Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I am an instrument of the Force. I exist in accordance with its will. I am what I am called to be.

Qui-Gon repeated the phrases in his mind, timing them to his breath, to the stretch of his limbs and the slow slide from one form to another. He had devised the mantras himself, years ago, in commitment to his ultimate quest for true surrender, and had found himself leaning on them heavily in the last few months.

It was easier to surrender to what was when doing so was not so painful. This too was something he had had cause to learn more recently.

The training salle was empty yet, though Mace and Yoda would be joining him shortly. He breathed into the expansive space, into his present solitude, and sought to let it dispel his lingering unease. Sought reassurance in the motions of his body, the familiarity of his movements.

The motions of Qui-Gon’s slow kata had been muscle memory for him for more than thirty years, and they lived in the memory of the body that existed beyond the renewal of cell and skin and muscle. He could do them unconsciously, in moving meditation and with deliberation, and they felt nearly the same as ever before – closer than ever to the way they had felt prior to six months ago, prior to the sudden and abrupt change – and near end – to his life. The scar tissue on his chest and back had thickened and softened, molding to his skin and his body; it no longer pulled or ached when he twisted, no longer woke him with stabbing pains and cold sweat in the middle of the night. No longer lingered.

But something else did, something untraceable and unnameable: a heaviness in his limbs he could not name, a shortness in breath and a lasting body-soul tiredness that would not clear from him, no matter the motion or meditation. All of his medical scans had presented his recovery as full, and so he had been called to this assessment of his field capabilities, meant to be a demonstration of his returned strength.

There was no reason it shouldn’t be.

Except that the act of stretching, rather than an invitation for energy to suffuse his limbs, to flow with the Force around him, seemed to be draining it instead. His body felt alarmingly weak, in a way he could not characterize or identify, his muscles less obedient to his command. He worried –

“Qui-Gon?”

The door to the salle opened and he was no longer alone. Mace and Yoda stood there, accompanied by a medical droid – the common setup for such an assessment. Mace would oppose him for the practical demonstration, observing from opposite him; Yoda would witness from the sidelines; the droid was there to perform physical assessment afterwards – or intercede if he should tear something open, though Qui-Gon had no fear of that any longer.

“Masters,” he said, greeting them with a bow of his head. “Thank you for coming.”

“Our pleasure, it is.” Yoda settled himself on one of the benches meant for observers. “Glad to hear of your recovery, we are. Missed, you have been, in the field.”

His eyes sharpened upon Qui-Gon for an instant, and Qui-Gon swallowed back his unease. Had Yoda picked up on it? Or on the larger unease of the moment, the doubts that Qui-Gon could not quite quell?

But he sought to clear his mind of them now. This doubt might be born of certainty, or it might be born of fear, and his mind was clouded enough that he could not be sure which was which. The bout would speak the truth of his body, and he would let it speak for him.

“You are kind,” he said, and took his place opposite Mace. “We shall see what today brings, then.”

“Guard,” said Mace, low and inscrutable, and his lightsaber hummed to glowing purple life an instant before he was on the attack.

Not so long ago, Qui-Gon’s lightsaber had felt natural in his hand. He could remember it so vividly: the hilt made to fit perfectly in his grip, the weight and radiance of the beam balanced to push back just right against the strength in his arm. The way it had felt like his hand was made to hold a saber, not the other way around; like the act of drawing the weapon to his hand was as automatic as the act of drawing breath.

Now the hilt was slick beneath his palm, the recoil of energy pressing him back like a blow as he flung the beam up to block Mace’s first strike. He had fought Mace Windu before, knew the speed and ferocity of his attacks – knew that dodging was better than parrying and that a swift and ferocious counterattack was needed to keep balance in the fight. To even hope to hold his own. He could feel the Force thrumming between them, driving Mace’s own strength, and he sought it for his own, sought to sink into a battle meditation that would attune him to the world around him, the moves of his opponent, giving him warnings or flashes of insight to help him hold his own against even a stronger opponent –

It spoke to him, still, the sense as strong as ever – but those senses were not enough to compensate for his own flagging strength. He managed a few dodges, a parry or two, a feint at a counterattack that drove Mace back briefly, back enough for Qui-Gon to draw in a few harsh, ragged breaths. The Force told him that Mace was slow today, as if he were fighting in a demonstration for padawans or initiates – it told him that the outcome of this battle was already known, that he might as well stop fighting.

But Qui-Gon had not stopped fighting six months ago, and he would not stop now. Even if he knew already how this would end, he would at least ensure that he had given it his best effort.

He was fighting two now: fighting himself as much as his colleague, fighting against the leaden weight in his limbs, the shortness in his breath. Mace’s lightsaber was nothing more than a purple blur before him, coming on fast, unstoppable, and Qui-Gon’s heart pounded so hard in his chest that black spots swam before his eyes, mingling with the blur of light and the sweat threatening to drip into his eyes. Every muscle in his body strained.

Focus. Focus. The body informs the mind. Each moment exists beyond the self.

The mantras steadied his mind, just slightly, and he managed to focus on the moment at hand, the attacks he could not quite dodge. He could no longer play the game of endurance, perhaps, but a single swift counterstrike might still end the match in his favor, if he could make it count. Mace tended to use offense as defense, a strategy that matched Qui-Gon’s own, but he tended to leave small openings when he did so – if Qui-Gon could just find one, particularly with him pulling his blows now –

There! Through the blur of sweat and tears he saw it: the slightest opening high to the left – there for only a split second, but enough for him to move –

He surged forward, skating past Mace’s lightsaber, raising his own, summoning all his strength for a powerful strike right inside Mace’s guard –

And couldn’t complete it. His arms would only raise the lightsaber halfway above his head before his strength failed him entirely, all the muscles in his body seeming to give way at once. His legs crumpled beneath him, his body folding down into a heap. The momentum sent his saber flying out of sweat-slick palms, the blade deactivating as it left his hand, hilt skittering uselessly across the floor of the salle.

Qui-Gon could hardly hear it over the roaring in his own ears. The black spots had swarmed into a cloud across his vision, and his breathing tore at his lungs. His body trembled so badly that he could hardly move, but he managed to bend forward and tuck his head between his knees, bringing all his will and self-control to bear against the urge to be sick all over the floor of the salle.

Faintly, above the cacophony of his own body, he heard the hum of Mace’s lightsaber deactivating. And then there was a hand extending into his field of vision, an offering.

He shook his head – he wasn’t sure he could trust his legs to bear his weight yet – and the hand retreated.

“Solah,” he croaked at last, and panted out a wry laugh.

Shuffling footsteps, and an electronic whirr. He kept his head down as the sensors on the medical droid flashed over his body and a monotone voice announced, “Elevated heart rate. Lowered oxygen levels. Consistent with overexertion.”

“Any damage to the scars?” Mace asked. “Or organ function?”

Another moment, another whirr. “None that I can find,” responded the droid at last.

It was as it had been in scans for the last two months or so: there was no reason for this level of exertion, no reason for the pain in Qui-Gon’s chest or the heaviness in his body, no reason he felt he could not move from his position on the floor. No reason, except the proof of his body, demonstrated again and again.

When he finally trusted himself to raise his head – slowly, slowly, against the dizziness that crashed over him – Mace and Yoda were both standing before him, Yoda nearly his height with Qui-Gon crumpled so close to the ground.

“Not cleared for field status yet, I would say,” Mace said, not without sympathy.

Qui-Gon scraped his hair off his neck with a trembling hand. Even that weight was nearly too much for him. “No.” He coughed, his chest feeling as if it were compressing around his lungs. Air was such a precious resource, he thought dimly. How was it that he had spent so much of his life taking it for granted? “I would tend to agree with you there.”

“Hmm.” Yoda spoke for the first time, staring at him with too much knowing in those eyes for his taste. “Perhaps a message for you this is, Qui-Gon. Learn from it, will you?”

“Perhaps.” Qui-Gon coughed again, pressing a hand to the center of his chest as a bulwark against the sharp pain lancing through his lungs. The scar tissue beneath his hand was thick, almost steadying beneath his palm – a new addition to his body that he had grown used to and almost found comforting now. The message had been there, maybe, if he had cared to listen to it. “Forgive me my levity, Master Yoda, but I will meditate on it once I have – my breath back.”

“Yes – you should rest.” Mace’s voice was as gentle as Qui-Gon had ever heard it, not quite verging on pitying because of the steel underneath it. “Do you require assistance returning to your rooms?”

“No,” Qui-Gon managed. The frantic pound of his heart was slowing, gradually, the worst of the breathlessness and nausea receding. The walk would fatigue him, but he could endure it, and he preferred to do so without watchful eyes. “No, I'll manage.”

Mace eyed him, waiting for Qui-Gon to correct himself. It was his way: he would take you at your word if you assured him of your competency, but his questioning eyes would insist that assurance be truth. For all that Mace was younger than he was, Qui-Gon still managed to feel like a misbehaving padawan under that stare.

But he did not relent, and Mace nodded at him. “We will discuss this later, then,” he said. “Once you have recovered.”

Recovered, Qui-Gon thought to himself all the slow, labored way back to his own quarters. What did that mean anymore, recovered?

Recovered from this momentary distress – yes, that he would be in time, though he suspected he would feel it tomorrow still, if history was any indicator. Recovered in full, returned to the strength he had had before – ?

Yoda was right. This was a matter for meditation. His body was heavy with exhaustion, but when his door slid open before him, he forced himself to sit on the floor instead of collapsing on the sofa or the bed. The turmoil of his thoughts must be sorted through now, while he was roused and wondering. There was a message for him in this, and it was time to discover it.

Recovered. What a laden word that had become, a word he had found himself more and more reluctant to use, even as it was bandied about so regularly in his presence. What did recovery mean, and was it within his grasp at all?

Indeed, what had he been hoping for from today’s bout? Had he expected to be cleared? Had he truly thought, truly hoped, that this one duel would prove something counter to the signals that his own body had been sending him, insistently, for months?

Qui-Gon had never thought himself particularly prone to denial. His understanding of the Force, of the flow of life and fate, was reactive, adaptive: accepting the complexities and possibilities of each moment and responding to what presented itself to him. He had counseled Obi-Wan throughout his apprenticeship to focus less on conditional regret, on what could or should have been, and more on what could come to be, basing that analysis on the truth of the situation and not on wishes or yearnings. And yet here he was, with a body that had forgotten its earlier strength and refused to obey the demands of his own wishes, but he was demanding of it that it perform as it always had before.

A message. Yes, a message from his body or from the Force itself. The truth was, he had fared no better in this duel than he would have a month into his recovery, once his organs had been replaced and his wound thickened into a scar. The weakness in his muscles, the fatigue that dragged at his body, the shortness of his breath – all had been examined by healers and droids alike, and they had found no medical explanation, nothing in the replacement heart or lungs he had been given to explain them. And still, six months later, they had lessened not at all.

He had been released from the medical bay; he could take care of his own basic needs now, but the truth was that any exertion beyond the most basic still left him winded and gasping, steadying himself on walls against rushes of dizziness. And there was the exhaustion: he had perhaps three hours in the day that he felt alert, awake and able to perform his responsibilities; otherwise he felt the seductive pull of sleep dragging at his eyelids, his muscles, his thoughts – and yet no matter how much he slept, the fatigue never seemed to lessen. Was he still recovering, or was this – was this permanent?

The spike of panic in his chest at that thought made the room spin around him.

Qui-Gon breathed through it, stabilizing himself, calling himself back to the most basic of meditations, the simplest grounding techniques: the solid floor beneath him, the feeling of his robes between his fingers, clenched tight in alarm. He relaxed them, one finger at a time, let himself sink back down, back to the Force.

The Force was still there, waiting patiently for him to turn to it once again. Sometimes it felt like the only thing in the galaxy that had patience for him anymore.

Why that panic? What was holding him back from that acceptance of permanence?

Qui-Gon called up his idea of himself, held it before him, forced himself to examine it. A body trained into strength and power and ferocity, supplementing the strength of convictions that would not be bent. An ambassador, sent to negotiate with the powerful on behalf of the subjugated. A defender of those who could not defend themselves. A master, willing to teach and be taught, who had learned his finest lessons from his student. Which of those identities could he retain, and which must he relinquish, if he were to adapt?

And crucially, which of those was it that made the idea of adaptation so terrifying? Jedi, Master, duelist, diplomat, protector, teacher –

Teacher.

Anakin.

That was it, he realized – that was the surge of horror, of fear. If he could not perform his duties as a Jedi, what would become of Anakin?

He was in initiates’ classes now, kept there by Qui-Gon’s survival and the assurance of his recovery. His promise that when the time came, the boy would have a master. No other Jedi would take on a student who had come to the Temple so late, one whose adjustment promised to be so challenging. Obi-Wan would, if he must, but to demand he do so now would be cruel. Cruelty could be forgiven in death, perhaps, when no other choice remained, and Qui-Gon had been prepared to inflict it – but with his survival, Anakin remained his responsibility. Obi-Wan was free, now, free of his master’s tyranny, free to make his own choices and follow the dictates of the Council as he would.

He would be home from his latest mission soon, and that thought lifted Qui-Gon’s heart a little – the thought that Obi-Wan might come to his quarters upon his return to share a cup of tea and a heated discussion or two. He would find the energy for that, surely. In the long months of his recovery – or perhaps, he made himself think, his new reality – his former apprentice had been his greatest comfort, the most invigorating companionship.

Yes, Obi-Wan was free; Obi-Wan was his equal in title now as he had been in ability for some time. Qui-Gon had done the best he could with him, and that evaluation was Obi-Wan’s to make now – his decision to determine what he would keep of his training and what he would like to change as he moved into his knighthood. But Anakin was Qui-Gon’s responsibility and the source of his concern – his worry about what kind of master he would be for a boy who needed him. What kind of master he could be at all if he accepted these limitations as permanent.

But then –

What kind of master would he be if he could not accept what was? If he could not adapt to the changes in his own body, his own abilities?

We are each called to serve the Force in our own ways, he reminded himself. I can still serve, even if that way has changed.

He would need to learn the extent of his new limitations. Would need to learn to adapt to them, to work around them – perhaps he could not be cleared for the sort of fieldwork that demanded the physical power he had once had, but he could still aid in diplomacy. Perhaps he could not spar with a padawan with the same intensity he had used with Obi-Wan, but he could adjust his own style, could relearn the basic defensive forms – could learn how to protect himself and those around him in emergency settings. Could learn alongside Anakin, even, when the time came for that. It would be a humbling experience for him, and a useful lesson for the initiates, to share their classes with a master learning the lessons Qui-Gon would need to learn.

And he could make himself useful to the Jedi still, to the Republic. He would give his political duties here more attention, would learn how to work more subtly than he was accustomed to. There was good that could be done here.

Trusting in the Force meant surrendering to fate, he had reminded himself long ago. If he had managed to survive a wound that should have been fatal, that meant he had a part yet to play in this world. That life was not done with him quite yet.

He breathed in as deeply as his lungs would allow, letting himself surface out of his meditation and into the space around him. Somehow it seemed more peaceful already - calmer, as if settling things within himself had somehow settled the uneasy currents of Force around him. As if he had moved closer to where he needed to be.

Or perhaps he was merely tired. His body ached from the fight, his chest still sore from the simple task of breathing, his arms and legs leaden. The mere effort of pushing himself upright from his meditation pose made his head swim, and a yawn dragged his jaw wide.

There were things to do, now that he had made his decision. Arrangements to be made. But - adjusting himself to his new limits meant heeding the changed needs of his body. He would not let misplaced pride keep him from serving as best he could, wherever he could – and if that meant surrendering to an increased need for rest, he would do it.

It was just as well that he had made that decision, for even his bedroom seemed suddenly too far away. It was all he could do to heave himself onto the couch before he succumbed to sleep.

Chapter Text

When Qui-Gon entered the initiates' hallways, he had to take a moment to brace himself against the onslaught.

It was not only noise, though it was that, too – it was the relatively unshielded energy surge of hundreds of young Force-sensitives who had not yet learned the finer skills of toning down their power, their urges, or their emotions. Lessons began early on in youth, but even the older children had largely not yet had enough life experience to regulate their emotions, to recognize with perspective when a minor discomfort or indignity was not the worst thing they had ever or would ever experience. It was an onslaught of laughter, tears, shouting, banging, and unregulated feeling that could overpower other sensitives, if they did not have the skills to calm themselves and weather it.

Once, Qui-Gon had possessed those skills, if never in the same measure as the crèche-masters who performed the most valuable and most challenging work of the Jedi Order. But these days, exhausted as he was, his own serenity was harder to find - his own stability in the Force and his purpose unbalanced enough that the emotion could catch him off guard with its ferocity. His first attempt to visit Anakin here, in the early days of his convalescence, had left him stunned and shaking in a heap at the entrance of the hallway.

He was stronger now, in mind if not in body. The resolve of the previous day's meditations still lived within him, making it easier to reach for calm, to let the waves of feeling roll off of him and away. The Force was still there for him, steadying him, and that made it easier to go on. But still, the walk down that hallway felt like his warm-up exercises had before the bout: as though he were expending far too much of his energy before the moment when it would truly be needed.

Sorani, the master responsible for the children Anakin's age, greeted him at the dormitories. He had become a common enough sight here in the last few months. "Master Jinn!" she said. "Are you here to visit our newest initiate?"

"Surely it is no longer necessary to single Anakin out like that," he responded. It gave him no satisfaction to watch her flush, but it was a tendency he had noticed in more than one master over time – to set Anakin apart from the other children. "But yes, I am here to see him. Is he in?"

Anakin was in fact in the dormitories, alone in his shared room tinkering at some bits of metal, but he looked up in surprised pleasure when Qui-Gon entered. “Qui-Gon!” he cried, then corrected himself, somewhat subdued. "Master Qui-Gon." Clearly he had been chastised more than once for his phrasing, and Qui-Gon suppressed a wince. The nomenclature must be difficult for a boy who had had no prior introduction to the Jedi life.

"Hello, Ani," he said, controlling his reaction. "It's good to see you."

"It's good to see you, too," said Anakin. "Are you feeling better?" He frowned up at him. "You're tired."

Could he see it, Qui-Gon wondered, or could he simply sense it? Anakin had already proven himself astonishingly sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others. It was a form of communication that had taken Obi-Wan some time to develop, though he had grown strong enough in it by the end of his apprenticeship that he and Qui-Gon could communicate nearly wordlessly. Again, Qui-Gon was reminded what a different experience teaching Anakin would be; he must work most on control and deliberation, skills Obi-Wan had already possessed in abundance. Patience, though – patience with himself and with others – that was something Qui-Gon was well-practiced in teaching.

For now, he assessed his own emotions, carefully pulling back on their expression. But he would not deny Anakin's words. "I am," he admitted.

Anakin's lips pursed in a tight frown. "It feels like you're always tired when you come to see me," he complained.

Qui-Gon made his way to the corner of the room with slow steps, letting himself sink into the chair that stood there. Anakin followed the motion with concerned eyes. "I am always tired, Ani," he said. "That's what I came to talk to you about, in fact."

Anakin blanched. He was so expressive; Qui-Gon wasn't used to this in children, and it was another reminder of what he would have to learn, in attempting to teach. "Are you tired of me?” he said, and there was a plaintive, anxious edge to his voice that Qui-Gon had never heard before – perhaps because he had not spoken to Anakin when the boy had so much to lose. “Do you not want to be my master anymore?”

“No, no,” Qui-Gon assured him. “No, nothing like that. Or – well. I suppose that’s the question I wanted to ask of you.”

“What do you mean?” Anakin said suspiciously. “I thought you were going to be my master. I thought that was the deal.”

“It was,” said Qui-Gon. “It is. At least, I am still willing, if you are. But there are – complications.” He sighed, an expulsion of air and energy from deep within him, as though releasing more than breath in the admission. "You’re right, Anakin: I'm very tired all the time. Not because of you or anyone around me – it’s because of what happened to me in the fight.” He still didn’t know entirely how to phrase what had happened to him, and given the lack of information on any medical scans, he didn’t have the words for what it meant physically, either. “And I have made my peace with the knowledge that this may be a permanent state for me." Peace was perhaps a slight exaggeration, but perhaps if he said it often enough, he would help build that acceptance within himself. "I will not be able to be the kind of master you may have wanted when you dreamed of being a Jedi. There's so much that I will need to learn how to do differently that I plan to become a student again myself in some things. And I don't know if I will be able to leave the Temple for long adventures. I am still committed to your training as long as you'd still like to have me. But I would ask you to consider if you still want me as a master. If you can still feel fulfilled in a quieter life than you'd imagined."

Anakin frowned up at him. "I don't know if I want a quiet life, Master Qui-Gon," he said at last, after a long time thinking. "But I want you as my master. I don't want to leave yet, not when I just got here."

And only then did it strike Qui-Gon what an unfair question he had come to ask – what unfair choices he had given Anakin all the while he had known him. He’d wanted better for Anakin than this – had wanted, initially, for Anakin to have a master who would choose him, be matched with him, the way that masters and padawans were meant to find one another. He’d wanted Anakin to be welcomed into the Order, to be accepted: to find a life here, a world where he could learn to use all the talent and potential he possessed with peers who could respect him. He’d wanted to take this one little boy away from slavery and into a society where he would be appreciated.

He hadn’t wanted Anakin’s sole chance of acceptance into the Order to be his tether to a master who wasn’t sure he was up to the challenge. He hadn’t wanted him to be set apart in this way.

But regardless of what he’d wanted, he was the one who had made the decision. He was the one who had taken all of Anakin’s choices away.

He could feel it descending on him again, that fog of despair that he thought he’d staved off so recently. It had been his companion many times in those early days, a will-stealing bleakness that sapped his mental strength along with his physical, left him lying helplessly in bed and staring up at the ceiling. It was the kind of despair that led so easily to darkness, and sometimes he feared that it was only the thought that any expenditure of energy would be too much that kept him from simply falling into it.

He reached for the Force now – for his Force, for the light, for the reassurance and certainty that he had felt when he’d met Anakin for the first time, when he’d fought back-to-back with Obi-Wan and known exactly what his apprentice would do, when he’d defied orders for the dozenth time. The deep-rooted knowledge and understanding that what was was meant to be. Reached for that certainty and sank into it, let it hold him, let it push back the haze, at least until he could put enough distance between himself and Anakin that the student would not suffer under the weight of the master’s burden.

“I understand,” he said. “And there is time between now and then. My promise will keep you here, and I won’t retract it; I give you my word on that. It’s still possible that you might form a connection with some other master who will take you on and who can give you a better opportunity for training than I would.”

“And it’s still possible that you might get better, right?” said Anakin.

Qui-Gon froze. That fog was still tugging at him, threatening to engulf him, and he didn’t know what was needed to push it back – the delusion of hope, or the peace that could be found on the other side of resignation.

“It’s possible,” he said carefully. “But Anakin, I wouldn’t count on it. I don’t want to give either of us any false hope” –

“I think the Force can fix you,” said Anakin, with a stubborn gleam in his eye. “I think the Force can do anything we want it to.”

Those words – or perhaps it was the tone with which he said them – sent a shiver down Qui-Gon’s spine, some kind of ominous warning he didn’t know how to interpret. There was a falseness to them, but more than that: something dangerous that lay beneath, something dangerous in that hope. The idea that the Force was something that one manipulated to one’s own will, that you could make the Force do anything, rather than existing alongside it and accepting what it gave you. That idea – that too skirted perilous lines between light and dark, and it was a line that Anakin would need to understand more thoroughly in the days to come.

“I will ask the Force for nothing it does not see fit to grant me on its own,” was all he said, and the conversation ended there. He said his goodbyes to Anakin and made his way back to his own quarters, wondering when would be too early to begin the boy on meditations of acceptance.

Qui-Gon’s own determination to accept his fate was straining already after only a week into the current Senate session. Debate on a set of bills regarding cortosis exports and taxation was already stalling, with details wrangled to death by people who had no stake in the task at hand. Qui-Gon knew – had to know – that the smallest detail in a written bill could make a vast difference to the people in the system it affected, but so many of the concerns raised seemed born of pettiness or bad faith or the simple desire to argue, not out of true care and concern for those who would be most impacted.

He could only imagine how Obi-Wan would be looking at him if he were here: eyebrows arched in challenge, daring him to complain about a task he had insisted his padawan join him in countless times over their years together. But Master, he would have said, a smirk pulling at his lips as he echoed Qui-Gon’s own words to him, surely no concern is too small to have long-lasting impacts. Is it not our job as Jedi to see what others would overlook?

The thought of his former apprentice almost made him smile, but the expression did not last.

It was just all so – small, he found himself thinking as he made his way out of the Senate hall with recordings in hand. So small, in the face of something so much larger, and so – clouded somehow, so lacking in the clarity that he found in those moments when he could quiet his mind and enter into true communion with the Force. These sessions at the Senate left him dizzy and confused, worn in spirit the way that the simplest of practice saber bouts still left him in body.

At least here, he reminded himself, there was less danger of being impaled if his tiredness got the best of him. So long as the senators refrained from hurling sharp objects.

“Master Jinn?”

He turned at the voice, scraping a mask of calm over his face – one skill, at least, that had not been robbed from him – to respond. “Chancellor Palpatine,” he said in real surprise, and inclined his head.

He had had little opportunity to get his own read on the new chancellor, preoccupied as he had been. He had gotten along well enough with his predecessors: he had liked Kaj and tolerated Valorum, though he had found the man’s bureaucratic entanglements tiresome at times. Palpatine he had taken little notice of in the past, even amidst the struggle to save Naboo – there had been greater concerns at the time.

“It is you,” the chancellor said with a smile. “I’m pleased to see you on your feet again, Master Jinn. I never had the opportunity to thank you for your service to my home.”

Qui-Gon inclined his head. “No thanks are necessary,” he said. “I was merely doing my duty. And surely you have heard that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker are the true people to thank for Naboo’s defense?”

“And believe me, I have,” said Palpatine. “They are quite remarkable, are they not? Although Master Kenobi was insistent that your training was to be credited for his success.”

Qui-Gon waved that aside as well. “The credit for his accomplishments is all his own; I was the one privileged to train him.” Though Obi-Wan had of course distinguished himself in the eyes of the Order and the Senate alike with his feat, there was so much more to him than the duel he had won, the blow he had struck. Sometimes Qui-Gon wondered if Obi-Wan regretted that feat, the attention it had brought him.

If he were honest with himself, he knew there was much more from that day that Obi-Wan regretted, though that responsibility should never have been his to bear.

“Yes,” Palpatine said, “and young master Skywalker assures me that you will soon do the same for him?”

“If the Force wills it.” How much had Anakin spoken to Palpatine? Neither of the previous chancellors had taken the time to associate masters with padawans outside of the ones they knew personally.

“Quite, quite,” Palpatine said. “Still, for all your humility, I would argue that your sacrifices in the name of duty go above and beyond the expected.” His eyes flicked down over Qui-Gon’s body, a motion all too familiar to him in the last several months – people looking for the signs of his ordeal, not knowing that the havoc it had wreaked on his body was largely invisible. “I would have extended you my thanks before, but you were not in a position to hear them at the time, and since then I fear my own duties have kept me quite busy.”

“Of course,” said Qui-Gon neutrally. “I would never ask you to take time from your service to the Republic.” A faint throb had begun behind his left eye, and his limbs felt heavy to the point of near-collapse. His jaw clenched hard around a threatening yawn; he could retain his command over himself for long enough to have a polite conversation! He grappled for calm, the surety of the Force, and it eluded him.

Palpatine waved that away. “I trust your recovery is going well, then?” he said. “It warms my heart to see you here; I was worried to hear of your condition some months ago.”

“I can confidently say that I am fully recovered, Chancellor,” Qui-Gon said. It was not a lie – he was confident that the status of his recovery now was as full as it would be, and he was not interested in measuring up his present abilities to a past standard he could not count on ever achieving again. Particularly not in front of this man he hardly knew.

“Good, good.” It was too hard to read genuine emotion in the face of a politician, and Palpatine’s general mien radiated concern and affability. “I am sure the galaxy is that much safer, to have retained a man of your considerable talents. I have heard you are one of the Order’s finest.”

Qui-Gon repressed a flinch. It was easy to tell himself that he had moved on, that he had let go of his past capabilities and physical strength – harder to cling to that surety in the face of this man’s flattery. Genuine or not, it did not change the impact of the words – an impact he did not dare betray outwardly, even if it twitched in his stomach like something alive and malicious. “You flatter me,” was all he said. “With your compliments and your concern. I assure you, I have made it my goal to avoid mysterious assassins whenever possible in the future.”

“A worthy aspiration, I should say.” Palpatine smiled. “Have you learned any more about this assassin? The last I was told, the Council knew little of his origins.”

“Then you know as much as I do,” said Qui-Gon. That could not, of course, be quite true – the resurgence of the Sith was a matter for the Jedi alone and not the Senate – but it was not too far from the truth, either: thus far, little had been discovered of the dark origins of Qui-Gon’s would-be killer. “But I am confident in the Jedi Council’s abilities.”

Any Jedi nearby who had heard that line might well faint in shock to hear Qui-Gon Jinn say such a thing. And it was true that he disagreed with the Council on many things, but he had never doubted the conviction or the abilities of those who served on it, only their priorities. But that too was an internal matter.

“Indeed,” murmured Palpatine, as though Qui-Gon had confirmed something for him that he had been seeking. Qui-Gon repressed a frown as his threatening headache intensified, a sharp needle of pain advancing behind his eye, then retreating again, leaving a lingering ache behind. “The Republic is fortunate to have such an august body at its service.”

“Indeed,” echoed Qui-Gon. The urge to press his fingers to the spot between his eyes, to the bridge of his nose, in an effort to ease the throbbing in his head, was nearly irresistible. A dense mist seemed to be descending over his mind, already clouded from the session he had witnessed, and his hands trembled around the datapad he clutched. Extricating himself from this conversation was rapidly becoming his greatest concern. “In fact, I am due to report to them quite soon, Chancellor. If you’ll excuse me?”

“Of course, of course,” said Palpatine, waving a hand gracefully. “We must all be obedient to the call of duty. I thank you again for your service to my homeworld, Master Jinn.”

Qui-Gon inclined his head, though the motion made it lighten as if filled with helium. “And I thank you for your kind words. Until next time?”

“Until next time,” the chancellor agreed, and Qui-Gon excused himself at last.

Every step down the hall of the Senate building was an effort. The immediate urgency of his headache had eased, now that he was released from formal conversation, but it still pulsed behind his eye, an odd and unpleasant counterpoint to the dizziness that swirled around him. He needed to sit . . . he needed to lie down. He could not stand any longer –

He reached deep within himself and drew on the Force, on his own deep well of gratitude that this connection, at least, was not something he had lost. As he would have once entered a trance state in battle, so he did now: connecting with the Force around him, letting it lend him strength to lift one foot, then the other. The Temple . . . if he could just make it to the Temple . . .

