Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Qui-Gon returns from his excursion to Bandomeer as a cat climbs out of a bath. Plo goes to grant him clearance for docking and in the background of Qui’s answering comm, hears peculiar sounds.

Two voices, rattling, whispering. There is thudding and a clatter that inspires Qui to leave off answering Plo’s questions to snap over his shoulder in a stronger accent than he usually employs in public space for ‘both of you to settle down now.’

It is the ‘both’ that sticks with Plo. He hesitates for a moment before comming back and asking Qui-Gon to restate the number of passengers he is returning with. His previous report had included two, himself and the Initiate (former Initiate, technically—Yoda is gloating and Plo and Mace are steering clear of him before something else ‘unexpected’ happens to them next) Obi-Wan Kenobi, however clearly there is at least a third body in Qui-Gon’s care.

Qui-Gon himself is perplexed at the question.

“Did you not receive my missive?” he asks.

Apparently, Plo has not.

“Mace confirmed it, did he not pass it to the council?”

If he has, then Plo wasn’t present for it.

Qui takes several long moments before turning on his comm again.

“I found a sith,” he says.

There is silence.

“A sith?” Plo repeats.

“Correct.”

“What kind of sith?”

Qui-Gon pauses again; this time, Plo can imagine him looking thoughtfully over his broad shoulder.

“A little one,” he finally answers.

Qui-Gon enters the council chambers with Initiate (former) Kenobi at one of his sides and another child stationed at the other. This child, Plo cannot place among the crèchelings or initiates. They hold the last two fingers of Qui-Gon’s left hand, though, and cringe into his side while looking from the arching Temple ceilings to its recently-cleaned floors.

As Qui-Gon approaches those council members waiting for the three of them, Mace and Plo stand from their seats.

Initiate Kenobi’s light-colored eyes darken as his pupils expand. Plo’s heart clenches in the face of his suppressed anxiety.

What happened was a mistake, regardless of what Yoda may say about the Force’s will. Any apology for those events which have hollowed Initiate Kenobi’s eyes and cheeks and stained the creases of his nostrils and his nailbeds with dark mineral would be insuffient. Mere words, empty no matter how emphatically stated.

There is nothing to say to a child dragged, for however short a time, no matter by what sort of circumstances, into slavery.

If there was true justice to be found in this galaxy, young Kenobi would receive a council meeting of his own, where the attention to his case would not be divided between himself and his two companions. But alas.

Qui-Gon visibly aches before them. His Force Signature throbs in its center with a reopened wound and leaks out into fans of brittle, lacy coral-like tendrils.

Plo does not understand why Master Yoda’s lineages follow his word to the ends of the world; for the strength of their individual personalities, Qui and Mace both yield to Master Yoda’s suggestions, even when the result time and time again results in broken bowl after shattered vase.

Qui stands before the council and bleeds. He reports on Xanatos, his first gushing wound, and explains how he attempted to control the damage this first lost apprentice did to the mines and miners on Bandomeer. He lays a hand on the crown of young Kenobi’s head as he speaks of the offer of self-sacrifice that the boy held up to preserve the lives of those around him.

It was not the bravery that has struck Qui-Gon in this moment, but rather Kenobi’s analysis of the situation and ability to remove his emotions from an effective resolution. This, Qui-Gon says, is more than admirable and has changed his earlier stance on the boy’s potential to grow into a Knight. He needs training and direction, but his instincts are strong and to return him to his assignment in the Agricorps would be a waste of potential for both Kenobi and the Order as a whole.

Kenobi drops his eyes as Qui-Gon speaks. His blackened fingers twist and tangle into each other. His energy has withdrawn almost entirely into himself; all that remains as evidence of the true extent of his fear is his quivering jaw.

The boy has endured multiple rejections already. Plo read in each of his swallows a terror of what happens after one final repudiation. Where will he go? What will he do? Will he return to the mines?

Qui-Gon states in contained exhaustion that, should it please the council, he is willing to accept Obi-Wan Kenobi as his padawan learner. He will swear to oversee the boy’s maintenance and training until knighthood.

Several members do not think this wise, especially given that Qui-Gon’s former apprentice appears to be targeting those he perceives as replacements for himself in Qui-Gon’s life. They believe that, should Initiate Kenobi be approved as his padawan, he will again be subjected to Xanatos’s violence.

Master Yoda accepts this as a possibility and asks Kenobi if he would like to be a knight.

“Yes, Master,” Kenobi murmurs.

“Difficult and painful, the path of a jedi knight is often,” Master Yoda reminds him. “A life like this, you do not have to live. Choose, you may. However, aware you must be of the dangers that will follow.”

Kenobi looks up into Qui-Gon’s eyes. Qui meets his gaze and gives a little shrug.

The result is rather unexpected. Kenobi’s shoulders slip down incrementally and his trembling jaw settles. He turns back to face the Council, and Plo can feel the swoop of confidence that accompanies the words, “I am aware of the dangers, Master.”

“Master Qui-Gon’s apprentice, you wish to be?” Yoda asks.

“Yes, sir.”

The council is moved. Conversations are had, but throughout all of them, glances shift from young Kenobi to Qui-Gon’s other side, where the alleged sith’s apprentice appears to be slowly falling asleep standing up. Qui-Gon gently shakes their linked hands and the apprentice jerks awake and makes as though to bolt. Qui tightens his grip while simultaneously leaning over to give Kenobi a nod of assurance.

The council votes to approve the apprenticeship of Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi with Master Jinn. The boy nearly collapses with relief, and Qui slips a hand around his back. Normally, this is the moment where a master and new apprentice celebrate. There is often tight hugging and whooping—a congratulation is bestowed by the council and, if a lineage is present, members will cheer and welcome the child into the fold.

However.

There is another matter here that cannot go undiscussed any further.

The sith-apprentice.

Qui-Gon asks Padawan Kenobi to retire to the antechamber outside of the meeting space. He cheekily tells him that he’s free to nap. At Kenobi’s confused, awkward shuffle, Qui asks Mace if he can escort Kenobi outside.

The sith-apprentice, watching this all going on, begins to show signs of discomfort. This is peculiar.

Even more peculiar is how Kenobi waves at the apprentice and gestures at them to stay calm, even as he is escorted outside. As soon as he turns around with Mace’s hand hovering at his back, the sith-apprentice lets out a high keening sound. Qui adjusts his grip so that he’s holding more of the child’s fingers and just in time to prevent a lunge in Kenobi’s direction.

Kenobi continues to make soothing gestures.

The sith-apprentice snarls and sets upon Qui-Gon’s wrist with sharp teeth. Possibly milk teeth still. It is hard to know the child’s gender, as Zabrak children don’t often have visible distinctions early on, however this one’s skin is a dusty red and they look as though they have been painted with some sort of ink.

Qui-Gon shushes the child softly as their distress crescendos. Kenobi’s total disappearance cuts everything off like a knife. The child’s noise making falls away completely. They stare at the entrance to the chamber room, rapt.

Qui-Gon turns back to the Council’s blazing gaze.  

“The conditions on Bandomeer are unkind to all creatures,” Qui-Gon says tightly, “In mine and Padawan Kenobi’s endeavors, we were aided by this boy, who Padawan Kenobi encountered prior to my arrival. His name is Maul. And if you see his eyes, you will see that he has been in contact with the Dark.”

A hushed murmur runs through the council. Plo lifts a brow at the irony of a child so small and obviously ill-treated being given a name like ‘Maul.’ Others behind him whisper that it is impossible for someone so young to fully embrace the Dark side. There must be some mistake.

“See for myself, may I?” Master Yoda asks, effectively silencing the whispering.

Qui-Gon looks down at Maul. Curiously, there is no response. Maul doesn’t seem to register that someone is looking down at his crown of unerupted horns for several beats. When he does lift his head, it comes with a quizzical expression, as if he doesn’t understand what is happening around him. Qui gives him a little tug and kneels down to whisper to him.

That expression doesn’t change much. Qui-Gon taps the edge of his own eye and Maul blinks and plasters his free hand against the side of his face to show his eyes to Qui-Gon.

It is unfairly endearing.

“Yes, I see them,” Qui says. “Can you show my old master?”

Maul, still with his hand on his face, turns to look for said master.

Shaak Ti at Plo’s right turns to give him a totally vacant expression which is her way of screeching internally.

Yoda waddles forward to introduce himself, and Maul’s face goes from wonder to alarm. He looks from Yoda to Qui-Gon and back twice. Shaak reaches over and wraps a hand around Plo’s wrist tightly.

“You name, Maul is?” Yoda asks.

Maul lurches at being directly addressed by a troll. He attempts to adopt a defensive stance even with one arm trapped in Qui’s grip.

“A family name, have you?” Yoda asks benignly.

Maul doesn’t answer.

“He wasn’t able to give me one,” Qui-Gon says for him as Yoda peers closer at Maul’s eyes and retracts himself, seemingly satisfied.

“How can you know him to be a sith’s apprentice?” Ki-Adi-Mundi asks from his seat.

“No, no. A sith’s apprentice he is,” Yoda counters. “The Dark side, I feel in you, Young Maul.”

Maul bats at his head. Qui winces and tries to snatch his hand before it makes contact. Even Yoda seems taken aback.

“Answer my questions, you will not?” he asks. “Speak, can you?”

“He can,” Qui-Gon says. “He’s just overwhelmed.”

There is a pause that is as strange as that statement.

“Overwhelmed?” Mace repeats from where he has taken up standing by the door frame.

“Yes,” Qui-Gon says.

He straightens up but keeps a hold on both of Maul’s hands. Maul shows not much interest in this happening to him. He shows his teeth to Yoda.

Plo’s pretty sure they’re at least half milk teeth. Those incisions are so small.

“Who is your master, little one?” Plo tries asking from his seat.

Maul twitches at the new voice and abandons his Yoda-intimidation efforts to search the crowd for the owner of the voice. Plo slowly stands and lifts a hand. He repeats his question. Maul cocks his head at him.

“Master?” he asks up at Qui-Gon.

“Yes,” Qui says. “Remember? You told me your master is—”

“Sidious.”

Well, that was ground-shakingly easy.

“Sidious?” Mace repeats.

Maul visibly decides that he’s bored of all these people and this tall person next to him who won’t let him hunt the troll. He settles in Qui-Gon’s grip and shifts as though to stand behind him by about a half-step or so, the way that their own Padawans learn to station themselves. Qui-Gon lets go of one of his hands to let him take up that space, and then, to everyone’s surprise, he lets go of the other hand.

Maul doesn’t bolt. He takes up the Padawan’s station and just...stays there?

It is as though Qui-Gon is his master now.

Qui looks uncertainly to Master Dooku in the council’s crowd. Master Dooku leans forward and places both hands on his mouth as he tries, for once, to help Qui figure out what the kark he’s gone and gotten himself involved in.

“May I?” Master Dooku finally asks.

Master Yoda yields the floor as Dooku stands up and makes his way down to speak to this child.

“Your master’s name is Sidious, young one?” he asks.

Maul looks around and realizes that Dooku is talking to him. Yes, him. He blinks and defers to Qui-Gon.

Dooku tucks a fist against his lips and thinks for a long moment before trying again.

“This is not your master,” he says, pointing at Qui-Gon. “This is Obi-Wan’s master. You know this, yes?”

Maul again says nothing, leaving the answer to Qui-Gon. He’s been trained, that’s obvious, at least in presentation and when and if he’s allowed to speak in front of an audience.

“Maul,” Dooku says, “Do you know that Qui-Gon is not your master?”

Finally, there is a nod.

“But he feels like your master?”

An expression of shock. Rapid head shaking.

“He’s not like your master?” Dooku asks, having worked out that yes and no questions are the way to go here.

He receives another head shake.

Dooku pulls back as Mace approaches and takes his place in kneeling.

“Am I like your master?” Mace asks gently.

Maul stares at him and then shrugs.

“Did your master take you to Bandomeer?”

No.

“Did he tell you to go to Bandomeer?”

No.

