The Temple felt too large when you stood in it alone.

Not alone, you corrected yourself—Anakin Skywalker was across from you, already circling lightly on the sparring mat, his Jedi Knight robes still feeling unfamiliar even now. He rolled his shoulder once, testing the weight of the training saber in his hand, then glanced at you with a half-smile.

“Don’t overthink it,” he said. “Obi-Wan always says that right before I overthink it anyway.”

You didn’t answer.

You rarely did at first.

Seventeen years. That’s what separated you from Obi-Wan Kenobi. Seventeen years of different air, different gravity, different silence. Mustafar heat still lived somewhere under your skin, even here in the cool stone of the Jedi Temple. You had learned early not to speak unless spoken to. Not because you were told—because it was safer that way.

Obi-Wan had found you anyway.

His half-sister. A truth spoken so calmly by the Council that it had felt unreal. Same father, different worlds, different lives stitched together too late to make sense.

And still—he had taken you in.

Not immediately as family. Not like a storybook rescue. Slowly. Carefully. Like someone learning to hold something that might break if gripped too tightly.

He hadn’t taken you on this mission.

That part still sat oddly in you.

Obi-Wan was gone—on his own assignment, pursuing General Grievous, the war tightening around him like a closing fist. He had left you behind on purpose. Not because you were unimportant. Because you were.

Because you were new. Because you were still fragile in ways even you didn’t fully understand yet. Because he didn’t want you anywhere near the kind of violence he expected to find.

So the Council had made a choice.

Anakin would oversee your combat training.

And today was not flight training.

Today was fight training.

“You ready?” Anakin asked.

You lifted your saber.

It was still unfamiliar in your hand. Not the weapon itself—you had trained with it for weeks—but the meaning of it. Obi-Wan had always insisted on patience, on balance, on the idea that a Jedi did not rush toward conflict.

Anakin was not like that.

Anakin moved like someone who had learned that hesitation cost more than pain.

“Ready,” you said quietly.

The training droid activated first.

It moved fast enough that instinct mattered more than thought. Anakin stepped aside immediately, almost casually, and you reacted a fraction too late—the blade clipped your guard, snapping your arm back.

“Too slow,” he said, not unkindly. Just honest.

You reset your stance.

Again.

The droid struck.

You blocked.

Barely.