His transport was waiting for him when he left the building, and – this would do. This would serve. He let the Force carry him into the speeder, manipulating his limbs as if they belonged to someone or something else. Slurred, “To the Temple, please,” at the hired driver. And then he let himself collapse into the seat, datapad slipping from his nerveless hands to clatter on the floor.

He was not quite sure that he liked Chancellor Palpatine, he thought muzzily as the fog in his mind swirled in to claim him. His limbs were so heavy and he wanted so badly to be home in his bed. The man was . . . strange . . . his words had cut too close . . . His thoughts slipped away from his grasp, fragmented half-things dancing out of reach of his tired mind’s efforts to catch them . . .

“Master Jinn?”

When had Qui-Gon’s eyes closed? With great effort he dragged them open just a crack to see that the transport driver was standing over him, looking down.

“Master Jinn,” he repeated. “We’ve returned to the Temple now. Can you stand? Shall I fetch you a chair?”

It took a moment for the sense of those words to make it through the thick haze surrounding Qui-Gon’s thoughts, but when he understood them at last he shook his head, though the slightest motion was far too much effort. “No,” he croaked, “no, I’ll – I can manage. Thank you.”

The Force was still there, though fainter, harder to reach. Perhaps from his exertions, or perhaps simply as a reminder that this could not be his solution to all things. But please, he found himself begging, just for this – please – just to get me home –

He had meant to bring his findings to the Council first, but that would have to wait. Step by slow, agonizing step, he dragged himself through the Temple to his rooms.

He was weeping with frustration by the time he reached them: at the ache in his head, the sluggishness in his limbs and thoughts both, the inability of the Force to sustain him fully, and his own inability to rise above this, to find his long fought-for calm center. At the thought of how he must appear to anyone who saw him: a Jedi master utterly spent from a short walk, his face wet with sweat and angry tears, survived past his usefulness and nothing now but a leaden collection of limbs – no one would believe of him that only six months before he had been locked in single (and double) combat with a warrior of the Sith –

But he had lost that battle, he reminded himself as he palmed the door open. Lost it decisively and rightly, and this was the consequence. Had he not himself felt deep unease with the idea that the Jedi were meant to be warriors? There was no shame in losing to a warrior more skilled and more ruthless than you were ever meant to be. He had been through this already. He had resolved not to look behind in regret, to accept what came and take it with him into the future.

But that was when he had thought that he could still be of some use here. Before he had been aware that an afternoon of political engagement could leave him just as spent and hollow as a single bout with the lightsaber.

He made it the few steps past his couch and into his bedroom, but removing his clothes was too much effort. He collapsed facedown onto his bed, letting go of everything all at once in the privacy of his chambers. Even actively weeping was too much work, so he simply lay passive and let his furious, pathetic tears leak into his pillow.

He could not do this. He could not serve the Force as he was, could not serve the Republic. Could not serve as Anakin’s master. The boy deserved better from his teacher –

Yes, said a voice deep within him, a voice which sounded like his own. He does deserve better.

Qui-Gon blinked. That voice had had – clarity, depth. As if it came from the Force itself. And though the words had seemed to agree with him, the sense of them was something different entirely.

He grounded himself, reaching for the physical, the real. The cloth of his pillow beneath his face, pressing his nose flat and insinuating itself between his lips; the firmness of his mattress below him; the hard angle that his belt pressed into his waist, between his weight and the bed. This was the truth of this moment, and nothing more. His breath slowed, and he opened himself and listened.

Yes. Anakin deserved better from his teacher. He deserved someone who would not let self-pity obscure his purpose, who would not shame himself for his limits. Anakin had such ferocious spirit, but such conflict within him, such fear and defiance and determination. He needed a master who would teach him surrender. Patience. Trust.

Can you do that, Qui-Gon Jinn?

Clarity began to seep back in, began to clear the worst of the mire from his thoughts. His head still felt stuffed with something fibrous and flossy, a distant fog between himself and the world, but within himself, calm began to suffuse him. Steadiness. Listening.

All is as the Force wills it.

Right did not mean easy. His path may still have steps yet to be revealed.

For now, he would continue doing as he could.

His limbs still ached, still weighted to the bed, immovable, but the throbbing in his head began to clear. He sniffed and smiled weakly into his pillow, then let the calm lift his thoughts, pull him deeper into the Force, to rest.

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan Kenobi’s ship touched down in the middle of the Coruscanti night.

He slid open the door to the bridge, stifling a yawn, as his mission partner Bedin guided them to a landing. “The Council is waiting to see us,” he said. “At least, those who are awake.”

“Very good.” She turned to him with a weary smile of her own. “It’s nice to be home, isn’t it?”

He nodded wordlessly. What he could not say – and kept clamped carefully down – was that he was particularly relieved to be off this mission and in his own company once more.

It was an unkind thought, and he would not share it without being asked – despite Qui-Gon’s laughing commentary, Obi-Wan was capable of politeness when needed – especially as there was nothing particularly objectionable about Bedin Jora. She was pleasant, agreeable, capable –

And dull as dust. She rarely fought him, and when she did, she kept her arguments to the logical; she was focused and seemingly undistractable; she had shown no sign of derailing their entire mission on a personal whim that ended up uncovering some deep-rooted systemic issue. Their mission had gone, in fact, exactly the way the briefing had assured them it should.

In theory, this was what Obi-Wan had been looking forward to about missions on his own, free of his apprenticeship. In practice, he had not expected it to be so boring.

Or to feel like something was missing.

They went straight to the Council chambers upon their return, and Bedin let Obi-Wan lead. The feeling was so unfamiliar to him that it was all he could do to keep from glancing over his shoulder, slowing his steps to let her pass him so he could walk a step behind, as had always been his prerogative before. He clamped tightly down on his reflexes; it wouldn’t do to be an apprentice here. Not now.

“Welcome you are, Knight Jora, Knight Kenobi,” said Yoda. The title was still new to Obi-Wan, still sending a little thrill up his spine – that title he had spent so many years working towards, though it had been assigned under less-than-ideal circumstances. “A report, you have for us?”

They traded off the reporting between the two of them. Their mission had, by all accounts, been a complete success: they had apprehended the bandits threatening the governor of one of the provinces, and with the threat to his life removed, the governor had been able to cast his deciding vote in the debate over galactic citizenship. Grateful to the Jedi who had protected him, he had cast his vote in favor of entering the Republic, and a new team would be rotating in to assist with the transition.

“Well you have done, both of you,” said Yoda. “Pleased, the Senate will be to hear this news.”

“We are gratified to hear it, Master,” said Bedin, her eyes downcast and her hands folded into her robes.

“And now you should rest,” said Master Koth. “And catch up with your friends tomorrow. There are those in the Temple who will be glad to see you again.”

Did his eyes linger on Obi-Wan? And could the masters on the Council feel the way his heart jumped at the thought?

“Of course, Master,” he murmured, and he and Bedin took their leave, parting with a nod and a few polite words.

And then Obi-Wan was walking as quickly as could be countenanced back to his own chambers, heart thumping in hope that he knew was foolish. It was the middle of the night – there was no way –

But there was. The comm in his room was blinking with a message when he arrived.

Obi-Wan made himself wait. Made himself take off his boots and put his dirty clothing into the hamper to be laundered later, made himself unpack at least the most immediate of his things. And then, when he could wait no longer, he hurried to the comm and listened to his message.

It was from Qui-Gon, as he had known it would be, and the sound of his master’s voice sent relief rushing through him.

“Obi-Wan! I have received word that you’ll be returning to Coruscant tonight. I’m afraid I can’t wait up for you, but I hope that this message is waiting for you when you return. Perhaps you’d like to join me in my quarters for tea tomorrow if you have some time. Say around noon? If you don’t respond, I’ll assume you’re coming and prepare accordingly.”

It was for the smallest, most inconsequential thing – and yet it was so Qui-Gon, somehow commanding even in what seemed like a request, the sort of tone that Obi-Wan still couldn’t refuse, and this time, he didn’t even want to. Laughter bubbled up inside him, relief and joy and the bittersweet awareness that he had missed Qui-Gon deeply, that he had been worried all the while he’d been away, in ways that he hadn’t allowed himself to think. What state would he find Qui-Gon in tomorrow? How had his master been faring during Obi-Wan’s time away? No one had seen fit to tell him anything yet.

But in this message, he had sounded like his old self – and he wanted Obi-Wan’s company tomorrow. That would have to be enough to satisfy him for now.

“You didn’t respond to my message,” was Qui-Gon’s greeting to him when the door slid open.

Obi-Wan grinned despite himself, sudden and wide enough to make his jaw ache. “You clearly stated that my silence would serve as assent.”

Qui-Gon smiled back, and one of his hands landed on Obi-Wan’s shoulder, heavy and solid, a welcoming clasp that spoke more than any words ever would. It was a gesture that would not have looked out of place on any master and apprentice, but this one had come to be theirs; Obi-Wan had strained against more expressive displays of physical affection in his youth, and so the reassuring grasp of shoulder or arm had become their compromise, Qui-Gon’s expression of affection or concern or comfort in a way Obi-Wan was willing to accept.

It made him feel more loved than he could ever admit, though today he found himself also admitting – somewhere deeper than he could ever acknowledge aloud – that he would have welcomed a greeting embrace.

“Well,” Qui-Gon said, “you’re here now, and I kept my promise.” He released Obi-Wan’s shoulder and extended an arm. “Tea?”

“Of course.”

He followed Qui-Gon to the sofa and noted the way his master sighed in relief as he let himself sink down. “Are you in pain?” he asked, the words slipping out before he could stop himself.

“No,” said Qui-Gon. “Just tired.” He adjusted his position with more care than he would have used before, a slowness that spoke initially of deliberation but perhaps was simply a symptom of exhaustion. “Constantly, and perhaps interminably. As lasting effects of impalement go, it seems a rather light one, all things considered, though light is not the term I would use to describe the sensation.”

Light was also not the tone Obi-Wan would have used to discuss the matter, but it was the only word that applied to Qui-Gon’s now. The memories still hit too close to home for him to be able to joke about them. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Qui-Gon looked at him sharply, and no tiredness could dull the keenness of his insight. “Your sympathy I accept,” he said. “Not your contrition. I hope you haven’t been blaming yourself still.”

It was the same reproving tone he had used throughout Obi-Wan’s apprenticeship – and the same level of awareness that brought it on. Obi-Wan couldn’t hold his gaze. “I’ve been trying not to,” he said.

“Do or do not,” said Qui-Gon. “In this case, do not. We’ve been over this, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan pressed his lips together and nodded. They had – it was perhaps the first coherent conversation they had had, when Qui-Gon had finally been awake enough to understand the world around him. He had attempted to apologize for his lapse during the battle, and Qui-Gon had told him in no uncertain terms that the lapse had been his own and that regret was not befitting the knight Obi-Wan had deservedly become. Since then, he had strived to put it aside, but the emotion still rose up in him, despite his efforts to suppress it.

“Anyway,” he said, seeking to change the subject. “You seem” – Well was far from the right word; Qui-Gon looked little improved from how Obi-Wan had last seen him upon departure, though he was in his own quarters rather than a medical bed. This close, he could see the delicately bruised skin beneath Qui-Gon's eyes; the careful deliberation of every motion. And yet there was something steady about him, something certain and vital that had characterized his approach to Obi-Wan's apprenticeship and been notably absent when they had last said goodbye. "Settled."

Qui-Gon smiled at him, allowing the change in subject. "Perceptive as ever," he said. "Yes, I am learning to accept what I had still been denying when I saw you last." He nodded at the teapot. "Pour the tea? I had hoped to reverse the roles of service upon your return, but I overexerted myself a bit yesterday and I would trust your strength in fine motion a bit more than mine at the moment.” He lifted his arms, so Obi-Wan could see the slight tremor in his hands.

Obi-Wan had been trained in careful neutrality by Qui-Gon himself, and thus Qui-Gon would always be able to see through him, but he masked his own reaction as best he could. "I'm not sure I could handle the shock of the reversal, anyway," he said, pouring out the tea into the delicate cups Qui-Gon had been given on Bivall all those years ago. "But what have you been doing for yourself without an apprentice? Surely not going without!"

“Only when I have no other option,” Qui-Gon promised. “And I have learned some ways to keep from taxing myself unduly.” He let his hands rest back onto his knees with a faint sigh of relief. "Filling the kettle with only as much water as I need, for instance. One of many small compromises, I assure you. But we adjust."

It was as welcoming a conversational invitation as Obi-Wan could have asked for, and he took it. "You are adjusting, then?" he said carefully.

"I am." Qui-Gon accepted his cup of tea, sipping slowly and lowering the cup to the table. Before, he would have left it in his hand. "I have accepted that the changes to my body and my abilities may well be permanent, and I am learning to compensate for them." He looked at Obi-Wan with a slight, wry smile. "I have even begun some small foray into Soresu."

Obi-Wan's heart jumped. Had Qui-Gon known, somehow? He always did seem to know things he shouldn't, some uncanny perception that had not always been Obi-Wan's friend during his apprenticeship. "Really?" he said, keeping his tone as casual as he could. "I’ve been – making some study of the discipline myself."

"Have you?" There was no way to tell if Qui-Gon's surprise was true or affected. "And how are you faring?"

Obi-Wan swallowed. "Well enough." He had in fact been spending every spare moment at practice, driven to greater and greater exertions by the memory that would not stop replaying in his mind – a memory of a small space with little room for motion, of watching his master skewered before his eyes. Seeing Qui-Gon here, alive and well, went only partway towards mitigating the memory of that terror – particularly with the pinch at the corners of his eyes that spoke of some discomfort he was trying to hide. "Master Alara says she thinks I could specialize, if I keep at it."

"I have no doubt of that," said Qui-Gon. "Your speed and versatility have always been your greatest physical strengths."

Obi-Wan glanced at him sideways. "My skill in the basic forms has been an invaluable help," he said. "Thanks to someone's insistence that I master those before moving too quickly into a preferred form."

"Oh?" said Qui-Gon. He sat back and arched an eyebrow. "Are you perhaps suggesting that your old master might have had a point, all those years ago?"

"Don't let it go to your head," Obi-Wan warned him.

"Would I ever?" The studied innocence in Qui-Gon's voice was reminiscent of years' worth of council meetings. Obi-Wan scoffed at him.

"How is your training, then?" he said. "Since somehow we seem to be on the same path."

"Hardly the same path," Qui-Gon said dismissively. "I think my specializing days are behind me. And the lightsaber must be my last resort moving forward, not my first. I only want to know enough to keep myself safe, and those around me, if I should need it. I have rather less energy to devote these days, so I have to use it sparingly."

Impulsively Obi-Wan reached out for Qui-Gon's hand, where it had come to rest again on his knee, and pressed it beneath his own. For all its slight tremble, it was still familiar beneath his fingers: still his master's hand, a trusted certainty throughout his life – and even as he thought that, Qui-Gon brought his other hand to rest atop Obi-Wan's own, warm and solid.

"Don't worry about me, Obi-Wan," he said softly. "I'm just as much here as I ever was."

"I know that," Obi-Wan said, though to his alarm his throat had gone distressingly tight. He forced more lightness into his voice. "Well, then, what else are you devoting your energy to these days?"

“Politics.” Qui-Gon managed to imbue the word with the deepest consternation. “Laugh at me all you like; I know I deserve it. I’ve been assigned to monitor the processes of the Galactic Senate and identify potential upcoming political instabilities. Which mostly means listening to politicians argue.”

Obi-Wan fought down the threatening smile. Qui-Gon’s approach to politics had always seemed to come from a deeply contrarian perspective: he championed democracy and had made Obi-Wan read more political bills and briefings than any Jedi should have to engage with in a lifetime, but personally chafed under any hint of political constraint to his own ideas or activities. Obi-Wan had long suspected that Qui-Gon was more a proponent of political engagement in theory than in practice. “Better you than me,” was all he said. “Is there anything interesting, at least?”

Qui-Gon’s brow furrowed. “Maybe,” he said slowly. “I would need longer to gather the information I need, but – you have a finer mind than I do for discrepancies and gaps. Something feels wrong to me about a set of bills currently in legislation. Maybe you would be willing to take a look at the details, if I gather the information together and give you the full picture?”

No task had ever sounded more dreadfully dull to Obi-Wan, but a glow was spreading through his chest, as warm as the hand still pressed between both of Qui-Gon’s. His first solitary mission had been lonelier than he had expected, something achingly empty inside him whenever he turned to look for Qui-Gon and found him absent. And his mission with Bedin had been so lacking in the sparking companionship that Obi-Wan was too accustomed to – she had simply been far too pleasant, failing to respond to Obi-Wan’s attempts at gentle barbs and all too acquiescent to his own ideas. The thought of working with Qui-Gon again, arguing over the most mundane details, even for something as uninteresting as bills and Senate speeches –

“Is this what it is, then?” he said. “You can’t order me to do your work anymore, so you have to flatter me into it?”

Qui-Gon raised his eyebrows. “Would flattering you have made you more eager to help in the past?”

Obi-Wan sighed heavily. “If I’m still on Coruscant when you have what you need, I’ll help,” he said. “But I demand more tea. And company. And maybe a practical bout with the lightsaber after, if you’re up to it.”

Qui-Gon squeezed his hand, and Obi-Wan’s heart seemed to contract with the motion. “You drive a hard bargain, my former apprentice,” he said with a smile. “But I will meet as much of it as I can. Now,” and his voice took on its familiar brisk cadence, “what are we doing talking about me? I want to hear about your missions!”

Obi-Wan laughed and sat back, and Qui-Gon released his hand at last to take another sip of his tea, steadying the cup with both hands. “Well,” he said, “my most recent mission partner was far too polite . . .”

Qui-Gon was as attentive an audience as Obi-Wan could have hoped for his many anecdotes, and they occupied the rest of their visit with lively conversation, until Qui-Gon’s eyelids were drooping and his voice had trailed to a low rumble. Obi-Wan paused in the middle of a sentence, testing, and Qui-Gon’s eyelids cracked half-open.

“Don’t stop on my account,” he murmured, and yawned.

Obi-Wan fought back the sympathetic yawn that rose in his own throat, and then the urge to reach out and smooth a hand over his master’s cheek. “Am I so dull?” he teased gently.

“Hardly.” Qui-Gon pushed himself blearily up on the couch. “I tire easily these days. I hope I haven’t given offense.”

“Of course not,” Obi-Wan assured him. “But I should leave you to rest. I’ll just clean these up” –

“No need, no need,” Qui-Gon mumbled. “I can take care of it later.”

“Nonsense!” Obi-Wan insisted. Habits of twelve years didn’t fade in mere months, after all. “Please, let me do this for you, Master.”

“Qui-Gon,” Qui-Gon corrected sleepily, but he didn’t protest any further when Obi-Wan gathered the tea things and brought them into the kitchen to wash himself.

It was a soothing familiarity, he thought, standing at the sink that he knew so well – Qui-Gon still kept everything where Obi-Wan remembered – and washing dishes with a slow, meditative ease. So much about his new life was unfamiliar to him, but this memory was here as an anchor, the knowledge of Qui-Gon in the other room a steady reassurance to some part of Obi-Wan that had been frayed to anxious bits those many months ago.

When he emerged from the kitchen, Qui-Gon was asleep where Obi-Wan had left him, his head tipped back against the cushions of the couch, wisps of silver hair straying over his forehead like bits of fluff from the weeds Obi-Wan had spun in the air as a child. Wishpods, the initiates had called them then, and a wish of his own sprang to Obi-Wan’s mind, a pressure at the back of his tongue in that place of suppressed speech.

He swallowed it down, ruthless with himself, but could not tear his eyes away from where Qui-Gon’s lips and legs had both fallen slightly apart, relaxed in slumber. He knew his master’s form better than any other’s, but he had had so little opportunity to gaze his fill when Qui-Gon was awake, and he let himself take it all in now. His body was softer than it had been before his injury but retained the same sense of leashed power: the breadth of his shoulders and the solidness of his build, a strength far outstripped by the stubborn will of the soul that inhabited it. The proud brow, the crooked nose, the broad mouth, slack in sleep –

Obi-Wan snapped back to himself when one of his arms lifted, straying towards his master’s form as if magnetized – and he turned abruptly and fled before he could give in to the urge to touch.

The hand Qui-Gon had held tingled for the rest of the afternoon.

“I’m sorry, Master,” said Obi-Wan with a shake of his head. “I’m afraid I don’t see it.”

Qui-Gon puffed out a heavy sigh. His head was whirling from the lines of text and numbers and names that they had spent the past two hours going through, despite Obi-Wan’s occasional sighs and pointed glances at the chrono on the wall – all still suspended about them in transparent hologram form so they could look at many at once. Layered over the simple furniture and cluttered shelves of Qui-Gon’s quarters, they gave the world a strangely distant quality, like a dream, or a vision . . .

Laid out like this, he had to admit that all the evidence pointed to Obi-Wan being right. It was logical, after all, that the representatives of Onden should protest against taxation on their doonium. It was equally logical that their neighbors from Stora should want assurances that they would not be the targets of weapons made from said doonium. It made perfect sense that the bill would have been fiercely debated and sent into rewrites, with all the many other systems affected chiming in. Obi-Wan had reminded him of this as Qui-Gon elaborated on timeline and discussions, talking through each step and reminding him of the perfectly rational path debate had taken. It was not an ideal solution, perhaps, that the resulting compromise had allowed Stora to create a force to defend themselves from potential attacks, but it was not unexpected or uncharacteristic.

And if the result was a little more hostility on the parts of every delegation involved and one more military established in the galaxy – that was, Obi-Wan pointed out with his usual wryly dismal perspective, no worse than could be regularly expected from sentient beings.

All of which was true. But Qui-Gon knew, with a deep, unshakable certainty that resisted rational reasoning, that there was something more to all of this. The Force roiled with unease, murky and unclear, and it grew murkier the closer he drew to the Senate and its politics, winding him in on himself until he was lost in a maze of political bills that must somehow obscure the problem that lay beneath.

Indeed, his very inability to track the problem must be part of what felt so wrong.

“I don’t trust it,” he said. “Nothing you’ve said is wrong, but there is something – other. Something not right within the Force. It’s clouded from my sight right now, but I will find out what it is.”

Obi-Wan drew in a breath, his mouth tightening into the familiar stubborn line that Qui-Gon knew preceded an argument – and then, with a restraint that spoke of great effort, he released it again, letting whatever he would have said dissipate. “Perhaps you’re right, Master,” he said, placating. “But why don’t we let it go for now, at least? You promised me a match if I helped you, remember?”

It was Qui-Gon’s turn to frown. Obi-Wan had never held back from arguing with him before. Was his capitulation now an act of pity, a desire to spare Qui-Gon his sharp tongue in his weakened condition? A desire to keep the peace between them, to not part on harsh words before he left for his next mission, which he had been assured would not be later than two days from now? Or had he simply decided that now that Qui-Gon’s problems were not his own, his former master was no longer worth arguing with?

Whatever the reason, it struck deeper than Qui-Gon would have expected, lodging somewhere in his solar plexus, somewhere below the scar.

For a moment, he considered pursuing, considered pushing. But – he no longer had the right to push Obi-Wan’s limits in matters like these. He had made his desires clear, and Qui-Gon would respect them, however much it stung.

“I did,” he said, and waved his hand to deactivate the Senate holograms. “And I will oblige you, with whatever strength the politicians haven’t sapped away.” He rose with a groan, stretching out the stiffness of long sitting, though his body registered its complaints at leaving its resting position. The fatigue that was his constant companion tugged at him, and the weight of that one off moment with Obi-Wan seemed to have dripped from his chest into his stomach like the weight of liquid metal. Or perhaps it was rather the compounded effort of all that afternoon’s research, draining the strength from his limbs and leaving his head in a foggy daze. Either way, he was suddenly exhausted.

But he had promised, and he would need to learn to fight while exhausted, after all. Perhaps Obi-Wan was right to not want to part with hard words between them. He would not send him away without some concession on his part. It was what it meant to be equals now, no longer master and apprentice. Obi-Wan deserved that consideration.

But a strain of tight unease still ran beneath the rest of their time together, one Qui-Gon could not quite banish from his mind.

Sparring with Qui-Gon, blades crossed, bodies dancing in long-practiced katas, minds wholly in tune with the Force around them, had always been one of Obi-Wan’s most relished activities. In his younger days, Qui-Gon had met him leap for leap, somersault for somersault, in their preferred form of combat; as time had gone on, Qui-Gon had begun to favor the more grounded maneuvers of the form, making himself into a tidal wave of motion, a ferocious onslaught of attacks. He had used his greater strength against Obi-Wan, forcing Obi-Wan into the more aerial, acrobatic maneuvers as compensation. As Obi-Wan’s training had continued, their matches had gone on longer and longer, matching skill for skill, until the years when the victor could as easily be either one of them – but only after a long, hard-fought bout.

Now, Qui-Gon’s strikes had lost their power. Obi-Wan found himself slowing down in response, in both defense and offense – pulling his blows, as he would with a younger learner, just to keep the bout lasting as long as possible.

And still, after only a few passes, Qui-Gon’s forehead was gleaming with sweat.

It caught the light of their locked blades, which also illuminated the tired lines carving their way across his brow, around his eyes. Obi-Wan frowned between the crossed lightsabers, tested the strength of the blade pushing against his. It was a hold he could break, he realized. In the past, when they had sparred and Qui-Gon had held him like this, his only option would have been to yield to the force of it – to drop to the ground and hope that his master’s greater strength and weight would overbalance him long enough for Obi-Wan to recover. Now . . .

He shoved against Qui-Gon’s blade: a sharp, jerky motion. Qui-Gon held against it, but his feet slipped a little, his stance weakening.

Obi-Wan shoved again and Qui-Gon broke all at once, the arm that held his lightsaber wavering and dropping against Obi-Wan’s assault. Qui-Gon stumbled backwards, then dropped to his knees, deactivating his lightsaber and raising his hands.

“Solah,” he said, then looked up with a tilt of the head. “Thank you, Obi-Wan, for the reminder of my pressing need to change tactics.”

He accepted the hand Obi-Wan offered and rose to his feet, but Obi-Wan noted the slight unsteadiness of his stance. Only once before had he defeated Qui-Gon this quickly, and that had been the day before Qui-Gon had exhibited symptoms of Bamayarian flu and been bedridden for a week.

His hand ghosted towards Qui-Gon’s shoulder in an offer for support that was not needed. Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow at him and Obi-Wan let it fall, a little abashed. Still. “It does seem . . . quite a change,” he said, unsure how to be diplomatic about what he really wanted to ask, the concern that spoke too greatly of his own failure – his concern for Qui-Gon’s well-being, yes, but also the reminder of how he had come to be in this position.

Qui-Gon gave him a sharp look, one which revealed he had read more than what Obi-Wan had said. “As I said, many of my former preferred tactics and stances no longer suit me – of which, it seems, I must be reminded every bout.” His lips quirked slightly. “I am calling it an exercise in humility.”

“That’s one perspective, I suppose.” Obi-Wan strove to match the lightness in Qui-Gon’s voice. “Another bout, then? Or would you like to rest?”

“Rest, I think,” said Qui-Gon. “I’m afraid you’ve quite worn me out, my former padawan. I thought your days of doing that were over.”

Obi-Wan bit back the retort that leapt to his lips: you wore yourself out. Quelled it with a flash of alarm at the real bite in the words he didn’t say, in the thought that preempted them. Qui-Gon had always put duty before pleasure, and Obi-Wan should not have expected that to change, even at the end of his apprenticeship – but he was the one who had chosen to spend the scant few hours of their time together, and apparently all of his energy, on arguing with Obi-Wan about politics. For all his preachings of surrender to the Force and the present moment, Qui-Gon proved stringently, stubbornly incapable of letting go of his own certainties and opinions when he was convinced of something.

True, he had often proven to be right in the past. But as his certainties grew more outlandish and more insistent, Obi-Wan couldn’t help wondering when he would find his breaking point. When he would finally be proven wrong, and how many people would suffer for the fallout of it.

Indeed, he wondered if it had already happened. Obi-Wan had not been appraised of Anakin Skywalker’s progress in the Temple, but it seemed to be fairly common knowledge that the boy was not fitting in well with others of his age. Did Qui-Gon regret this decision of his, or did he hold to that same certainty? If Obi-Wan asked him about it, would he respond with the same stubborn set of his mouth as when he had refused to relinquish his concerns about the Senate?

Qui-Gon was looking at him, and Obi-Wan realized too long had passed since his last words – too long, and his own thoughts doubtless too exposed to the scrutiny of the man who had trained him for twelve years. “My apologies,” he said in an effort to salvage the conversation. “Old habits die hard, it seems. Shall I escort you to your rooms?”

The old mask of impassivity had settled over Qui-Gon’s features. “I can make my own way, I think,” he said. He brushed a hand over Obi-Wan’s shoulder, a brief, glancing touch, and let it fall away. “Thank you for the company today, Obi-Wan.”

“And thank you for yours,” said Obi-Wan, but as his master walked away, he couldn’t help feeling that he had lost something.

Chapter Text

During his long convalescence, Qui-Gon had taken to filling his days with reading.

It had been one of the first things he had been able to do to occupy his time during the long hours spent alone, when his pain medications wore off and he was exhausted but could not sleep. At first, it had been nothing more than a soporific, his brain too tired and clouded to understand the more complicated sentences before drifting out of focus, but as he had regained cognitive function and some small level of mental energy (even if his body could not match it), he had found it almost pleasant: an opportunity to devote the time to reading that his and Obi-Wan's intense mission rotation of the last few years had made so scarce. So much of his early recovery had been characterized by intense depressive fogs that even his long-studied serenity could not quite stave off; the thought of using the time for scholarship was one of the things that managed to pierce that haze and help him see some kind of hope again.

He had begun with the prophecies once memory and conceptual awareness had caught up. The appearance of the Chosen One of prophecy was the strongest sign in years that he had not been mistaken to place his faith in them all those years ago. And so he had occupied himself studying the many different translations of the prophecy.

The original text had been lost to time, but the prophecy itself had been translated down several times, into many different languages – of which the nuances of each revealed different possible frames of interpretation. It seemed largely historically accepted that the mystic who had written out the prophecy had received the same vision in dreams, from different angles, on and off for years; by the time she had placed it into those words, each one had been chosen carefully based on the emotions and awareness that accompanied the vision. But each translator had in turn reinterpreted those words in their efforts to share the prophecy with their own Force-sensitive scholars.