“Did someone your master knows take you to Bandomeer?”

Yes.

“Do you know why you were going?”

No.

Mace is stumped.

“Were you supposed to receive any messages?” he asks.

Maul shakes his head.

“Were you—were you aware that you were receiving any information?”

No.

Plo doesn’t know what to make of this. Why would Sith Sidious send their apprentice away without giving said apprentice any details of the purpose? Perhaps it was intended to be a test? Perhaps the whole thing was a training exercise.

If that was the case, then, well, Maul had failed. Spectacularly. Unless Sidious had hoped, for some reason, for their apprentice to keep Qui-Gon and Kenobi alive.

“Does he speak to you?” Mace asks Qui-Gon.

“Yes,” Qui says, “But more to Obi-Wan. They are quite close; I believe they were on the same labor assignment.”

So now they are all supposed to believe that a sith sent their apprentice without any intel to Bandomeer to be taken as slave labor into a mine and then to support Jedi activity.

“I fear,” Qui-Gon says, “That the sith he was apprenticed to wished to break their bond by sending the boy away to be killed.”

 Plo winces as several council members take up scowling and scoffing around him.

“Has he used the dark side in your presence?” Mace asks.

“On multiple occasions, yes,” Qui-Gon says. “But I can’t tell if he knows any different. They have been rather perfunctory things. Catching rope, flicking switches. He uses it for these purposes just as he uses it in offensive combat.”

“He fights,” Mace states.

“Very well,” Qui says. “Mostly anyone who gets too close to Obi-Wan, including myself.”

“Does he have a saber?”

“He tells me he had a weapon, but he doesn’t know where it went. He doesn’t appear to have belongings, so I found nothing to suggest that he is not telling the truth.”

Mace acts for everyone as he looks down at Maul. He kneels one more time and holds out his hands.

“Will you trust me, little one?” he asks.

Maul stares.

“I won’t do what your master has done to you. You have my word.”

Maul narrows his eyes in suspicion.

“Will you let me see just a little into your memories?” Mace asks.

Maul’s lip curls.

“Two minutes,” Mace bargains. “No more.”

Maul shifts to hide behind Qui-Gon but doesn’t actually move his feet. His eyes begin searching the room. They flick towards the door that Obi-Wan left through, then come back to Mace.

“Perhaps,” Qui-Gon interrupts, “He would be more willing after a meal.”

Mace tilts his head up to him.

“And some pain relief,” Qui-Gon adds gently. “You will understand what I mean.”

Mace stands and moves back to let the council decide. Yoda poses the suggestion to everyone.

Shall they allow the boy treatment and rest and try again?

There is no dissent. It is the least that they can do for a child.

Chapter Text

Curiosity follows Plo for the next few days. It takes him to Qui-Gon’s apartment, where his new Padawan has found safety in a corner while Qui-Gon strips the apprentice room next to his of all Xanatos’s belongings. Obi-Wan looks to Plo with a face that says ‘help.’ Plo absorbs the furious muttering, the banging, and the clattering and assures Obi-Wan that the irritation has nothing to do with him and everything to do with all the nonsense Xanatos has crammed into the crevasses of the space.

He asks Obi-Wan while he is there how he came to know the Maul, the sith child.

Obi-Wan explains that Maul was on his labor gang before Obi-Wan was assigned there. He’d been working in that space for a few weeks and had originally gnashed his teeth at Obi-Wan for slowing down the line. But after a little while, he’d settled down and they’d talked a little. Obi-Wan had noticed that he, too, had been outfitted with a Force inhibitor, but hadn’t recognized Maul as a fellow initiate or crècheling.

When he’d asked, Maul didn’t know what the Temple was. He came from a place called Dathomir, but he’d left there after he’d won the attention of a force user.

He said his mother was a witch, but he didn’t know what kind of magic she used.

“So he was there before you were,” Plo clarifies.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan says. “I shared rations with him because they didn’t give him as much because he’s littler. Younger, I mean. Like, he’s not ten yet, so they gave those guys smaller rations.”

“He’s not ten standard?” Plo asks.

“He’s nine,” Obi-Wan says. “After we started sharing, he’d fight anyone who tried to pick one with me. I told him he didn’t have to, but you know, he’s got anger problems, so it didn’t really matter what I thought. He doesn’t care how big people are, either. He dropped one of the overseers without the Force. His hand was hurt and stuff. I think it’s still sort of crunched. He holds it like this.”

Obi-Wan shows Plo a couple curled fingers.

Plo nods slowly at them.

“Did you feel the dark side in him?” he asks.

“Not until we got the inhibitors off,” Obi-Wan says. “Then I realized that maybe I shouldn’t have gotten so close, but it’s not like he ever hurt me. And he tried to tackle Xanatos, so he can’t be all bad right?”

...right.

“Once you get him calm, he’s better company,” Obi-Wan says. “He likes singing and riddles and stuff. He said his master doesn’t let anyone play or sing where they lived. We aren’t going to send him back to Bandomeer, are we, Master?”

Plo doubts it, but he has no real answers here, and he does not like to make promises he cannot keep.

“If he was more open to talking to us, we would have better idea of how to help him,” Plo says. “Otherwise, I believe that we may work to get him back to his people on Dathomir. Although he is force-sensitive, he has already been corrupted by the Dark Side. Training that out of him will take years and requires his willingness to put it aside—a feat not easily accomplished, even by the most powerful of jedi.”

Kenobi looks away, crestfallen.

“I understand,” he says. “Maybe if you let me talk to him, he’ll answer more?”

Maybe indeed. Plo takes note of it.

The Force starts nagging the next evening when Plo is preparing a meal in his apartment. The room is darkened and the O2 regulators hum, but the Force ripples insistently.

Plo pours the toasted nuts into their bowl and follows the ripples as they grow more excited. They draw him down through the Temple to the halls of healing, where he finds Mace drawing on every well of patience in his person.

He sits, legs folded, on the ground in front of Maul and continues to try to offer him a small plastoid bowl. Maul watches him like a hunted rabbit, tucked away in the shadow of the cot he has been given to sleep on.

He’s a scrawny thing, obviously ill-treated by that master of his and then ill-treated more in the mines of Bandomeer.

Mace offers him a cube of raw meat from the bowl. He’s done this with the handful of Zabrak crèchelings they’ve had over the years and, usually, the children are more than happy to reach over and pluck the cube from his hand and chomp it into oblivion. They like it best when Mace makes a show of giving and then hustling away with snacks, trying to get them to ‘hunt’ him back through this luring process because they know that after they’ve given chase, he’ll give them the whole bowl.

This is a much blander version of the type of encouragement they would get in their home cultures to encourage them to sharpen their hunting instincts.

Maul, however, only blinks at him with blown pupils.

Plo crouches down to make himself a nuisance over Mace’s shoulder and takes damage to his shins for the trouble. It is no matter.

“Hello there,” Plo says in Maul’s direction.

“I’m working here,” Mace says.

“Are you hungry?” Plo asks.

Maul edges back as far as he can before he runs out of cot and shadow to hide in.

“He won’t eat,” Mace says.

“Have you considered leaving?” Plo asks.

Mace’s expression is flat which promises future bullying. Plo steps around him and his buzzing irritation to take the bowl from his hand and plonk it down on the ground just in the boundaries of the cot’s shadow.

“Stop being helpful,” he says as he pulls at Mace’s sleeve to force him to stand. “He doesn’t want to play with you.”

“I’m not trying to play.”

Plo will believe it when he sees it.

“It’s non contaminated, he washes his hands,” he tells Maul as he pushes Mace out of the room with him.

It is a while before Plo sees Maul again. He’s received word through his council meetings that the boy has opened up a little about his past. He still won’t anyone into his memories, but he’s told Qui-Gon enough for them to pinpoint what they believe to be his home region on Dathomir.

He is a Nightbrother, other Zabrak members explain to the council. They know this because of his extensive tattoos and the lilts and falls of his accent when he does speak.

A request for information has been sent to one of the Nightbrother villages on Dathomir to inquire if there are any children who have gone missing. The reply is curiously a negative. No children have been recently lost, they say. Knight Eeth Koth calls bullshit on this and requests to speak with the village’s leaders.

He leaves and returns with the news that Maul isn’t understood to be ‘lost’ but rather ‘taken.’ He’s been missing for a few years now, taken by a person who the Brothers don’t know but who they say the Sisters do. And while Koth was not able to speak to the boy’s mother directly, nor able to ascertain if this particular village is the one that Maul comes from, the men of that village are insistent that the boy’s mother is looking for him and that they are more than happy to transport him back into her custody.

They plead for Maul’s return, and Knight Koth states that something about that is uncomfortable to him. He thinks that this is more than empathy. It is possibly desperation. And that makes him worry that Maul is an object with political value in that village more than he is a kidnapped child.

There’s no way to find out without Maul telling them or letting them see his memories to determine if something he does not understand has happened to him.

Plo volunteers.

He doesn’t see why not. He likes children—even the bitey ones—and he has no strong disdain at the idea of touching someone who has touched or been touched by the Darkside.

He goes to find Maul in his temporarily assigned room in the crèche and finds it empty. The masters minding the children say that if left on his own, Maul’s moods fluctuate between destructive and apathetic. He’s already done his best to destroy the room a few times, and, upon finding that none of his artistic measures take hold in the place, he’s become withdrawn.

He used to show signs of interest in passing masters or initiates who came to pass notes under the door to what they thought was a new sibling, but now, he sleeps. He’s slept for several days lately and has begun to show less interest in food, so one of the masters has taken him to the Room of a Thousand Fountains to see if maybe the change of scenery will make him feel safer and more interested in socializing again.

Plo thanks them and takes himself for a walk.

He finds Maul about fifteen feet up in a tree in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. It takes about three hours to do it. The boy is remarkably skilled at hiding and remarkably patient when he’s gotten to where he wants to go. The crèchemaster Plo is with clutches at their chest in relief and leaves Plo to go call off the search effort of the others in the area who volunteered to assist in finding the loose sith-apprentice.

Plo considers Maul’s owlish gaze down at him.

“Does it feel better up there?” he asks.

Maul looks up over his head.

“We don’t need to do that,” Plo says.

The boy goes up another five or so feet.

“Even better?” Plo asks.

There is yet another stare. A barely-there nod.

“May I join you?” Plo asks.

A headshake.

“Is it best alone?”

Apparently, it is. So much so that Maul finds a happy notch to settle into about forty feet up.

Plo stands under the tree for hours, waiting the kid out. Surely, he is bound to get hungry and frightened and want to come down. Or else, he might climb from one tree to another. These are scenarios that Plo is prepared for.

He is not prepared for night to fall and for Maul to still be up in the tree, waiting for him to give up and leave. Most of the others have. The crèchemaster at Plo’s request, since he’s got a feeling that the reason that all this climbing business started is linked to the threat of being put back into the small room in the crèche.

“You are admirably stubborn,” Plo notes.

“If I go back, he’ll kill me.”

Ice travels down Plo’s spine. He looks directly up and finds that Maul has crept down to the branch only about fifteen or so feet over his head again. He’s been so quiet and careful, Plo didn’t even hear him moving around.

“Who will kill you?” Plo asks. “We aren’t sending you back to Bandomeer.”

“Why not?”

Why not? Plo forgets how to answer this. Maul starts talking again before he can work out a satisfactory response.

“They give you food in the mines,” he says. “And it’s not cold. There are others.”

“It is only you and your master?” Plo asks.

“He’ll kill me,” Maul insists. “He already tried, but I didn’t die. I don’t die.”

“Your master is trying to kill you?” Plo asks.

Maul’s eyes are yellow and tinged around their irises with red.

“He betrayed my mother. He took me,” he hisses. “She’s angry.”

“Will she hurt you as well?”

“She gave me away to a keeper because Master told her to.”

“Will she hurt you, Maul?”

Maul’s fingers dig into the bark of the branch he’s curled around.

“She gave me away,” he says again.

“Why did she give you away?”

“Because Master told her to.”

