Chapter Text
- Foundation
Without Obi-Wan quite realizing, a standard year had passed since Master Torr and her charges had taken up residence, almost three years after Anakin started his instruction. He was even more startled when a battered ship landed in the landing pad that was carefully unmarked as Jedi territory.
Qui-Gon looked up from the tea he had collected on his last mission. “It seems your venture will be undergoing an inspection...”
The presence had been a comfort over decades, but Obi-Wan was almost shocked that she left the main Temple. He stood, and brushed at his robes, checking on the relative locations of the younger Jedi.
Master Torr had taken them away, keeping contact with Hett’s tribe and encouraging interactions with her charges.
With Anakin and Luke’s troubled histories with these tribes, there was no way the Padawan would be excused from these encounters. Diplomacy was far more than battles and treaties. Anakin was becoming far better with working peoples than he ever absorbed the first time.
Obi-Wan still had hopes that the more Hurley-burley tribal democracy would click more than the elite Senate had in his Padawan’s understanding.
Master Nu stepped out of the transport and looked around the desert plain with an inaudible sniff.
Obi-Wan rose from his bow. “Welcome, Madame Nu. This is an honor for us to host you if you’d like to come inside where it is a bit cooler.”
She took a deeper breath once they moved inside the vapor-lock of the refraction dome and its tiny fountain humidified their common hall. “This is unexpectedly fine for this planet.”
Obi-Wan smiled with his pride. “My Padawan is a gifted mechanical genius. Projects such as these are his form of meditation.”
“Perhaps he would achieve more in the Corps with talent like that--”
Shaking his head before she finished speaking, Obi-Wan objected. “No. He is far too talented in the martial talents and crisis to be satisfied with support roles. He wants to help others and will become a knight for the record books.”
Nu hummed doubtfully. “Rumor has it you see further than Sifo, and he often has had problems with self-fulfilling prophecies.”
Obi-Wan sighs. “I know of that and it may lead to his passing too soon. I’m working on what I hope is a more subtle collection of acts than he would. He believes a grand change can’t be subverted by the Sith.”
“Every life Obi-Wan saves has a ripple effect, Jocasta, he stopped the Sith apprentice to save my life. Every life I save now, every peace I broker is another voice for the Light, and the light grows stronger.” Now Qui-Gon’s voice was as full of pride as Kenobi’s a moment before.
“You, I’d expect to be twisting standards and stymieing the Council, but young Kenobi had always been so biddable.”
“Luminous beings are we, and age is but an illusion.” Obi-Wan was not trying very hard to keep a straight face with his misquote, but he got more serious. “This will not be a lengthy separation.”
“But a spade is a spade, and this is effectively a splinter Temple. A few things need to be codified and negotiated about relations… so to smooth reunification if that is the eventual goal or if you can even be called Jedi any more than those on Jedha.”
Obi-Wan gestured toward the lower underground garden, with its cool fiber and full-spectrum lamps. “For most everything we follow the Council’s edicts. We have fewer areas on contention than Corellia or even Master Altis’s proposals. I believe the Temple is too separated from the people we serve, only the Senate elite is even likely to meet Jedi, let alone know us well enough to trust us. We need connections not just with queens and Senators, but workers, scholars, and the poor, Corps as much as Knights. The Code itself is unchanged, only a few dogmas reinterpreted.”
“The Council is split in its opinion.”
“I understand very well. In that future I hope to prevent, I was on the Council and one of only two Council members who survived the slaughter. The Sith is already in the Senate, so this place is a lifeboat, a seed arcology.”
Madame Nu nodded and noted something on her own padd.
Jinn added, “Calling it a splinter Temple that loosens current age restrictions on younglings, is a useful distinction, Jocasta. My own Master became a Padawan far later than Obi-Wan was allowed. What is too old when some races mature faster or slower? What does it mean if a candidate matured later or sooner due to things not under any control? Occasional contact with birth family is not only harmless but can be beneficial, it’s only an issue if the relationship is exploitation or a ploy for power like the duCrions. Shmi Skywalker had been an excellent untrained creche master before Master Torr’s arrival.”
“That is what I am here for as a representative of the Archives and Council of Reconciliation. I am to evaluate the progress the younglings are making away from the Temple. I will recommend if this... experiment is to be ended, maintained, or expanded. If you are to become an acknowledged sister temple, dogma variance is less an issue as long as it is considered.
Obi-Wan did not want this, it brought too much of the stink of paperwork, and there was no Cody to fill in. He did not want to encourage this kind of permanence just to keep Anakin away from Coruscant for a few more years. But neither did he want continuing ‘oversight’ and interference with his decisions by disagreeing Masters.
He rubbed his still filling in beard and looked at his own Master, not that Qui-Gon could save him. “Very well, I am hereby requesting the foundation of a Sister Temple with myself as Master of the Tatooine Temple. I will provide the list of the handful of changes.”
Soon, Nu studied the list from Obi-Wan’s padd, humming quietly as she read the changes he had discussed heavily with Torr and Jinn.
Obi-Wan wanted to meditate on this for himself. Keeping Anakin away from Palpatine and better in the Light kept spiraling outward to greater changes. He needed to do more than react to people the Force sent his way.
The Order had been playing chess blindly against the Sith, but now the Sith were blind to him. He needed to consider more than isolated ploys like saving Ahsoka and Hett. He needed a strategic ally, a Shadow, or even a non-Jedi who could gather the news he needed about things like Kamino.
Nu frowned at Obi-Wan’s notes.
He also needed to create this school in his non-copious free time training Anakin and preparing for the coming war.
Multipurpose motions. If Anakin wanted the benefit of a splinter Temple’s agency, he would have to undertake the additional effort. Researching and persuasion to ‘get’ his way instead of power, manipulation, or leaving Obi-Wan or his Captain to do Anakin’s paperwork. Anakin needed to absorb that with power and authority came logistics and bureaucracy.
Color of the robes was hopefully a carrot to teach him the consequences of doing things without traditional support.
Rex and Appo will thank him.
Blue robes would be close enough to the standard and Obi-Wan wondered how long until Anakin realized that matched the usual saber color of Guardian blades.
When he looked up, both Nu and Jinn were meditating as well and he waited to resume their discussion. Perhaps she could put him in contact with a strategic-minded Shadow to block or neutralize Sith pawns.
Asaaj deserved a better path too.