Which of course necessitated a deeper linguistic study of the words themselves. If the language of prophecy was already a translation from emotions and images, then it was crucial to piece together as much as could be gleaned about that original language from its derivative words. “Chosen,” for instance – that had been translated in many different ways; some of the words seemed more akin to synonyms of “selected” or “anointed,” as though the child of prophecy had been designated by some individual chooser – but in some of the translations, the words had more of a sense of inevitability, less the idea that the Force as an entity had selected one individual than that the individual had come as a convergence of forces, and that nothing could be done about it. Which had made Qui-Gon wonder about that idea of the Force as an entity, as opposed to an inevitability. Was the Force one, or was it all? An actor, or a series of actions that fit into patterns that were always going to happen?

He had realized that the lessons he had both learned and taught were not entirely clear on that point. Both ideas seemed to be used interchangeably, and while past Jedi philosophers had been possessed of strong opinions one way or the other, Qui-Gon's own teachers had been more fluid in the language they used and the lessons they taught – and he had been unclear in his turn. There was a certainty that lived within him, but when he sought to put it to words or align it to existing philosophy, it seemed to elude him. How much of that certainty was the truth of the Force speaking to him, and how much of it was the very framework of knowledge he had used to form his understanding?

All of these questions had led him only deeper into the enticing black hole of his research. Obi-Wan's lips had tightened the first time he had visited to see the stack of datacards on Qui-Gon's bedside table, but eventually he had relaxed with a resigned laugh. "I'm glad to see you haven't changed," he'd said with real relief, and Qui-Gon had reached up to squeeze his hand.

Now, reading was his solace: a refuge he returned to on the days after a saber lesson or Senate session so intense that he could barely rise from bed to feed himself, let alone leave his quarters. If his contributions to the Order were meant to take place outside the field of direct action, perhaps he could contribute philosophically as well as politically, become the scholar he had sometimes imagined himself in the fervency of his younger days. His philosophy was not yet coherent, his writings nothing more than fragmented notes jotted on his own pad, rough lists of readings and scholars whose work might be fitted together. As of yet, he had found only one person willing to discuss them with him.

“Master Jinn!” said the archivist on duty, her round face breaking into a smile at the sight of him. “Good morning! Materials to exchange?”

Qui-Gon hefted the stack of datacards in his hands. It was a good day today, so he had hoped to exchange them for a new stockpile of reading to busy him on the next bad one. “You know me too well, Knight Axtin,” he said, making no effort to hide his returning smile. He had not met Rie Axtin before his injury; she had gained her knighthood and taken her position at the Archives only a few years prior, while Obi-Wan was still Qui-Gon’s padawan and thus his primary research support. In the last few months, though, since he had exhausted the reading material he had known about and begun venturing into more experimental searches, she had become both an invaluable help and something like a friend. “I’m glad to see you’re on duty today; I was hoping you could help me with something.”

“Of course,” she said. “You know I look forward to your questions.”

She never revealed anything more direct than this to him, mindful of the privacy of those who used the Archives, but Qui-Gon had gotten the sense that few people – at least, few people outside the category of padawans with research assignments – came to ask her questions the way he did, hoping for her support in the process of developing his research as opposed to merely asking for the specific materials they were looking for. He had to admit with shame that he had until recently done the same – and he regretted it. His conversations with Knight Axtin had been essential to his research.

She took the datacards from his hands and checked each one carefully back into the archival system, setting them aside for an apprentice to return to their proper places later, then turned to the larger research terminal. “What can I help you find, Master?”

“I’ve been thinking about the nature of fate and the Force,” he said. “Whether fate can be considered a single actor or a collision of happenstances that cannot be avoided.”

Her hands paused, hovering over the keypad. “So you’re presupposing the existence of fate, then?” she said. “Looking for information that takes it as a given?”

The question masqueraded as a plea for more information, but the skepticism in her tone made it pointed. Qui-Gon smiled. She often responded to him like this, not directly challenging him but asking questions of his premises, and every time it reminded him how much he missed having an apprentice. “I’m presupposing its existence for now,” he said. “If the Force is eternal, capable of existing across all temporal dimensions at once, then I’m allowing the basic assumption that there is a singular course that is true at all points in time. The question atop that premise is whether it is directly and singly driven or if it is driven by the multiple events and actions that place it into position. Once I’ve followed that trail as far as I can go, then we can return to the assumption.”

Mollified, she turned back to the terminal. “So you’ll be looking for treatises on time, then,” she said, “and intention. I think we’ll add multiplicity to that search, and include the possibility for other related terms. Maybe I’ll run you a search that includes singularity, and one without it, so you can get direct comparisons between the two as well as work addressing each separately.” Her fingers flew across the keypad. “Are you looking for Jedi philosophers specifically, or those from other sects?”

“Both,” said Qui-Gon. “Though – I’d like to know which is which, so I can evaluate them with that knowledge.”

“Simple enough.” A list of titles appeared on the screen; she scrolled through it, selecting some and leaving others. “Are you in the mood for a large selection, or something more narrow?”

“How many can you give me?”

“How many can you carry?”

Qui-Gon grinned. Some of the archivists were more restrictive with their checkout limits, but he had the sense that Knight Axtin cared less for such things. She lit up whenever he left the archives with more material than he could easily carry without a bag. “Let’s find out,” he said.

When she had loaded him up with a threatening avalanche of reading material, he thanked her with a bow and made to leave. Before he could turn to go, though, she stopped him.

“Master Jinn,” she said, and when he turned back, she was looking at him with a speculative, almost wistful expression. “Would you mind telling me – what is your research question for all of this? What are you trying to find out?”

It was a question he did not have to answer – but he found that he didn’t want to keep it from someone who had been helping him with his research and challenging his questions. “I am trying to understand the nature of fate and the Force,” he said. “What motivates our decisions. What it means to listen to the Force’s will if all things are ultimately the Force’s will. What it means to trust that things will come out all right.”

Silence followed his words – silence and Rie Axtin’s pensive, almost sorrowful gaze. She seemed to see deeper into Qui-Gon than he would have liked to let on, as if reflecting back his own unease with his questions, with the uncertainty that drove them. “I see,” she said softly. “Well – if you ever write a treatise out of all of this, will you show it to me?”

And that made him smile again, despite everything. “Knight Axtin,” he said, “you will be the first to read it.”

The truth was, more than any specific scholarly goal, Qui-Gon was trying to understand how everything seemed to have spiraled out of control.

He had not doubted for a second, once he had witnessed Anakin for himself, that the right thing to do with him was to take him back to the Order, if he was willing to go. He had not doubted that Anakin had a destiny, that his fate was bound up in that of the Order and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and the Force itself. He needed training, he needed teaching, he needed to thrive in a place where his talents could be allowed to flourish.

And if it gave Qui-Gon occasion to free just that one more person from the bonds of slavery without overstepping his mandate, then so be it.

But now Anakin was here, and – though he put on a brave face for his visits to Qui-Gon – he was clearly unhappy. Qui-Gon had witnessed the distance between him and the other initiates in the classes he attended, and he could only imagine how much worse it must be for the ones he could not. Anakin was tethered to this Order that had almost refused him solely by Qui-Gon’s promise to train him, and Qui-Gon was not at all certain he could be the teacher Anakin needed – not only because of his own capabilities, but because he was beginning to doubt that unshakable certainty that this was the right course.

Because something was wrong here – something was deeply, deeply wrong.

He could not pinpoint exactly the source of that wrongness, though he felt it most prominently in the Senate, in the quagmire of politics that left him with pounding headaches and trembling legs – but it was also here, in the Order. In the bonds that kept him trapped to that political body, in the tenets that he had questioned all his life – and the ones he had never thought to question at all.

So now he was questioning them – now he had to. Because he needed to know if that wrongness he felt meant that something was wrong with the Order –

Or that something was wrong with him.

Qui-Gon Jinn’s talents with the Force had never lain in the area of pattern recognition.

If he had any kind of a coherent guiding philosophy, it tended to revolve around doing what felt right, when it felt right, in response to the moment in which it occurred. Attempts to control what was to come, or to look back on what had been, were only useful insofar as they influenced momentary reaction. He had always believed that – for himself, at least – the most trustworthy response to something was the immediate response: the purest expression of the Force’s will, untainted by the logic or reasons that might stand in the way of the right kind of reaction.

Except now, nearly a year after his injury and six months into his determination to rethink his ways of serving the Force, he was beginning to doubt that certainty. Not only his ongoing study of epistemology – his questions about how much his own connection to the Force could be trusted, existing as it did within the incoherent philosophy that had been trained into him – but his months attending to the Senate were introducing questions, making him wonder if a larger unified view of the situation at hand might grant him more clarity.

He had not had those questions in mind when he had tried to find it with Obi-Wan months before, and perhaps that had been his undoing. Perhaps, informed by new questions and a new approach to the Force and to politics themselves, his own scrutiny might yield more promising results now.

And – if he did find something – maybe Obi-Wan would finally listen to him about it. That thought was too narrow, too selfish, to drive his purpose, but he had felt some wall, some distance, between himself and his former apprentice since Obi-Wan’s first return months before. They had met regularly in the time since, but whenever Qui-Gon attempted to discuss politics, Obi-Wan closed up on him as he had done at any mention of Jedi prophecy in his younger days. Qui-Gon always grew irritable in response, and they finished their meetings with unspoken words heavy as humidity in the air around them – an unease so different from the easy companionship they had found over twelve years as partners.

This, too, could not be natural. There was something clouding their thoughts from one another, just as it clouded Qui-Gon’s clarity around politics, just as it clouded the proceedings of the Republic’s government. And perhaps if he could understand what it was, he could find the tools to pierce the cloud – or to lift it away entirely.

Which was why he now sat surrounded by months of Senate records, trying to arrange them into some kind of coherent order.

First there had been the Onden situation: the bill that had eventually passed allowing for lower taxation on the production of weapons and the system’s own increased militarization. No one in the Senate had been happy with the compromise that had been struck, and although nothing had happened from the system since, there was a sense of danger looming there when Qui-Gon allowed himself to meditate on the situation – a promise of potential future conflict.

And then there were so many others like it – tiny situations, really, each one small compared to the larger picture of the Republic, but starker when laid out next to one another like this. Fights against taxation and regulation, always resulting in compromises that slowly chipped away at the sense of peace and cooperation that was – as far as Qui-Gon understood it – the entire purpose of the Republic.

And now, again: an instance of militarization on Mar IV, a government seeking permission to build weapons to defend itself from pirates – but an unstable political situation that could explode so easily into violence led by – and returned against – its own people. Qui-Gon could see no way out of it – he was not a keen political mind, unlike those in the Senate, and yet the arguments always seemed to elide the deeper issue. Always there were threats of violence from without, the potential of turning them inward – and clouded, always clouded.

And all the while a sense of inevitability about it, like things could never have gone any other way. At no point during any of the sessions had something felt immediately and outwardly wrong to Qui-Gon, someone acting in opposition to their own good or the good of their people. Somehow, the larger picture seemed to be getting worse and worse, while everyone within it was only acting in ways that made perfect sense.

Perhaps it was the unfamiliarity of seeking patterns; perhaps it was simply the nature of the one he seemed to have found, but Qui-Gon could think of nothing to do in this moment, no reaction he himself could take to something so vast yet so vague. The only thing he knew to do was to speak to others who were more skilled in something like this than he was.

He reached for his comm device and contacted the Jedi Council.

They heard him out with impassive faces, all of them. Qui-Gon was well past the youthful anxiety of presenting his cases to the Council; age and a healthy dose of skepticism had taken care of that long ago – but still it was unnerving to talk through something he had pieced together so carefully, to present his evidence, and to realize how much, without the intense unease of his own doubt, it all looked like nothing.

It was like when he had first shared his suspicions with Obi-Wan and met with his apprentice’s thinly-veiled dismissal, but flavored with his history of finding himself at odds with the Jedi Council. Just as his own inclination when presenting to the Council was to prepare to disagree, to disapprove of their solution, surely their own thoughts ran a similar tired trajectory – Qui-Gon Jinn, here again to stir up trouble where none exists –

“We thank you for your attentiveness to this matter, Qui-Gon,” said Mace at last. “But as you yourself have pointed out, all of the cases you’ve presented here are examples of the political process at work.”

“Yes,” Qui-Gon said, pushing down his frustration, “I understand that, Master Windu. But it is the nature of that political process that concerns me. I have been in the Senate to witness the rising of tensions” –

“Not our task it is, the political process to disrupt,” Yoda cautioned him. “Careful, Qui-Gon, not to overstep your mandate.”

Decades of training in reining in his emotions kept Qui-Gon from grinding his teeth together. “That is why I have come to you, Masters,” he said. “I understand that our place as Jedi ties our hands, but this is a matter of grave concern to me. The Force speaks of some great threat here, but my senses are not finely tuned enough to understand it. I have begun to wonder if it might be worthwhile for us as the Order to reexamine our place in the Republic and our relationship to the Force. I have been doing a good deal of reading, and I have begun to think we ought to seek out a deeper relationship of trust with the Force, rather than with the authorities of the Republic. I have a list” –

“This is disturbing to hear,” said Ki-Adi Mundi. “We know you disagree with our methods, Qui-Gon, but you overstep your own authority here. This lack of humility borders on hunger for power.”

Qui-Gon counted the rhythm of his own breath to keep from snapping back. To be accused of a lack of humility! To him, humility meant openness to listen, willingness to change your path or your mind at need. If there was any lack of humility happening, it was here.

“Hold to the Code, we do, as a defense against darkness,” Yoda said. “To challenge it, dangerous it can be. Wise enough are you, Qui-Gon Jinn, to question the teachings of centuries of masters?”

This was too much. “I am listening to the teachings of centuries of masters!” he protested. “What have I been doing but studying their works? The Jedi Code is built up of years of interpretations informed by many different understandings of the Force. It serves a purpose, and I respect it for that. But the Code too can become dogma if we do not reexamine it for ourselves. And circumstances may be changing, politically, that make it impossible to hold to without changing ourselves in response!”

“Enough,” said Mace. “The Jedi do not seek power, Qui-Gon. You know this. We are grateful to you for bringing this to our attention, and the Council will consider it now.”

His words – and his tone – were final. Qui-Gon drew in his breath to argue – and realized that not a single face looking back at him held any sense of understanding of what he had tried to say.

It was enough to drive him to exhaustion, instantly. All the energy he had saved up to present this concern, this argument, simply swept aside as if it were nothing, as if it were merely the arrogance of a man who could not acknowledge that he had nothing useful to contribute anymore. As if his concerns were nothing more than an irritation to be tolerated.

Perhaps Yoda sensed this, for he spoke again, and this time his voice was gentle. “If ease your concern it will,” he said, “your worries about the situation on Mar IV, shared, they are. Decided, the Council has, to assign a Jedi knight to monitor the situation.”

“Monitor the situation,” Qui-Gon repeated, brows rising. “To protect the weapons factories?”

“To prevent violence,” Yoda said. “No one better there is for such a situation than Knight Kenobi.”

If this was meant to reassure him, it did exactly the opposite: rather, it sent a wave of nausea rushing through him. The thought of Obi-Wan being mixed into this situation – he could handle himself well; that was not in question, but he would be used as an arm of the Council for a situation that was already dangerously volatile. It felt like – like –

“Thank you,” Qui-Gon said dully. There was nothing more that could be done here. “I appreciate your response to my concern.”

They must have known he was lying, but what did it matter anymore? What was different about this session than any other Council meeting he had attended before?

They released him with few words beyond that.

Obi-Wan was in his rooms when Qui-Gon dropped by unannounced.

“Master!” he said when the door slid open, real surprise and pleasure in his voice. It was nearly enough to lift Qui-Gon’s spirits, even if it could do nothing for the heaviness in his limbs: he had not spent enough time with Obi-Wan, clearly, in the last few weeks he had been at the Temple. They had made it a habit to meet for tea at least once after each of Obi-Wan’s latest missions – but those missions had come thicker and faster, and Obi-Wan had been at the Temple less, and Qui-Gon had –

He had been preoccupied. He was still preoccupied, and he had not quite felt right coming to Obi-Wan with his concerns, knowing as he did the strictly logical mind of Obi-Wan Kenobi. But this was his last chance, and the knowledge of what he was here to do made the smile fade before it had managed to surface on his face.

Obi-Wan seemed to pick up on it; he raised an eyebrow. “What brings you here in such a state?”

“You didn’t tell me you had been assigned a mission,” Qui-Gon said abruptly.

Oh, but that was not how he had wanted those words to come out. Now it sounded like an accusation, and certainly Obi-Wan took it as one. “I don’t have to tell you anything anymore, remember?” he said tightly. “But as it happens, I was planning to. You seem to have found out on your own, though.”

“From the Council,” Qui-Gon said. “When I met with them to urge them to take my political warnings seriously.”

Ah, and that – that look on Obi-Wan’s face was one Qui-Gon knew so very well. Long-suffering tolerance, barely veiled frustration. It was the look he had worn so often with Qui-Gon these days when Qui-Gon attempted to express his concerns, the same look he had worn when he had brushed him off a few months before instead of arguing back. It was as though, now that Qui-Gon was no longer his master to rebel against, Obi-Wan had decided that he was not worth the effort.

“And did they?” he said, carefully neutral.

“Of course not,” said Qui-Gon. “Even as you’re not now. I urged them that we desperately need to rethink our relationship with the Republic, with authority, especially in light of increased militarization – and their reassurance was that they were sending you on a mission to enforce that very authority.”

“I am not enforcing authority,” said Obi-Wan. There it was – that flush high in his cheeks as he responded at last to provocation. But this time there was not the playful edge to their earlier friendly arguments. “I would thank you to have a higher opinion of me than that. I am going to provide protection and prevent violence.”

“Protection to a government that will manufacture weapons that no one should need!” countered Qui-Gon. “I would never accuse you of creating violence or oppression, but – this isn’t the sort of conflict we should be taking a side on! We should be trying to defuse situations like these at a much deeper level.”

“You may not think you’re accusing me of that, but that’s how you sound,” said Obi-Wan. “Well, what then? What would you have me do instead?”

Qui-Gon drew in a deep breath. “Don’t go,” he said.

"What?"

 The word was the crack of a whip; Qui-Gon repressed a flinch and stood firm. "Stay behind. Don't be a party to whatever is going on here."

"Whatever is going on here," Obi-Wan echoed. There was something about that voice, that crisp, clipped accent, that made mockery cut twice as deep. "You have no idea what's going on here, and you're asking me to refuse a direct mission that could be used to counter violence in the name of your vague suspicions?"

"I'm asking you to stand up for something!" burst out Qui-Gon at last, incensed beyond reason. Obi-Wan had always been good at provoking him beyond calm, drawing him out of himself. "I'm asking you to listen to me for once and trust me. I'm asking you not to be made a pawn of this system that seeks to play us all!"

"A pawn?" said Obi-Wan. His voice was ice-cold with fury. "Do you think so little of me? You think I can't make decisions for myself, based on my own reason and my own instincts? I listened to you for twelve years. Was that not enough for you?"

Qui-Gon's blood thundered in his ears, adrenaline rushing through his veins. His head ached, and he could sense that the crash when this anger wore off would be devastating indeed, but his blood was on fire and he had not felt so awake in weeks. "Apparently not," he said, making no effort not to be cutting. "If you can't recognize a problem when it presents itself."

"How dare you," hissed Obi-Wan. For all that he had spoken up to Qui-Gon in his years as a padawan, for all the spirit Qui-Gon knew he possessed, he had never felt the full force of Obi-Wan's fury directed at him like this. "How dare you twist duty into insult like this. How dare you, when if you were in any fit state, you wouldn't dare to refuse a mission yourself."

"You think I wouldn't?" Qui-Gon drew himself up.

"I think," said Obi-Wan, and his voice was like a knife, "that it's easier to tell others what to do when you don’t have to do it yourself."

For a moment, Qui-Gon could only stand there. He had always known that Obi-Wan's words could cut to the bone, but perhaps he had simply never tried to hurt Qui-Gon so deeply before. He had nothing to say in response, no devastating line that could turn this conversation into a victory. There was no victory to be found here, anyway – this was nothing but deep, echoing loss, carving his insides into a chasm without a bottom, falling eternally.

He had no sense of whether Obi-Wan felt the same way. His former apprentice simply looked at him, daring him to speak further, and folded his arms over his chest when Qui-Gon had nothing to say in response.

"Well," Obi-Wan said at last. "I think you should leave now, Qui-Gon. I have a mission to pack for, and your battle is with the Jedi Council. I won't fight it for you." And, with those words, he shut the door in Qui-Gon's face.

Qui-Gon heard the locking mechanism slide into place behind him.

Chapter Text

Qui-Gon drifted for the next day.

The wave of his anger had carried him all the way back to his own rooms, before crashing so hard into soul-deep exhaustion that he’d been left a shapeless lump in the middle of his bed, a heap of regret and self-pity. It was the kind of depressive spiral that had characterized his early days of injury and illness, one he still found himself vulnerable to despite his best efforts to find serenity. He could not find peace in such moments, but he had developed a strategy of sinking as deeply into meditation as he dared, drawing his consciousness back from his mind and letting it linger in the Force while despair swathed him like a gauzy, clinging blanket that could not be kicked away. He could not think, only feel, and he quieted his mind and body and let the emotion exist within him without analyzing it, without processing – let it run its course until finally, it ebbed enough that his thoughts were his own again.

This time, he did not surface from that deep meditation until a full day later. Consciousness returned to him slowly, thoughts orienting themselves to feelings, memory and physical awareness trickling back into his sense of himself. He could not tell if the churning in his stomach came from hunger or regret.

It had not hit him so hard in a long time, he thought as he blinked and twitched, slowly reminding himself of physical sensation and cognition. Not since the earliest days of his recovery had he had to sink so deep for such a long time. But perhaps that was only understandable given what had brought it on – the way he had managed to alienate the one person he had thought – the one person he had hoped –

The person whose opinion mattered more to him than anyone else in this temple.

It was that to which he found himself returning once he could force himself upright for long enough to fulfill the simplest of bodily needs. Obi-Wan’s opinion of him, and what that fight had revealed of it. More, his opinion of himself.

Obi-Wan had been right, he realized. He had been begging others to do something about some vague wrongness that he could not identify, and he had not had the courage to do it himself. He had judged Obi-Wan wrongly, harshly, instead of looking inward and determining what he could do about the wrongness himself.

If he was committed enough to ask Obi-Wan to go against the Council, something he knew intimately that Obi-Wan would never dream of doing, then what was he committed enough to do himself?

The answer, when it came to him, echoed in Obi-Wan’s own voice. I think you should leave.

Obi-Wan had meant for Qui-Gon to leave him alone, of course. Nothing more than that. But – but the words –

The vastness of them was so terrifying that Qui-Gon could not have even considered them at any other time, if he were not sick in body and soul, stripped bare to his own mind and desperate for any kind of escape from a trap he found himself flailing against. You should leave.

Leave?

Yes, he had grown increasingly frustrated and trapped and upset by the rigidity of the Order. Yes, he had had just about all that he could tolerate of being unheard, unlistened to, dismissed by the authority that determined the actions of everyone in the Jedi. Yes, his sessions in the Senate left him increasingly exhausted and aching and unsettled in his soul, and it felt as though everything was crumbling around him, increasingly intolerable –

But leave? Leave the Order? Leave his home? Leave the only life he had ever known?

Dooku did it, a voice inside his head reminded him. You might follow in your master’s footsteps one last time.

Dooku.

All this time, Qui-Gon had not contacted Dooku. Had not quite dared to, if he were being honest. At first it had been something like embarrassment, when he was still waiting for a “full” recovery – a reluctance to present himself to his former master when he had lost so much strength and skill. And after that . . . perhaps he had simply felt that he was teetering so close to the edge of his own tolerance that a talk with his master might push him over before he was ready.

But perhaps he was ready now.

And as for embarrassment – the horrible things he had said to Obi-Wan had burned that out of his mind entirely. He did not think it could be possible for anyone to see him brought lower than he had already been, lashing out at a beloved former apprentice because of a mere wound to his pride. What more did he have to lose?

His comm unit sat beside his bed; he reached out a hand for it now and scrolled through the contacts he could reach. Obi-Wan’s contact was inactive, he noticed with a pang. He must have left for his mission already, and only the Council would have a link to reach him. But perhaps that was just as well. For all his contrition, Qui-Gon had no idea what he would possibly say to Obi-Wan now, even if he could.

He still had information about how to reach Dooku on Serenno – and he selected the contact before he could talk himself out of it.

For some time, there was no response. Qui-Gon remembered Rael telling him, years ago, about reaching out to Dooku and hearing nothing back. Perhaps the business of ruling Serenno had, as Rael seemed to think, taken up all of Dooku’s time for his former apprentices. Or perhaps –

“Qui-Gon.”

Dooku was there, in blue hologram form, projected incongruously over Qui-Gon’s bed, but his voice as close as if he were back in the days of his apprenticeship. Qui-Gon could see him only from the waist up, but he could tell that Dooku sat at a desk in a richly-decorated room; perhaps he had been at work. His own attire was understated but elegant, his hair and beard neatly trimmed, impeccable as he ever had been, though the sight of him in silk tunics instead of Jedi robes still shook Qui-Gon slightly.

“Master Dooku,” he said, inclining his head.

Even in the smaller form of the hologram, he could still see the scrutiny on Dooku’s face as he took in Qui-Gon in his turn. Qui-Gon could only imagine how he must look: half-sitting up in bed wearing yesterday’s clothes, the shadows of interminable fatigue and existential distress carved in hollows beneath his eyes. Dooku raised an eyebrow.

“You look dreadful,” he said.

Qui-Gon huffed a laugh and ran a shaking hand over his face and hair, smoothing back the mess from his forehead. He hadn’t even bothered to unbind his hair before collapsing into bed, he realized now, and the tail had bunched up atop his head like the crest on an Alderaanian peacock. “You know I have always appreciated your honesty,” he said. “Apologies for presenting myself in such a poor state to the Count of Serenno.”

“I should have expected nothing less, I suppose.” The dry humor in Dooku’s voice was like a comforting blanket, as if for just that one moment Qui-Gon could pretend all the years and all the sorrow had fallen away and he were just an apprentice again – at the mercy of Dooku’s rigid posture and exacting standards, but under his protection, too. Wanted. Respected. Safe. “But truly, Qui-Gon. I haven’t seen you in such a state since you were a child. What is the matter?”

What wasn’t the matter, Qui-Gon thought. Aloud he said, “I suppose the news doesn’t travel so far outside the Order these days. Did you hear about the duel that Obi-Wan and I found ourselves engaged in on Naboo?”

Something twitched in the holo image, something that could have been a simple glitch in the connection or an odd look flashing across Dooku’s face. “I heard,” he said slowly. “That was some time ago, was it not?”

“Yes, well,” said Qui-Gon dryly, “it left its lasting imprint. I cannot recommend being impaled as a health choice, Master. If presented with the opportunity, you should do all you can to avoid it.”

Dooku put down whatever he had been holding, which rested below the hologram’s field of vision, and leaned forward, suddenly intent. “What imprint did it leave?” he said.

Qui-Gon blinked. Dooku had never been especially interested in the specifics of physical symptoms before. “Fatigue, mostly,” he said. “Constant and impossible to counter. Occasional vertigo” –

Dooku waved that off. “But where does that come from?” he insisted. “Lung damage? Heart” –

“I don’t know,” was all Qui-Gon could say. “According to all the medical scans, I’m in perfect health – cleanly recovered. And yet” – He spread his hands. “I assure you, if this is in my mind, it is entrenched more deeply than I know how to reach.”

“That is written all over your face,” said Dooku. “That is not why I ask.” He brought his hands up, clasped under his chin. Qui-Gon could not quite make out the expression on his face. “And the medics in the Order, they have done nothing for you?”

“I have come to believe that nothing can be done,” Qui-Gon said. Ah, but this was why he had refrained from contacting Dooku for so long – the contempt in his voice, the disdain that twisted the words the Order, a dismissal of Qui-Gon’s home, his very life. Even now, even with his own frustrations, he found himself tensing in automatic defense against Dooku’s accusations towards the Jedi. “I have taken it as a sign from the Force that I am meant to walk a new path. But I am still struggling to determine what that path may be.” He took a deep breath. “In fact” –

“Nothing can be done by the Jedi, perhaps,” said Dooku. There was something in his voice that made Qui-Gon’s skin prickle with nerves, like the warning anticipation of blasterfire from some unexpected corner. “With their rigid hierarchies and control over information, their limitations on what the Force can be used for. Have you considered that there is a difference between what can be done and what the Jedi are willing to do?”

“I” –

In balance, Qui-Gon supposed, he should not have been surprised. Dooku had been critical of the Jedi’s rules and structures; indeed, he himself had become critical of them in his turn. But there was something dangerous to the cast of Dooku’s voice now, something hungry and proud, an edge that threatened to devour the tone of the master Qui-Gon had known. Qui-Gon did not agree with the Jedi Council’s decisions now, no. But he did, in large part, agree with the limits he had always been taught, the responsibilities that came along with the power of connection to the Force. There were reasons for the things they were not willing to do – because sometimes, the risks outweighed the potential good.

“I have been expanding my research,” Dooku said when Qui-Gon did not answer, “beyond those controls and rules. I think I could help you if you came to join me here. There is much more in the galaxy – much more to the Force – than you have been taught, Qui-Gon.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, I know that.” Had he not been thinking that very same thing in his reading, in his challenges to Jedi epistemology, to his own understanding and relationship with the Force? But what he had been thinking was different – felt different – from what Dooku was saying now. “But I think that in the case of my injury, at least, the Jedi are right. Those limits exist to keep us from touching what should not be touched, changing what should not be changed. The Force saw fit to do this to me, and so I shall take it as a sign that my own approach to life must be changed.”

It was easier said than done, always. Of course he wanted to be healed – wanted to rediscover lightsaber combat as a joy of motion rather than a necessity; wanted to banish this awful weakness in his limbs and at the very core of him. He wanted to reclaim those parts of his life that he had loved: he wanted to be in the field again, rather than trapped here in this world of compromise and subservience to a will that did not listen to the Force as its highest good. But –

But he did not want those things at the cost of tapping powers that should not be tapped, forces that might change him forever. And – had he been able to return to the field, had he not turned a careful, watchful eye on events at the heart of the Republic and the Jedi, would he ever have been able to uncover the wrongness he felt now? He had told himself that the Force had acted for a reason, and it may be that he had stumbled upon that reason at last.

“What the Force has done, the Force can undo,” said Dooku. He was leaning in even closer now, and Qui-Gon could see the light in his eyes even through the slight distortion of the holo: something disturbing in its fervency, something quite outside the tight control Dooku had always exhibited as Qui-Gon’s master. “I have been tapping powers the fools on the Council have never dared to dream of. I have been discovering new dimensions to the Force and how it can be used. I have grown far beyond what I once thought I could be, and you could, too, Qui-Gon. You could be healed and have a place at my side. You could be respected as the Jedi do not respect you.”