Plo feels like he’s missing a key piece of the puzzle here.

“Your mother knows that your master is a sith,” he says.

Maul brings his legs up onto the branch and flattens himself against it.

“Does she know how he’s treated you?” Plo asks.

“It’s ‘cause I ran away,” Maul says quietly. “And the keeper was mad, and they beat me, but I escaped. He made me how he wanted me to be.”

“Who did?” Plo asks.

“Master,” Maul says in a snarl dampened by bark. “He made me like this. He made her give me away, he knew that man would be terrible. He knew I’d be mad. I’m so angry. He wants me to hurt because it makes me hate more, and the more you hate the stronger the power becomes. It eats you.”

Plo can’t say that he expected a nine-year-old to understand the forces keeping his head plunged into the Dark like this.

“Do you want to be angry?” he asks.

“NO.”

“You don’t like being angry?”

“NO.”

“It sounds like you’re angry right now.”

“That’s how it works. Why don’t you get it? Aren’t you a master, too?”

Plo can’t help but chuckle.

“So you don’t want to be angry,” he says, “But every time you get hurt, you get angry. And you don’t want to go back to your master because you think he’ll kill you?”

Maul glares over the edge of the branch.

“He thinks I’m weak,” he says. “He said it was a mistake to take me. I’m not old enough. I need too much.”

“Do you need too many things?” Plo asks.

Maul grows quiet.

“No,” he says after a long moment. “Except sometimes I’m thirsty and there’s no water.”

“Is that all you need? What about if you’re hungry? Cold?”

“I figure things out.”

“How long have you been figuring them out?”

“I dunno. Maybe a year?”

Plo tips his head to the side.

“A whole year?” he asks.

 “Maybe two,” Maul admits. “I tried counting, but I missed some days, and it all went to hell.”

“You’re very intelligent, Maul,” Plo points out. “Most of our younglings wouldn’t be able to live through what you have. And for you to have figured out why the Sith treats you like this—it is admirable.”

Plo waits, but there is no response. He counts to thirty and looks up to find the space above him completely empty. He lowers his head and controls an instinctual startle to find Maul standing on the grass in front of him now.

He tips his head to the side and holds out a hand.

“You’re too old to sit on the ground,” he says.

“Am I?”

“Yeah.”

“Like your Master?”

“He may as well be soil. You’re still bones.”

Plo takes the hand but stands up on his own. He swings his new prisoner from side to side and watches Maul watch the motion.

“Can I kidnap you for a little while?” Plo asks.

Maul tears his gaze from their hands up to Plo’s face.

Plo lets Maul into his apartment. It is as secure as anywhere else, but more importantly it has a window that Maul plasters himself to the moment he notices it. He stares out at the glowing city scape.

Plo closes the door quietly behind him.

“Where are the trees?” Maul asks as Plo goes to fish around his cabinets for something edible for near-humans.

“There are some,” Plo says. “But they are small. They don’t do well in the city’s air. It is more polluted the further down you go.”

“That’s why they need trees, then. They make the air better.”

“Oh?”

“I read it.”

Plo thinks near-humans can probably digest Yuhar seeds—although Plo has been warned by three separate crèchemasters that too many result in GI problems they have to deal with.

“Are you hungry?” he asks.

“Are these books?”

Plo looks up and finds Maul inspecting his shelves of collectibles. The cabinet they live in is glass and will not open unless Plo has reduced the oxygen in the room to a level that both he and the books can safely exist in.

“They are indeed,” Plo says. “Do you like to read?”

“Mom collects spellbooks,” Maul says.

“Oh? What does she use them for?”

“Evil.”

Plo has to laugh.

Maul falls asleep on the floor by the window, watching ship lights as they sink lower and lower into the city outside.

Plo enters the empty padawan room next to his to find one of Bultar’s old heavy blankets. He comes back and shakes it out over Maul’s still form. He shifts a little in his sleep, but the snuffing falls away and again, there is quiet.

Plo goes to his own room and closes the door, seals it, and turns on the O2 regulator so that he can remove his mask. Over the hum, he can still sense Maul in the force just a room away.

Chapter Text

In the morning, Plo exits fully expecting his rooms to be Maul-less; what he finds instead, is that his apartment is Mace-full and in a way that spells doom.

Mace has parked himself on the kitchen counter with his arms folded over his chest. Plo looks from him to the window to see that the blanket is still there on the ground, and—even more interestingly—Maul is sitting tightly in a corner with a datapad on his lap, enraptured.

Plo hands his attention back to Mace.

“Good morning,” he says.

“You cannot steal children whenever the whimsy takes you,” Mace says.

“I didn’t steal him, I kidnapped him with permission,” Plo says. “Didn’t I, young one?”

Maul makes a grunt of agreement in his corner. Plo wonders fondly what he’s reading over there.

“Plo.”

“Hm?”

“The sith-child stays in the sith-child-room,” Mace says.

“He may stay here with me,” Plo says. “There is more room for him to move. I will monitor his behavior.”

“Plo. If you want an apprentice, just say you want an apprentice.”

“Alright,” Plo says, matching Mace’s crossed arms. “I want an apprentice.”

“Alright,” Mace echoes back, “No. See? How easy was that?”

“You gave Qui-Gon an apprentice.”

“Qui-Gon’s apprentice isn’t neck deep in the dark side.”

“Well, I suppose someone will have to do something about that,” Plo sighs gustily. “What do you think, Maul? Do you want to go back to your old Master? Or would you rather stay with me?”

Maul looks up from the pad and tips his head to the side.

“You,” he says.

Good boy.

“No. No, none of that,” Mace says. “I don’t know what you two bonded over last night, but that’s not how this works.”

“He needs time to come down from his time in the Dark,” Plo argues. “He cannot do that effectively if he is not instructed. The crèchemasters have not had experience in fighting this tide. It is unfair to place the responsibility upon them, is it not?”

Mace holds up a finger. A clack snags both his and Plo’s attention to the corner. Maul lifts his hand from the pad that he’s set on the floor.

“Master will know if I go back home,” he says as he stands and straightens out his threadbare clothes.

Mace narrows his eyes.

“Will he?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“And are you saying that you will return to his side?”

“I don’t I have a choice,” Maul says looking directly into Mace’s eyes.

“You have a choice,” Mace says. “If you resist the dark side, then you will serve no purpose to him.”

“If I have no purpose for him, then he’ll kill me,” Maul says.

Mace’s nostrils flare as he turns to stab a thousand mental blades into Plo’s person.

“So you two talked last night,” he says.

“We did indeed,” Plo says. “Maul is quite articulate when he does not feel that someone is going to twist his arm until it comes loose from his body.”

Mace decides to ignore him.

“What do you plan to do then?” he asks Maul.

“I dunno,” Maul says.

“He’s a child, it isn’t his job to know,” Plo points out.

“Thank you, I am aware,” Mace says. “Maul, if everything was perfect and you were free from your master, what would you do?”

Maul looks away from the kitchen to the light of the window. His eyes track passing vessels like a cat’s.

“I dunno. Maybe I’d go home,” he says finally. “I have a little brother. He’s still a baby. I can take care of him until he’s big.”

“Yet, you say that if you return home—”

“Bandomeer,” Maul says abruptly. “I want to go back.”

Plo’s heart drops.

“To Bandomeer?” Mace repeats.

“Send me back.”

Mace slips off the counter.

“We can’t send you back to Bandomeer,” he says. “The mines have been shut down. They are not stable enough to work in.”

“So I’ll figure something else out,” Maul says to the window.

“We will connect you with your mother again,” Mace says.

Maul turns completely away from them to move closer to the window so he can watch the traffic outside.

Mace can sense the defeat just as Plo can. It is as though Maul has had enough. The questions repeat themselves until they hold no meaning anymore, so there’s no use in him saying anything at all. The force begins to pool around him like blood or despair.

He touches a hand to the window like a toddler waving goodbye to a train.

Plo hasn’t thought this in about 20 years, but he really, really needs Qui-Gon Jinn.

Qui-Gon, of course, takes this moment to impossible to find. Plo tracks his footsteps to Tahl, to Healer Che, to Rael Aveross, to the Armory, back to Tahl, around Mace like his life depends on it, eventually to Yoda.

He enters the old man’s office without knocking. Qui turns around in surprise while Master Yoda sets both hands on his cane.

“Master Koon,” he acknowledges.

“Masters,” Plo greets, “My apologies. May I borrow you, Qui-Gon?”

Qui expression flattens.

“If it’s Mace-related, I’m busy,” he says.

Plo flounders. Qui reads it on him after only a second. He opens his mouth, but Yoda beats him to it.

“About young Maul, this is?” he asks.

Plo stomps on the internal despair of being read like a damn book.

“I see so much good in him, Master,” he says. “He is wise beyond his years and caring for others. He is aware that the sith abuses him to increase his anger and fear and acknowledged to me last night that these feed the dark. Despite what he has been through, which admittedly he has only given me brief information about, he tells me that he does not wish to kill his master, only to be free of him. I am aware that Mace and many on the council wish to give him back to his mother, but I worry, Master, that doing so means that the opportunity to spare ourselves from a powerful enemy in the future has appeared before us, and we are letting it sail past.”

Qui-Gon’s eyebrows do a wave. Plo beseeches him silently to agree. He brought Maul back from Bandomeer, he’s seen the boy in action. Surely, he saw the flecks of light, too.

“Obi-Wan is exceedingly fond of young Maul,” Qui-Gon says. “It was at first alarming to me that he would be so affectionate with a sith’s apprentice, but as they are both children, they are perhaps more forgiving of faults than we ourselves have become.”

Master Yoda emits a high-pitched grunt of consideration.

“Fond, you too have become of young Maul,” he says with squinting eyes at Plo.

“He tests my patience and rewards me with trust,” Plo says. “I cannot help but think of how my own master thanked me for the opportunity to practice his own preaching.”

Qui-Gon glances down at his troll of a grand-master and winks. Plo tries not to puff up too noticeably.

“True, this is,” Yoda says. “True indeed. Poorly, it would be if young Maul grew into a full Sith. Cruel, it is to release him to endure the struggle between dark and light once again, unguided. A commitment, however, he must have to the light. Back from the darkside, few have come. A child, he still is, as well.”

Qui makes a little ‘come on, come on’ gesture with his hand hidden by his robe. Plo panics for a moment. It is not dignified, but then again, nor is throwing open every door on the floor to find a man who looks like a horse’s ass.

“I would take responsibility, Master,” he says. “I have no padawans now, and still years to come to take one. If the council would grant Maul a temporary stay to show us if he is able to overcome the greatest of his darkness, then I will take up the task of guiding him towards that goal until he is able to be instructed by someone suited for him.”

Master Yoda stares. Qui-Gon offers Plo two thumbs up over the old man’s head.

“And if consumed, the child still is?” Yoda asks.

“Then I will help find him somewhere safe to live where the Sith cannot find him,” Plo says.

“Agree to this, you think Maul will?” Yoda asks.

“I don’t want to get his hopes up if the council is not in agreement,” Plo says. “I would rather hold the information to myself so as not to cause him any additional sense of rejection.”

“Hm. Speak with the senior council members, I will,” Yoda says. “Another two weeks, give us, to determine an acceptable outcome.”

Plo lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He bows long and low.

“Thank you, Master,” he says. “I will leave you now. Thank you again.”

Maul is granted his two weeks stay which confuses him because he seems to have just gotten used to the idea of being shipped off back to Dathomir. On the datapad Mace gave him to play with, Plo finds countless searches about the planet. Maul has looked up the name of what Plo presumes to be his mother, although with a handful of others, as though he hopes that this can tell him if they are all still alive where he last saw them.

Plo closes the pad and takes a moment to observe the duvet folded and taking up the entire seat on the end of his couch.

He looks back toward the padawan room that it has come from.

Two weeks is a long time to sleep on a floor.  

Mace makes strangling gestures as Plo escapes him yet again in the hallway on his way down to the crèche with Yoda-immunity to take Maul up to his rooms for the time being. The crèchemasters are exasperated with him; they don’t even try to get in his way as he saunters through the group to go knock on the closed door of Maul’s not-cell.

