your unbroken neck, at the very least - as you are forced to fling yourself violently and inelegantly to one side in a rolling tumble that brings you to your feet to meet Boulder Falls from the Mountain with a hasty and ill-timed block. You stumble, having completely lost the matched rhythm of the dance, and as your body continues forward along an unintended path towards a Hayden Christensen who seems entirely possessed by the soul of Anakin Skywalker, he, in turns, moves purposefully towards you, his left hand lashing out to latch onto the hilt of your ’saber as his body sways forward to twist up underneath your now nonexistent guard. You’re so stunned that you can’t even think to resist as he wrenches the hilt away from you and twists you about, throwing you down, hard, to the mat, so hard that only your suddenly empty and out-flung right hand keeps you from crashing down onto your shoulder and hip instead of merely falling to your knees.
The threat of the two practice lightsabers crossed before you, the greatest part of their lengths off to either side of your neck, trapping you as if between the blades of an enormous pair of scissors, and the demand, "Do you yield, Master?" delivered with a triumphantly flashing grin, jolt you from your shock and fling you headfirst into an anger so unexpected that your mouth is open and are shouting at him before it has time to register that it’s Hayden, only Hayden, and it’s not his fault you’re channelling your bloody character so hard that you’re seeing Anakin bloody Skywalker smirking at you. Which accomplishes very little besides making Hayden stare at you with his eyes all huge and dark and his lower lip trembling like you’ve just murdered his favourite pet puppy right in front of his eyes. Fuck all! Nothing you do is right, and first the boy backs off and runs from you like some poor spooked wild creature and then he comes back and is as cold and composed - and falsely brittle - as if he’s been dipped in a thin layer of ice, which means that you have to go chasing after him when Nick - who’s so ecstatic about the damn footage of the bloody fight that he’s practically chomping at the bit, desperate to get back to watching and rewatching it - lets him leave, believing him when he claims to just be feeling a bit under the weather. You’re so damn angry that by the time you catch up with him you’ve managed to lose sight of the fact that this entire mess is mainly your own fault.
"So you think hurting me’s going to help with whatever it is, is that it, you bleeding git?"
For someone who has just been walking so painfully slowly that a body could hardly be blamed for thinking him entirely exhausted, Hayden certainly turns about quickly enough. You blink at him for a moment, startled, while he stands there blinking at you owlishly, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. "S-sorry," he finally stutters, "I really didn’t mean to."
"Yeah, well, that’s neither here nor there, now is it? It happened and it will happen again, if you keep on like this, bottling everything up like you are. Dammit, Hayden, this isn’t healthy!" you insist, once again brushing aside his attempts to apologise for throwing you down at the end of the match.
Hayden just frowns and, even though you try not to, you can’t help staring at him, at the slight dampness of his hair, where he’s been sweating, and at the slightly shaking arms that are still held rigidly at his sides, the movement of his ribcage closer to heaving than to its normal gentle rise and fall due to his ragged breathing, his shirts clinging to him, the tee-shirt soaked through underneath another one of those damned white dress-shirts he bloody well always seems to be wearing. You have to shake your head a little to make yourself stop staring at the way that what you can see of his tee-shirt is hugging him, you want so much to be able to touch the gold skin it’s stuck against so wetly. But these are dangerous thoughts, thoughts you most definitely should not and must not indulge, not now, not here in this otherwise empty training room, here on the far side of the exercise building, with him less than a metre away from you. This has got to stop. Now. You tell yourself that it has absolutely got to stop now. You can do better, you will do better, than this. You won’t embarrass him or yourself by behaving like some fucking pervert. You just want to help him. He’s hurting. He’s obviously hurting. You just want to help. Why won’t he see that? Why won’t he let you in? Force take it, if he opens his mouth to make one more damned mealy-mouthed false excuse - !
And of course, that’s what he does. You can see the falseness of the words he’s about to say twisting his mouth out of true even before he can fully part his lips to speak. And you’re so blindingly furious that you brush those words aside and take the one step closer that you need to be to grab him by the shoulders tight and just shake him, really shake him, because you’re so angry that if you don’t shake him you’ll hit him, and you can’t, you can’t do that, so you have to hold on to him and shake him, as if you’re some cliché heroic love figure stepped out of out of some ridiculous classic romance and he’s some flighty little fluff for brains heroine and you’re going to shake sense into him even if you have to snap his neck trying. You’re gripping him too hard. You know you are. You can practically feel the bones of his shoulders grinding together under the pressure of your hands. And you’re shaking him far too violently, making his head snap back and forth on his neck so sharply that you know it has to hurt him. But you can’t help it, you can’t stop yourself, you’re just so damned tired of all of this bloody run-around shite - !
Hayden’s twisting away from you, his chest rising and falling like a bellows, the breath rushing in and out of him so quickly, so violently, that you’d think he was the one who’d just completely lost his temper. Then he’s spitting words at you, shoving them through his tightly clenched teeth and biting them off as if he’s killing each word by saying it, his voice so low and dangerous that it doesn’t even sound like him (though it does, a little voice in the back of your head remarks quietly, sound exactly like Anakin Skywalker that time Mace Windu told him about how Padawan learner Obi-Wan Kenobi was once tried for murder and sentenced to life in jail and tried to pass his subsequent return to the Jedi Order off as if it had come about only due to Qui-Gon’s political savvy and cleverness and not Obi-Wan’s actual innocence in regards to any such crime). "You absolute ass. Don’t you ever do that to me again!"
"Hayden, what the - "
"I said I was sorry! I’m feeling a bit off! That’s all, that is it, so do us both a favour and fuck off before what’s left of my stomach decides to redecorate your shoes!"
Hayden’s practically snarling at you now, one arm curled protectively across his supposedly upset stomach, and at that you're once again so angry that you almost can’t even see straight. "Now, look here, you little - "
"Dammit, Master, look at me! I’m taller than you! When will you stop calling me little?"
That manages to break through your anger. In fact, that shocks you so badly that you almost lose the ability to speak, and even when you do finally gather up enough wits to respond, you can’t think what to really say to him. "Ah, mate . . . "
"Fine. Let me use small words so that you can understand me. I am sick. I am tired. I am not in the mood for this shit. Nick told me to go lie down and get some rest, and that is what I am going to do. Now would you please get out of my way."
He is not requesting that you move aside and you know it. Your hands knot into helpless fists at your sides with your failure, but you still carefully take one step back and one step to the side, and Hayden doesn’t waste any time before moving, striding past you and on out the door, so quickly that it’s not until he’s already gone past and his spine suddenly goes rigid that you know he’s heard the words you whispered as he stalked past you, the words that are a solemn promise: "I will find out what’s wrong. It’s only a matter of time. I promise you that."