Qui-Gon could not breathe. Before his eyes, Dooku was transformed – he had become someone different, someone far from the master who had promised Qui-Gon his honesty, who had trained him and shaped him, who had taught him to think for himself but to listen to others when it was needed. The look in his eyes, the cadence of his voice, the very feel of his presence, even from such a distance, sent cold sweeping through him, put him in mind of – of –

Of the presence of the Sith lord who had nearly killed him.

Dooku was touching darkness, Qui-Gon realized. He could not know how deep his former master had gone, how far down, how changed he was – but what he spoke of now was the dark side of the Force. And he was inviting Qui-Gon to join him in it.

“Thank you, Master,” he said, careful and slow. His heart, he realized, was pounding, sending freezing blood fast through his chest and making his head spin. “I am honored by your offer. But I must decline it. You know that I share many of your frustrations, but these limits, at least, are ones I must adhere to.”

All at once, the light in Dooku’s eyes died away. He sat back and folded his hands and returned abruptly to his rigid posture of before, his perfect propriety. “I understand,” he said. “But you know that the offer stands. You will always be welcome at my side if you choose to join me.”

The frantic racing of Qui-Gon’s heart was at odds with Dooku’s returned calm; he pressed a hand to his chest as if that would slow its beating. “Thank you,” he said. “I think I must be going now.”

“So soon?” Dooku arched an eyebrow. “Is that all you wanted to discuss with me?”

Qui-Gon breathed out shakily, struggling for control over his body’s betrayal. “It is,” he said. It is now. “I wish you all the best, Master.”

When the call ended, he let himself fall back onto his pillows with a gasp of relief.

He could not join Dooku, that much was clear. He could not even listen to Dooku’s perspective on the Jedi, not any longer. That – what he had said about subverting the Force’s will – that would be worse than staying here. Qui-Gon’s frustrations with the Jedi now related to the clouding of the Force here, the way the will of the Force had been subsumed to the will of the politicians they served. But that did not mean he wanted to reach into darkness. What Dooku had said – what the Force has done, the Force can undo – it reminded him of what Anakin had said to him early on: the Force can do whatever we want it to –

Anakin.

Again, he had forgotten Anakin! In all his questioning of what must be done, what the Force willed him to do, he had forgotten the very simple and human responsibility he had to this boy, this boy who was himself the will of the Force. Qui-Gon’s responsibility was to Anakin both as a person and as the Chosen One of prophecy, and whatever decision he made now must include Anakin in it as well.

So perhaps he ought to talk to him again.

His urgent need to talk to Anakin, to learn something more, to do something, drove him to his feet; the weakness in his knees drove him right back down.

He sat on the edge of his bed for a moment while his ears rang and black dots swarmed before his eyes, breathing evenly as he waited to see if he would pass out. In the end his will won out over his body, though it was a close thing, and he retained his tenuous grip on consciousness. Still, the message had been received. If the Force would not whisper directly into his ears, Qui-Gon liked to think he could at least heed the strict warnings of his body. This one had been self-inflicted, yes, by a full day spent in meditation and a lack of sufficient sleep or food, but it was a message nonetheless: wait. Manage your immediate needs before you stray too far from the memory that you are yet a living being.

Attend to the moment before you question what it might mean in the larger picture.

Heed your own advice, Master Jinn.

This time, before attempting to rise, he took careful stock of his own body. His head still felt dangerously light and pulsed with a threatening headache. His throat was dry; he had had nothing to drink in more than a day. Hunger so fierce it verged on nausea clawed at his belly, and his arms and legs felt leaden. His heart . . .

His mind and heart felt dry and empty, hollowed-out shells scraped clean of all their energy, all their will beyond the anxious urge to act, to do something, to respond to the threat he felt all around him. It was nearly the instinct of a battle, except that he could not identify if the enemy was a mysterious menace all around him - or merely the ravages of his own mind.

He was in no state to make decisions like this.

And he was in no state to present himself to Anakin or to anyone else. He needed food and water and a bath or a shower, and real sleep if he could manage it. Obi-Wan had already gone, and so there was nothing he could do about the harsh words that had passed between them, no way to recall them or make amends. He would have to trust in the strength of their bond, the respect and love that had carried them through twelve years of disagreements, to carry them through this one as well. And for the rest, there was nothing so urgent it could not wait another day.

Still seated on his bed, he reached out with the Force to summon a bottle of water and a nutrition bar from the stash he kept across the room. He always felt uneasy when he did this, as if he were cheating somehow, using the Force in ways that disrespected its power, but he did not trust his legs to hold him before he had fortified himself somewhat. He ate and drank slowly at first, to give his stomach time to settle, and felt the headache begin to recede. A tightness at the back of his skull that he hadn't even noticed eased, and he let out a deep, relieved breath.

There was a simplicity to this, he reflected as he chewed: the basic, necessary act of feeding the body, of tending to its needs. The body could be stalled, put off, delayed, but never denied entirely: it always demanded what it needed. There were some who would frame that as punishment, but the body did not act with malice, not in and of itself; it simply grasped for what it lacked, using pain as a plea and unconsciousness as a means of conservation. And now, in the act of feeding himself, he moved towards a greater harmony with himself: the soul settled, the mind easing.

There were those who believed closeness with the Force could be found in denial of the body – but the body too was of the Force and connected to all that it was. There was a greater unity in acknowledging the body, accepting the harmony between body and soul. As the needs of his body had changed, so too had the needs of his soul.

Perhaps all the needs of his body had been a message, then. Perhaps he had needed to come to this point so that he could begin to listen to what was outside himself. But he had gone too far, and he must be reminded to stop, to settle, to listen.

The food and water had revived him enough that he could stand now, and he made his slow way into the kitchen to make himself a proper meal – letting himself linger on the cooking and the eating, letting himself live in every sensation. There was time for the small among the large, he reminded himself. The decision he was contemplating was too vast to be made without also attending to each minute facet of its process, of its consequences. He let himself sink into the sensation of cooking in a kitchen in the Temple: the familiarity of it, of the space, of the feel. The familiarity was a comfort and also a frustration, a knowledge that it had developed because he had spent so much time here in the last year. Once, he had found comfort in newness, in trusting to the Force and letting himself embrace new places and possibilities and needs.

He could do it again, if he had to.

He bathed after eating: again long and slow and deliberate. Allowing himself to exist, rather than to think. To let the possibilities of leaving and staying swirl about him, each equally real – which was to say, not at all – until the moment that the choice was made. And once it was made, he would do with it what he must – just as he had done with Obi-Wan, with Anakin, with his own body.

Give me a sign, he asked the Force quietly, without expectation for what that sign would be. Just a nudge. Help me look in the right direction, when it is time.

His center returned to him, a serenity that he had been missing for some time. And when he went to bed, he was calm.

Chapter Text

He was in the center of a sandstorm. Dust whirled around him; cloth whipped about his face, stinging his cheeks. He could see nothing; his sight was obscured by the storm – which was more than a storm. Dust, yes, but also emotion: heightening waves of it, buffeting him like gales, like the furious gases of atmosphere – fear, grief, despair, and a building rage that choked him, strangled him, something icy and hot and hateful. He gasped for breath but could not draw it in past the dust.

“Ani!” said a woman’s voice, faint and echoing on the wind. “Ani” –

And then it was all drowned out in a howl, an endless, curdling scream that came from lower than the throat, lower than the diaphragm – from the belly of the planet itself – that horrible hate given voice – a fury that could not be suppressed –

“No!” Qui-Gon cried, and bolted awake.

He lay in his own bed, shaking and clammy – drenched in cold sweat. The sensation of his own body, his own bedroom, was a jarring wrench from one world to another – a transition between place and time, each just as real as the other. He had not experienced this in so long, and yet as he reoriented himself to the present, to the moment that surrounded him, he knew there was nothing else this could be.

A vision. Another.

A vision. Yes. He drew a long, trembling breath and focused: one finger after the other, the sheets, the air, the currents of the Force. They felt muddled and strange – a jolt from the sharp clarity of a different point in time, back into the now, where the journey between the two was fuzzy and unclear – or maybe it was simply that same elusiveness, the way clarity in the Force seemed to escape his grasp. But it was more pronounced now, somehow: stronger in that distinction. As though a brief instance of clear sight had drawn his attention to how clouded his connection was now.

Clear sight. Yes, clear sight. That this was not his first vision did not make its specifics easier to understand, but it had given him tools, and he grasped for them now. Remember – remember everything. The sights and sounds and sensations of the vision did not flee from his grasp like an ordinary dream; they stayed with him like the memory of something he had truly experienced – another confirmation that this was no dream – and he catalogued them to himself: the horror, the fear, the screaming, the sand. The woman’s voice.

A voice he knew. Anakin’s mother. Shmi Skywalker. And that dust – Tatooine.

He had had a vision of Anakin’s mother crying out for him on Tatooine, had felt horror and despair and darkness. Something was coming.

Something was going to happen.

Knowing that it was a vision did not help him know better what to do about it. He had vowed, after that first vision on Pijal, to practice surrender: to let the Force carry him where it would, to heed its whims and act in response. A vision must, in some way, be a prod to act – particularly one so specific, so close, so directly about someone he knew. And yet, for all the warning of it, he knew that to act in response to a vision was so often exactly what brought it about.

Surrender, he reminded himself. Surrender meant that he could not change fate. What he had seen was bound to come about. But what he had seen was unclear and could mean so many different things. He could not assume that this vision was any kind of instruction, any warning that he could act upon to avert a future.

But receiving the vision meant that he was being asked to do more than nothing.

In Pijal, acting to subvert the vision had been what brought it about most favorably. What then was he meant to do now?

The details of the vision must be what would give him direction. Tatooine, Shmi Skywalker, Anakin’s name . . . Anakin.

The logical thought, if this vision were to be subverted, would be to keep Anakin away from Tatooine at all costs. But – if this vision would come to pass anyway – perhaps the message from the Force was to run towards the future, to take his chances with what it might bring.

Take Anakin to Tatooine?

The Order would never allow it. For him to leave, on his own, without field clearance, and with a youngling who had not yet officially been named his padawan learner – it was unthinkable. It made no kind of rational sense. And yet –

If the Order was not the place for Qui-Gon any longer, and Anakin was bound to it by him –

Where else would the boy want to go but back to his mother?

Qui-Gon drew the tangled sheets back from his body with unsteady hands. No. He had taken Anakin away from Tatooine scarcely a year ago. What he was thinking – it was not something he could dare to do, to himself or to Anakin.

Was it?

Was this the sign he had been asking for?

For the first time since waking up, he allowed himself to take stock of his body once more. He was still trembling from the dream, from the shock to his system that the vision had brought on, but he felt otherwise renewed. Tired, still a bit shaky at the knees, but able to rise, able to walk. Able to venture forth from his rooms for the first time in two days.

Before his body had insisted on rest and food, he had planned to visit Anakin. Perhaps it was time to do so now.

He rose and dressed, neatened his hair, clipped his lightsaber to his belt. Felt like a Jedi again, rather than a worn and wounded man. Felt, perhaps, prepared for what he must do.

And then he went to where the initiates would be practicing.

He had visited saber practice before – notably, in the early days of his new retraining, to remind himself of the basic forms and humble himself enough to practice with training droids again, with the machinery slow and gentle enough for his new needs. And then he had gone to watch, as a master might for a young padawan, to give Anakin the support it seemed he needed – particularly after noting the way the other masters tended to set him apart. Qui-Gon’s presence seemed to smooth that over, though he could not attend as often as he might wish to. But it had been some time since he had visited, and he needed to be directed to the correct salle before he found Anakin’s class.

They were drilling in the basic offensive strikes today, the ones that formed the building blocks of Ataru, Qui-Gon’s preferred form up until very recently. He watched with interest; he had not bothered to refamiliarize himself with these classes, as his body was both intimately familiar with these cadences over nearly forty years of repetition and in no fit state to take them up again, but it was still a pleasure to watch them be taught. Anakin took to the more aggressive maneuvers with ease – though, to be fair, there were few moves he had not mastered easily. It was not the mastery of the forms themselves that was his problem, but rather the patience with the others who took longer, and his patience with the instructors who sought to give him critical feedback.

He took criticism differently from how Obi-Wan had, Qui-Gon noted. Obi-Wan had internalized his frustrations, turned them into a double-ended blade of defiance and self-critique. Instead of growing despondent, he had been determined instead to master the forms he had been criticized on – subsuming his own frustrations and irritations into a desire for perfection that would impress his masters and satisfy himself. Qui-Gon had sought to teach him to look beyond that, to look beyond the need to be good enough for someone else’s standards and to find his purpose in the actions he took, but whether he had succeeded in that was Obi-Wan’s choice now.

That was another stab, another reminder of their falling out – a reminder that Obi-Wan had moved past the need to live up to Qui-Gon’s standards. That, whether he worked to please himself or others, it was no longer Qui-Gon’s affair.

But Anakin was. Anakin’s frustrations were channeled outwardly, into a ferocity that seethed beneath the surface of his skin, beneath the calm he had not quite learned to master. The masters who trained him, more accustomed to younglings of Obi-Wan’s temperament, clearly did not know what to do with him.

Was the problem Anakin, or was it the Order? That was what Qui-Gon had yet to figure out – and he was not so arrogant to think that he could support Anakin where so many other, wiser, better-trained masters could not. But perhaps it was not a question of the inherent ability of the master, but rather the placement of the student.

Frustrated as he was by his classmates, Anakin lit up when he saw Qui-Gon waiting for him outside the salle. He tore ahead of the others, slowing his step only reluctantly at the sharp command from Master Drallig, and practically bounced to Qui-Gon’s side.

“Master Qui-Gon, you came to watch me!” Even as the last word left his mouth, his face creased into a frown. “You don’t look so good.”

Qui-Gon ran a hand over the top of his head, absently smoothing wisps of his hair back from his forehead. “When do I ever, these days?” he said wryly. “I did come to watch you, and also to talk to you. But first – your forms are progressing very well.”

Anakin beamed, concern forgotten. “The offensive forms are my favorites. I can do them even faster, but Master Drallig won’t let me.”

“Soon enough,” said Qui-Gon. But a slight smile had found its way onto his own face; it was a pleasure to see Anakin this ebullient, even if only for a moment, even if in defiance of the Order’s expectations of restrained emotionality. Doubtless that control was what Anakin needed, but still, his moments of enthusiasm and joy seemed to brighten the very Force around him. “The slow start is necessary to ensure that the body fully familiarizes itself with the forms. Shortcuts in training can lead to costly errors in action. But I am impressed with your progress.”

“Thank you,” said Anakin. Their steps had taken them down the hall now, and Anakin paused at the door that would lead – not back towards the initiates’ quarters, but out towards the more public areas of the Temple. “Did you want to talk about anything else?”

“I did, in fact,” said Qui-Gon. Had Anakin sensed his intent, or was he simply trying to free himself from the conversation? “Do you have a moment?”

Anakin’s brow wrinkled up. “Not right now, actually,” he said. “Sorry, Master. The Chancellor wanted me to come see him.”

Qui-Gon’s own eyebrows shot up. “The Chancellor?” he said. “Wants to see you?”

“I didn’t do anything bad, I swear!” said Anakin anxiously. “He just likes to spend time with me. We’ve had lunch in his office sometimes – he has the best food, steaks and soups and the best desserts. He gave me chocolate last time! Have you ever had chocolate?”

“Yes,” said Qui-Gon absently, barely aware of what he was saying. “You . . . have lunch with the Chancellor?”

“Not every day,” said Anakin. “Just sometimes.” He was tightening up already, stiff with defense. “There’s nothing wrong about it! He wanted to thank me for destroying the droids on Naboo at first, and then he got to liking my company. You’re not going to tell me I can’t, are you?”

“No.” Qui-Gon’s mouth felt detached from his mind. How had he missed this happening? And why was it happening at all? The Chancellor had a bit of a reputation for mentoring, that was true – Queen Amidala had mentioned him a time or two as a senator who had taken an interest in her progress. But it was strange that Palpatine would have taken such an interest in Anakin when he surely had other things to do. Particularly when Palpatine was responsible for the highest levels of government, and Anakin was one of the most powerful young Jedi the Order had ever seen. It resonated with all of Qui-Gon’s earlier misgivings about their interconnection, about the dangers that could come about from such intermingling between government and the Jedi. Anakin was already prone to forming dangerous attachments: to his mother, to Qui-Gon himself. Regardless of Palpatine’s intentions, if he were to form one to the person with power over all the Republic, how dangerous could that be for the Jedi?

Especially when, more and more, Qui-Gon’s instincts were telling him that the Jedi Order was the wrong place for Anakin to be, after all.

“No,” he repeated. “Enjoy your lunch with the Chancellor, Ani. But perhaps afterwards I can come and visit you in your room?”

“Sure!” said Anakin – all good humor again, earlier suspicion forgotten. “Is it important?”

“It might be,” said Qui-Gon distantly. “I need to visit the Archives now, and you have your lunch to get to. But I’ll see you later, Anakin.”

True to his word, when he bade goodbye to the boy, he went straight for the Archives.

The thought had been rising within him again and again, only to be pushed down by all of his common sense – but perhaps now was not the time for common sense. Qui-Gon had often been accused of lacking just such a practical quality, in fact, whenever his more unorthodox solutions to problems were presented before the Council in the least flattering language possible. But instinct and common sense were two different things, and he must trust in the Force above else.

So he meant to study those who had done the same thing before him.

“Master Jinn!” said Rie Axtin. She had straightened up almost before he entered, swiveling towards him from behind her desk as though she had been waiting for him. “Back for more already?”

He smiled faintly – his last research session had been only a few days prior. “You have an outsized expectation of my reading speed,” he said. “I’m here to look into a slightly different topic this time. What can you find for me about the Wayseekers?”

Wayseeker had been a title the Order had granted centuries before. The Wayseekers had been Jedi who were granted permission to separate themselves from the direction of the Jedi Council and act according to the way the Force spoke to them. Qui-Gon had always been curious about them, had thought more than once that he might have fared well as a Wayseeker himself, had he been born in the right time. The Wayseekers had been allowed to remain part of the Order, welcomed back when and if they chose to return – and they had had more authority to speak up than he did now, either more freedom or more ability to use that freedom to influence the leadership of the Order.

Rie found him the basics, then ventured deeper with him – looking up the first of the Wayseekers and the last. The tendency had dwindled over the years, fading out rather than ending abruptly – and even she was hard-pressed to find an explicit reason for it. But the more he read, and the more they discussed, the more Qui-Gon felt sure he knew the answer, even if it could not be grounded in historical intention.

In truth, the Jedi Order as it had become had no space for a Wayseeker. No space for Qui-Gon to separate himself from the dictates of the Council while remaining under their protection. And if their protection was as bound up in the Senate and the Republic as he feared it was, then he did not want it, anyway. Could not be beholden to it.

The more he read, the clearer his answer became – and the clearer it rang with the Force within him, as though layers and layers of deception were being scraped away.

“Thank you, Knight Axtin,” he said at last, several articles deep, when her hair had come loose from the tie holding it back and his back was beginning to ache from leaning over a desk. “I think I have found the question I was looking for.”

“Is there any chance you might share it with me?” she asked, brushing hair out of her face and moving to clear the terminal at his nod of permission.

“Not yet,” he said regretfully. “There is someone else I must speak to first.”

He had not realized how much time had passed while he researched. Anakin’s lunch with the Chancellor would be well over now – indeed, it would nearly be time for his dinner. But he would be free.

He should eat something himself – he should have learned from his rather spectacular personal collapse the day before. But instead, Qui-Gon made his way once more into the initiates’ halls.

Anakin was alone in his room, and the speed with which his head snapped up revealed to Qui-Gon that he had been waiting. No, it was good that he had not delayed any longer in coming here. Qui-Gon greeted him and took the chair in the corner – his standard spot, now, when visiting.

“Good evening, Anakin,” he said. “How was your lunch with the Chancellor?”

“Good,” said Anakin. “He’s – nice.” His mouth firmed up and he went quiet.

“Nice,” said Qui-Gon. “Yes, I have found that to be the case as well.” But still, he could not help wondering what interest the man had in Anakin. “It is a common trait among politicians.”

“Then maybe we should all be more like politicians,” said Anakin. He eyed Qui-Gon sideways, not quite meeting his gaze – perhaps reacting to Qui-Gon’s suspicion, or suspicious that this latest comfort was about to be taken away from him along with the others.

Qui-Gon took a deep breath. This was, after all, part of what he had come here to learn. “I told you, I recall, that the life of a Jedi was a hard one. Are you finding the truth of that for yourself?”

“It doesn’t seem hard for anyone else,” muttered Anakin. There was resentment in his tone, bubbling beneath the surface, audible to anyone who would listen closely enough to him to hear it. “Maybe I really don’t belong here.”

Qui-Gon kept his voice even. “Have you been told that?”

“Not in words,” said Anakin. “But everyone knows it. Everyone’s thinking it. I know they are, even if they don’t tell me.” Whether that knowledge came from a sensitivity in the Force or simply from the obvious interpretation of how others behaved around him, Qui-Gon could not tell him he was wrong. “And maybe they’re right. I can’t be like them. Like you.” He looked up at Qui-Gon, eyes alive with emotion – earnest beseeching replacing the frustration. “I can’t just turn myself off, Qui-Gon. Master Qui-Gon. I don’t understand how you do it.”

These struggles – in someone with Anakin’s level of power, they were the reason Qui-Gon had wanted to bring him to the Order in the first place. But it seemed that the Order was proving itself an unfit place for him. “That is why I came to you, Anakin. These skills in emotional control – they are important and worthwhile. But I don’t think you’re entirely wrong about not belonging in the Order.”

Anakin flinched away from him. Whatever he had been expecting, it was not that. “Are you kicking me out?” he said, voice shrill. “Are you going to make me leave? Master! I don’t have anywhere else to go!”

“Peace,” said Qui-Gon. “Center yourself, Anakin. Calm your emotions. No, I am not going to make you leave the Order. But” – The words were nearly impossible to say. They had been unthinkable to Qui-Gon for nearly thirty years, simply unimaginable, beyond any frame of reference he had ever had. “I have come to ask if you want to depart.” Another pause. Another breath. “With me.”

There – it was said, and it could not be unsaid. Across the room, Anakin froze.

The silence held. Qui-Gon let it hold: one breath, two breaths. Found his serenity, relaxed into it. He had trusted in the Force and this child in a moment when lives were at stake; this could not be more urgent than that. Whatever Anakin said now would guide him. What is meant to be will be.

“. . . You’re leaving?”

Anakin was staring at him, shocked and wide-eyed and horrified. Perhaps it was a betrayal to him – that the first Jedi he had ever met had found himself disenchanted with the Order. Qui-Gon found himself wondering what would have happened if someone else had found Anakin instead, and then had to quell a laugh. No one else would have brought Anakin – and the burden of decisions about him – here in the first place. That had been made abundantly clear to him.

“I believe so,” he said gravely. “I believe that my differences with the Jedi Council have become irreconcilable. But I am determined not to forsake my promise to you. If you wish to remain, I will stay with you.”

“So you’re letting me decide?”

“I have placed too many burdensome decisions on you, I know,” Qui-Gon said. “But even if we were to depart the Order, we would still be Jedi, and difficult decisions are part of a Jedi’s life. You must” –

“Where would we go?”

A flash again of his vision: sand in his mouth, screaming in his ears. He faltered.

“Could we go to Tatooine?” said Anakin, his words rushing forward. Perhaps he had not even noticed Qui-Gon’s lapse. “Could we go find my mother?”

Inevitable, with the attachment Anakin had formed to her. Inevitable, with the failure of the Jedi Order to replace it. Whether it was right or not, Qui-Gon could not know, but the Force would do what it would. The future would come as it would. “If you’d like.”

“I want to go,” said Anakin. “I miss her every single day, and no one here even cares.” His eyes were gleaming. “We left her there and I promised I’d go back, and I haven’t” –

And Qui-Gon had made no such promise, but he’d wanted to, hadn’t he? He’d looked at her for the last time and seen all the other slaves he’d met that he hadn’t been able to save, had seen Watto’s face as he refused that one last gamble. It would be something he could set right, maybe, once he was freed of his mandates. Something he could do on his own terms.

“Yes,” Qui-Gon said. “I know. We would go back for your mother if you left with me. But you must think carefully about this. Are you sure this is what you want?”

“I’m sure.” Anakin looked around the room as if already picturing himself away from it. “I always wanted to be a Jedi, you know. But if you can teach me how to be a Jedi somewhere else, and if I can be a Jedi and see my mom, too, that would be the best thing in the world.”

That could be dangerous. There was a reason Jedi did not have families, and Qui-Gon understood it and agreed. But he had been reimagining so much about Jedi orthodoxy, could he not reimagine this, too?

More, did he have a choice anymore?

“You will need to be patient with me, Anakin,” he cautioned. Ah, but he knew so well how hard this lesson was to learn as a youth – but Obi-Wan too had been impatient, and now he had grown into one of the steadiest people Qui-Gon knew, the most measured and thoughtful. It was why he trusted him now, even despite his frustration, despite the pang that went through him at the thought of the harsh words they had exchanged. He made himself set it aside; if he could not release it now, he ought not dwell on it. “Here, you have had students and masters alike to keep pace with you when you needed it. If you go with me, you will be bound to the limits of my strength and energy, which are not as great as yours. Do you understand?”

The choice he offered was not a kind one, and he knew it – knew already what Anakin’s answer would be, with his mother as the other choice. But Jedi were rarely presented with kind choices – and they were, despite their impending separation from the Order, Jedi yet. Qui-Gon did not know how to be anything else. There was only what was right, what was necessary, and the hope that the two would coincide.

“I understand,” said Anakin immediately. “I want to go with you.”

Qui-Gon breathed deeply once more and sealed his fate – but no. His fate was already sealed, had he not learned that already? He would do what he must, and that would lead him into the future that was bound to come.

“Very well,” he said. “Then we will go.”

The full Council accepted his request for a hearing.

Every chair was occupied, every master present to look down at him. Qui-Gon had stood before the Council before, often in situations relating to his own disobedience – or rather, his differing opinions from those on this body – but never before had he felt quite so nervous.

Nerves, he reminded himself, could be a reaction to change. He reached for the core of certainty in himself and felt it still there, still solid.

“Well, Qui-Gon?” said Mace. “What brings you before us again so soon? More news of the workings of the Senate?”

His voice was as impassive as always, but the anticipatory reprimand was unmistakable. Qui-Gon drew in a deep breath, then released it, exhaling all his pride, his irritation, his attachment to how the members of this body thought of him. “No, Master Windu,” he said. “My concern here is of a rather more personal matter.”

“Personal to you?” said Eeth Koth. “Surely the full Council was not necessary for such a thing. Remember, Qui-Gon, what we are here for.”

“Forgive me, Master Koth, but it was necessary,” said Qui-Gon. “I know my reputation among this body, and I would rather all its members hear these words directly from my lips, all at once.” He steeled himself, held tight to that core of rightness – remembered the horror of his vision and the knowledge that the Force was guiding him, in some way or another, to act in ways he had always been forbidden before. Remembered his need to move beyond the limits that had been placed on him, to find his own truer connection with the Force. Remembered the words he had cobbled together from old Wayseeker declarations and his own desires. Looked around at the Council chamber and felt a deep wave of love and respect for all its members, deeper and surer than his frustration with them – the knowledge that he would like to remain forever a friend of this Order that had made him everything he was, of these people who had given him care and protection and support along with the headaches and frustrations.

He would not be his own master, who had departed in contempt and fury and now threatened to lose himself in studies of darkness and power. He would do this with all the love and care it deserved.

“Masters,” he said, and his voice was steady and sure, “I request your blessing to part ways with this Order, with grace in the parting and respect and friendship on both sides afterwards.”

Silence, for a moment, and then everyone reacted at once.

The Masters on the Jedi Council tended to be better than most Jedi at shielding or dampening their emotions; Qui-Gon had never known if they had trained themselves to feel less as a result of dispassionate ruling on so many situations or if they simply hid their feelings behind iron-wrapped serenity. Their reaction now gave him no hint of the answer to that question – whether the surprise of his reveal was so great that it outstripped the other situations they had experienced, or whether it simply shook their ability to shield what they were already feeling – but the Force around him came alive with emotion: shock and indignation mostly, with a slight undercurrent of almost shameful relief.

He could not tell from whom which emotion emanated, and he steadied himself with his own certainty, his own determination. He had been the one to bring this news to them, after all. He must be prepared for their response.

Outwardly, most of the Council members remained calm, with only flickers of sentiment betraying them. At long last it was Yoda who spoke. “Considered this carefully, have you, Qui-Gon?” he said. “No rash decision, is this?”

Qui-Gon controlled the spark of irritation. “This decision came to me recently, Master Yoda,” he said. “But I fear it is my only option. I cannot serve the Force as I feel I must while I remain here in the Temple, and the Order no longer provides the space for those who would pursue their own relationships with the Force while remaining within its jurisdiction. I know that I have made decisions in the past that the Council disapproves of, but I would ask that you trust that none of these decisions have ever been made lightly.”

“And you have thought through all the consequences of your decision?” asked Master Mundi. “For you personally and for the Order? You have planned for your own needs outside the protection and care of the Temple?”

Qui-Gon bowed his head. “I am grateful for the care I have received here,” he said. “But there are many who suffer injury and illness outside the protection of the Order, and many of those do not have the added benefit of connection to the Force. I shall trust in it to lead me to what I need. And I remind you that I ask for your blessing to remain a friend of the Order, though I may no longer operate according to its will or represent it in my actions. Indeed,” and he allowed himself a smile, “I believe this will be to the benefit of us all, as you will no longer have to bear responsibility for me.”

“And what of your other responsibilities?” Mace spoke at last. “The consequences of your other actions? What of Skywalker? You brought the boy to us asking that he be trained as a Jedi, and you gave your word that you would provide that training, when the time came. Is this too a responsibility whose consequences you will bear?”

“Anakin will come with me,” said Qui-Gon. “The Order need no longer strive to train him to its standards or to consider the consequences of his presence.” He made some effort to control the bitterness of those words. Perhaps if the Order had been a kinder place to Anakin, this would not have been such an easy decision to make – but perhaps Qui-Gon had erred in bringing him here, after all. Perhaps the correct place for a child of prophecy was not in an Order that had strayed from the Force, too close to a political system whose designs Qui-Gon no longer trusted – on the galaxy as a whole or on Anakin as a person. The Force had brought him here, and the Force would take him away now. “I will keep my promise to train him, and I will not forsake my heritage or my duties as a Jedi. I believe in the Code and the path, though my interpretations may differ from the current accepted dogma.” He tucked his hands into the sleeves of his robes. “Again, Masters, I reiterate that I ask for your blessing and not your permission. We will be parting ways, but I would rather part as friends.”