“He’s sleeping again,” a passing master says, “You may have to try harder. Don’t go in before he wakes up. We’ve had two guys end up in medical. Feisty little shit.”

Plo thanks her and knocks harder. Still nothing. He taps a foot a few times and makes up his mind to ping Maul gently through the Force. It can be a bit alarming, but it will be effective.

He just has to be gentle, gentle—

A muffled thud and a yelp makes its way through the door. Maul’s awareness reaches out and then snaps in close to himself upon realizing that someone else, someone unfamiliar, has given him the equivalent of an elbow to the ribs.

Plo knocks once more and a scrabble at the side of door, where frosted glass protects the person inside from being on display, alerts him that Maul is now awake and trying to figure out who’s shaking him.

“Coming in,” Plo says, cracking open the door. “Hello.”

Maul looks like he’s been woken up by a brick.

“Hi,” he says.

“Do you have any belongings in here?”

“No?”

“Do you want to take anything with you?” Plo asks.

The room is sparse but not uncomfortably so. It is a space usually used as an overnight sickroom or safe space for a youngling. There are a few colorful toys in a box by the side of the bed. These have been picked through several times from the looks of it. Not many are appropriate for someone Maul’s age, and from the looks of it, he has occupied himself instead with moving furniture so that he can see out of the gaps in the curtains of the windows around the doorframe into the hallway.

He’s just been watching jedi and younglings move past him for days, Plo realizes with a pang in his jaw.

“I don’t have anything,” Maul says. “Where am I going?”

“With me,” Plo says simply.

“Where?”

“Upstairs?”

“Is my mom coming?”

“Don’t know yet,” Plo says. “It’s going to take us a little while to get in touch. I thought you might like to stay somewhere with a better view in the meantime.”

Maul’s lips turn down at the edges and his fingers curl in uncertain crescents as he tries to read Plo’s energy.

Plo decides to backtrack a little.

“You don’t have to,” he says. “But you are going to be here for another two weeks at least. I wanted to give you the option: you can stay here in this room, or you can come stay with me in mine—the place you were in the other day. Which would you prefer?”

Maul looks back at the toys and the desk he’s shoved into the space behind the door. Plo tamps his own hope down as he watches the careful cataloguing.

“I don’t have any money,” Maul says.

Plo’s brow shoots up.

“You don’t have to pay for this,” he says.

“Do I have to work?”

“No,” Plo says softly. “I am offering because I wanted you to be more comfortable. You need not give any service or payment in return.”

“Why?” Maul asks, taking a step back from Plo.

He is threatened, Plo realizes. He thinks that this is a mindgame. A test. He moves his own person a good space away.

“I am not sure that you will like the answer,” he admits.

“Tell me why,” Maul says in a voice edging towards a growl. “Don’t lie. I’ll know. People always lie.”

“I will not lie,” Plo says, “I see light in you. Little crystals all over.” He passes a hand in an arc to encompass Maul’s body. “I see someone who is strong, who is clever. Who does not deserve to suffer in the name of power. Selfishly, I am doing this to alleviate my guilt that you have been the subject of scrutiny for reasons beyond your control and my fear that you will leave here thinking the jedi are, as a people, no better than your Master.”

Maul’s downturned lips seal into a line. His red-flecked eyes drop to the floor.

“I’ve lived through worse,” Maul says. “I can stay here.”

“Maul—”

“I’ll stay here.”

Centuries old trees have fallen more gracefully than Plo’s hope does in that moment. He is shocked to feel so strongly about this rejection, and it takes great effort to gather himself and release that disappointment into the Force. He takes another step back.

“I can understand that decision,” he says. “If you do change your mind, however, or would like to leave here for some time in the room with the water, I am happy to accompany you.”

Maul withdraws into himself.

“Two weeks?” he asks.

“Two weeks,” Plo says. “Then you will know where you will go.”

“To Bandomeer?”

Plo swallows.

“Two weeks,” he says. “I’ll leave you be now.”

Mace comes by the apartment only two hours later, apparently fully expecting to see Maul. He’s brought with him a soft toy with large, black eyes. He leans into the doorway and pauses. Frowns.

Plo carries on reviewing mission reports. Mace comes in and looks around.

“Where is he?” he asks.

“He wished to stay in the room in the crèche,” Plo says.

Mace ends his round of surveillance on him.

“Why?” he asks.

“Unclear,” Plo says, “I suspect that he does not wish to experience something he will be forced to forfeit in a short time.”

“That’s not very sith-like of him,” Mace huffs. He sets the soft toy on the table and joins Plo in the chair on the other side of it.

“Not very, no,” Plo agrees.

They sit in silence for several beats.

“I’m sorry your sith-child is defying the sith handbook,” Mace says.

“He isn’t my sith-child,” Plo says. “And this just proves my point.”

“If it makes you feel any better, Qui-Gon has already managed to both alienate and endear himself to Padawan Kenobi.”

“Yes, I heard that they’ve gotten a rocky start. I hope you’re not gossiping without a purpose, Mace.”

Mace shakes his ankle and studies the still-open door.

The council grants Maul his two weeks officially and develops a set of trials for him. They would like to see Maul utilize a saber and to see him show kindness without prompting. They ask Plo if he might take part in organizing these instances so that they occur without Maul thinking that he is being observed. They worry that he might alter his behavior if he knows there are eyes on him. They ask Plo too, not to let on that a longer-term stay might be on the cards for Maul after these tests.

Plo assents, of course he does. And then he goes out to find a training saber.

Maul is more amenable to him coming to his door and asking him to go on a brief walk with him. Now that he has realized that the Room of a Thousand Fountains boasts more than one type of tree, it is all that Plo can do to keep up with him as he sets about climbing as many can be climbed. He is not always successful, which wouldn’t be a problem if his success didn’t begin to waver when he was twenty or more feet into the endeavor. Plo, however, is becoming more adept at predicting where exactly he is going to fall. He’s only missed twice now, and perhaps that is a problem because Maul is only growing bolder.

Today, Plo corrals him past the part of the room dendrophiles such as Maul are called to. He stops him in a meadowish area surrounded by stones and walks them to the center of its oval-shaped clearing. Maul knows something is afoot. His suspicion takes the shape of a full turn to check all edges of the oval.

“Why?” he asks Plo rather simply.

“Because,” Plo answers, because two can play at this game.

“Fine, be that way.”

Plo does not laugh. He is a professional. Instead, he reaches into his pocket and produces the hilt of one of the training sabers; he ignites it and watches Maul jump.

“For you,” he says, holding out the saber.

He and Maul both watch as the hilt falls to the ground. Maul jerks his face back up to Plo’s as Plo works on processing that that has just happened.

“I’m not fighting you,” Maul says.

Plo wonders if Maul had planned that or if that was just how he reacted to things his gut told him he shouldn’t touch. Like, would he do the same with a glass? A baby?

“It’ll turn red if it I touch it, and I’ll explode.”

Surely not a baby. Maybe a glass.

“And I’m not good with the one anyways.”

“The one?” Plo repeats.

Maul crosses his arms over his chest.

“I don’t play with short sticks,” he says.

Plo absorbs this and comes up with nothing in his memory bank to match it to.

“You’re too small for a full saber,” he says.

“It’s not a matter of small,” Maul says. “It’s about useful.”

“Oh?” Plo says. “What is your preferred weapon then?”

Maul studies him.

“I’m not fighting,” he snaps. He points at the trees. “I want to climb.”

Plo puts up his hands.

“Okay, okay. Tell me your weapon of choice then,” he says.

“You want me to stab you. Someone’s watching this. I’m not stabbing you for them.”

Too clever. Too clever. Abort abort—

“Maul, my boy, we don’t need to fight. Only spar. Have you sparred before?”

Maul scrunches up his face so that the lines in the skin match the inked ones under his eyes.

“Wrestling,” he decides.

“No, sparring. Practice-fighting. No one gets hurt.”

“That’s wrestling. Savage bites, though. He always bites even when we say no biting.”

Plo takes this grain of possibly-relevant information and puts it to the side.

“You can do the same with sabers,” he says.

“I don’t do sabers.”

This is baffling. If there is one thing that Plo knows about the sith, it’s that they also use sabers. This, the handbook cannot lie about. It is why people of yore used to get the jedi and sith confused all the time.

“If you don’t use a saber, what do you use then?” Plo asks yet again.

“A staff,” Maul says with a sharp nod.

“A staff,” Plo repeats. “As in, a saber with—”

“Two sabers. Put together,” Maul says proudly.

Plo can’t lie. He’s a little speechless.

“Where did you learn that?” he asks.

“Made sure the other guys stopped sitting on me.”

“I didn’t ask why, Maul. I asked where.”

“Forest.”

Ah yes, all is clear now. How could Plo have suspected anything else? He sighs.

“Okay, why don’t we put two together then? I’m sure there’s some tape—”

“I’ll find a branch. You stay there and be old.”

Plo is left standing all on his lonesome. A breeze blows past him.

Maul returns with a branch that is too long for him and covered in branches. He tears at it with his hands, ignoring deluge of rustling and crackling sounds as well as the cuts and splinters he gets as collateral, and strips it to a point where only the thickest wood remains. Then he sets about trying to crack the wood with a rock until it splinters; via this method, he manages to remove both the thickest and thinnest part of the branch so that he’s left with only the middle portion, which is more or less the same girth all the way through. It is taller than him, this remnant, and he takes a few jabs with it before dropping it and fetching his trusty rock to shave it down in places more to his liking.

Plo, meanwhile, picks up the dropped saber and attaches it to his belt. He takes the opportunity to go fetch one of the pre-made wooden sparring swords from a nearby collection point. For some time, he digs around for a staff and is surprised when he can’t find one.

It makes him feel a little silly upon his return. Maul sees the wooden sword in his hand and starts getting worked up and excited.

Plo derives from this that he likes sparring, despite not having a word for it.

That’s fine. He waits until Maul’s happy with his staff and tells him that they’re going to start in the middle of the oval. Maul doesn’t want to start there, however. He doesn’t understand why they have to start there. He has to be herded (bullied) over there. Despite the vocal protesting, he goes along with it until they are nearly in the center before he decides he’s had enough and whips around to take his shot.

It catches Plo off-guard. He nearly takes hip-damage, and for the trick-shot, he brings the practice sword in his own grip down right on top of the staff in Maul’s hands so it nearly throws itself into the grassy ground.

Maul scowls.

“Patience,” Plo tells him. “Pick it up. All the way in the middle.”

He has made a mistake.

He has inadvertently taught Maul how to come down on a low grip to disarm an opponent. The little shit does it three whole times before Plo gets his act together and begins knocking the staff upwards, so that Maul gets to experience the joy of tumbling back onto his back.

To his credit, he always gets back up. And he’s fast, if clumsy.

Plo fends him off without too much effort the first several rounds. Around then, Maul grows frustrated and tries going for shots that he doesn’t realize Plo has lured him into. He takes some hard knocks to the hands for taking the easy way out.

“NO,” Maul snaps out of nowhere after Plo has swept his feet out from under him yet again. Plo observes coolly as he shoves himself up and grabs at the staff that’s fallen beside him.

“No?” Plo asks.

“NO. Stop. No, gimme—”

He catches onto the tip of the sparring sword and shoves it down. Then he stomps over the place next to where Plo is standing and stares at his feet for a good 15 seconds before dragging his staff a few paces away again. He sets his own feet wider apart.

“Okay, now,” he says.

Plo feels the bell chime in his head. He resumes the position.

Maul is young, so he is all chaos, no stamina. He keeps going with the staff long after he is too tired to properly wield it, and while his movements become more clever and directed when he is tired, they don’t carry enough force behind them to be successful.

In short time, he throws himself on the ground and screams into his hands a bit while doing a solid impression of a crab on its back to cope with this. Plo watches, fascinated.

“Are you finished?” he asks.

“NO.”