In the end, they let him keep his lightsaber and his robes, and sent him off with a sum of money from the shared Temple account to which all Jedi had access on missions, within reason. Though Jedi strove to negotiate rather than bribe, there were situations where money was a better, more ethical way forward than the Force or violence – and of course, situations invariably arose that required the ability to purchase food, supplies, or repairs. Qui-Gon had drawn from the account himself, never in sums as large as the one he was given now – but of course, this was different. This was the last of the money he would receive from this account, meant to ease his way into a new life. In the end, as Yoda had finally pointed out after a long debate, the life of a Jedi was only worthwhile if it was an intentional choice, not the last resort of someone who would be trapped without another option.

Anakin was allowed to take his clothes, some mechanical scraps he had been tinkering with, and the training lightsaber he had used for classes with the initiates. It would not be sufficient for more than small skirmishes – but then, neither would Qui-Gon’s own strength. He had in mind to avoid any violence at all whenever possible. Once Anakin was trained fully in his basics, they could petition the Order for an opportunity to get him a full saber of his own – if he still wanted this life by the time that became a possibility.

They left the next day, after Qui-Gon had slept and cleaned out his rooms (bidding a fond farewell to most of the possessions he had accumulated over a lifetime of service; the items brought up memories, but he would have to trust that those memories he needed would still sustain him) and returned all his materials to the Archives. What he could, he had saved to his own datapad, which he was allowed to keep, though with his official Temple connections and communicators erased – philosophical reading that would sustain him in the scarce free time he would have in between resting, planning his way, and caring for a powerful child in addition to himself. The thought nearly made him quail, but he found that core again – that certainty that had been missing for so long – and let it carry him through the doubt.

Rie Axtin had been at the Archives when he’d returned his datacards, and he’d bidden her a fond farewell – thanking her for her research support and explaining that he had left to pursue his own path to knowledge. She’d made him reiterate his promise to send her any of his own work, if he ever got around to writing it, and had looked deeply thoughtful as he’d walked away.

Anakin seemed to have no one within the Jedi to whom he wanted to bid farewell, which yanked at Qui-Gon’s heart. He would do better by Anakin than he had so far, he promised himself. He would make sure the boy had what he needed to be happy and trained – training that would work with him as he was, rather than as the Order required him to be. But he did insist on bidding farewell to the Chancellor.

Qui-Gon’s gut twisted as he waited outside the man’s office, using all his hard-taught self-restraint to keep from extending his senses through the door, listening to their conversation. His head had begun to ache practically the instant they’d set foot within the Senate building, and he leaned against a wall to conserve his energy, eyes closed.

Was he doing the right thing? For himself, for Anakin, for the world? Chancellor Palpatine had taken Anakin under his wing when no one else in the Jedi had seen what he needed – including Qui-Gon himself. Even now, beyond the sensations and emotions of his vision, Qui-Gon had no idea what to do for the boy. Perhaps Anakin should stay behind, after all – perhaps he should be placed into the hands of someone who would care for him better –

The door opened, and Anakin emerged. His face was red and tearstained, and he latched himself onto Qui-Gon’s robes in seconds. The chancellor stood behind him, his own face kindly and sad.

“Farewell, young Anakin,” Palpatine said. “I hope your new guardian keeps his promise to care for you well.”

His eyes met Qui-Gon’s, and for just one moment there was a flicker of something else in them – there and gone in an instant. Qui-Gon tried to identify it: protectiveness? Fear? The dull ache in his head intensified to a throb, and he gave up his efforts.

“I will do my very best, Chancellor Palpatine,” he said evenly. “I thank you for the care you have given Anakin over the last year.”

“It was all my pleasure,” said Palpatine warmly. “I suppose this comparison would mean little to a Jedi, but he has come to feel almost like the son I never had the privilege to have. It will be a hardship to lose him, but I understand his decision.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Anakin sniffed. “I don’t want to say goodbye, but I” – He looked up with pleading eyes.

“You have to rescue your mother, I understand,” the chancellor said. “It’s kind of Master Jinn to do this for you. I know you’ve been worried for her all this time. I hope you find her well.”

“I share that hope,” said Qui-Gon gravely. It would be his responsibility if they did not, he realized with a pang. He should have come for her long before. “And” – He hadn’t realized that this would hurt, a tiny needle compared to the larger loss, but still one of many small changes he hadn’t considered – “I suppose you had best not call me Master any longer, Chancellor. I am simply Qui-Gon.”

"Qui-Gon, then," said the chancellor. "Be well."

Yoda met them outside the Senate building, as he had arranged, and Anakin turned his teary face away as if to hide. But Yoda made no comment, escorting them to the spaceport where they would arrange their transportation away.

He said little as they walked, and Qui-Gon did as well, struggling to arrange his shifting feelings. He and Yoda had long had a relationship of mutual fondness and mutual exasperation – at least, he hoped the fondness was mutual. He had met Yoda on closer terms than many other padawans his age, introduced by his own master, and had frustrated the Grand Master for years on end with his obstinacy – but he had always known Yoda was available to speak and listen, and always had advice to offer. He would miss him, even as it would be something of a mutual relief to part ways.

But then – mutual fondness and mutual exasperation could characterize others of the relationships Qui-Gon would most miss among those in the Order.

As if picking up on his thoughts – and perhaps he was – Yoda turned to him when they were preparing to say their farewells. "Others there are who will miss you, Qui-Gon," he said. "Who will be sorry to see you gone."

"I know," said Qui-Gon softly. "I" –

He broke off and shook his head. There were no words strong enough to convey the depth of his feeling at leaving Obi-Wan this way, leaving without reconciliation for the hard words they had exchanged – leaving at all. This decision was one that Obi-Wan would never understand, and Qui-Gon earnestly hoped for him that he would never have to: that his own ethical convictions would always align well enough with the Order he loved to keep him in the world where he belonged. And he hoped that the Order would be able to benefit from the presence of Obi-Wan Kenobi for a very, very long time to come.

Obi-Wan was a far better Jedi than Qui-Gon would ever be, and a far better man. For all he strived, he had never been able to tell him so in the right words. He could only hope that the brief message he had left on Obi-Wan's inactive Temple commlink could communicate the depth of the emotion behind it.

And that Obi-Wan could someday find it in his heart to forgive Qui-Gon for what he had done.

"I will miss them as well," he said to Yoda at last. Yoda too would understand. "And I would not leave them this way if I felt any other option were possible."

For the clarity that had eluded him in the Senate building had returned here, closer to the world and closer to his purpose. The clarity – and the urgency. Something in Qui-Gon, something deeper than he could quantify or explain in words – born perhaps of his vision, or simply of the Force within him – was telling him not only that he needed to leave, but that he needed to leave now. That further delay was not possible, or the chance would be missed and may never come again.

Qui-Gon had promised long ago to surrender to the Force. He would do it now, too, even if it took him away from perhaps the single dearest person to him in the world. That was what it meant to be a Jedi, even if he found he could no longer agree with the Order’s interpretation of it.

In the end, Obi-Wan would have to understand.

"Go you must, then," said Yoda. "Well do I wish you both in your journeys. Friends to the Order you shall remain." He bowed his head to Anakin, then to Qui-Gon, and they both returned the gesture. "Farewell, Qui-Gon Jinn, Anakin Skywalker. May the Force be with you."

"May the Force be with you, Master Yoda," said Anakin dutifully.

“May the Force be with you,” echoed Qui-Gon. “And may we meet again in friendship.”

And then he put a hand on Anakin’s shoulder, and together they walked into the crowded port.

Qui-Gon Jinn was a complication.

Supreme Chancellor Palpatine sat in his office after their departure, scowling at one of his statues without truly seeing it. That his apprentice had fallen to a Jedi padawan had already been a disappointment; that the master he had struck down had managed to survive even more so. The moment he had met Anakin Skywalker, Palpatine – Sidious – had sensed his potential even as Qui-Gon must have: the thought that this boy could be the greatest thing he would ever create. But the making could not be rushed, lest all be lost in the attempt.

He sighed. He did not truly need Anakin for his plans. Despite the other complication of Queen Amidala’s unexpected victory, he had achieved the title he needed and the other events for his plans were being set into motion. Qui-Gon’s master was already proving a useful tool, as well; a few more nudges and he too would be in perfect position. But –

But he wanted Anakin. The thought of having all that power at his fingertips, the thought of watching the exquisite process of his breaking and remaking, of watching it happen at his own hands – it was the thrill of a new delight, an unexpected gift that Qui-Gon Jinn had delivered into his hands – and was even now taking away again.

Even a few more months among the Jedi and Palpatine might have had him; the boy’s unhappiness was plain to be seen, a perfect canvas for his own artful strokes. But he was not ready yet; it was too soon for him to leave. The Jedi were as good as under Palpatine’s thumb already, but he could not have Anakin yet as one of them; that connection must be made personally, individually. And the thought that he might be reunited with his mother – the thought that Qui-Gon might keep a promise Anakin had only imagined him making – Palpatine would have had him convinced of its breaking in the space of just a few more months, if he had not been so blindsided by this.

The mother was the key. She must be. And perhaps it was not too late. If Anakin could not be fast enough to save her – if something within him could be woken –

Palpatine nodded to himself. Tatooine was outside of Republic jurisdiction, but not outside of his own. It might require some negotiation, but he could make this work for himself.

Chapter Text

There was no transport directly from Coruscant to Tatooine, of course.

Qui-Gon had paid for the least expensive transport possible to the Outer Rim with more than he wanted to spend of the credits he had received upon his departure – a sum that had caused Anakin to inform him that under no circumstances would he be negotiating for their purchases on Tatooine itself. Once they reached the station, they would seek out transportation the rest of the way to Anakin’s home planet – but it would be some time yet before that happened. “Least expensive,” as it happened, also meant “longest and most crowded.”

Qui-Gon sat on the narrow bench that could serve as either a makeshift bed or a seat, resting in light meditation. For all his exhaustion during the day, sleep at night was hard to find at the best of times, restless and disturbed and fitful. If any time could be called “night” on this ship. Time seemed to vanish in space; though their bodies and their chronos kept track of the time that passed for them personally, any rhythm of day and night vanished during long space travel. He had been drifting for several hours, seeking an internal peace that eluded him.

He was not in the practice of second-guessing decisions once they were made, paths once they had been taken; he did not doubt the decision he had made now. Leaving the Order had been the only thing to do once he had searched his feelings and his instincts, and he would not regret it so soon. But he had not known how alone he would feel once the ties were cut – how adrift. The family, the support, that he had known all his life was gone abruptly. He had his lightsaber, the money he had been given to start his new life, and an apprentice he could hardly be counted on to train.

And he had not gotten to say goodbye to the previous.

The wave of loss nearly jolted him free of his meditation – the thought that Obi-Wan would return to Coruscant to find him gone. That too had not hit him as hard as it should have until the planet was disappearing behind them, their decision made with no turning back. The message he had left Obi-Wan would not ease the pain of his departure, would likely only inflame his fury at first . . . but he had to hope that after some time had eased the wound, Obi-Wan would be able to take comfort in Qui-Gon’s pride in him, in his care, in the deeply-held knowledge that he would always be welcome wherever Qui-Gon found himself.

If Obi-Wan ever wanted to see him again. If he could find it within himself to forgive his former master for what he would doubtless perceive as the worst betrayal.

Beside him, curled up on his own hard bench, Anakin twitched.

Qui-Gon let himself surface from his meditative state, looked down at the boy who had now twice trusted him enough to leave a life behind. Was this the will of the Force, to yank this boy back and forth between worlds? Or was it simply Qui-Gon’s own record of failures and mistakes?

Anakin twitched again, and this time a low moan escaped his lips. Heads turned towards them and the emotional current of the Force shifted: disinterest, irritation, some faint ripples of concern. Qui-Gon knelt beside Anakin’s bench to shield him from view.

He had nightmares, he had told Qui-Gon once before, but Qui-Gon had not witnessed it, had not known what to expect. Had not, perhaps, fully considered that he was now the person responsible for counseling Anakin out of them.

It was a skill in which he was not especially practiced. It was not an uncommon affliction for Force-sensitives, and Qui-Gon was no stranger to nightmares himself, but he had dealt with them on his own, with the exception of seeking guidance on the rare flash of foresight. He didn’t know if Obi-Wan had suffered from nightmares in his youth; he had always been so private and closed-off with his worries and woes, and it had taken him so long to let Qui-Gon in. Not, Qui-Gon supposed, that he had been the most inviting presence for such a –

“No!” Anakin cried out, sitting bolt upright so quickly that he nearly smashed his forehead into Qui-Gon’s nose. Qui-Gon’s reflexes served him well enough still to dodge out of the way, and then he caught Anakin by the shoulders as the boy jerked in his grip.

“Anakin,” he said, soft but urgent. “Anakin, you’re awake. You’re all right.”

Anakin blinked rapidly, wild-eyed gaze darting around the cramped bunker of the ship, to Qui-Gon and away and back to him again – and then clung to him, wrapping his arms around Qui-Gon’s neck and trembling against him. Tears leaked into the hollow of Qui-Gon’s throat, and Anakin let out a tiny, choked-off whimper. “Something bad is going to happen,” he whispered.

Qui-Gon glanced around them, his hands automatically steadying Anakin’s back. The boy was too large to be lifted in his arms as he had when they had first met, but they needed to have this conversation in privacy, wherever that could be found on this packed transport. “It was a nightmare, Anakin. You’re awake now.”

“Not a nightmare,” Anakin insisted. “It was real.”

Qui-Gon pressed his lips together. It was hardly unthinkable that someone as powerful as Anakin would have visions, but he could not let Anakin spiral with uncontrolled certainty about a dark future up for interpretation. Nor could he have this conversation surrounded by others who could not know that they were – or had been – Jedi. “Go back to sleep,” he tried. “We’ll discuss this when we’ve landed.”

Anakin stiffened for an instant, almost imperceptible, except that he was still pressed close to Qui-Gon’s body – and he was broadcasting waves of hurt into the Force around him. “Fine,” he said Anakin dully, and he began to withdraw.

And Qui-Gon gripped him tighter. He had erred, he could sense it right away – he could not expect Anakin to understand the needs of their situation as Obi-Wan would have, could not expect the same reactions from different apprentices – different people. And he had the strange but certain sense that misstepping with Anakin could have far more dire consequences than any errors he had made in Obi-Wan’s training.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I don’t mean to brush you off. Let’s try to find a place where we can talk.”

They found their way into the one single-stalled refresher on the ship, theoretically large enough for nursing parents or those with mobility aids – or, now, for two former Jedi. There was barely enough room in this stall for a hoverchair, a detail of the sort Qui-Gon had found himself noting with much more censure in the last year or so, and it stank, but they could talk quietly away from the listening ears of their fellow passengers.

“Do you think that your nightmare was a vision?” Qui-Gon asked.

Anakin seemed less sure of himself now that he was more awake, forced to explain himself. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “It felt real.”

Qui-Gon nodded. He knew that uncertainty. “What happened in it?” he pressed.

“I’m – I don’t know.” Anakin clutched at Qui-Gon’s hand. The boy was astonishingly tactile, Qui-Gon had found himself noting over and over again, much more so than Obi-Wan ever had been – using touch as reassurance for himself and for others. Obi-Wan had become more willing to touch Qui-Gon after his knighthood, though, and Qui-Gon wondered what that said about either of them – and then he jerked himself out of those thoughts. Anakin needed him. “It was – there was fire. Lots of fire, but I felt so cold. And someone was screaming. It felt – dark.”

A similar level of clarity to Qui-Gon’s own visions, then. “Visions of the future,” he said, weighing each word before he uttered it, “can be a great gift, but also a dangerous responsibility. The future is unclear and always in motion, and often it is our very efforts to thwart prophecy that set it on course to come true. Do you understand?”

Anakin frowned up at him, brow wrinkling. “So I should just ignore it?” he said, with more skepticism than an eleven-year-old ought to be able to muster.

“No,” said Qui-Gon. “Accept it, learn from it. It may inform your actions. But know that what you witnessed can be interpreted in many ways, and it may or may not come true within your lifetime. The Force will do as it wills, and we do what we must as we are called.”

“That seems too much like doing nothing,” said Anakin. “I didn’t become a Jedi to do nothing.”

That thought sent a throb through Qui-Gon’s heart again – both a reminder of how he and the Jedi alike had failed Anakin, but also the realization that neither of them were Jedi anymore: that he had renounced that title with nothing to replace it with.

But – no. They were Jedi still. Qui-Gon had been a Jedi all his life, and leaving the Order did not change the lessons that he had already ingrained in his heart and body, the connection to the Force that flowed through him. When he spoke, he kept his voice and words careful.

“It is not the same as doing nothing,” he said. “And being a Jedi is, above all else, about listening to the Force – about understanding your connection to it and acting in response. This is why I have always told you to trust your instincts, to listen to your feelings above your conscious mind – because often it is our feelings that carry the messages from the Force.”

“And right now my feelings are telling me that this is bad!” insisted Anakin.

“Yes,” said Qui-Gon. “And they are probably right. But instinct can be twisted by fear, too, and that is why we work to counter our fear – because it can cloud that connection and make us act unwisely. I’m not telling you to ignore your visions, Anakin. I have experienced them myself, and I know how pervasive they can be. And it may be that they are nudging you to act, giving you some kind of warning or placing you in position. But I would counsel you not to jump too quickly to conclusions about what they might mean.”

“You’ve had visions too?” Anakin said. “But I thought – Master Sorani told me that Jedi don’t see the future anymore.”

“Most do not,” said Qui-Gon gravely. And – here was a thought – perhaps part of that was due to the cloud that had fallen over the Order, the distortion of connection to the Force. Perhaps it was simply the strength of Anakin’s connection that allowed such glimpses to reach him. Qui-Gon wondered if his own connection would strengthen with some distance from the Order. “And the Jedi are right to be cautious about visions, anyway. Many people who see a possible future will act in ways that they hope will prevent that future from coming to pass, and it is those very actions that bring it about.”

“Well, what do I do about it, then?” Anakin persisted. “How do I know how to act?”

“You must find your center,” Qui-Gon said. “You must separate out the anxieties of your conscious mind from the warnings of your subconscious, sink below them both, and find the part of you that lies deepest, closest to the Force. It is in that part of yourself that you can truly listen, can connect to the Force in each moment and the actions that must come from that connection.”

“I don’t know how to do that, Master Qui-Gon,” said Anakin. “Qui-Gon. The masters were always telling me to quiet my mind, but my mind doesn’t know how to be quiet. There’s so much happening inside me all the time, and I can’t make it stop.”

Qui-Gon nodded slowly. He should have recognized this as a problem early on – with someone as powerful as Anakin, as connected, and someone who had grown up on a brutal planet and at the mercy of a slaveholder – someone, in other words, with a constant need for vigilance – he should have understood that a quiet mind would be hard to find. “Why don’t we meditate together, then?” he said. “I can try to show you a path to stillness.” Obi-Wan, too, had struggled with meditation in the beginning – though that had come from quite a different source, from self-doubt rather than excessive openness, from trying too hard rather than lack of learned discipline. Obi-Wan had needed Qui-Gon to step out of his way, to force him to reckon with himself and all that he did not know he could do on his own. Anakin, though – Anakin needed more of a hand, more guidance. Qui-Gon brought his mind back to the present, where Anakin was nodding.

“Come, then,” he said. “We can meditate in here if you insist, but this doesn’t have to be private, and we might be marginally more comfortable in our beds – if they haven’t been stolen by now.”

This made Anakin smile just a little, and Qui-Gon took his hand and led him out of the refresher and back to the crowded bunk.

Most of the others were asleep by now, not interested enough in the spectacle of Qui-Gon and Anakin to wait up for them. Qui-Gon settled Anakin cross-legged on his bench and sat across from him – then, after only the slightest pause, took his hands. Some preferred touch during shared meditation; Obi-Wan had not, but he could tell instantly that it was the right move for Anakin.

“Focus on my hands,” Qui-Gon said, quietly enough that other passengers would have to strain to hear. “Feel them around yours. Feel the sensation of my fingers, how they feel touching your fingers. Then feel the air in the spaces in between – what that feels like against your hands.”

“It feels like nothing,” Anakin interrupted.

“It’s not nothing,” said Qui-Gon sternly. “It is air, and the air in this spaceship has a different quality from the air on a desert planet, on a city planet, in a jungle. Even in the spaces that feel empty, the Force is always there.” He waited until he felt Anakin’s grip relax in his, then went on. “Think about the temperature, the texture, the grip. Think about them until nothing else exists, until all your consciousness is concentrated in your hands. Now take three slow, deep breaths, and feel each breath to the tips of your fingers.”

The Force around them was smoothing out, steadying. It was the simplest of grounding meditations, but the basics were the basics for a reason, and Qui-Gon would always believe in them over more advanced forms – of meditation and combat alike.

“Now let that awareness travel from your hands to your wrists,” he said. “Feel the fabric of your cloak, the way the air beneath it feels different from the air on your hands. Follow your awareness down your arms, over your shoulders. Keep breathing.”

The tension in Anakin’s body was beginning to melt, to settle. To fade. Qui-Gon kept his own breathing steady, calm.

“The Force is in all things, but in you it is concentrated in your consciousness,” he said. “And the consciousness is rooted in the body. There are ways to leave it, to separate from it, but all of those ways rely first on knowing it – knowing the full shape and character of that connection as intimately as any part of you. Let yourself exist in that connection. Ground to the Force as it is alive within you. Know every cell in your body, every breath and every motion. Keep breathing.”

Anakin did. His breath evened and his body relaxed, and Qui-Gon felt the smaller hands go slack within his own – and released them just in time to steady Anakin as his body softened at last into sleep.

He smiled to himself. It was not an uncommon fate to befall initiates striving to meditate – and something that, in his younger days, or in a different situation, might have led Qui-Gon to wake him up in some teasing way, levitating him slightly or tickling him with a feather or playing some other harmless little joke. But perhaps when one had relinquished the Jedi Order, one could be slightly more choosy about the moments that should be used for teaching, and a crowded ship full of other sleeping passengers was not the moment to choose.

Or perhaps Qui-Gon had simply come to recognize the value of sleep as its own form of grounding, particularly as his own body demanded more and more of it.

He eased Anakin down onto his bench and pulled the thin blanket over him, then leaned back against the wall behind his own with a sigh.

He should sleep, too, if he could. His body yearned for it, yearned to simply let go and release itself into oblivion – but something kept him awake, on edge. Perhaps it was the way the bench was far too short for the length of his body, or the way the walls of this bunker felt too close to the motion of the engine, jarring his very bones until they ached, or carefully-honed reactions that kept him from sleeping in unfamiliar transit spaces, or the lingering unease of Anakin’s visions and his own –

Or perhaps it was the knowledge that once this transport landed, he would be more on his own than he had ever been before.

He sat, eyes closed, his body rattling to the rhythm of the engine’s thrum, until some semblance of oblivion blurred the sensations all together.

By the time they reached their destination, a trading outpost on the Outer Rim, Qui-Gon was utterly wrecked.

He had not traveled since his injury – at least not that he could remember; he had been deeply unconscious for the journey between Naboo and Coruscant – and so had not been prepared for the devastation it could wreak upon his body. He had hardly slept, though his body and soul craved rest, and every step felt like dragging a collection of sandbags forward inch by agonizing inch, a sheer act of will. His eyes stung and his head was full of seedpod fluff, every thought a sluggish effort. A pinching pain had begun at his neck and shoulders and was spreading slowly up into his skull and down the length of his back.

Once he had traveled well and often, had been accustomed to spending no more than a few weeks in the Temple at a time and otherwise bouncing around the galaxy. Travel had rolled off of him then – the transit an opportunity to center himself and prepare before taking in a new world, a new mission, with its own challenges. It had been time to talk privately with Obi-Wan, to meditate, to rest.

There was no use dwelling on what he could not have back about his former life, he knew that. But still it twisted uncomfortably within him – a reminder of the many layers of loss that had yet to reveal themselves, the many things he had not even realized he would need to adjust to.

He rested a hand on Anakin’s shoulder. Anakin seemed to be tireless, energy radiating out from him in all directions, ready to bounce off the walls of the spaceport where he had been unable to in the crowded ship – but he restrained himself admirably. Perhaps his time in the Order had taught him some measure of patience, after all. “We’ll need to bargain transport to Tatooine now,” said Qui-Gon. “Likely on the ship of someone already going in that direction – which most likely means smugglers or other unsavory types. You can use the Force to get a sense of their intentions, so we know who we might approach and who to avoid.”

“Yes,” Anakin said. “And when we do that, you should let me do the talking.” He cast a glance in Qui-Gon’s direction, brow furrowed. “And try not to look so much like you’re going to collapse.”

“Yes, Master,” Qui-Gon said, and Anakin let out a burst of surprised laughter.

Qui-Gon had wrangled rides on dubious transports before, and he cast an eye about the port for an auspicious pilot – but it was Anakin who spotted the smuggler; Anakin who bargained with a canny combination of brash swagger and shrewdness for perhaps half the price Qui-Gon had paid for their transport here. And for all that the journey was much shorter and – if possible – even less comfortable, Qui-Gon supposed he would simply have to acknowledge that things were different here on the Outer Rim.

Well, he thought with a grim sort of amusement, at least the credits had been accepted at all. Once they actually landed, he would need to figure something else out.

The Force would provide, and he would simply have to trust in it.

The ride was bumpy and cramped, and Qui-Gon’s headache had intensified to a pounding by the time they landed – a pain not helped by the brightness of the suns or the dryness of the air or the heat, the wretched heat. Qui-Gon was fairly certain that the last time he had trudged across the desert to Mos Espa, the heat had not been this intense.

Or perhaps he had not felt it this intensely, driven as he had been by purpose, by the desire to accomplish this small errand as quickly as possible and return to the larger problem at hand. Not knowing that said small errand would change the shape of the rest of his life.

He could not tell now if it was the memory or the heat or the exhaustion that swirled dizzily around him like vertigo of the consciousness, threatening to dissolve the mental anchors that kept his body and his thoughts under his control. Fate had led him here once before, and now fate had brought him back here – and in the sudden magnitude of that realization, that trust, he swayed on his feet.

Anakin's grip at his elbow kept him in his body, kept him upright – which was a relief, because he feared that if he stumbled and fell, he would not be able to get up again. A rather undignified way to die, all things considered.

"Qui-Gon?" said Anakin, and that small hand squeezed him harder. "Master?"

Qui-Gon blinked against the sun and pulled himself together. "I'm sorry," he said. His voice came out in a rough gasp, and he raised his wrist to his forehead to wipe away a layer of sweat. "I'm here with you."

"Good," said Anakin, though his tone was dubious.

Qui-Gon drew on the Force, as he had done so often: keeping himself upright, keeping himself anchored. The environment was cruel and unforgiving, but somehow the Force was easier to reach here than it had been on Coruscant – even at the heart of the Jedi temple. It struck hm again that it had been wrong to take Anakin from here, that the Order had been the wrong place for him – but then, for the first time, the Force struck him with another blow like a bell-tone of clarity: he had had to take Anakin away from here in order to bring him back. He had needed to go back to the Order in order to leave it.

Perhaps he was in the right place after all.

The thought gave him strength – kept him upright, drew his shoulders up, allowed him to extend his awareness around them as they passed into the bustle of Mos Espa: the scents of smoke and sweat and cooking meat; dazzling sun reflecting off metallic surfaces and absorbed into beige clothing; the sound of raised voices haggling in many different languages –

"There," said Anakin. Against Qui-Gon his body went rigid, and Qui-Gon slipped an arm around his shoulders, hoping to share their strength between them. "I hear him."

Watto's shop was rather smaller than it had been the last time Qui-Gon had come here, but Watto himself was instantly recognizable by face and voice. He took a deep breath, grounding and steadying himself, scraping a veneer of centered calm over his face – it would not do to present any amount of uncertainty, any level of weakness – and they stepped forward.

Qui-Gon had not devoted much time to wondering or anticipating how this reunion might go, when the time had come. He'd been prepared to offer whatever money he had for Shmi's freedom and see what came next, but had not even attempted to speculate about what might happen when Watto saw them again, how the encounter might play itself out. Which meant that he had not expected for Watto to catch sight of them, puff up in fury, and shout, "YOU!"

Immediately, half the crowd of people turned to look at them. In the center of two dozen staring eyes, and pinned to place by Watto's ferocious attention, Qui-Gon did the only thing he knew how to do: he improvised. He spread his hands and let his shoulders relax as if he had never been more comfortable in his life, and he gave Watto a polite nod. “I wasn’t sure you would recognize me.”

“Not recognize you?” Watto hissed. “Me, not recognize the sleemo who took everything from me? And you dare to show your face here again?”

“Not everything,” said Qui-Gon mildly. “You still had quite a thriving business and an enslaved human under your control, last I recall. Speaking of which” –

“No!” Watto spat. “I don’t want to hear a word you have to say. I’ll offer you a fairer deal than you offered me last time: get out of this port – off this planet – and you can keep your life!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that without the one I left behind,” said Qui-Gon. “I’m disappointed to hear you aren’t willing to bargain. Might I at least hear your asking price?”

It was a relief that this kind of negotiation, at least, flowed back easily to him. He had worried that hours and days spent among the Senate, listening to politicians feign civility before – at times – outright shouting at one another had dulled his reflexes for this kind of bargaining: the easy games played between people haggling not over words sealed into law but with immediate material power and consequences. But here, he met Watto’s fire with just a hint of goad and a calm serenity that was bound to inflame him further, and it felt – for a moment – almost as if he were years younger.

“That one?” Watto laughed, bitter and acidic. “She’s gone now, and good riddance. You’ll have no luck looking for her.”

And Qui-Gon’s age came rushing back all at once, his calm rocked with the horrible thought that he might have been too late. “Gone?” he asked, bringing all his training to bear on the task of keeping his voice steady, his face only politely curious. “Pray tell me more.”

“Not a chance,” said Watto sourly. “I’ve learned better than” –

“Mom?”

Watto broke off abruptly as Anakin stepped out from under Qui-Gon’s arm. His face was set and his hair lifted on the wind and he looked suddenly, terrifyingly furious – an anger disproportionate to the youth of his face. “Is that little Ani?” said Watto. “Anakin, you’ve come back?”

“I’ve come back for my mother,” said Anakin tightly. “What have you done with her?”

Watto looked back and forth between Qui-Gon and Anakin, his face twisting through a series of unrecognizable expressions. The Force around him flickered with confusion and fury and the indignant greed of someone who had been cheated – along with, strangely enough, a faint thread of affection. For a moment, Qui-Gon wondered if Anakin’s child’s appeal would win out where his own face had bred anger, but Watto looked back up at him and his face practically visibly snapped closed. “I told you,” he said, “she’s gone. I don’t talk to the likes of” –

But he broke off again, his face suddenly lit in a flare of fire-blue light. Anakin’s training lightsaber extended, clenched in one hand, and behind it his face was twisted in anger.

“You will tell me where my mother is,” he said, and his voice bore no hint of Force persuasion – the lightsaber said it all. “Right now.”

“Ani?” whispered Watto in shock. “Little Anakin – with a lightsaber?” His eyes snapped to Qui-Gon, and Qui-Gon watched as hundreds of puzzle pieces came together in his mind in one instant. “You’re a – you’re a Jedi!” His voice rose to a howl. “You Jedi stole my property and now you’ve come back for more? Well, you won’t have it, I tell you – I’ll stop you from taking it! Tell them! Tell them the Jedi have no place here!”

Qui-Gon’s senses told him that the crowds around them were closing in, drawing in tighter, cutting off all escape routes. The tension in the air was rising from curiosity to fear to anger. These people did not want to fight the Jedi, but they did not want to appear subordinate to the Republic. They would protect their own, even slaving scum like Watto – and Qui-Gon did not want to hurt them, even now, even with his own utter contempt for all that they were. He could not use his power to harm those who could not defend against it – he no longer represented the Jedi, but that rule, at least, he did agree with – and he could not let Anakin do the same. But neither could he let this pass –

His hand came to rest on his own lightsaber, but even the thought of igniting it made him tremble with exhaustion. He had not slept properly in days and he needed it so desperately; the sun was beating down on his head and shoulders like a barrage of fists and all he wanted to do was sink boneless to the ground, but here was Anakin, a step away from turning into a raging storm, and here was the crowd of people he could not represent the Jedi to, not like this –

“Hey, now,” broke in a voice – a new voice, a voice so familiar that it made Qui-Gon start in shock. “What’s the need for all this aggression, hmm?”

Into the center of the square, through the tightening crowds and angry murmurs, strolled a very familiar Kiffar man. He walked with an easy, relaxed lope, as if he were simply browsing the shops and waiting for something to catch his eye, exuding calm from his very presence. “I think we all want to calm down just a little,” he went on, spreading out his hands, and Qui-Gon felt the Force shift with his words, felt it spread out in a diffuse whisper, like vapor in every direction. The anger in the murmurs turned into confusion. “We don’t want a fight right now, do we?”

“No,” someone agreed, and a few others followed suit. Even Anakin seemed calmer – perhaps not yet able to recognize a Force trick when it was used on him, or perhaps the user had been aiming for Anakin most particularly. He did not deactivate his lightsaber, but he did lower it to his side, looking a bit abashed.

Slowly, the crowd began to disperse, leaving Watto furious and gaping. “Wait” – he spluttered – “but don’t” –

“Why don’t I take these two aside and talk to them, Watto?” suggested the newcomer. “I’ll explain to them what happens to people who disturb your shop.”

Watto’s fury did not fade, but he did look around at his lack of backup, the other vendors voicing approval of this sensible plan, at Anakin’s lightsaber and Qui-Gon’s hand at his belt, and he seemed to decide that he was beaten for now. “Fine,” he said sullenly. “But tell them not to darken my door again!”

“I’ll be sure to,” said the newcomer easily, and jerked his head at Qui-Gon and Anakin. “Come along.”

“Not without my mother!” said Anakin, but quieted when Qui-Gon placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Anakin,” was all he murmured. He could not outright ask Anakin to trust him, not until they were in a place where they could speak privately, but Anakin looked up at him and something in his eyes softened. Qui-Gon felt the emotional radiance of his signature change; he was suspicious still, but willing to wait and see what Qui-Gon knew that he didn’t. Slowly, he deactivated his lightsaber and let Qui-Gon steer him away with a hand on his shoulder.

“Thank you for the save back there,” murmured Qui-Gon when they were a safe distance away. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

“Where do you think I’m taking you right now?” muttered Jedi Knight Quinlan Vos.

Chapter Text

They followed Quinlan in silence for over a quarter of an hour under the throbbing heat. Qui-Gon drew on the Force again to keep himself upright, but his reserves were nearly spent and he felt ready to collapse by the time Quinlan finally led them to a small hut tucked among a cluster of others. He opened the door for them and ushered them both in without a word.

Inside, it was relatively cool and dim. They stood in a small room with a low table and a series of cushions – for sitting, presumably; Quinlan seemed to have eschewed chairs in this space – and a few curtains partitioning it off from other rooms. Qui-Gon had to stoop to enter, and the change in his equilibrium made him sway dangerously, the ground seeming to rise and fall below him in waves.

“Respectfully, Master Jinn,” Quinlan said as soon as the door had closed behind them. Qui-Gon assumed this meant all would be secure for them to talk in privacy – at least, he hoped so. “What the fuck?”

“Not Master,” he said wearily. “That title is no longer mine. I’d like to sit, if I could.” He gestured towards the cushions. “Will I be causing a diplomatic incident if I use one of those?”

“Tired already, Jinn?” Quinlan had never been much to stand on ceremony, and apparently that extended to taking Qui-Gon’s correction in stride. “After a little argument like that? Age catching up to you at last?”

“Tired always, Vos,” Qui-Gon sighed. Taking the tease as permission, he let himself slump onto one of the cushions, closing his eyes for a long moment before levering them open again. Oh, but he was tired enough to sleep right here. “You have been away from Coruscant for quite some time, haven’t you?”

“Apparently.” Quinlan sat opposite him, and Anakin followed suit when Qui-Gon nodded to him. “It seems I’ve missed a lot. No longer a Master, and no padawan braid to be seen, but you’re trailing a kid with a lightsaber ready to cause trouble. And you too tired to back him up against a handful of ragtag street vendors. Are you injured? Sick?”

“Chronically, I’m afraid,” he said. This too was something he would have to learn again; Temple-bound as he had been, the need to explain his lessened capabilities had decreased as the circle of his acquaintances shrank. On a world like Tatooine, he would either need to resume practice hiding his condition or inform anew each person he could trust with the knowledge. “The injury is a year old now, but it has left a lasting mark. More importantly right now: yes, I have left the Order and renounced the title of Master, so Anakin here is not my padawan officially, but his training is my responsibility. This is his home planet. Anakin Skywalker, meet Master Quinlan Vos.”

“Skywalker,” said Quinlan thoughtfully. “You’re related to Shmi, then? Is that why Watto was so mad?”

The burst of energy that emanated from Anakin was an intense, icy jolt: hope and freezing fear mingled into one. “You know her?” he said. “You know what happened to her?”

“What happened to her?” said Quinlan. “All good things, as far as I know. I don’t exactly keep tabs on her, but she’s free now and married to a moisture farmer who lives a ways away from here. Watto has been sour about it since it happened. What did he tell you?”

Qui-Gon slumped with relief. All of the energy that had been keeping him upright left his body at once and he sagged back against Quinlan’s cushions, his eyes fluttering closed. Perhaps the horror had been wrong. Perhaps this knot of guilt he had been carrying about with him could loosen a little at last. “He only said she was gone,” he said. “But he had no motivation to be honest with me. Thank you again for stepping in with him. I think I’ve reached the extent of my energy.”

“Well, you can rest here awhile if you need to,” said Quinlan. “But if you wouldn’t mind giving me a little more information about what’s going on first, I’ll call it even. The short version is fine.”

"The short version," said Qui-Gon wearily. "Ah . . . I have parted ways with the Order due to irreconcilable ideological differences. Anakin kindly agreed to accompany me, and I fully intend to continue his training as we together explore our changed relationship to the Force. For now, we have come in search of his mother, in the hopes of rescuing her from slavery – though it seems that has already been done. But Anakin would very much like to see her." He turned his gaze to Anakin. "Does that about sum it up?"

"And free slaves," Anakin added. "We want to do that, too."

Qui-Gon nodded, letting his eyes fall closed. "Though we were going to start with just the one."

"You want to free slaves, huh?" said Quinlan. "Well, as it happens, Shmi Skywalker is just the woman to go to, then. I don't know her myself, but I keep my ear to the ground, and as far as I know, she's been one of the leaders in antislavery actions here – smuggling, organizing, and the like. It’s not common knowledge, but I can tell you that one of their bases operates at the Lars farm. Officially I'm here on an information-gathering mission, and I'm under orders not to interfere. Unofficially . . ." Even with his eyes closed, Qui-Gon could feel his rakish grin. "I've been known to offer some help here and there. Untraceable, of course."

"Of course," Qui-Gon echoed. "And yes – there you've landed on one of those very irreconcilable differences I mentioned." But something in Quinlan's voice, in his words, was reminiscent of the time Qui-Gon had had this very conversation with Obi-Wan, years before. Of how when the moment truly demanded it, Obi-Wan too had been willing to act outside the law for people's safety. It was a sharp throb in his heart, a reminder of what he had lost – no, had given up.

Had given up for the right reasons, he reminded himself. Had given up out of necessity. This was the right place for him to be, and no sorrow changed that.

"Can you take us to her, then?" said Anakin. "Or tell us where to find her?"

"I can tell you where to go," said Quinlan. The Force and the air shifted as he rose, and Qui-Gon cracked an eyelid to see Quinlan peering down at him. "Do you think it can wait an hour or so, though? Your not-master looks like he's about to pass out."

"Feels like it, too," mumbled Qui-Gon. His lips barely moved under his command, and everything in him was so heavy. He had gone for too long, had pushed himself too far – had spent everything he had to give. His connection to the Force had not waned, but there was only so much that even the Force could do to keep a body moving when its consciousness was fading out. And now, in the presence of another Jedi – someone who knew him, someone he trusted to protect him – the last of his walls had come down; the last of the adrenaline that had kept him on his feet drained away. Safety acted upon him like a drug, pulling him under, into an oblivion he could not hold back any longer.

"Qui-Gon."

Hands. Hands on his shoulders, slapping lightly. A voice in his ear.

"Qui-Gon!" Urgent this time. The hands a little harder, a little more insistent. Shaking him. His head rolled on his neck and he became aware that he had a neck, which encouraged other sensation to flood in. Heat. Too much heat. Heavy, heavy limbs. So heavy. Why would he ever want to lift them?

"Wake up!"

"Qui-Gon." A different voice. Lower. "Can you hear me?"

The sound that emerged from Qui-Gon's throat – an honest, unguarded sound summoned from the very depths of him – was a weak, complaining groan that ought to have embarrassed any Jedi Master. It was good, he supposed blearily, that he wasn't a Jedi Master anymore. "Unh?"

"There you are." A weight on his forehead, hand-shaped but covered in fabric – gloved, he realized – and then a wave of energy from the touch, cool and tingling and reviving. He found the strength to open his eyes, and a blurred but familiar face stared down at him. "Good morning, sleepyhead."

"Quinlan," he croaked. Even with the strength Quinlan had lent him, speaking was an effort. Ah, but it was coming back to him now – the memories of the last few days, what it had cost him. "Anakin."

"We have to go, Master Qui-Gon," said Anakin urgently. "Something bad is going to happen. We have to go find my mother."

Shmi, yes. Qui-Gon blinked, rolled his head more deliberately, tested the motion of his limbs. What he found was neither comfortable nor encouraging: every muscle in his body seemed to ache with a deep, throbbing reluctance to move; there was an unidentifiable weakness in his chest that made him feel that even the effort to sit up might test his strength too greatly; his mouth was dry and tasted like dust. The urgency in Anakin's voice tugged at him, reminded him of his own vision and its horror, and his body had no strength to respond.

"You may have . . . to leave me here," he rasped. "If you can."

"Shall I get the chair, Master?" said a third voice, this one entirely unfamiliar. Qui-Gon blinked as a third face came into view – a Twi'lek girl who looked a few years older than Anakin, a silka bead padawan braid clipped to her lekku. "Hello, Master Jinn."

"Qui-Gon," he corrected. Awareness was returning more fully, and he pushed himself partially up. Even that motion made him gasp for air, spots swimming before his eyes. "Have we met?"

"No," Quinlan answered for her. "This is my padawan, Aayla Secura. Yes, Aayla, why don't you bring the chair?"

"They borrowed a hoverchair for you," said Anakin helpfully. "So you can come with us. But we have to go now. My mom is in danger, I can feel it."

Qui-Gon lifted an exhausted arm and scrubbed at his eyes. "Did you do . . ." The thought fled before he could finish it; he scraped through the mess of his mind to dredge it back up. "Did you do the centering meditations we practiced? To identify feelings from fears?"

"I tried to," said Anakin earnestly. "This is a feeling, I know it. We have to go now."

Qui-Gon was in no state to move, but he was also in no state to doubt Anakin’s certainty. When Aayla returned with the hoverchair, he allowed Quinlan to help him into it, then to send another gentle pulse of energy through him, easing the dull ache in his limbs, the black hole at the center of his chest. The chair was a different model from the ones he had used at the Temple – and he was out of practice, anyway, having preferred to walk whenever he could as soon as the ability had returned to him – but the controls were simple enough, and Aayla stayed beside him as Quinlan guided Anakin ahead of them, staying close enough to talk.

“I have access to a speeder we can use,” Quinlan was saying. “It’ll be faster.”

“I don’t know if I’m in any state to pilot,” Qui-Gon began. As far back as Obi-Wan’s teenage years, Qui-Gon had let his apprentice take on the majority of that task, at first because Obi-Wan loved it and then because he was quite simply more skilled than Qui-Gon, who had never had any particular talents in such areas. Even had he possessed any innate mechanical ability, though, Qui-Gon barely trusted himself now at the controls of his hoverchair. And, though Anakin’s talents in piloting were beyond doubt, they might draw more attention than they wanted.

“I’m driving,” Quinlan said simply. “Not to worry.”

Qui-Gon frowned. “But aren’t you under orders not to interfere? The Council may not be pleased to find out that you have jeopardized your mission – especially in the goal of helping us.”

“I’d be in worse shape here if I let the speeder out of my sight,” said Quinlan easily. “Besides,” and he shot Qui-Gon another flash of that daring, mischievous grin, “what the Council doesn’t know won’t hurt them.”

Qui-Gon was in no position to argue with that.

With Quinlan at the controls, they zoomed across the desert in a blur of sand. Qui-Gon centered himself as best he could, seeking grounding this time outside his own body – feeling instead the currents of the Force around him, the life pulsing in the cacti and other desert plants that thrived despite the lack of water, the animals and insects that crossed their path. Felt the life force like a crisscross over the desert, felt the rightness of it – and then the waves of wrongness where sentients acted out their own animal instincts against one another, where domination and subjugation crushed life and will, where cruel exploitation kept the Hutts in control of the planet atop the entire system beneath them.

It was more than merely slavery, Qui-Gon realized; it was a whole system of wrongness, rotten to the core – and it was not so different from some of what he had witnessed in the Senate. It was too much for him to combat alone, even for the Jedi Order to fight – and yet fight it they must, or they could not truly be acting in accordance with the light.

And then, in the midst of his meditation, his rumination, he felt another wrongness – something just on the edges of his awareness. Something approaching, some danger other than what he could have anticipated – but that revealed nothing of its character.

He breathed deeply, gathering his reserves, preparing himself for whatever might be needed. Grateful not to have to stand up for it, whatever might come. Why in all the worlds had he resisted using a chair for so long?

He had given little thought to what might come next, after they found Anakin's mother – had been acting as he once would have, trusting the Force to guide his next move – but now he allowed himself to think a bit further on: to think about what might happen if they stayed here. If they could make themselves useful to the antislavery efforts, if he might be able to offer Anakin training while he stayed close to his mother. Perhaps if that was their path, he would look into procuring a hoverchair of his own.

The moisture farm, when it came into view, did not look like much: a large round structure not far from a small hut, surrounded on all sides by barren desert space. But Anakin brightened as they approached, practically bouncing in his seat. Qui-Gon found himself understanding more immediately why the crèchemasters had had such trouble with him – such energy could not be easily trained into Jedi discipline. But perhaps training him outside the Jedi order would enable him to channel that energy in different ways, to learn according to new structures. To apply Jedi principles to a different kind of lifestyle. "She's here!" he said. "I can feel her!"

Quinlan brought the speeder to a halt. "I think we'd better stay behind, Aayla," he said gently. "Don't want to jeopardize our mission. But we'll be waiting for you here."

Qui-Gon’s chair was removed from the speeder; then Quinlan gave him a hand into it – in the absence of Anakin, who had already leapt to the ground and begun to run. The heat sapped at Qui-Gon’s strength, exhaustion still tugging at his body and mind, but the chair allowed him to keep pace with his informal apprentice, who was hurrying now towards the hut. "Mom?" he called out. "Mom, are you there?"

The door opened.

A woman stood in the doorway, instantly recognizable, though Qui-Gon had spent so little time in her company: the kind eyes, the dark hair drawn back from her face. She looked at them with a frown, a question on her lips – and Qui-Gon watched it dissolve into an expression of open amazement.

"Ani?" she said wonderingly. "Is that my little Ani, come back to visit me?"

"Mom!" cried Anakin, and they were both running.

They met perhaps twenty feet away from the door, and Anakin threw himself into her arms. She caught him up, pulling him in close, and Qui-Gon’s heart suddenly ached in a way he had never known it – in a loneliness he had never before felt.

He had been taken from his birth family before he could begin to form memories, and so his earliest sense recollections were of the Temple, of the Jedi. He had never missed the family he had never known – the Order had been his family, his companions, the people he loved and trusted and cared for. It had always been enough for him, and he realized that what he felt now was not so much a yearning for the family that Anakin and Shmi had made for themselves, but the loss of the family that the Jedi had been for him. The connections he had made among them, the support they had given him, which he had now renounced.

He allowed the feelings to pulse within him, allowed the sorrow and longing and wistfulness – and recognized that they were not tempered with regret. The need of the moment had demanded sacrifice from him, and he’d made it willingly. He would mourn it, but he would not wish it otherwise. This must be the balance he was striving for in his own interpretation of the Code: the ability to find peace with his own emotions, to feel them but not let them influence him.

When Anakin and Shmi parted at last, she turned to him. “Qui-Gon Jinn,” she said. Her face was nearly blank, but he could feel the waves of emotion emanating from her: gratitude, suspicion, confusion, perhaps some long-held resentment. “I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”

“I hoped I would see you,” he said. “I am only sorry that it took me so long to return.”

“Don’t be angry with him, Mom,” Anakin interjected. “He would have come sooner, if he could.”

He could have, Qui-Gon knew. If he had raised Shmi’s safety on his list of priorities the way he should have done, he could have left the Order earlier, could have tried to make contact without the supervision of the Council. But perhaps it was better not to say as much. Shmi had found her own way, and they had arrived to find her alive and well – had arrived on time?

Shmi’s expression melted all at once. “I cannot be angry with the man who saved my son from here,” she said, “and who has now brought him back to me, a Jedi in training, so confident and strong.” She gripped Anakin’s shoulders, stared at him as if she were drinking him in. “Come in, both of you. Let me find you some food and introduce you to my husband and his son” –

It was then that the shot rang out.

Qui-Gon felt the intent in the Force an instant before the blaster fired – not soon enough to track the shooter, but soon enough to stop the bolt. He reacted on instinct, adrenaline carrying him where conscious thought would not – and his instincts did not involve his hoverchair, so he threw himself out of it, lightsaber igniting midair to intercept the path of the bolt he had traced, red deflecting off green into the distance.

"What" – began Shmi, and then Anakin was out of her arms and igniting his own saber, for all the good it would do. The training lightsabers were strong enough to deflect bolts from the practice droids, not from real blasters. Qui-Gon could not allow Anakin into the path of this blasterfire; all of his effort must go towards protecting the mother and child.

"Go!" he shouted. "Into the house, now!" His knees had buckled when he landed, a stumbling impact that would have shamed initiates younger than Anakin, but he had no time for pride – and no time to lose his balance. This was why he had begun work in Soresu, he reminded himself. This was why he had changed his style, why he had gone back to the most basic defensive forms – not for the joy of motion any longer, but for the need to protect. Another bolt shot from the distance and he deflected it, too, reaching out with the Force to sense its path and angling his blade in front of it just in time.

“But I can fight!”

“Don’t argue with me, Anakin!” Where were their attackers? Why couldn’t he sense them? Had his senses been so dulled by his exhaustion, so spent that he could no longer reach out for the Force? Or was there something else at play here, something more dangerous, that was working to shield them from his senses? There was something horrible in that, something chilling, that made dread rise up in him, freezing him inside even as the heat pressed on him from without. “Go!”

“Too late for that!” The door behind Shmi and Anakin burst open and an unfamiliar man rushed out, clutching a boy a little older than Anakin by the tunics. “The house is overrun – they must have come in the back door! What is going on here?”

The blaster bolts kept coming, and it was all Qui-Gon could do to deflect them, fighting his own exhaustion as much as the weapons, even as that strange cloaking in the Force pressed down on him, roaring in his ears like the precursor to unconsciousness. Why couldn’t he sense them? What was going on? A bolt kicked up sand from the ground and it sprayed into his eyes, blurring his vision.

A horrible sense memory crashed down upon him all at once. This was his vision – this was exactly what he had felt then, the confusion, the despair, the horror. The realization that there was nothing he could do to stop it – no strength in his limbs to fight back –

He kept fighting, deflecting bolts by feel more than by sight, but he couldn’t keep track of them all, and he had no more strength to stay on his feet. He folded at the knees, trusting in the reach of his arms to extend where his strength could not – and then abruptly something burst through the smothering, cloaking sensation –

And there they were: hooded, masked figures pressing in, blasters too close now for precise deflection – as if Qui-Gon could manage any kind of precision at all. Someone was behind him, materializing abruptly; he whirled, but he was too slow, too tired, too spent – a savage blow cracked at his elbow and sent his lightsaber spinning out of his hand; he recalled it with the Force and shoved his attacker backwards on instinct, but then there was another one grappling him, forcing his arms down –

Somewhere in the whirling chaos, a woman screamed.

Shmi.

“Anakin!” she cried. “Ani!”

Her voice was distant – was she screaming out of fear for him, or for herself? – Qui-Gon snapped his head backwards into his attacker’s face and writhed out of the grip, only to be seized again as Anakin shrieked, “Mom!”

He was close by – she was the one being taken, then; she was the one in danger. Qui-Gon fought to open his eyes, fought to break the grip of his captor, begged his scrambled mind to think of something to do –

And then, around him, everything slowed down.

In the Force, he could feel it as it happened, but could do nothing to stop it. He felt the howl more than heard it, the same howl of uncontrolled fury and grief he had felt in his dream, of power escaping the bonds that sought to contain it and exploding outwards like a bubble of pure sound breaking the barrier. He felt the shock and the horror of their attackers, picking them out one by one at last in this removed, distant space – too late to do anything, too late to stop it. Felt the sparks of panic and pain from each of them – and then felt them disappear. All of them. All at once.

The grip on him went slack, and there was a dull, cracking thud as his attacker crumpled to the ground.

Without the hand holding him up, Qui-Gon was not far to follow. He caught himself on his hands and let his head hang just for a moment, panting for breath, before he looked up to take in the sight around him.

The sand in a vast radius around their little group had been blasted partially back, as if someone had reached down with a massive and perfectly round shovel to scoop out the ground. Anakin stood at the center, fists clenched, still radiating fury. Behind him stood the man who had come out of the house and the boy he had tugged with him, both speechless and horrified. Several feet away, Shmi too had fallen to hands and knees, and was painfully picking herself up now, withdrawing from the limp form that lay on the ground beside her.

Around them were scattered the bodies of several humanoids. Qui-Gon did not need to touch them with the Force to know that they were all dead.

How it had happened, he could not say. Whether Anakin had burst their hearts or ruptured something in their brains or simply extinguished their lights within the Force – but that he had done it was not a question. He was still trembling, radiating raw power and fury – which slowly, as the silence stretched, turned into fear.

“Anakin?” Qui-Gon said quietly.

Trembling, pale and sick, Anakin turned to look at him.

Amidst the silence, amidst the carnage, footsteps on the sand, coming up behind them. “Qui-Gon?” called Quinlan. “Are you all right? We sensed – oh.” He as good as skidded to a halt, and when Qui-Gon turned to look up at him, he was staring at Anakin. “Oh.”

Qui-Gon tried to rise – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he tried to want to. He couldn’t. It was not a disconnect between the strength of his body and his will; rather, his will seemed to have given up. He could not draw any more strength into himself, could not even summon the will to reach out for the Force to aid him. People were dead and Shmi had been attacked and Anakin needed him and he was utterly spent. There was nothing left to draw on, nothing left to reach for.

His arms trembled with the effort of holding himself up. Past caring how he appeared, he lowered himself to his elbows, then to his side. The sand burned against his cheek, heat aggravating the abrasion of each grain, coarse in the creases of his ear; he would be shaking it out of his clothes and hair for days – and that, too, he did not care about. His eyes closed.

“Qui-Gon?” said Quinlan’s voice. “Master Jinn, are you hurt?”

Possibly – the back of his head was tender where he had slammed it into someone’s face, and his arm throbbed – but that was not what Quinlan was asking. He shook his head, sand grinding at his cheek. Even words were too far away for him now. Profound, bone-deep exhaustion sucked at him, and the sun beat down on him as if to sap away any strength that might have returned to him, and his vision had come true in a horrible way he could never have expected, and Anakin needed him and he could not open his eyes.

“He’s tired.” The voice was Anakin’s, a tiny, horrified peep. “He can’t get up.”

Did that come from Anakin’s past experience with him, Qui-Gon wondered – from his knowledge of what they had been through over the last several days – or was he feeling it, picking it up? He could not even try to reel in his own sensation; even that was too much of an effort for him. Anakin shouldn’t have to deal with Qui-Gon’s feelings on top of his own – but maybe that would be good for him, give him a distraction. Maybe they should be less concerned with shielding their feelings from one another, Qui-Gon thought dazedly; maybe a little more shared emotion would be a good thing. Maybe outbursts came from repression, rather than from expression. But then – that expression could be so dangerous . . .

“Let’s search the house.” That was Quinlan’s voice. “Make sure everyone is – uh – taken care of. Then we can figure out what to do from here.”

Qui-Gon lay passively as the world moved around him. He could not sense the specifics of any of it any longer, but the motions of the Force rippled here and there, emotion and activity rising and falling around him like ocean waves. Waves would be welcome; water would be so welcome, but even if he had some he was not sure he would be able to drink it. He was not asleep, not quite, but hovering on the border of it, his awareness both shrunk to his own consciousness and expanding far beyond it.

There was an answer to some puzzle here, he thought, some lesson in the motion around him. Perhaps when he was aware again he could solve the riddle, could understand what the Force was trying to tell him. For now, there was nothing he could do but listen.

“Qui-Gon?” Quinlan’s voice again. “Can you hear me?”

He tried to make a sound in answer but was not sure if the grunt made it past his lips.

Hands around his shoulders, and another set around his calves. “All right, Aayla. On my count. One, two . . . now.”

The sand disappeared from under him, spilling out of his ear and hair as he was lifted. The hands around his shoulders and legs threatened to bruise, but the motion was strangely soothing, a gentle rocking and the feeling of air around his body. He was carried somewhere cool and dark, laid down on a soft surface.

“Rest,” said a voice above him. “I’ll fill you in when you wake up.”

As if the words had been permission, his last hold on consciousness gave out and he slipped away.

Consciousness returned slowly, reluctantly. Sensation: warmth, too much of it; something soft beneath his body and rough against his cheek. His hair, clumped with sweat and sand and plastered to his face. Fatigue dragging at every muscle in his body. He did not want to open his eyes.

But along with sensation came memory – the memory of where he was, or where he thought he must be, and why he must be here. What had happened before his body had given out on him at last. What could have happened in the hours since he had been asleep.

Opening his eyes was an effort – his eyelids had adhered themselves to one another with a crust of sleep and sand, and he grunted as he peeled them apart.

“Qui-Gon?”

“Obi-Wan?” he mumbled, then shook his head. “Anakin. I’m sorry.” Anakin’s face came into blurred view, creased with concern, and Qui-Gon’s stomach lurched at the memory of what had happened before his consciousness had fled. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Anakin’s voice was flat. “Are you?”

“I think so.” He lifted an unbearably heavy arm, searching for Anakin’s shoulder. “You don’t have to be fine.”

“I – I don’t” –

Anakin strove for calm for perhaps three seconds before his lip wobbled and his eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, tears distorting his voice and his face. “I killed them all, Master Vos said. I don’t know how I did it.”

Darkness, Qui-Gon did not say. Such untapped power born of rage and fear could not have come from the light. It would not help Anakin to hear it now, though he must reckon with it soon enough. But Qui-Gon needed to understand what had happened before he could attempt to talk to Anakin about it. “All of them?” he said. “There were no more, then?”

Anakin shook his head. “Master Vos has them all out in the front. He won’t let me come near them, and they’re all talking to each other about me.” He sniffled. “I think they think I’m dangerous.”

“You are,” said Qui-Gon. It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he struggled to sit upright, letting himself take in the room around him. He was in a bed in a dimly-lit room – a bedroom someone must have kindly given up for him, likely the boy’s by the looks of it; the bed was narrow, the shelves littered with small droids and toys. “All Force users are dangerous by nature. Our power makes us capable of deeds that most others cannot perform, which is why the Order urges us to keep a careful check on that power. Someone with your natural talents is more dangerous than many others, which is why the Order was afraid to accept you in.”

“Are you saying they were right?” Anakin’s face was red, smeared with tears, but anger glinted again in his eyes. “Are you going to go back to them now and leave me behind?”

“No,” said Qui-Gon. Before he had felt a personal responsibility to Anakin; now, his responsibility included thinking about the safety of the world. He could not let Anakin make the choice about this, not now – he needed training, needed meditation and centering and control. “I am going to teach you how to control it.”

“What if I don’t want to learn anymore?” said Anakin, sullen. “What if I want to stay here with my mother?”

“Then I will stay with you,” said Qui-Gon. “But not learning isn’t an option. Do you truly not want to learn to control this, Anakin? Do you want to do that again?”

Anakin paused for a long, terrifying moment. Qui-Gon breathed into his own center to keep himself from interrupting, to keep waiting, to give Anakin the space he needed. The Force was calm, unchurned by danger or the worries of what was to come.

“No,” said Anakin. “But I don’t” – The anger faded, and he turned to Qui-Gon again in a fresh wave of tears. “I don’t feel bad about it,” he confessed on a sob. “I didn’t mean to kill them but I’m glad they’re dead. They were trying to hurt my mother.”