“When do you think you will be, then?” Plo asks.

“NEVER.”

“Then you may stay there,” Plo says as he makes to walk away.

“Noooooo.”

He continues on his way to return the sparring sword to its receptacle but goes down unexpectantly mid-step. The ground is much harder than he remembers it being. He twists over and examines the crab-creature that has attached itself to his legs.

Maul tightens his body around the leg and hunkers in with wide, challenging pupils.

Plo shakes his leg experimentally. He receives the gift of bared teeth in response.

“How fierce you are,” he says mechanically.

Maul starts growling. It is a sound like a handful of rocks and coins being vibrated together in a cotton sack.

“I am so frightened,” Plo deadpans.

The growling intensifies. Plo twists his legs abruptly towards Maul and breaks his hold on them to the tune of a shout and a mouthful of expletives no nine-year-old ought to even be aware of. For now, Plo ignores them to stand up and dust himself off. He regathers the sword and takes one step—one singular step—forward.

And then he’s down again.

He blinks behind his mask and looks with irritation down the length of his body. Maul shows him as many teeth as he can muster. Plo shuffles up awkwardly until he is standing, this time like a lamp with an especially wide base. Maul clamps onto his shins tighter than before and takes up his growling again.

That continues in various pitches as Plo works one leg free and resolves that he’s just going to have to walk now.

So he does. Stiffly. With effort. Until Maul’s tired of having his head knocked into knees and flings himself off into the grass to writhe around like a dog trying to scratch an itch on its back. Plo leaves him there to pout and snarl and turn himself into one giant grass stain while he puts away the sword.

Plo takes Maul back to his room afterwards and leaves him with the crèchemasters for a thorough scrubbing. When he gets back to his own apartment, he seals the door and hits the O2 regulators. Painfully, he ducks his head to remove his mask and robes.

Getting himself lowered horizontally onto the couch is a even greater challenge punctuated by far more aches and twinges than a guy of his age should have to contend with.

He hasn’t fallen to the ground like that in a long time.

Chapter Text

A test of kindness is a very different thing than a sparring session. Plo takes a day off to deal with his knee pain before traversing back down to Maul’s door. He knocks, but there is no answer.

After the third time, Plo takes a chance on fate and opens the door. The room is empty.

His throat locks down instantly.

He must look like he’s lost his damn mind; he’s asked every single person in the crèche and the hall and the canteen if they’ve seen a little Zabrak boy, this big, red skin, black tattoos. They all gawk at him.

Master Fisto decorates his visage in a long, blistering manner before he stands up and asks where Plo saw the kid last.

“He’s really something,” Kit says as they check storage closets and the space under benches in the halls.

“He is remarkable,” Plo says.

“I saw your little session in the park.”

Plo will not dignify that with a response.

“Honestly, Plo, I was skeptical. But when he didn’t go for the saber even when it was right there in front of him, I think I sort of got it after that. The tantrums, though, those’ll need some work.”

Plo halts in trying to unscrew a grate with his claws.

“Work?” he repeats.

Kit makes a show of sniffing and busily checking under a windowsill no one could possibly fit beneath.

Maul has not escaped. He is not hiding. He has been taken along late with the other children to the library where the archivist is reading a story. The crèchemaster monitoring him gives Kit and Plo a ‘what the fuck is the matter with you’ hand gesture when they burst into the room and startle the children.

Maul is knocked out at the table the master has stationed him at while the little ones listen to the tale on the floor.

“I wasn’t aware that you involved him in your activities,” Plo whispers with the master behind the stacks.

“We needed to at least change the linens in his room,” the master says. “And he hasn’t been half as feral since you started taking him on walks, so I figured it was the lesser evil here.”

“He’s not feral,” Plo says.

“Yeah, I know. That’s his brother,” the master says rolling his eyes.

Kit tips his head to the side.

“How many of them are there?” he asks.

“Unclear. At least three,” the master says. “I asked him to draw a picture of his family and he got three circles in before tearing things up, so I’m going with that.”

Plo can’t reconcile this account of Maul’s behavior with the boy cradling his head on the table out there and the one he’s been taking here and there for the last week or so. He knows that many members of the Order are deeply uncomfortable by the presence of a sith, no matter how small, in their Temple and home, but Plo had hoped that they would realize that they are working with a child. A pliable, malleable, if anything pitiful thing.

“He is aggressive with you?” Kit asks.

“With most of us,” the master says. “We have tried approaching him in every way you can think of, but none of it works. I think he hates humans.”

Kit’s attention snaps like a twig.

“Qui-Gon is human,” he says, “He doesn’t respond poorly to him.”

“That we know of,” Plo qualifies.

“He is fond of Padawan Kenobi,” Kit says. “How is he with human children?”

“With the kids? Fine,” the master says. “Especially Zibo over there. I think she reminds him of his little brother. Maybe they smell similar, I don’t know.”

“Are the other crèchemasters human as well?” Plo asks.

“Some.”

“How does he react to those who are not?”

“Fine? Not-not aggressive, but he’s got a special hate reserved for the rest of us.”

Kit paws at Plo’s shoulder, evidently sharing his thoughts and unable to express that solidarity in non-touching ways.

“Thank you,” Plo says. “The next time he acts out like this, please do let me know.”

Kit is positive that the Sith Master is human. Plo tries to tell him to keep his voice down. They don’t know that. There is nothing to confirm or deny this.

“No, you are going to ask him,” Kit says. “And whatever he say, yes or no, you bring that back immediately.”

Yes, yes, fine whatever. Now stop touching.

It doesn’t take long at all for the call to come through. The crèchemaster on the other end speaks with the resolution of a person watching a piano begin a fall from a cliff.

Plo hustles down and is, unfortunately, tailed by a giant green man who wouldn’t know the word ‘subtle’ if it followed him down a hallway at night. He takes a breath and decides that he will persevere.

It turns out to be a good decision made wisely.

Maul’s screams are hoarse and breathy, but his shouts are bellows and that juvenile growling of his is intense enough to shake his voice. Plo can’t make out what he’s saying, but he can discern through the frosted glass of the lower door windows that there is a great deal of thrashing going on. The masters inside are speaking in steady, even voices. Giving Maul choices. Asking him if he needs space.

They want him to identify the emotions he is feeling, but Maul is too worked up to hear them. Plo sees the lunge through the glass and hears the bevy of people talking over each other in response. Kit grimaces.

“No,” one of the masters in the room says in a loud, authoritative tone “We aren’t doing that.”

Maul shuts up in an instant.

“Good,” the master says. “Hands off. We’re taking space now. All of you, out. Too many cooks in here. Out.”

The door cracks open and bodies come filing out, one, two, and the final crèchemaster, a woman with braids wrapped around her head. Maul makes a sound as she closes the door.

The sound morphs into a scream and then breaks away entirely. The door and windows shudder.

“This is time for space,” the master orders through the door. “We’re all taking a break. We’ll come back and talk after we’ve all calmed down.”

The glass of one of the windows cracks.

The master lays into Plo and Kit with a gaze full of attitude.

“Thanks for the treat,” she says.

Plo lays a hand on his heart as the sound of furniture dragging and crashing over joins the cacophony in the small room.

“What triggered him?” he asks.

“Who knows? Could have been anything. He doesn’t like being told what to do or when to stop one activity to move onto the next,” the master says.

“Was that what happened just now?” Kit asks.

“No, now he’s upset that it’s time for bed,” the master says. “And our reaction to that is apparently to open a portal to hell.”

Plo doesn’t appreciate this attempt at humor. Maul has yet to have even one of these explosive tantrums in his presence. Plo hasn’t even witnessed him drawing on the Force, much less the dark side of it.

“Let me talk to him,” he says.

“Ideally not,” the master says. “We have to teach him that everyone’s boundaries are important, not just his. You can go in there once he’s calmed down in five or ten minutes.”

Plo does not like this rule, but he is not an expert here. He folds his arms over his chest and directs his attention to the door.

It takes fifteen minutes for the sound to totally die off. Only then does the crèchemaster relent and allow Plo to open the door of the place. Inside, room is in a state. The mattress has been removed from its frame and the desk is on its side, nearly blocking the door. The toybox is spilled and there are gouges in the walls. They are the width of small fingers, dragged down a few inches before the effort was abandoned. Plo uses the Force to move the desk out of the way so that he might open the door wide enough to get through, but the second he does. The door slams closed and Plo is left standing in front of it with empty hands.

A long scrape inside tells him that the desk has been replaced in front of the door more securely this time.

Maul is hiding somewhere in that mess.

Plo can feel anxiety blooming and receding through the Force. It is mixed in with emotions that are so jumbled together they are hard to discern.

Plo rests a hand on the door and tries to push his own steadying calm into the Force. It is rejected. Anxiety spills out like wine, faster than before.

“Maul,” Plo says.

A barely-audible moan answers him and then drops off.

“Maul,” he says again. “Let me in to help you.”

There is no response. Worryingly, the anxiety has begun to fade.

“MAUL.”

The anxiety vanishes. The Force is quiet once more. Disturbingly quiet.

Plo imagines the desk inside on its side and pushes until it scrapes loudly. He pushes down on the handle and shoves before Maul can get the thing back into place. It flies open and slams into the wall perpendicular to it, leaving an indentation there.

The room is motionless.

“Maul?” Plo calls, searching for the boy’s signature. It is difficult to pinpoint because of all the nearby bodies spewing concern and emotional strain.

Plo lifts the edge of the mattress so that he can see the frame underneath, and there, he makes out a dark shape. He pushes the mattress aside and finds that it’s actually difficult to wade through all these to get to wear Maul’s body is tucked against the opposite wall. The bedframe hangs over him like a cage; the holes in it are too narrow for Plo’s hand to fit through, so he has to just look.

He can see splotches of blood already.

“Maul,” he says quietly. “Are you awake?”

Nothing. Plo holds his hand over the frame and curls it so that the cage tears away from the screws holding it in place and crumples back into a rolled sheet. Underneath, Maul does not move. Plo leans over and takes ahold of his arm to pull his torso to the side.

Underneath is the arm itself, carved with deep with a splinter broken away from the baseboard. Plo lets out a slow breath.

“Get a healer,” he says.

It has become clear now that Maul is grappling with something much larger than himself. His arm is bandaged, yes, but the injury is deep and the healing staff are again at odds with the crèchemasters over managing signs of mental illness among the younglings. Plo removes himself from the office space before things get dirty.

He goes to peer into the new room that Maul is sleeping in. Knight Koth sits in there with him.

“Master,” he greets.

“It is kind of you to come sit with him,” Plo says.

“Master Fisto said that he doesn’t trust humans,” Koth says.

“It may be that the Master Sith is a human,” Plo says.

“Ah. Well, that would do it. All those people in his face, locking him in a dark room. Bet that feels familiar. Kid didn’t have much of a chance did he? He drew every lot he could lose. What happens to him after this?”

Plo isn’t sure, but he does understand now why Maul has been so eager to leave the crèche.

“I think I’m going to take him with me for a while,” Plo says.

“Probably for the best,” Koth says. “I know some people who might want a kid like him if we need to put him somewhere outside of his current options. They’re good people. One of their aunts was a Nightsister. They’ll have an idea of what he’s been through on that front.”

“Your generosity is endless,” Plo says. “Perhaps you can show me the well where you found it.”

Koth smiles.

“I don’t think you want to go there, Master,” he says.

The healers say that if Maul is calmest with Plo, he should stay with Plo. The crèchemasters say that that’s fine with them, they’re done. Shaak Ti comes on behalf of the council and sits down with Plo in his now occupied apartment and says that she’s not the only one surprised that Maul chose to harm himself instead of the people frightening him.

“That’s hardly compassion,” Plo says. “If they’d stayed much longer in that space, I have no doubts he would have lashed out at them. Perhaps I have been naïve.”

“Not naïve,” Shaak says. “Compassionate.”

Plo sighs. This isn’t about him.

“This is not unusual, Plo.”

He knows.

“It is also not your fault if he is unable to pass these trials.”

“In my mind, he has already passed them,” Plo says. “But passing trials does not a jedi make.”

“No, but a normal life spent safe with the knowledge of how to keep away from the dark side is still a life well lived. Maul does not have to transform overnight into the perfect initiate to be worth your time and energy.”

This is true.

“The council sends their regards for the both of you,” she says. “We have located the mother to contact when you give the go ahead.”

Plo nods and Shaak leaves him in a too-quiet apartment with windows that face out into the city.

Plo wakes up to a sound that sends him rocketing out of bed and searching for his mask. He unseals the door to his room and peers out into the hall to find Maul frowning at the refresher’s sink handles. He looks between it and the thick bandages on his arm.

“You’re awake,” Plo says.

The gaze lands on him next. Maul holds out his arm.

“I did this,” he says.

“You did,” Plo says.

“I remember.”

“It must have hurt,” Plo acknowledges.

“It hurt,” Maul says. “How do I take it off?”

Plo deflates and enters the refresher.

Zabrak people have a higher pain tolerance than other near-humans, and while Maul’s species is more human than your typical Zabrak, he still seems to experience a substantive portion of that tolerance. He allows Plo to clean and re-wrap his wound without complaint.

He is, however, somewhat dizzy and disoriented. Plo turns around and just barely gets a hand between his forehead and the corner of a wall.

“It’s moving,” Maul tells him as Plo stoops down and helps him to a place safely on a chair by the table.

“What’s moving?” Plo asks.

“Everything.”

“You’re exhausted.”

Maul considers this.

“When did you last eat?” Plo asks him.

Maul considers this, too. He turns away and uses the counter to himself stand. He teeters himself over to the front room’s window and crumples down to sit and stare through the glass. Plo hunts through his things for something he can digest, and finding nothing, makes the executive decision to call down to the canteen for an order.

When he’s finished, he finds that Maul has fallen asleep on his side by the glass, in the same position Plo found him under the bed frame downstairs.

They have only a week left.

Mace comes over unannounced that evening and brings with him the porg toy he’d brought before. Maul is again sleeping. Plo is fidgeting and thinking about meat. He’s offered Maul three different kinds of it throughout the day, and Maul has, for his part, tried to eat a few pieces from each, but he doesn’t feel well, and doesn’t connect his lethargy to his lack of calories.

Plo is worried that this is hopelessness, that every day Maul hangs in this liminal, hostile space, he comes closer to apathy.

Mace watches Maul sleep and shrugs.

“Touching that power takes it out of you,” he says. “I’m not surprised he’s so tired.”

Plo nearly flips the table.

Mace has been sitting here the whole time. He’s touched the dark. He knows what it feels like. He should have been the first point of contact for Maul. And instead he’s been standing back, letting Plo play his game of heroes.

“There there,” Mace says tonelessly at Plo trying to sink into the table face. “Here, I’m going to teach you something. Never say I didn’t do anything for you.”

He stands up, strides over to Maul, tucks the giant porg under his arm, and then returns to the table. Plo waits in silence for something to change and, when it does not, hopes that Mace can tell how fucking done he is with him right now.

Maul makes a little sound in his sleep and curls around the porg. He makes a noise of confusion and shifts it until he’s holding it more comfortably smashed into his chest and face.

“I’m still waiting for you to do something,” Plo says.

“Patience, padawan,” Mace says. “You’ll thank me in the morning.”

It takes one night and Plo is up the next morning messaging Qui-Gon things like ‘I understand now why you want to kill him 27 hours a week.’

Qui-Gon asks if he too, has been gifted an interloper.

Plo asks what his interloper looks like. It is apparently a loth wolf in miniature that Padawan Kenobi does not sleep without. Qui-Gon asks what his is. It is a porg in maximum proportions. In hindsight, this is exactly the kind of thing that Mace finds hilarious. They should have known he was going to come through eventually with this nonsense.

Maul, however, interrupts the conversation to show Plo the porg and say that it is the first soft toy he’s ever had. Plo does not stifle one hundred feelings at this. He stifles one. It is tooth-rotting pity.

“People often name their stuffed friends,” he says. “Can you think of a good name for her?”

“Malice.”

Chapter Text

Malice is a catalyst of behavior. Her presence and Plo’s assurances that, whatever happens, Malice will go with Maul seem to make Maul feel more secure. He sits her in the other chair by the table and doesn’t mind when Plo takes the opportunity to ask a few more probing questions.

Why did Maul hurt himself, for example?

Maul claims that it’s the way to make the feelings stop screaming at him. It makes his brain quiet again. Yes, he’s done it before. A few times. Not with his Master, no. Before his master, though, he’d done it once or twice.

Plo asks if Maul was thinking about his Master when he was in the room in the crèche.

Maul picks at his bandage and mumbles that he’s always thinking about his Master. He’s thinking about what he’ll do when the man finds him. He’s thinking about the warning crackle of what sounds like force lightning. He’s thinking about days spent left on a planet while his Master does business and days spent in a hold while his Master is in transit to do business.

It’s dark in the holds he’s lived in, Maul explains. Dark and cold and there are no windows, and when his Master is done with his presence, he has to go back into the hold until there is another training session to be done or a job that feels impossible.

He sleeps in the holds, Maul says. It’s much easier to sleep than think, but his Master realized he was sleeping and now does things that make it impossible to do so for long periods of time.

Plo stands from the table and hands Maul his porg to help him process this trauma. Maul takes her and crams his cheek into hers. He asks Plo when he will go back to the room downstairs.

The answer is that he won’t. But Plo can’t make any promises now He has a different question and it’s a very important one. He explains that Maul doesn’t have to answer if he’s afraid to do so but knowing the answer will really help Plo understand a few things from the last couple of days.

“Is your Master human, Maul?” he asks.

Maul looks up suddenly.

“Yes,” he says without hesitation. “He is old and pale and human, and he wears two faces.”

Plo’s brow sinks.

“What do you mean he ‘wears two faces?’” he asks.

Maul’s eyes widen. He swallows and drops his gaze to Malice.

“He’s tricked everyone,” he tells her and her only in a whisper.

Plo’s pulse takes an incline.

“Who’s everyone?” he asks.

Maul screws his eyes closed.

Plo can’t leave this information where it is; he takes it to Kit when Maul is sleeping (this time on the bed in the padawan room). Kit points at him and Plo talks over his litany of ‘I told you so’s.

“He calls his master two-faced and seems to think he’s a politician,” Plo says. “It sounds like he means that he’s hiding in plain sight.”

“He could be anyone, then,” Kit says.

“Precisely.”

Kit gnaws on his lip.

“Did he do this to Maul on purpose?” he asks. “Did he use Maul to get into the Temple?”

Plo doesn’t know for certain, but this would imply that Qui-Gon is a sith.

“Oh, I’d believe that. 100%,” Kit says.

Plo tells him to maybe not talk so loud where members of Yoda’s lineage can hear him. Furthermore, Qui-Gon may exhibit constant and endless sith-adjacent behavior, but his eyes are resoundingly blue.

Kit laughs and reminds him who has seniority between them. He has no fear of Yoda’s lineage. They may be aggressive, but they’re almost all easily defeated with a healthy dose of common sense.

“We’ve got to keep Maul talking, though,” he says.

“He’s not well,” Plo says, “And I only have a few more days with him. The senior council has told me nothing about any sort of evaluations of his behavior. I don’t feel comfortable re-engaging him in sparring at the moment.”

“Forget the sparring,” Kit says. “Put him with some other kids. Let’s see what he does when he’s not the only one in a room.”

Maul is alert when Plo returns and Plo knows this because his front door is cracked open and Padawan Kenobi is sitting outside it on his folded up robes. Plo halts his steps a little ways away and takes in the light peeking out of another open door hallway down the corridor. Qui-Gon rises with the dawn; it only makes sense that Obi-Wan is beginning to join him in that habit.

Plo can’t quite hear what the boys are talking about, but Obi-Wan shifts from sitting with his legs crossed under him to laying on his belly with his head propped up by his palms. He is a darling tripping hazard. Plo hangs back to observe for longer and is rewarded by Maul opening the door a little more so that he is somewhat visible. He doesn’t cross the threshold, though, not even by a toe.

He does, however, mirror Obi-Wan’s position and hold up his arm.

Obi-Wan scolds him immediately. Maul waves him off. Obi-Wan juts out his bottom lip and reaches over to poke the stuffed stomach of Malice, who Maul has brought with him to threshold. Maul bats his hand away and shows his teeth.

Obi-Wan pokes him instead.

Maul latches onto his hand with his teeth and Plo flinches, but Obi-Wan laughs and shakes him off without trouble. He then leans in with his hands cupped around his mouth. Maul blinks at him three time and points at his bandaged arm and his teeth and his eyes in pointed succession.

“It’ll just be us,” Obi-Wan says. “They won’t care.”

Maul shakes his head.

“Please?”

Maul shakes his head harder.

Plo feels like he’s got a good sense of what’s going on here. He clears his throat upon approaching and watches the color drain out of both boys’ faces. Maul scrabbles back while Obi-Wan shoots up to his feet.

He bows sheepishly.

“Master Koon,” he says.

“Padawan Kenobi,” Plo returns. “How do you do?”

“Fine, sir.”

“Were you speaking with Maul?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Perhaps planning an adventure?”

Obi-Wan is already a pale child, if he loses any more color he will simply disappear.

“Sorry, sir,” he says.

“No, no, it’s alright,” Plo says as Maul peeks at him from around the door. “I think it may be a good idea, actually. Provided you stay with Maul the whole time, yes?”

Obi-Wan lights up at the same time that Maul jerks his upper half into full view.

“Of course,” Obi-Wan says. “We’re just going to the courtyard pool. Is that alright? Me and Bant and Siri and Garen?”

“Yes, but Maul is younger than all of you, so you must watch him closely. I have some business I must attend to in the meantime, but you may comm if you run into any trouble. Maul, would you like to accompany Padawan Kenobi and his friends to the courtyard?”

Maul chews his lip. Plo softens in the face of his hesitance.

“It isn’t a trick,” he says. “If I was to trick you, I’d have thrown you into Qui-Gon’s sink. You may go, but when you come back, I would like you to try to eat some more. Do we have a deal?”  

“Yes,” Maul says.

“Done, then,” Plo says. “Leave Malice here so she doesn’t take a swim when you aren’t looking. Don’t put that hand in the water.”

Obi-Wan surges forward and catches Maul by the seam of his tunic’s shoulder and drags him over the threshold. Plo stands back as the two of them go awkwardly bumbling down the hall to catch a transporter down to the floors that the other children reside on. Maul looks back at him one time.

A little certainty is etched into the lines of his lips.

Plo waves him off and re-enters his apartment, picking up Malice to deposit in her seat of honor at the table.

Qui-Gon joins Malice at the table about twenty minutes later with a cup of tea in one hand and a bribe in the other. Plo accepts the pouch of golden flax with appreciation that Qui ignores.

“Mace has been here,” he says.

“He doesn’t even knock anymore,” Plo says.

“You must bully him back, little brother.”

“He is exceedingly hard to bully,” Plo points out.

Qui’s teeth show in his terrible attempt not to smirk.

“I see that you’ve given my troublesome apprentice leave to be even more troublesome,” he says.

Plo quirks a brow at the adjective and moves Malice to a new place of esteem on the couch so that he can fit himself into the other space at the table.

“Obi-Wan doesn’t strike me as especially troublesome,” he says, “Perhaps a little mischievous.”

“He takes me off-guard,” Qui says. “Keeps asking questions about Xanatos.”

“One cannot blame the young for their curiosity of those who slept in their beds before them.”

Qui-Gon leans back to stare at the ceiling; his hair falls behind him, straighter in some parts and wavy in others. Plo remembers a time when it was much shorter, too short even to coax into a nerf tail. It makes him feel old. Maul makes him feel old.

“It is strange to have a child here again,” he admits.

“I’ll drink to that,” Qui-Gon says, lifting his mug without halting his examination of the heavens.