Qui-Gon took a deep breath. He was not prepared for this, and he longed for the Temple counselors, with their honed skills in sorting through emotional turmoil, in rooting out the source of such turbulence and smoothing it over in the mind. He longed for the Jedi Archives, for the philosophers with their long-studied opinions and arguments on light and dark. He had been preparing to study the word balance when he’d left at last, and he felt suddenly that that was what he needed most – he and Anakin both. “Thank you for telling me,” he said calmly. “That is where we’ll need to start. Feelings cannot be denied or pretended away, but they should be examined and understood, so we can move through them with deliberation. Do you wish you felt bad about it?”

Anakin stopped, abruptly – as if Qui-Gon had given him a riddle or a thought puzzle. In a way, Qui-Gon supposed he had: thoughts and emotions were sometimes the greatest riddle of all – and were often what the riddles were tools to understand.

While Anakin pondered his response, Qui-Gon took the opportunity to assess his own condition. A twinge in his neck from sleeping was threatening to blossom into a headache, but could probably be kept at bay with a few stretches. His body protested every movement, but did not prevent it; if he had to rise, he could probably at least stand and maybe walk. His own emotions throbbed within him, tender and sore – the overwhelm at feeling so out of his depth with this new challenge, the uncertainty at what must happen next, the worry about Shmi and Anakin, the guilt for dragging Quinlan into this –

And, yes, homesickness. A deep longing for the Temple and the cool familiarity of his own room and the companionship of his friends – and for Obi-Wan, for his wit and companionship and deep steadiness. For all his anger, for all the certainty of a self-righteous raised eyebrow upon being confronted with this problem with Anakin, Obi-Wan would not be without sympathy, either. Their bond was strong enough for that.

It was, Qui-Gon reminded himself. It was strong enough to be trusted – strong enough to be certain that he would see Obi-Wan again.

“I don’t know,” said Anakin at last, and Qui-Gon brought himself back to the child standing beside him, brow wrinkled with thought. “I don’t think they’re worth feeling bad about. They were trying to hurt people I loved, and I think they deserved to be hurt first. But everyone else seems to think I should, so I feel like I must be missing something. I don’t want everyone to think I’m a monster.”

There – there was something Qui-Gon could latch onto, a puzzle he could give to this too-brilliant child. “I want you to meditate on that, then,” he said. “If you don’t feel it for yourself, I want you to try to understand what the others here must be feeling. What your mother might feel, and Master Vos, and myself. You can ask them, if you want, but I want you to meditate on their answers and try to understand them from your own perspective. Once you have come up with an answer, we will talk through it.”

“How long do you think that’ll take?” said Anakin. He was already shifting from foot to foot.

“As long as it needs to,” said Qui-Gon. “Patience is one of the first lessons in control. While you’re meditating on that, would you be willing to send Master Vos in to me? I think he and I need to talk.”

Quinlan Vos did not sit; he lounged. Comfortable even in a small braided chair clearly intended for a much younger person, he sat with his knees apart, forearms in his lap, chin tilted back. A memory surfaced of Obi-Wan complaining about Quinlan’s ease in their shared youth, and Qui-Gon bit back a smile.

“Welcome back to the land of the conscious,” Quinlan said. “You missed all the fun.”

“Fun,” Qui-Gon echoed. “Yes, I’m sure it was great fun. Nevertheless, I’m sorry for failing to do my part.”

Quinlan shrugged. “We understand. Anyway, I think that could be called a failure on all parts. No one could have seen it coming.”

“I did,” Qui-Gon murmured. “But not in the way that it manifested.” Quinlan raised his eyebrows at him and he shook his head, unable to summon the energy to explain. “What have you found out about the attackers? Do you know where they came from?”

“They were sent by the Hutts,” Quinlan said simply. “We don’t know any more than that.”

“Really?” said Qui-Gon. “How do you know? Was there any kind of identification on their clothing?”

“Not on,” said Quinlan. “In.” He raised a gloved hand. “When I’m around, the clothing is the identification.”

“Ah, of course.” It had been some years since Qui-Gon had spent any extended time with Quinlan Vos, but he remembered now Quinlan’s particular Force talent for tracing the histories of objects through touch. It was one of the reasons he was so frequently sent on undercover or tracking operations. “The Hutts, you say. Was there any information about that strange cloaking in the Force? I didn’t sense them until they were upon us.”

“It’s not that precise,” said Quinlan, “but no. That is something I want to mention to the Council when I send them my next report, but I’ve been delaying until you woke up. Is this a ‘don’t tell the Council you were here’ situation?”

“The Council knows I was planning to come here,” said Qui-Gon. “As does the Chancellor. I don’t know that it’s any particular secret; no need to delay on my account. And I left the Order on good terms – well, nominally good terms, anyway, so you shouldn’t be in trouble for helping me. Or, at least, you wouldn’t have been, until” – He winced.

“Yeah,” said Quinlan. “About that. That boy is – I’ve never seen anything like him.”

“Nor has anyone in the Order.” Qui-Gon sighed. “How much do you know about the Jedi prophecies?”

“Only that they exist,” said Quinlan. “And that you, uh.”

“Have more than a passing interest in them?” Qui-Gon finished for him. “I wonder where you might have possibly heard that. Anyway, I believe that Anakin is the chosen one of prophecy, meant to bring balance to the Force. When I first encountered him here, I sensed that he was a vergence in the Force – but more, some kind of turning point for the world or the Order. I chose to bring him back with me. Watto may have mentioned being cheated out of a different slave?”

“That was – of course that was you.” Despite the situation, Quinlan guffawed. “I never believed all the stories Kenobi told me, but I’m starting to wonder if I should have.”

“Obi-Wan is not prone to exaggeration,” Qui-Gon said dryly. “He” – He broke off, swallowed hard. “Anyway. I began to realize that not only was the Order ill-equipped to train someone of Anakin’s background, but that my own beliefs and their political constraints were drawing irreconcilably further apart. So I left. But now I’ve begun to wonder if anyone is equipped to train Anakin. I’ve taken up the task because no one else is willing, but I confess, I do wish I had access to the Archives now. I’ve set Anakin some basic meditations on empathy to begin with, but this is going to be a larger task.”

“It is,” said Quinlan. “Maybe . . .”

“Maybe?”

“That sort of rage, that intensity of emotion, the seduction of it . . . I’m not completely unfamiliar with the feeling,” said Quinlan. “I don’t have the power to do whatever he did out there, but I know what it feels like to touch darkness. I might be able to help you – with this part of his training, at least.”

“You’d be willing to do that?” Qui-Gon asked. “It might put you and your mission in danger.”

“Well, not without a price, of course.” Quinlan’s face split into a broad smile. “I need your help with Aayla. I never expected to be training a padawan so serious, and I don’t know what to do with her.”

Qui-Gon smiled back – and in the Force, the moment resonated with the same rightness he had felt when accepting Obi-Wan as his padawan, when taking Anakin away from Tatooine that first time. The whisper from the present and the future both that something about this was exactly the way things were supposed to be.

Chapter Text

Yet again, Obi-Wan returned to Coruscant in the middle of the night, beaten and bedraggled, weary to his very toes.

Was this how Qui-Gon felt all the time? More and more, Obi-Wan had found himself wondering if exhaustion was catching. He was too young to feel so beaten down by his very life, when his own master had had such energy and liveliness well into his forties. Energy that had not betrayed him until –

Obi-Wan shook his head. Thoughts of Qui-Gon had plagued him this mission, despite his best efforts to press them down and away, to focus on the needs in front of him. It was hard when those very needs were so difficult to discern – when he had found himself siding more and more with the sentiments – if not the tactics – of the very people he was meant to be keeping from violence. When even the uneasy truce he had managed to negotiate sat heavy and wrong with him, and Qui-Gon’s words to him kept echoing in his head.

Could they be truer than he had wanted to admit? So often during his apprenticeship, Qui-Gon had been proven infuriatingly, frustratingly right – but just as often, he had given ground to Obi-Wan in his admissions, had acknowledged where his thoughts lacked nuance or caution. Was it simply that things felt lopsided now that Obi-Wan was on his own? – that his own tendency towards caution was not balanced by Qui-Gon’s recklessness, that his logic lacked Qui-Gon’s intuition to temper it?

He had hoped, in the last months of his apprenticeship, as both he and Qui-Gon acknowledged that his knighting was imminent, that they might be assigned on missions as partners even after his apprenticeship had ended. Qui-Gon’s near-fatal injury and lasting illness had rendered that impossible, of course, but at least he had been present to talk to Obi-Wan upon his return, to invite him for tea –

It would be too much to hope, surely, that such an invitation would be waiting for him now, after the harsh words they had exchanged. But Obi-Wan could not help hoping anyway. This had happened between them before, after all – personal attacks slipping out during regular debate, only to dissipate on the wind. Perhaps a slight show of penitence would be enough to get him back into Qui-Gon’s good graces, and perhaps Qui-Gon’s temper too would have cooled and they could discuss the topic with more willingness to listen to one another –

His report to the Council was brief – only Yoda and Master Piell were there to hear from him – and peculiar: they kept casting significant glances at one another and at him. Only knowledge of his place kept him from interrupting with a snapped demand that they tell him what was going on, and he barely kept a veneer of politeness on his, “Will there be anything else, Masters?”

“There is something,” began Master Piell, but Yoda shook his head.

“Find out for himself, he must,” he said. “Not ours to deliver, this news is.”

“News?” said Obi-Wan. “News for me? Masters, if there is something I should know” –

“In your rooms, you will find it, Knight Kenobi,” said Yoda. “A message for you, there is.”

A message? There was only one person who could have left it, and Obi-Wan’s restraint faded away from him in seconds. “Thank you, Master,” he said, and was out of the Council chamber as soon as he had been dismissed.

Sure enough, the comm unit in his room was blinking when he arrived. A message from Qui-Gon, and he was on it instantly, never mind the bag that he tossed carelessly into the corner of the room, never mind his feet begging to be freed from their boots. Qui-Gon had left him a message. What would he possibly have –

The message was voice only, no sight of Qui-Gon’s face, no expression to read – and brief, two sentences only. Two sentences, in a tone of voice that seemed thick with something like sorrow. Two sentences that no one in the Temple would have ever believed could possibly come from Qui-Gon Jinn.

“Obi-Wan . . . you were right about everything. And I hope someday you can forgive me.”

Those words snatched at the leftover anger that Obi-Wan had been carrying with him, wrapping around it into a hard lump in his throat of nothing but contrition of his own. He had more than enough to be sorry for himself.

And yet – there was something off about it, something wrong. Something about the melancholy way the Council members had looked at one another and at him; something lingering in Qui-Gon’s tone that told him there was more to this message than the mere words.

He stabbed the button to return the call. Never mind that it was the middle of the night, never mind that he had no idea what to say. It didn’t matter. He desperately needed to talk to Qui-Gon. Needed to pour out his own apologies, to hear Qui-Gon’s explanations, to promise to listen to him once more –

The signal was declined.

“What?” Obi-Wan frowned at the unit, down at the icon that represented Qui-Gon’s information. The status indicator was gray, unreachable.

Inactive.

But why would Qui-Gon’s link be inactive? That was reserved only for Jedi who had left on missions, which surely Qui-Gon had not been cleared to do in the short week Obi-Wan had been away. And – even if he were away on a mission, Obi-Wan should have been able to leave a message.

His heart pounding in his throat, Obi-Wan swept up his datapad. He went into the directory of active Jedi, which listed the status of Order members, at least those who were not undercover. He scrolled down, scanning the screen until he reached Jinn –

Age: forty-nine standard years. Species: human. Rank: Master. Status: resigned.

Resigned.

Everything in Obi-Wan’s head went white. His ears rang, and he stumbled to his bed to sink down onto the edge, pressing his hands to his mouth to keep from crying out, from laughing hysterically, from being violently ill.

I hope someday you can forgive me, Qui-Gon had said, and now Obi-Wan realized that he had been referring not to what he had said to Obi-Wan, but what he was planning to do. Leave. Without warning or debate. Without waiting for Obi-Wan to say a proper goodbye.

And with a horrifying lurch in his stomach, Obi-Wan realized what his last words to Qui-Gon had been: I think you should leave.

“This is beneath you, Master,” he murmured aloud – but even as he spoke the words, he knew they were false. He knew Qui-Gon Jinn, perhaps better than anyone else in the Jedi Order, and he was well acquainted with Qui-Gon’s whims. Impulsive they might seem, but every one of them was heavy with intention. Qui-Gon acted on instinct, but not on impulse. He would never leave the Order merely to prove a point to his former apprentice. Which meant –

Even Qui-Gon’s more rash actions were rarely taken without some kind of buildup, some kind of long-held resolution, some kind of deep certainty. What this meant was that all he had said to Obi-Wan, all his frustrations and critiques of the Council and the Order in the last several months, had been building within him for a long time. What this meant was that he had been far more serious than Obi-Wan had allowed himself to believe.

He had taken Qui-Gon seriously, of course – at least, he had believed that Qui-Gon believed what he was saying. But had he really listened, the last several times Qui-Gon had attempted to complain to him about politics? Had he really allowed himself to hear what might be building beneath them?

He couldn’t agree with Qui-Gon, not fully. He might agree more than he had expected to, now that he had witnessed some of the direct impacts of these Senate bills up close, but that did not mean he could agree with Qui-Gon’s fundamentally different perspective on what Jedi should do with the power they wielded – how much authority they should take onto themselves. Qui-Gon’s beliefs tended too closely towards anarchism for Obi-Wan to agree with; he could not believe that Jedi acting on their own would be able to do as much good – or be as trustworthy – outside the structures of the Order, the guidance of the Republic. He could not believe that Qui-Gon had been right.

But he believed that Qui-Gon had been acting on principle. And he understood better than he had wanted to admit.

Clearly, Qui-Gon had not expected him to.

It should have made him angry. He should be furious at his master’s typical lack of communication, at his lack of consideration for Obi-Wan – at the whim that had driven him from the Temple, with the last words between them still reeking of anger, giving Obi-Wan no way of contacting him – no way of even trying to find common ground. At the lack of explanation – or, worse still, a proper goodbye.

Perhaps that fury would come, in time. But for now all Obi-Wan could think was that – with everything left unresolved between them – he had no way of knowing when or if he would ever see Qui-Gon again.

He let his head sink lower until his forehead rested in his palms, and he sat there for a long, long time, staring at nothing.

Quinlan and Aayla left them at the moisture farm not long after Qui-Gon had woken up. They needed to get back to their contacts, Quinlan explained, and would do some investigation while they were there to see if anyone knew about the Hutts’ attack on Shmi. But he gave Qui-Gon his comm information and promised to be in touch, and then they were gone.

It was some days before they heard from them again. Those days passed in relative quiet, and Qui-Gon spent them mostly resting – moving from the young Owen’s room to the small sofa in the main living area once he was able to stand again. Shmi and her new husband Cliegg were apprehensive at their presence, but Shmi’s joy at seeing Anakin again was stronger than her newfound fear, and Qui-Gon presented as reassuring and helpful a countenance as he was able. Cliegg was more reluctant, but once he realized that Anakin’s mechanical ability and Qui-Gon’s fine control of the Force would assist in his work, he gladly accepted their help in exchange for shelter.

Qui-Gon could not help with the physical component of Cliegg’s work, so once he had assisted in those tasks that the Force could aid, he retired to the house with Shmi. Her work was quieter and less straightforward than theirs: it required attention to a careful whisper network she had built up among slaves and former slaves alike, the organizing of clandestine meetings and careful reading of strategy. After some time, she began to trust him well enough to admit what she was doing: organizing a mass escape under cover of a purchase which would deactivate the transmitters and then allow the group of slaves to revolt, steal the ship, and fly to a neighboring planet, where they might be able to start their lives over.

Qui-Gon found that his experience in the Senate, listening to politicians argue from every angle, had given him more knowledge than he had expected about what angles buyers might consider and how she might better cover her tracks. That thought revolted him anew – how many of the arguments about “goods” that he had heard had actually in some way relied on or been covers for slave labor? Not directly within the Republic, perhaps, but many of the corporations they contracted with used such tactics. It gave him a sense of purpose to sit with Shmi and help her make these plans – a feeling of use beyond the capabilities of his body. And the work was quiet and sporadic enough that he had plenty of time to rest – more, perhaps, than he had had since the early days of his convalescence, before he had set himself more work than he could reasonably manage.

The rest gave him the energy to meditate with Anakin in the evenings, spending careful time and focus on questions of control, of compassion and empathy. Anakin was not devoid of either, he came to realize, but had trouble extending them to people who had hurt him or those he loved. Forgiveness did not come easily to a boy who had grown up on this harsh desert world, surrounded by people who would enslave sentient beings for their own gain and kill for supplies they needed. Qui-Gon worked with him on picking apart the concept of fairness from the justice Jedi were able to dispense – they must act in protection of what was right, but not in retribution, because a world in which their power gave them the right to dispense punishment was a world that could too easily be corrupted into tyranny and fear.

The concepts were too difficult for Anakin to grasp immediately, of course; they required more than simple brilliance, but deep thought and contemplation and patience. But Qui-Gon reminded himself that even as Anakin must learn to have patience with others, so must he too have patience with his charge. More than his power, more than his prodigious talent, Anakin had a good heart and a tremendous capacity for compassion, and for Anakin’s own sake as well as for the world, Qui-Gon wanted to treat it with care. And, with their deliberate meditation sessions and assistance dispensed during the day, he had the feeling that the Lars-Skywalker family was slowly beginning to trust them.

Quinlan and Aayla returned about a week later, at nightfall, as Qui-Gon and Anakin sat meditating in the yard. At the sound of the speeder, Anakin released Qui-Gon’s hands and ran to them, and Qui-Gon pushed himself to his feet with slightly more effort and followed.

“There’s no word,” was the first thing Quinlan said, before even a greeting.

“No word?” Qui-Gon frowned.

“From any of my contacts,” said Quinlan. “The attackers were from the Hutts, but there’s been no word about anyone picking up on Shmi’s activities and going after her for them. Even if it did come up on high, it’s not related to her work here, not unless someone is very good at being discreet. Not something I’d expect from the Hutts, given that the only thing they hate more than each other is everyone else around them. But no one is talking about anything.” He shrugged. “Which makes me think this attack came from some other source.”

“I wonder if” – There was no justification for this, only a feeling, but Qui-Gon’s feelings had been clearer since leaving the Temple, as if his connection to the Force itself had become slightly purer, slightly more trustworthy. “I wonder if it had something to do with us,” he said. “With Anakin or with me.”

“Why would it, though?” said Quinlan. “Who would have cause to attack Shmi just because you were here?”

Qui-Gon could only shake his head helplessly. It was no clearer than that – but it was enough to make him worry that by their very presence here, they were putting Shmi and the Lars family in danger.

But if they left, would they be in greater danger still?

“Quinlan,” he said, “perhaps you’d be willing to spar with me sometime?”

And so Quinlan and Aayla formed a new part of their routine: coming by for a few hours in the evenings when they could. Quinlan and Aayla took it in turns to spar with Qui-Gon as he tested the new limits of his strength and mobility, both in and out of the borrowed hoverchair, and joined them for meditation in the evenings. It was good for Anakin to have Aayla as an example, a Jedi padawan who had been taught discipline and patience since infancy – and Quinlan could meet Anakin stroke for energetic stroke, both allowing him the opportunity to work out his own turbulent feelings and offering guidance on how to channel that feeling into something productive, rather than destructive.

Though Qui-Gon’s prowess as a sparring partner could not match up to even the padawans, he was able to provide guidance in other ways. Aayla had already begun to specialize in Ataru – earlier than Qui-Gon had allowed Obi-Wan to choose, but she was not his responsibility – and though he lacked the energy to rely on it as a fighting discipline, his own years of specializing in the form had given him the expertise to correct her stances, advise her where and how to direct her energy, encourage her to use her environment to her advantage.

Slowly, Qui-Gon began to share his philosophies with the others – the studies he had been doing, the questions he had been asking. Neither Quinlan nor Anakin were especially interested in extensive philosophical debate, but Aayla seemed to enjoy listening to his thoughts, and the other two tolerated it for short periods of time. Quinlan even allowed Qui-Gon to use his Temple-connected datapad to retrieve materials from the Archives.

When Qui-Gon mentioned, offhandedly, that he missed his reference sessions with the archivists, Quinlan gave him a strange look. “Why not call them up?”

“With what?” Qui-Gon asked. “I don’t have a Temple commlink anymore, and I can’t check out the materials on my own.”

“Use mine,” said Quinlan. “Why not?”

Qui-Gon paused. “Do you need . . . are you sure you want to reveal your continued association with me? It may not ease things for you with the Order.”

Quinlan shrugged. “It’s not like they don’t already know. I haven’t been ordered to stay away from you or anything – only not to let you interfere with my mission or to give up my cover. As long as I don’t do that, you might as well use my connections. Someone should.”

And so Qui-Gon had even spoken once to Rie Axtin, giving her – if not all the information about what had happened with Anakin – a lively conversation about light, dark, and the balance between them that led to the addition of several new essays to Quinlan’s now quite eclectic library. The conversation with Knight Axtin was refreshing after the generally low responsiveness of his current companions, though Qui-Gon still missed the back-and-forth fire of debates with Obi-Wan – the constant challenge to his thoughts and his ideals.

But this was comforting in its own way, some creation of a new kind of normal. In only a few weeks, it had already begun to feel comfortable. Easy. Too easy – and Qui-Gon knew that that was because it was. All the while, he had felt something nagging at him, a rightness and a wrongness both. A promise that this could be a way of living outside the Jedi Order, that he could still find ways of teaching, of learning, with others with their own understanding of the Force.

But at the same time, he knew that this was not the end – that this was only a brief respite, a pause before something began to change.

On the day of the planned slave purchase and escape, Qui-Gon waited alone at the spot where the revolt and departure were planned to occur.

He was the only one who could go. To send Anakin would be too dangerous – either to him or those who might end up fighting him; to send Shmi would put at risk someone with too much information and too much organizing power. Quinlan did not know what was being planned, for both his own safety and the safety of the mission – Shmi wanted to share information with as few people as possible, and Quinlan should not be placed in the middle of operations that might endanger his own mission here. Qui-Gon did not know the details of what he was investigating, and he hadn’t asked – though he had gotten the sense that it wasn’t the trade of sentients.

Well. What the Order chose to spend its attention on was no longer his business.

The deal was set to take place in Mos Espa, but the ship would be waiting on the outskirts – not far from where Qui-Gon himself had landed back when this all began. He had been dropped off there by one of Shmi’s contacts hours before and been waiting alone ever since – because of course, the established organizers here could not risk being discovered. It was, he realized, both an indication of trust and a test of his skills – they had come to trust at least that he would not fight at the sides of those who intended to own sentient beings, but at the same time he was the most expendable person – the person whose identity and life could be most easily risked in this one endeavor while allowing the organization to carry on.

It was a choice he understood and respected, and a task he had undertaken many a time before – he had stood alone before more and fiercer enemies in his time – but never before had he felt so uncertain of his very ability to stand.

He sat now in the hoverchair that Shmi had purchased for him in exchange for credits from his fund – while they were not often used on Tatooine, her work sometimes required offworld contacts – and that Anakin had already begun to tinker with. His hand drifted to the lightsaber at his belt, which he would refrain from using if possible – he would focus rather on more direct application of the Force – but if blasters began to fire or he were caught in direct combat, it might be needed.

He traced his fingers over the handle: so familiar to him, a grip that he had used for many a tactile meditation in his life – this weapon that he knew as an extension of his own energy, his own place in the Force. This weapon had been used to strike down a Sith lord, though he had not been the one wielding it.

Obi-Wan had had a new lightsaber by the time Qui-Gon was regularly conscious for long enough that memory could begin to form, but he had used Qui-Gon’s in the meantime. Qui-Gon wondered if some part of Obi-Wan was imprinted on the blade, some memory of him – and then he shook his head at himself. Of course there was, and not because Obi-Wan had used it for a time. If his lightsaber was an extension of himself, then of course Obi-Wan would be indelibly imprinted onto it.

The Jedi Code warned against excessive attachment to another being in ways that would interfere with duty, and perhaps it was now – in this separation – that Qui-Gon truly understood what that meant. He had left Obi-Wan behind at the Temple, had left with cruel words lingering between them, because there was nothing more that he could do, no other path forward that he could possibly see. He had done what he must, and still he thought on Obi-Wan with such deep fondness that his heart ached; still he hoped beyond reason that Obi-Wan would find some way to forgive him. Hoped that Obi-Wan’s own feeling for him was strong enough to understand the need Qui-Gon had felt, to understand what must be done.

But still, for all Qui-Gon’s peace with his own decision, he felt strangely empty and alone, waiting here by himself in the shadows of a ship without someone to protect his back. Particularly not when he knew he was not at his best – or, anyway, not at the best he had once expected of himself. Well-rested and centered, he now had as much strength as he could expect from the diminished capacity of his body and mind.

He would have to hope that it was enough.

He felt them before he heard them, the stirring in the Force that spoke of satisfaction: a job well done – chillingly devoid of any kind of cruelty or malice that would mark these buyers as people who took pleasure in the subjugation of sentients. There was no special pleasure in it, just an ordinary satisfaction at having accomplished a task; “owning” beings, then, was no great thing to these people, but part of everyday life, banal and not worth remarking upon. It was simply how the world worked for them; lives and freedom a completely ordinary thing to buy – and it was that ease that made Qui-Gon’s chest twist in disgust, though he controlled his facial reactions. Sounds followed soon after – the sound of a shuttle approaching and then stopping, the sounds of people being prodded to disembark, protests in Huttese, and then the thump of a blow that made Qui-Gon’s fists clench.

And then the sound of chains clanking: chains holding people together.

Of course. Of course they had been chained. Of course, with the slave transmitters temporarily deactivated, the buyers would not want to take any risk of an escape attempt.

Still hidden in the shadow of the ship, Qui-Gon reached out with his feelings.

Qui-Gon had always preferred to cut through knots rather than to carefully untie them, to rely on straightforward bargaining and strength rather than fine manipulation – but he had always been able to do the latter if he needed. More, he had practiced it with increasing intention since his injuries, now that his strength could no longer be counted on to see him through dangerous or delicate situations. In the Force, he could feel the people approaching: the two humans in front, clearly the buyers, surrounded by ten guards – they were taking no chances, then – spread out across the gaggle of seven slaves, all chained together. He felt the intention in everyone’s minds; the raw determination of the slaves, their awareness of the blasters in each guard’s belt, their readiness to reach out and seize them, if they could only free their hands.

And he felt the links in the chain, the locks that connected one person to another. They used the same mechanism, a simple enough thing, a series of tumblers that needed to be aligned in the correct position to allow them to unlock. He felt for each one, gripping each with a thread of his Force awareness, feeling for the necessary alignment of each tumbler, the smoothest transition that would send them sliding into place –

He gripped them, seven in total, until the group was only a few steps away from the ship, until the landing ramp had been activated and the first buyers were just preparing to lead the group up into the ship –

And Qui-Gon twisted a hand in the air, moving the Force currents all at once into the place he had felt. Simultaneously, seven locks clicked open. Seven sets of chains fell to the ground with a metallic rattle.

And seven people sprang into action all at once.

They had been told to wait for a signal that they would know when it came. Qui-Gon had been prepared to improvise any number of things, but the chains had perhaps been a blessing to his plans: this was impossible to mistake for anything other than what it was. The guards whirled at the sound of chains rattling to the ramp of the ship, and their prisoners were on them, attacking with bare hands and bodies, tackling them to the ground to wrest the blasters from their hands. Cries of shock and anger resonated in the air and the Force alike, and Qui-Gon tensed in his chair, preparing to leap out if needed.

At first, the prisoners seemed to be gaining the upper hand. The element of surprise had given them an advantage, and more than one had wrested blasters to their own control, taking down guards with their own weapons. Qui-Gon kept careful note of the currents of satisfaction in the Force, hoping they would not escalate to cruelty he would feel compelled to intervene in, but for now they were taken up mostly by the momentary need: to fight, to escape, to free themselves. They were holding their own, doing a fine job of the fighting, and Qui-Gon, still tensed with his hand around his lightsaber, began to wonder if they would not need his assistance after all.

Until another door in the ship opened and another twenty guards came rushing down the ramp to join the fray.

The Force chimed at Qui-Gon, the moment tugging at him – the need to move, the knowledge that if he did not, something worse would happen. He was still not attuned well enough to fighting in his chair, so he rose from it, feeling energized enough to stand, to move. He drew the lightsaber from his belt and ignited it.

The sight of the green blade blazing to life drew the attention he had wanted. The guards turned, momentarily, from the prisoners they were fighting. One of them whispered, “Jedi.”

“Not anymore,” said Qui-Gon, and threw himself forward.

His blade whirled amidst a storm of blasterfire, deflecting bolts away from himself and those he was trying to defend. He could not sustain it for as long anymore, but battle meditation was still an easy state to slip into, everything around him coming into sharper, slower clarity – he was aware of every person around him, friend and foe both; conscious of how to move to avoid being grappled from behind; able to place his blade just so in front of each blaster bolt before it could make contact. He was not here on behalf of the Jedi, but this was the work of the Jedi, he thought – the work of the Jedi as he had always understood it: placing himself between those who would be harmed and those who would harm them, using his weapon on behalf of those who would be free of subjugation. This – working with Shmi, throwing himself at last into the field on her behalf – was the kind of work that he had hoped he might be able to perform before he had left the Jedi, and there was a rightness to it now, a sense that this was where he belonged.

Someone was coming behind him; he dodged out of the way and nudged the Force just slightly at the man’s ankle, tripping him forward over his own feet and off the edge of the ramp. Qui-Gon took the opportunity to relieve him of his blaster, sending it skittering down the metal surface where it could be picked up by another of the prisoners who had yet to arm herself.

Something twitched in the back of his mind, something on the edges of his awareness, and he followed the urgings of the Force to look up – up at the ship, up where yet another armored man was rushing towards the ramp, tearing down towards the fray and screaming, “Abandon ship! Now!”

As if at some signal the others had not understood, all of the guards immediately dropped whatever they were doing, releasing the people they were fighting with kicks or head-butts – and rushed down the ramp, down and off the ship.

A ragged cheer went up from the would-be slaves. Without another glance back, they rushed up the ramp and into the belly of the ship, eager to make their escape while they could – thrilled by the potential of their rout. But there was something –

There was something wrong.

“Wait!” Qui-Gon tried to cry. “Wait, don’t” – but only one person turned to look, at the top of the ramp.

“Thank you, Jedi!” he called. “But you’d better get off the ship now if you don’t want to come with us!”

But there was something desperately wrong about this, about the ease of their release, about the eagerness of these slave buyers to abandon their ship. Qui-Gon stood alone on the ramp as it began to move, retracting back into the ship – and vulnerable to the blasterfire aimed his way from the warriors on the ground. He threw himself to one side to avoid a bolt – and off the edge of the ramp, hitting the ground in a shoulder roll that overwhelmed him immediately with a black swirl of vertigo.