“Maul has tried to describe his Sith-Master to me.”

Qui’s interest falls to the here and now. He sets his mug on the table and gathers his hair onto his shoulder. His fingers separate it into three sections.

“Go on,” he says.

“Human. Elderly. Pale—I presume this refers to a skin tone.”

“Master Dooku’s checking all these boxes,” Qui says uncharitably.

“He calls him two-faced.”

“Burningly accurate. Perhaps we should trade apprentices.”

“Qui,” Plo sighs. “He’s not my apprentice.”

“Surely, he is your apprentice.”

“He is not my apprentice.”

“Alright fine. He is not your apprentice yet.”

Plo fights the threatening grin like it has its own blade in hand.            

“Your optimism is inspirational,” he says. “Why do you think your master is a Sith?”

“It’s either him or Xana,” Qui sniffs, “And Xana is many things but a sith is not one of them. He isn’t angry enough to compete.”

“Do you think a sith would use Maul to get into the Temple?”

“Is there a doubt about that?” Qui volleys back like Plo is an idiot. “Of course he would. Although, I must say, a stupid sith he must make to teach his apprentice to throw himself into the pit for a jedi.”

Plo hums.

“You saw the light in him,” he says.

“I did. He’s young yet,” Qui says. “A couple of years and he will barely remember the sith’s teachings and face. It is a waste to give him back to the Nightsisters. They keep their men for breeding and combat. What life does Maul have waiting for him back home?”

“He has a family,” Plo says.

Qui-Gon takes in a slow breath and churns it into a sigh.

“Who are we if we cannot rehabilitate a sith?” he asks. “Who are we if we abandon the fallen to their suffering? Compassion is the way of the jedi. Love. Generosity.”

“This is why Xanatos pursues you to this day,” Plo points out. “He senses that you are still invested in his happiness.”

“And why shouldn’t I be?” Qui-Gon asks. “Is it more appropriate to wish ill upon my enemy?”

“Not at all,” Plo says, “But if you continue hold out hope for him, he will only continue to follow you.”

“My world would not collapse if Xana came to me at 30 years old and asked to complete his training,” Qui-Gon says.

Plo falters.

“Do you mean that?” he asks.

“Well, obviously I would have to finish with Obi-Wan first,” Qui says with a waving. “And he’s going to need at least ten years, but if Xana will wait and cease his warpath, then yes. He is fallen, not dead. Not lost to the void.”

Plo cannot help but feel that between Qui-Gon and Mace’s understandings of the Darkside, he is woefully under-prepared for what he has stuck his feet into with Maul. He sinks in his seat.

“The council is testing Maul,” he says. “He is on trial to see if there is enough light left to be worth rehabilitation.”

“If they cannot see it, then we live in a house of fools,” Qui-Gon says. “Let us change the subject to something less soul destroying. For example, why Kit Fisto hates me. I know he talks to you, consider yourself taken hostage. Speak, hostage.”

“He’s jealous you can grow hair,” Plo says.

A buzzing interrupts Qui-Gon’s painful squeaks from where Mace has pinned him to the floor to relentlessly twist his hair into some knotting style they have discovered on the holonet and that Mace does not believe is practical or feasible without multiple hands and bands to keep it in place.

Qui groans in relief at the comm and seizes Mace’s moment of distraction to get his head trapped securely between arms and knees.

Plo stands stiffly as a healer asks to speak with Qui.

“Is everything alright?” he asks while Mace sticks a socked foot into the gaps between Qui-Gon’s ribs and barks at him to get himself together, someone’s asking for him.

“Yes, and no,” the healer says. “Obi-Wan’s here with a broken nose. He and Chun collided again.”

“Oh dear,” Plo says. “Are the others alright?”

“Well. The boy you’ve taken charge of?”

Plo winces.

“Yes?” he says.

“Trashed Chun, easy,” the healer says. “Little guy’s scrappy.”

Maul, no.

“He didn’t break any bones, did he?” he asks.

“Who? The little guy? No, no. Nigh indestructible, that one. We got them separated, and he’s guarding Obi-Wan now.”

“I meant Initiate Chun,” Plo sighs.

“Oh. Well, I think the little guy’s method is an eye for an eye. Chun’s got a mess of a nose. He’s not making much of a fuss, though. The other kids said your charge gave him a talkin’ to before we got there to take them all apart.”

“What did he say?”

“Unsure, Master. Is Master Qui-Gon there? Obi-Wan’s trying to leave without clearance.”

Plo hands off the comm. Mace holds his gaze as Qui’s shoulders drop in a sigh.

He receives Maul in the halls of healing. ‘Receives’ is perhaps too kind a word. ‘Removes from Obi-Wan’s side where he is dead intent to calcify’ is probably the most accurate.

“NO.”

Qui-Gon’s palm engulfs Maul’s face and muffles the outcry. Maul grabs at his fingers and tugs until his noise-making drops into grunts of effort.

“Very good,” Qui-Gon says.

“Master,” Obi-Wan pleads. “He’s just trying to help.”

Maul licks Qui-Gon’s palm, and the sensation is enough to break even his river of calm. He withdraws his hand and Maul flings himself from the cot Obi-Wan is sitting on to the floor and then flat behind Plo’s back. There, he burrows in, and against his better judgement, Plo is absurdly endeared.  

The other children take this as their cue to all start talking at once. Mace hushes them and turns to the boy on the other cot next to Obi-Wan’s and asks slowly to be told what happened. This is Bruck Chun; Plo doesn’t know him as well as he knows Obi-Wan and Bant Eerin.

The young human lifts his chin to show off his bruised and swelling nasal bridge and says that it was his fault.

He said things he knew would make Obi-Wan’s temper flare.

Even the medical staff stop what they are doing at this declaration. Evidently, it is not the one that the young ones entered the halls saying.

“And why would you do that, Initiate Chun?” Mace asks evenly as Qui-Gon straightens up and waves Obi-Wan up to stand with him.

“Because—” the boy stammers. “Because—”

His eyes slide to Plo, but not to him. To his robes. To the yellow eyes peeking out from behind them.

“Because he was passed over for Master Jinn,” Maul says for him in his scratchy voice. “And it hurts.”

There is a long pause.

“Is this true?” Mace asks the child.

Chun lowers his eyes and chin and heaves a sigh.

“I don’t want to be a corps-man,” he says. “I want to be knight. But Master Qui-Gon rejected me. He took Obi-Wan instead. Obi-Wan.”

Qui’s expression says that he has honestly forgotten who this kid is, but he feels bad regardless.

“I did not reject you, Initiate Chun,” he says. “I did not wish to take a padawan from the start. It is not your faults nor Obi-Wan’s which caused me to step away. It was only after events outside of our control that Obi-Wan and I were forced to work together and learned this way that we are a better fit than I once believed.”

Initiate Chun sags further.

“I know,” he says. “I think I know.”

“You can eat him,” Maul interrupts with. “He’s just standing there.”

Plo is again caught off-guard by this interruption. It makes Chun laugh, though.

“You can’t eat people who you don’t like,” he says.

“Says you,” Maul sneers.

Plo twists around as best as he can to get hands on Maul and shush him. The result is a glare of defiance and wriggling.

“You can’t hit people you don’t like either,” Mace points out to Initiate Chun. “Did Obi-Wan strike you first?”

“Maybe. But I uh.”

“Talked shit,” Obi-Wan says bitterly.

“Ah,” Qui-Gon reprimands immediately. “Temper.”

Obi-Wan vibrates in irritation.

“This is not appropriate for two members of this order at your age,” Mace says. “We expect both of you to take responsibility for your actions. You may start by apologizing to each other. We will leave you to it and when you’re finished, Padawan Kenobi, you will return to your rooms with your master. Initiate Chun, you will return to your assigned clan. The rest of you have the pleasure of being escorted home by myself and Master Plo.”

The other children cram in closer to each other as if this in itself is a punishment. Plo waits until Mace has begun to lead the charge as a mother duck followed by chastised, reluctant ducklings before he looks down again at Maul’s burning yellow gaze.

“Come here,” he says.

“No.”

He doesn’t run though, even when Plo stoops and, with effort, hefts him up into his arms. Maul twists and flops limply over his shoulder.

“I didn’t even bite no one,” Maul moans, digging his fists into the seam of Plo’s tunic.

“The bar is on the floor,” Plo says.

“I didn’t put it there.”

Plo bites back the indigestion that comes with the truth leaking out of that very good point.

Chapter Text

Maul only allows himself to be carried out of the halls of healing, after that, he wants to be put down, and he is deeply unhappy to have his hand captured and held. Plo doesn’t necessarily want to discipline him for actions taken out of loyalty to Padawan Kenobi, but he also isn’t 100% convinced that Maul would not turn back and give Initiate Chun another piece of his mind in so inspired.

The small hand in Plo’s flexes around his fingers. And a little ways from the apartment, it swings a little. Maul lets go with Plo opens the door and ushers him inside.

A beeline is made for Malice. She is removed from her throne and taken over to the corner of the room by the window where Maul settles with his back against the wall. His earlier trust diminishes as he double and triple-checks Plo’s position in the room.

Plo putters around the kitchen, fetching the cubes of meat from the day before from the cooler and setting them in their bowls out on the counter to come to a more palatable temperature.

“Remember our deal?” he asks.

Maul continues analyzing him for signs of a threat.

“Maul? Do you remember?”

He receives a small nod of affirmation before Maul buries himself into Malice’s crown. He breathes in deep and slow.

“You’re not in trouble,” Plo says from across the room. “I am not going to reprimand you.”

There comes no indication that he has been heard or believed. Plo sighs. It rattles his mask. He checks his pad for messages and reaches behind him for a stylus and returns to find himself eye to yellow eye with his charge.

“If he continues to be like that, he’ll get kicked out of here,” Maul says in a rush. “And then those feelings will eat him. They’ll make him like me.”

Plo pulls back to put more space between them. Maul’s left Malice in the corner by the window.

“I told him so he knows,” Maul says.

“You told him that the feelings would eat him?” Plo asks.

“The hurt. That’s what makes you angry,” Maul says urgently. “It starts as hurt, but it turns into other things and then you end up doing things like this.” He holds out his arm. “And if you keep doing things like that, you’ll die.”

Plo needs this kid to take a step back out of his space. He telegraphs his movements in placing his hand on Maul’s chest and pushing him back a few steps so that he can stand up.

“Why did you tell Initiate Chun that?” he asks.

“Because he’s going to die,” Maul says simply. “I can smell it on him. He’s turning like me.”

A lesser man’s hands would start sweating. Plo, however, is a Jedi Master. He has seen people turn. He has seen what happens to those left behind, and he knows better than to take even the most careless accusation of such things as mere child’s play.

“Maul,” he says carefully, “Are you saying that you can feel the dark side in Bruck Chun?”

Maul hesitates and begins to tuck his arms around his ribs. He turns his head to the side and presses his lips together.

“Maul. Talk to me. I’m listening to you. Did you feel it in Initiate Chun?”

“In him,” Maul says. “And in what’s coming. The one from before, in the mines. He’s here.”

Xanatos. He means Xanatos. Qui-Gon will be devastated; not surprised, but heartbroken all over again.

Plo kneels with care and takes one of Maul’s hands.

“Thank you for telling me,” he says. “Thank you for protecting Obi-Wan and Initiate Chun.”

Maul jerks out of the grip and draws his chin down and shoulders in closer to his chest.

“Obi-Wan just got home,” he says. “And it’s already falling to pieces.”

“That’s not your fault,” Plo says.

“I hate him. The one with the hair and the laugh.”

“Do you?”

“He reeks.”

“Well, that’s not surprising.”

“I want to fight him. I’ll fight him.”

“The good news is that now that we know he’s coming, you don’t have to,” Plo says, standing up.

“Are you going to?” Maul asks him.

“Nope.”

“Someone has to,” Maul says. “If you’ve got a staff, I can put him to long-sleep.”

“I think you’ve probably killed enough people for the next, oh, say, lifetime,” Plo says. “Let’s leave that to Qui-Gon. This is his business. We are merely the messengers.”

“What’s a messenger?”

Plo leaves to take one of the bowls of cubed meat. He returns to the table and sets it squarely in front of Maul.

“Us,” he says. “Now eat.”

Plo passes off the information to Kit and Mace, both of whom are baffled by it, but accept it and take it where it needs to go.

And only days later, while Plo is writing out a letter to Maul’s mother, which will serve as the opening of negotiations for the boy’s return, Initiate Chun reveals to his clan master that he has been in contact with Xanatos for some time now, and during that time he has received orders from the man to kidnap the young Mon Calamari girl, Bant Eerin.

Plo is not involved in the complex business that follows. He keeps Maul out of the loop too by coming up with excuses for why he can’t speak to Obi-Wan through the door or go to the Room of a Thousand Fountains one last time before his journey home. Xanatos, frustrated by Chun’s lack of response to him and panicked by the Temple raising its alarms, kidnaps the girl himself and nearly drowns Obi-Wan in his haste to get away to finish his goal of taking Order resources.

Qui-Gon doesn’t answer his comms in the aftermath. Plo only tries twice before deciding that, were it him, he would be whatever stands beyond despair in the face of a once-faithful padawan tearing nails through the tapestry of his old home. Out of respect for those fresh waves of grief, Plo checks in with Shaak Ti who has temporarily taken custody of Obi-Wan so that Qui-Gon can meet with the rest of the lineage to determine what to do with his former apprentice. His fallen apprentice.

From the way things are going, it is clear that this will not be the end of these attempts and that Obi-Wan is going to be the target of them from now until their denouement.

Shaak allows Maul to clamber up into Obi-Wan’s cot with him. Obi-Wan generously allows him to lecture him for a good twenty minutes on the many ways not to die. Shaak and Plo give them their space and sequester themselves to the communal living area.

“They’re going to approve him,” Shaak says immediately.

“Obi-Wan?” Plo asks.

“Maul.”

“Maul?”

Shaak’s stare is steady.

“You were right,” she says. “He is not unscathed by his time with the sith, but he has shown time and time again that that is not all that he is and may be. He is already as trained as others his age, and while he is unquestionably marked by his time in the Dark, his instincts do not immediately turn towards using others for his own gain. I suppose congratulations are in order.”

Congratulations, she says.

There is a missive sitting now on the table addressed to Maul’s mother, the leader of those Zabraks on Dathomir, whose name is Talzin. She has given Maul a name beyond the one he arrived with: Opress.

Maul is not simply that anymore, he is Maul Opress and is the second child of three, with an older and younger brother. All are force-sensitive—or so the mother claims; Maul stands apart from the others purely by personality and ambition. He is both fierce and deferential, which makes him an heir that any Nightsister would long for and that any Nightbrother would be proud to call his offspring.

And he was lost unfairly. Talzin has been searching for him for two years.

Her missives seem to snarl as she states that Maul is the most recognizable of her children; she gave him those tattoos so that he would always be marked with his home and family, and yet she received information from Nightbrothers from a nearby village that the Order has had him in their custody for weeks. She demands to know why it has taken so long for the Order to reach out to her. She warns of retribution if Maul has been harmed in their custody, and swears that, if the Order does not return him, she has no problem using the Sith who stole her son to ruin their organization.

The roar is all but audible, but Plo reads those words trapped behind the bared teeth.

Maul is a treasured child—whether he is treasured as a person or as a particularly fine specimen of a Dathomirian Zabrak male is unclear, but regardless, on some level, his mother regrets what has happened to him. And gruff as she may be, Plo is equally hopeful that she is concerned about Maul’s welfare and has as safe place a place as any for him to return to.

No matter how fond Plo has become of Maul, he is not this child’s parent. He is not a teacher or a master. He has been safety in a storm that Maul cannot see the end of, and now after these many days, he must accept that he has served his purpose here.

He must let Maul go.

It is now or never.

Mace catches him walking Maul back up to their apartment for the last time and falls in step beside them. Maul no longer needs to hold Plo’s hand when they leave the apartment; he keeps up the half-step behind Plo as a padawan would. He is a little uncertain of Mace joining up and decides to give the masters more space.

Mace glances back to him pointedly and then to Plo’s face.

“Shaak told you,” he says lowly.

“Yes.”

“I thought you would be happy.”

“He must return to his mother.”

Mace goes quiet for a beat.

“Is that what he wants to do?” he asks.

Plo’s chest can only expand so far; it is filled with too many sighs to fit any more guilt inside.

“I have not asked,” he says.

“Perhaps you should,” Mace says.

“Perhaps you should mind your own business,” Plo says.

“Snippy,” Mace notes. “Why are you out of sorts?”

“Simply mourning,” Plo says.

“Ask.”

“Good bye, Master Windu,” Plo says pointedly.

“Bye, Master Windu,” Maul parrots behind him.

Mace smirks. It is a filthy thing that reminds Plo of the gaudy theatre costumes Mace used to wear to his rehearsals.

“Bye bye now,” Mace says, patting the crown of Maul’s head.

That infuriating man. Plo would normally message Qui-Gon to complain, but he is preoccupied and so Kit must do. Kit’s wells of sympathy, however, are shallow. He tells Plo that he’s gotten what he’s asked for, and while the parent has her rights, she’s also the one that lost Maul to begin with. Furthermore, Maul isn’t a baby like the crèchelings usually are. He is a child, yes, but he is wise. He is aware of the world like no other child in the Order. He knows what lurks beyond these walls.

Kit says that Mace is right. The decision ought to rest with Maul.

Plo, however, wants to know what happens if the decision is resting with him instead?

Maul knows no different now. He’s enthralled with a game that one of the younglings showed him in the library. His interests presently involve 1) getting a higher score. There is no 2).

Plo, on the other hand, is the one who has arranged a possibility of the next five, maybe even the next year years around him. He is the one who holds the power here; the power to give life or to take it—even if the taking is secondhand.

Kit asks if his feet always get this cold when taking on an apprentice.

Plo forces himself not to delete his contact information from the pad’s database. He is looking for a serious wisdom. Real advice. Yoda-adjacent is preferable and optimal.

Kit seems to groan through text and submits to the ordeal of being a senior council member asked to do his job. He asks Plo if he wants Maul as an apprentice who may never be the perfect jedi. Can Plo live with taking on a child who may not be free of the Dark side and a person who may have behavioral challenges for the rest of his life? Can he accept responsibility for teaching Maul to do what has not been done for centuries, if not millennia?

Will he be able to let go of his part in the failure if Maul does not succeed?

There are the questions Plo takes relief in finally seeing laid before him. They weave around a larger issue that he can finally see now, which is: is what he feeling for Maul pity or compassion?

Is he doing this for himself or Maul?

At the start of all this, he told Maul that he was doing it for himself, but that was rash. It was intended to gain Maul’s trust. Now that he has it, he wonders if he was telling the truth.

He looks over his shoulder and finds Maul watching him. Plo sets the pad face-down on the table.

“Something happened,” Maul translates from the gesture. “Did she say she doesn’t want me anymore?”

“No,” Plo says. “Your mother wants you very much. I received a message from her threatening us, actually, should you not be returned.”

Maul scrunches up his face.

“Why doesn’t she threaten Sidious?” he asks bitterly. “Why did she make me go?”

Plo has no answer. He drags fingers and claws across the table as he passes it and then the back of the couch as he moves to be closer to Maul. To sit at his level directly across from him.

“Are you excited to go home?” he asks.

“No.”

Plo winces internally.

“No?” he asks.

“No,” Maul says again.

“Where would you rather be?” Plo asks.

“Dead.”

Ouch.

“Surely not dead,” Plo says. “Your family has missed you.”

“This is them,” Maul says, gesturing with both hands as though to set the whole family to the side. “They don’t matter because I’m not going home.”

“What you talking about, Maul? You’re going home.”

“I won’t get there.”

“I will escort you myself to make sure if I have to,” Plo says.

Maul crams the tops of his knuckles into the deep sockets of his eyes and drags them up to squeeze his temples.

“Then my Master will kill you, too,” he says.

“Maul.”

“He doesn’t do do-overs,” Maul says. “I smell like jedi now.”

“He threw you away,” Plo says.

“That’s now how he thinks,” Maul says. “If I’m not helping him, then I’m in the way, so I’m dead. Home is dead. I want to go back to Bandomeer. Can you ask them? Please?”

The silence hangs tense in the air around them. The Force churns like an ocean.

“I can’t ask them to send you back to Bandomeer,” Plo sighs.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not safe.”

“NOWHERE IS SAFE,” Maul snarls. But just as fast as the rage has come on, it drips from his limbs. They go lax around Malice, who is cradled in Maul’s lap.

Maul drags the edge of a nail across the bottom of her eye. Every moment, he seems to become looser.

This is acceptance.

“What if there was another option?” Plo breaks the silence with. “What if there was somewhere else you can stay?”

“No, I’ve got all these tattoos. He’ll find me, easy.”

Acceptance. It is acceptance.

Plo’s heart is quickening.

“No, not that kind of option,” Plo says. “What if you stayed here?”

Maul finally looks up to stare.

“Here,” he repeats.

“Yes, here.”

“Live in here?”

Plo clears his throat.

“Not just in this room,” he clarifies. “In the Order. What if you could stay with me and Obi-Wan and Master Qui-Gon? What do you think of that?”

Maul readjusts his grip on Malice and shifts so that he can change the cross of his legs.

“I can’t stay,” he mumbles. “I’m a sith.”

“You’re less of a sith than we thought,” Plo says. “You’ve been very kind while you’ve been here. Open to learning. You like learning, don’t you?”

“I’m a sith,” Maul repeats.

“What do you think?” Plo asks. “Just considering the possibility. If it was an option, would you take it?”

Maul’s blinks seem to be growing slower.

“No,” he says.

Plo tries not to let the thread breaking their strings across the patchwork of his softened heart show in his posture.

“I see,” he says.

“It’s okay,” Maul say, lifting his face as if to assure Plo of all people. “There are better people who will come. You won’t be so lonely when they do. Here. You can keep her.”

He gets up to his knees and places Malice securely in Plo’s lap. Plo’s hands close involuntarily around the toy, and Maul sits back down, apparently taking in the image of Plo holding a giant porg. It makes him grin.

It is the last straw.

Plo move slowly at first and then quickly, removing the toy and lurching forward to catch the boy into a tight embrace. Resistance doesn’t come like it should. Maul buries himself into Plo’s neck and shoulder, warm and small and shaking.

He’s scared to go.

Plo wraps his arms around his trembling back and pull him into his lap, where Malice no longer sits.

“It’ll be okay,” he promises.

Maul hiccups and burrows in deeper.

He’s so afraid to die.

Plo hugs him tighter.

The council is full of wisdom, but no one has ever stood exactly where Plo stands, with a child who’s choices are closing in on him, strangling the air from his windpipe.

Sometimes, it isn’t on the child to choose. And while Maul deserves to have a choice, it is unfair to force him to always be the one who has to make do with what is in front of him. Things, too, can be given. It is easier when they are given and the issue of fault or burden is removed from the chooser’s control.

Plo chooses Maul as an apprentice. He doesn’t choose him in front of an audience, but on the floor of an apartment, while Maul wipes long-held tears from his cheeks.

There is no celebration. There is only sagging relief. Maul’s consent is a wet nod against Plo’s neck followed by rocking and then, slowly, sleep.

Plo does not let him go for fear that doing so will be the last time he does.

He takes Maul with him when he stands to one-handedly retrieve the datapad from the table. He resettles both of them on the couch and begins typing out a message to the Council.

He will take responsibility, for better or for worse. And if there comes a time where he must be a candle of hope like Qui-Gon has made himself, then it is not, as the man says, the worst thing that he can spend his life doing.

“Welcome home,” he says when the message’s blue confirmation appears underneath his finger-tips. He sets the pad aside and leans his cheek against Maul’s smaller, warm one. “Welcome home.”