When the spots cleared from his eyes, he was surrounded by the muzzles of at least a dozen blasters, and the ship was slowly rising off the ground – but still something was wrong. Still something screamed at Qui-Gon’s senses to look up, up –

At the flashing light coming from the device attached to the underside of the ship.

A failsafe, it must have been. Some method of self-destruction, just in case things went wrong – activated by the man who had fled the ship, and now waiting to destroy the ship and everyone on it.

Abruptly he remembered a story Obi-Wan had told him from his youth, on a mission he had embarked on alone: a bomb attached to his ship and set to a certain altitude, meant to detonate once the ship had broken atmosphere. This might be a similar device, or it might be timed – but either way, time was running out.

Qui-Gon shoved outwards with the Force and his attackers moved back a few steps – enough space for him to struggle to his feet. His head swam as he rose and he weaved on his feet, but he had to try. He reached out for the device, trying to sense its mechanisms – but it was too far away; he had to get closer –

A blaster shot rang out, and he could barely get his blade up to deflect it. At close range, it would have been point-blank directly to his throat. He shoved again with the Force and braced himself, standing in the center of his attackers, desperately seeking a way between them, a way up – up to the ship –

“Need a hand, Jinn?”

A second blaze of green light illuminated the face of Quinlan Vos, appeared behind the man menacing Qui-Gon and grinning as though he couldn’t possibly be enjoying himself more. A lazy shove of the hand, and the man howled as his wrist wrenched sideways, blaster falling to the ground.

Qui-Gon didn’t have time for questions. “The ship!” he called. “There’s a device attached to the bottom. Can you get up to get it?”

He could barely finish his sentence before Quinlan was jumping straight up into the air, the kind of Force leap that was mostly beyond Qui-Gon these days. He landed easily on the top of an air speeder parked high above their heads, and from there he jumped again, just catching the bottom of the ship – and then Qui-Gon could no longer pay attention to him, because with a howl of rage, the attackers were on him again, blasters firing, and it was all he could do to defend himself. He sank into his trance state again, letting it tell him which way to move, where to deflect – and he knew he was drawing on his reserves already, knew he would be paying for this for days, but there was nothing else to be done. Locked in a standoff, he found himself dearly missing his preferred style of attack; the strength was now gone that would have allowed him to strike with power, disarming and clubbing as needed – but now it was all he could do to hold off, to wait for something in his situation to change –

And then a small object hit the ground harmlessly before him: the bomb, whatever it was, edges gleaming with molten metal where a lightsaber had sawed it clear. Followed, in short order, by the soft thump of boots against sand in the crouching form of Quinlan Vos.

“Took” – Qui-Gon gasped for air – “took you long enough.”

“Thought I’d give you a little sport, old man.” Quinlan placed his back against Qui-Gon’s, and Qui-Gon could hear the grin in his voice as he stared out at their attackers. “Time for more fun?”

Qui-Gon could feel the change in the Force around them – from conviction to fear to resignation. The men looked around at one another – and then, without a word, they turned and ran.

Quinlan tore after them without a glance at Qui-Gon, and Qui-Gon followed him – but that weakness was opening up in his chest again, that black hole that sucked all the strength from his limbs and his mind. He faltered, surged forward, fell back. His knees buckled, and he let himself drop.

Quinlan did not stop for him, and Qui-Gon managed an approving nod to no one, even as he knelt in the sand with a hand pressed to his heaving chest. He was not Quinlan’s master, was no one’s master anymore, but still the instinct was there: the pride, the recognition of when an action was the right one. But it was not long before Quinlan returned, resigned.

“They had a shuttle,” he said. “Got away before I could – whoa. Are you okay?”

Qui-Gon waved a hand in a weak yes. “Can we – track them in yours?”

“Maybe,” said Quinlan. “But they have a head start, and if they get back to town, we can lose them too easily.” He shrugged. “Also, there’s no one to turn them over to. If we don’t fancy the ‘kill them all’ approach, there’s not much we can do here.”

As though summoned by Quinlan’s earlier words, Qui-Gon felt his age suddenly crash down upon him: age and exhaustion. Quinlan was right: what would stopping them do? What authorities could they turn these men over to, when what they had done would be supported by everyone on this planet? When their very presence here could accomplish nothing but saving a few at a time, bit by bit?

Still kneeling in the sand, Qui-Gon took a deep breath and reached for his center. It was still worth it – it had to be, because if they had not acted here, these people would not have been saved. The work of abolishing slavery may need to happen in the political halls that he so despised, but the work of helping people could still be done person by person, group by group.

Perhaps that was what he could do, then. Perhaps that was how he could make himself useful. He had proven unfit for politics, but not, perhaps, for this immediate work that the Jedi were unable – if not unwilling – to do.

At least, not as long as he had help to do it.

But – “You’ve revealed yourself,” he said. “And so have I. They know there are Jedi here now – and you said you’d been instructed not to endanger your cover.”

“That was before you got into a fight that looked too fun to stay out of.” Quinlan deactivated his lightsaber. “I’ll just have to keep a lookout for the next few days.”

“Or longer,” said Qui-Gon. He pushed himself up at last, pleased when his legs held beneath him. His chair waited some distance away, lonely in the open now that the bulk of the ship was gone, and he called it to himself with the Force and sank into it gratefully. “Do you think any of them would have recognized you? Do you think Aayla will be safe?”

A trace of real concern flickered across Quinlan’s face at the mention of his padawan. “I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve been careful, but we have been seen together; if I did get recognized tonight, she could be in danger. I should get back to her as soon as possible.”

“You should,” said Qui-Gon. “Find out what you can in the next few days, if you’re able, but keep your head down.”

“Don’t I always?” Quinlan flashed him a cocky grin. “Need a ride back?”

He dearly wanted one, but he shook his head. “I’m to be retrieved in an hour or so, and I can’t break that trust. And you should hurry back, just in case. Check in when you can – without drawing too much attention.”

“Will do,” said Quinlan, and with another leap into the air, he was gone. Qui-Gon watched him go into the deepening evening and wondered what the next day would bring.

“We’re not safe here.”

What it brought was Quinlan Vos and Aayla Secura at Shmi’s door, earlier than anyone else in the house had woken up. Qui-Gon still slept in the front room, and his sleep had been fitful and easily disturbed with the slightest tap of Quinlan’s fist at the door.

“You aren’t? Or Anakin and I aren’t?” Qui-Gon asked.

“None of us are,” said Aayla. She toyed with the braid dangling over her shoulder, wrapping it between her fingers just as Obi-Wan had done with his when he was her age – and Qui-Gon with his own, many years before that. “The people you fought have gotten all the slaveowners in Mos Espa up in arms. They think it was a Jedi operation, and they’re determined to show us how unwelcome we – and the Republic – are on this system.”

The fierce bite of satisfaction in Qui-Gon’s gut was unbecoming a Jedi, even a former one, but he allowed himself to feel it: this was the work that the Jedi should be doing; these were the operations that the Jedi should be performing! If it made them enemies of slaveowners and sentient traffickers, then so be it – those were the right enemies to make. But this was certainly in direct opposition to the parameters of Quinlan’s mission, some greater good with abstract consequences ostensibly greater than the specific needs of these individuals.

“In that case, they won’t connect Shmi to the operation,” he said slowly. “Her organization will be safe . . . as long as she isn’t seen associating with Jedi.”

“Exactly,” said Quinlan. “We’d all better lie low, if not leave altogether.”

“Have you been recalled, then?” Qui-Gon asked. The thought sent an unexpected pang of sadness through him – the realization that this might be goodbye for Quinlan and Aayla, that he and Anakin might be on their own once again. “Will you be returning to Coruscant?”

“Well,” said Quinlan. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

But he understood what Quinlan meant – and all at once that ease he had found in their companionship took on a new meaning to him: perhaps that had been its own kind of vision, a glimpse from the Force of what life could look like. What Jedi could look like, outside the Order but still trying to live according to their principles. What they could look like if they helped one another.

It was Aayla who said it, hand still wound tightly into her braid but face set and determined. “We want to stay with you, Master Jinn,” she said. “I want to keep learning from you, and my master likes the way you work better than taking orders from the Council. We could help each other – we could teach each other.”

Qui-Gon took a deep breath. He had never dreamed of this when he had left, at first – had thought so much more about what he was leaving than about what he might find along the way – and the potential of it was dizzying now, the thought of doing the work of the Jedi outside the Order, keeping one another on the path to the light, teaching and learning in community. But he had to ask first. “Leaving the Order – it’s not a decision to make lightly. Are you sure” –

“I don’t know any other way to make decisions,” said Quinlan. “Do you want us or not?”

Chapter Text

“Vos has gone rogue.”

Obi-Wan looked up from his meal to where Bolla had slid in beside him with no other greeting. “Fascinating,” he said dryly. “A truly momentous occasion.” Quinlan Vos had always been a bit of a loose cannon; he failed to see why this occurrence warranted the glee in Bolla’s tone. “And you’re telling me this because . . . “

“Just thought you’d be interested.” The gleam in Bolla’s eye spelled a trap. “Given the circumstances.”

Curse him, the mocking tone was working. Obi-Wan gritted his teeth, determined not to give him the satisfaction. “Bolla, I am enjoying this perfectly peaceful meal. If you have gossip to share, share it and be done with it. If you’re just here to irritate me” –

“Word is he’s not alone,” said Bolla. “He’s known to be in the company of a certain departed Jedi you used to call Master.”

Obi-Wan stiffened. Forget Bolla and his satisfaction. His fork froze in the air above his plate, food forgotten. “They know where Qui-Gon is?”

In the last few weeks, he had been trying very hard not to think of Qui-Gon. Mostly he had been failing, but still, the effort had to count for something. He knew – abstractly, at least – that it was because his hurt was still raw, that once he was able to calm down he could understand this in the way he had always had to understand Qui-Gon. After that first flush of despair, he had sought calm in centering meditation, had reminded himself of Qui-Gon’s own constant exhortation to think about the moment rather than the past or the future, to listen to the clarity of the Force. If this was how things were meant to end between them, then he would find his peace with that, because there was no other choice. Would go forward with Qui-Gon’s teachings, knowing that the impacts they had had on one another’s lives would take them where they were meant to go. And if they were meant to see one another again, then they would – the Force would bring it about.

At least, so he had been desperately assuring himself. So he had been insisting in an effort to let the anger and hurt and simple loss run their course, so that he might release them and recenter himself. And when that release was not enough, he had simply shoved them away, buried them beneath immediate duty and immediate need. Qui-Gon had gone. Qui-Gon had left his duties in the Jedi, and there was no guarantee when he would resurface in Obi-Wan’s life – or that he would at all. But Obi-Wan still had responsibilities here, and he would hold to them – and if that helped distract him from the aching throb of loss and hurt, so much the better.

But to hear word of Qui-Gon so soon – and, more, to hear that he was somehow associating with Quinlan Vos? That made something new curl in Obi-Wan’s belly, something that brought heat rushing to his ears and the corners of his eyes. An emotion even less excusable than hurt or anger, an emotion that signified a deeper attachment than he was meant to feel.

And, unfortunately, an emotion for which he had a name right away.

“Yes,” said Bolla. “Word is Vos was undercover on some planet in the Outer Rim investigating the spice trade, but then Qui-Gon Jinn got himself wrapped up in some trouble and Vos gave up his cover to help him. But when” –

“What kind of trouble?”

The words were out before Obi-Wan could stop himself, before he could make any effort to feign cool detachment. This was an angle he had not stopped to consider, among all his jumbled feelings about Qui-Gon’s departure from the Order, but he abruptly saw Qui-Gon’s arms trembling at the effort to serve tea in his quarters, the way he had sunk to his knees after the lightest of sparring matches. But of course Qui-Gon had gotten himself into trouble – even if Qui-Gon Jinn had expressly announced his intention (which he had not, to the best of Obi-Wan’s knowledge) to leave the Order in search of a life of quiet contemplation and peace, of course he could not avoid getting into trouble. Especially with Anakin with him – and what planet on the Outer Rim had Quinlan Vos been on, anyway?

“I don’t have the details,” said Bolla. “Only that when the Council tried to recall Vos, he told them where they could stick their lightsabers, and he’s been out of communication ever since.”

“He’s left, too?” Obi-Wan had thought once that nothing Quinlan Vos could do would ever surprise him again, but shock spilled down into his gut, twining with that awful squirming feeling that had overwhelmed him before, that heat twisting its way through him. Of course this would have happened. Of course Qui-Gon would have managed to collect all the rebels in the Order, hoping that they would listen to him, if Obi-Wan would not. Of course he wouldn’t be solitary, left with Anakin alone as company. What were they doing even now? Was Qui-Gon talking to Quinlan the way he would have once talked to Obi-Wan? Was he finding Quinlan responsive in ways Obi-Wan had not been? Was he satisfied with his company?

“I don’t know,” said Bolla. “I don’t know if anyone does. I don’t think he said one way or the other.” He shot Obi-Wan a meaningful look. “But I thought you’d like to know.”

Obi-Wan could only grit his teeth and nod.

The Council called him before them the very next day.

He had heard no more word of either Qui-Gon or Quinlan, but Bolla’s gossip had always been solid enough that he didn’t doubt it. And when the Council summons came, he knew what it was about immediately.

“No, Masters,” he said, and the honesty of his own words was another bite to the gut, another punch of that sick jealousy seeping its way through him like cold poison – yet somehow, even more difficult to purge. “He never asked me to join him. Indeed, he gave me no indication that he had thought about leaving at all.”

“No indication at all?” said Master Windu, looking at him closely. “Even to you?”

The validation of his closeness to Qui-Gon was only an additional sting to a wound Obi-Wan hadn’t even realized was there. “If you’ll forgive me, Masters,” he said, “you know Qui-Gon’s penchant for making . . . swift decisions.” Rash was not the right word; nor was impulsive, though Obi-Wan had used them all to Qui-Gon’s face many times before. He knew by now that, for all Qui-Gon’s decisions might be made in haste, they were never made lightly, and he would not betray Qui-Gon by using dishonest words. “I do not think this was a premeditated choice on his part, and I would not suspect him of planning to lure other Jedi away from the Order. He is not one to act out of spite.”

Though he could not be sure others would not follow him, anyway. No one knew better than Obi-Wan the magnetism of Qui-Gon Jinn – a charisma born not of charm, utterly free of intention or artifice, but of his absolute security in himself, his honest commitment to his ideals and his declarations. If Qui-Gon truly believed that leaving the Order was the best choice, he would not make any effort to convince anyone else to join him; he would simply do what he felt was right and encourage them to do the same, and anyone who happened to agree with him would throw themselves willingly into the powerful wake of his presence.

That was, perhaps, why he had never made any attempt at convincing Obi-Wan at all. Something lurched in Obi-Wan’s stomach at that realization – at the rightness of the thought: Qui-Gon would never have tried to convince him to do something he did not agree with. He had known from the moment he had made his decision that Obi-Wan would not approve.

And so all he had done was apologize.

That was the true source of the jealousy that twisted him into knots at the thought of Quinlan, he realized now. It was not the thought that Qui-Gon would have chosen Quinlan over him, but the thought that Quinlan might understand Obi-Wan’s master in a way Obi-Wan never could.

“Agree with you, I do,” said Yoda. “But concerned I am about what this pattern may mean for the Order. Jedi misrepresenting us to others in the galaxy, dangerous it could be.”

“Excuse me, Master Yoda,” Obi-Wan said, barely believing his own daring, “but in what ways have Qui-Gon and Quinlan misrepresented the Order? Surely they were not acting in ways incompatible with our Code?” Qui-Gon had defied his mandate as a Jedi before, yes, but he would never dishonor the reputation of the Order.

“They have not misrepresented us, not yet,” said Master Windu. “But their willingness to take the laws into their own hands could be dangerous, if left unchecked. We must keep a close watch on Qui-Gon’s activities, particularly if they leave the Outer Rim and return to Republic space, where we must act with more caution.”

“The Outer Rim.” Obi-Wan swallowed, but dared to speak up in question to the Council just once more. “Master Windu, would you be willing to tell me where Qui-Gon is now?”

Master Windu gave Obi-Wan such a meaningful look that he flushed to the ears, but it was Yoda who spoke. “Know already, you do,” he said. “To the planet Tatooine, he has taken young Skywalker.”

Yes. Yes, Obi-Wan had known. And the kind of trouble Qui-Gon was likely to find himself in on Tatooine – he could guess at that, as well.

“Thank you, Masters,” he said, and at their dismissal he bowed and took his leave.

Not only did Shmi agree with Qui-Gon; she helped organize their transportation off-world.

She had contacts who made travels regularly between Tatooine and some of the Core worlds – necessary for arranging transportation and refuge for slaves who managed to escape off-world. One contact had agreed to drop the four of them off on the planet of Dantooine – far enough away that they would be safe from the fallout of their actions here, but not so far that it would require much deviation from their route.

“But we shouldn’t leave!” Anakin complained for the dozenth time as they readied their meager things. “You’re not safe here either, Mom. We should stay and protect you!”

“Staying will not protect her, Anakin,” said Qui-Gon. “She is in danger either way, but if we stay, we run too great a risk of being associated with her network and taking all of her work down with us.”

It was perhaps the most crucial tenet of Jedi life that Anakin did not yet understand – but how could he? Even most adults had moments where they failed to grasp it; surely, Qui-Gon himself could not say he had mastered it. It was one of the easiest forms of unselfishness to give one’s own life for another – and though he was still so young, that was something Anakin had already proven himself willing to do. It was far harder still to allow someone else to make that choice, to stand aside while loved ones chose to risk their own lives for duty or for something greater than themselves. It was a choice that Anakin had never had to see his mother make – because for all his life, her own had not been hers to give.

“You went off to be a Jedi in the hopes of freeing slaves,” she said to him now. “I remained here to do the same. I will always love you, Ani, but our paths must take us in different directions now.” She squeezed him tight. “But our shared purpose will bring us together again, I know it.”

“I’m not going to be a Jedi now,” said Anakin. “And I can’t stay here with you. So what am I supposed to do, then?”

Qui-Gon squeezed his shoulders. “We will find out together,” he promised. “You may not be a Jedi within the strictures of the Order, but there is still work to do and lessons to be learned. And we will have Aayla and Master Vos with us, too.”

“It’s the adventure you always dreamed of,” said Shmi. “This is what real adventure is: it is frightening and uncertain, and you don’t know where you’ll end up or what you will experience along the way. But I know that you are brave and good, and you will do great things.” She smoothed a hand over his cheek. “Your path is out there in the stars, Ani. Mine is here.”

She embraced Anakin for long moments, and then pressed Qui-Gon’s hands when they finally parted, both tear-streaked. “Thank you, Qui-Gon Jinn,” she said. “When you first left, I loved you and hated you for taking my son away. Then I dreamed one of you would come back so that I would see him again. But when I stopped dreaming and began to work” –

“That was when your path became clear.” The more he knew of Shmi, the more he came around to the idea of the prophecy child as a deliberate choice – because such an astonishing woman must, in some way, have been singled out. She embodied the principles of duty and honor and sacrifice in ways that Jedi who had been raised without familial attachments would envy. Qui-Gon had come back to Tatooine in the hopes of freeing slaves, and ultimately, the best thing he could do for it was leave it in the hands of Shmi Skywalker. “Thank you for your hospitality and for the opportunity to provide some small amount of aid to your work. If you fear that your connection to us will be discovered, contact us and we will come to your aid.” In exchange for more of his dwindling supply of credits, Shmi and Cliegg had purchased him a few necessities, including a basic comm unit – since Quinlan and Aayla could no longer show their faces in town – and they had exchanged contact information.

“I will,” she said, hugged Anakin one last time, and let them go.

Obi-Wan was not hiding.

He was not. Jedi Knights did not hide from their problems; they didn’t hide from their friends; and they certainly didn’t hide from the unenviable position of being at the center of the most noteworthy event to strike the Temple in a year – not even if they had also been at the center of the last one and knew just what miserable gossips Jedi could be. And so, of course, Obi-Wan was not hiding in the Archives, not even if he knew it was the one place most of his friends would not think to look for him. He was just – seeking peace. Finding quiet. Fortifying himself for the next time he would step forth and be assaulted by the next round of people asking him questions about –

“– Jinn since Quinlan Vos went inactive.”

An electric jolt ran down Obi-Wan’s spine. Those names – his every sense was on alert for those names, but for once their speech was not directed at him. He cast his eyes about, glancing up from the screened desk where he had tucked himself, tracking the sound of the voice.

“You wouldn’t want a link on the official channel, anyway.”

Obi-Wan knew that second voice, distantly. He craned his neck around to locate the speaker, knowing that if he could catch sight of them he would remember the name.

“No,” said the first voice. “But I’ve had to guess for myself what he might want for the next direction in his research. I know my own interests in the question, but his often surprised me.”

“Trust in yourself, Rie.” Gentle chiding in that response, and Obi-Wan stood from his desk and moved towards it, navigating around a corner cabinet of datacards. “Your selections will do well.”

“But will they be enough?”

He could see them now, two figures hunched over a screen together – just a whisper too close, perhaps, than befitted casual acquaintances – and he had been right: he knew the second speaker, had received briefings from her before in fraught political situations. The words were out before he realized he had spoken. “Master Navarr?”

The petite Togruta turned to face him with no surprise in her face; her human companion, on the other hand, startled away from the screen, her face alarmed and almost guilty. Obi-Wan did not know her by name, but he had seen her before as well – behind an archival desk, where she had checked materials out to him a time or two. What had she been doing talking about Qui-Gon?

“Knight Kenobi,” said Rowana Navarr, dipping her head to him in greeting. “What a fortuitous surprise to see you here.”

“Fate, one might argue,” muttered the human woman, then cast her gaze down at her feet, a flush creeping over her cheeks.

Obi-Wan chose to ignore that. “Fortuitous?” he said instead. “Why so?”

“Qui-Gon Jinn was your master, was he not?”

The blush was contagious, it seemed. Obi-Wan too felt the urge to look away, pinned by Master Navarr’s too-knowing gaze. She was a contemporary of Qui-Gon’s and must have known already not only that Obi-Wan had been Qui-Gon’s padawan but also why he had been drawn to their conversation. Her specialty in the Force was sensing and tracing emotional currents and connections, and her expertise was frequently employed in challenging political situations as a sort of informant for the more official diplomats. Now, it seemed, it was bent towards the task of reading Obi-Wan. Perhaps she could even read him well enough to understand the feelings he did not quite understand himself.

"He was," he said, too abrupt, keeping his face neutral. If she could sense all that, then it was her problem. "But I don't have any more knowledge about his actions than anyone else. If that’s what you were wondering about.”

“We wouldn’t pry about that,” said the archivist – the woman Master Navarr had called Rie. “And it could be argued that his actions don’t require knowledge to be understood.”

“Understood?”

Another thing Jedi knights were supposed to be above was simple parroting back of the words others had said to them, but Obi-Wan was reeling too hard to speak. How could they speak so easily of understanding Qui-Gon’s decisions, when Obi-Wan had slotted them into the category of Qui-Gon’s actions that were so particular to him that Obi-Wan could never grasp them?

“Understood,” confirmed Master Navarr. “If not his personal reasons, then at least his decisions.”

It struck Obi-Wan that she looked tired; when he had received briefings from her in the past, she had always been energetic and thorough, but now she looked ever so slightly worn around the edges, weathered around the eyes and mouth. Was everyone tired these days? Or was Obi-Wan just noticing it more than he had before?

“You have been spending some time pondering his decisions, then,” he said stiffly, not even bothering to make it sound like a question. “You would not be alone in this Temple.”

“No,” said Rie. “But we may have more insight than most. Master Jinn had taken to spending quite a bit of time in the Archives before he left, and I was fortunate to support his research questions.” She glanced at Master Navarr. “I wouldn’t tell you lightly, but if you think” –

“I think Obi-Wan would like to know,” said Master Navarr, with that stare that seemed to look too deeply into Obi-Wan’s soul.

And – and she was right, but he didn’t have to admit it. He raised his eyebrows, as if that casual expression would be enough to feign disinterest when suddenly his heart was pounding. Insight into Qui-Gon’s thoughts? Some understanding that Obi-Wan himself must have missed?

“He was researching epistemology,” said Rie. “Varying understandings of the Force and approaches to its use and its study. And he was" – she pressed her lips together before speaking again – "not the only one with some dissatisfaction as regards the current philosophical state of the Order and its leadership."

"Or its care for its people," said Master Navarr with a deep, weary sigh.

Rie laid a hand on her arm, and something in the motion made Obi-Wan’s throat tighten. Too close to be casual acquaintances, yes – and Obi-Wan knew what they were, knew as if it had struck him between the eyes; the way they orbited one another, tilting ever so slightly towards one another, as if speaking in a language that belonged to both of them. A master and a padawan – a former padawan, rather, as Rie wore no braid – but a pair that had managed to remain aligned, philosophically and personally, after their parting. A pair who could finish one another’s sentences, not only because they knew what would come next but because they agreed on the completion of the thought.

He had never wished before that he and Qui-Gon could be in perfect synchronization like that; he couldn’t imagine them being anything other than what they were – but he had found himself wishing from time to time that they could have agreed on just that little bit more. That he could understand Qui-Gon as these two seemed to, as they seemed to understand one another – or that Qui-Gon could have understood him.

It was none of their business, none of their affair – and he didn’t know whether he was defending the Order or attempting to explain himself – and yet still he was talking. "As far as I know, Qui-Gon never felt . . . uncared for." Qui-Gon had been loved here. Hadn't he? Or had Obi-Wan simply loved him beyond his ability to recognize a deeper isolation?

"I am not speaking of Qui-Gon," said Master Navarr. “Merely taking inspiration from him.” She gave him a long, searching look, then nodded to herself. “We have been contemplating a similar decision, if that explains our curiosity.”

Rie started beside her, inhaling sharply as if to speak – and then settled, perhaps in response to some reassurance that was not given aloud. For a moment, Obi-Wan could not speak. Perhapse those were the only words that could so disarm him, could reduce his thorn-laden defenses to debris in an instant. A similar decision. To leave the Order? To follow Qui-Gon’s example? Obi-Wan could only stare, waiting for his stunned brain to work again. No one had announced such a thing to him before, so openly and yet so gently. Contemplating. Contemplating aloud, which had never been a tendency of Obi-Wan or Qui-Gon. Contemplating together.

Perhaps if Qui-Gon had contemplated with him –

No. Obi-Wan broke off that thought before it could fully form, swallowed down the wave of loss that rose up inside him at the realization. Qui-Gon would never have so much as asked Obi-Wan his thoughts, because he would have already known what Obi-Wan would say.

“You are, of course, perfectly free to make that choice,” he said, and the stiffness in his voice could do nothing to mask the hurt. The hurt that surely Master Navarr could sense flowing out of him – the raw feeling that he could not keep himself from bleeding into the Force at the thought of Qui-Gon’s departure, all those emotions he could not name, let alone acknowledge; the feeling of a trust broken, all the more painful as he watched the way they looked at each other, the consideration for one another in their decisions. The trust that he had found with Qui-Gon; the ability to let go, sometimes, of the need to know and simply plunge into the demands of the moment. The trust that he could not find in this moment now. It was what made the doubt, the betrayal, all the more painful – because though he knew Qui-Gon's actions to be out of alignment with every one of Obi-Wan's own beliefs, he had not often known his master to be wrong.

“If I might offer some advice, Knight Kenobi,” said Master Navarr. “You have the feel of one grasping for simplicity, duality – one or the other. It may be that the answer you are looking for is not as simple as that.”

Obi-Wan had been corrected by masters for all his life as a Jedi – all the life he could remember. He had mostly overcome the shame that came along with being guided, with being challenged. Yet somehow, now, in the face of Master Navarr’s gentle yet relentless reading, a hot flush was spreading through his face to the ears.

“Master Jinn was researching balance when I last spoke to him,” said Rie. “As a word and as a philosophy. Balance between light and dark, and between each of the tenets of the code. Whether it is possible for opposites to exist alongside one another, to push one another into a greater harmony.”

Obi-Wan opened his mouth. Closed it again. Felt as though he had been struck, somewhere deeper than the physical – struck in the soul. Whatever he had thought he might find from asking about their conversation, this was too far from it – and yet too close to his heart to be shaken off so easily.

“Thank you for your guidance,” was all he said in the end, rigid as before. “I apologize for interrupting your research.”

“There is no need for apology,” said Master Navarr. “Indeed, you’ve given me clarity that I needed. And for that, I thank you, Knight Kenobi.”

He could not manage speech in response. He bowed to them, wordless, and took his leave.

Dantooine, despite its nearness, was as different from Tatooine as it was possible to come. Lush with water and growing things, the very air rejuvenated Qui-Gon’s fried senses as soon as their contact had let them off the ship and retreated back into the atmosphere without a prolonged farewell. He tilted his head to the sky and took a deep breath, aligned himself to the living Force that swelled in the grass and trees and waters around them – life so much closer to the surface here than on Tatooine. Around him, the others were doing the same.

And then they began their journey.

The planet had been an ideal place not only for their contact, but also for them. There was an ancient Jedi temple here, and Qui-Gon had insisted they seek it out. He did not know if it was his research drawing him to seek out the places of his predecessors – as if to absorb, through standing where they had stood, something of the different ways they had thought or lived – or if it was the uncertainty of the looming future. When he had left the Order, he had not known what was to come, and he still did not – but now he was responsible not only for Anakin’s training, but for Quinlan and Aayla, for the others who had agreed they could do more good outside the Order than within it. So what must that look like? How must they move forward into it? The temple here would give them a place to reflect on the way Jedi had lived before, the dispersal of action and perspective, and perhaps it would give them the sign they needed to make their own way forward.

They walked for hours. Qui-Gon had begun on his feet, in an effort to fully embody the journey, to give as much to it as those he traveled with – and had learned after less than an hour that that would not be possible, not if he wanted to be fit to travel at all the next day. The hoverchair Shmi had purchased for him was called into service, bearing his weight rather than hovering beside him and allowing him to travel at the same pace as his companions.

He still tired before the others, though, and was forced to call them to a stop for an early night. Anakin was the only one who seemed impatient – the moving had quelled his restlessness for a time, Qui-Gon thought, allowed him to subsume his sorrow about saying farewell to his mother yet again, his lingering worries for her. But they made camp at the edge of a river, and Aayla offered to teach Anakin how to fish – a skill he had not had occasion to learn at the Temple, and certainly never on Tatooine. The two padawans went off together, and Qui-Gon couldn’t help musing that this was the gift from the Force he hadn’t realized he would need: a way to share the task of teaching, to take up the weight of one another’s responsibilities. It was the kind of sharing that the Temple had given him, that he had worried he would be giving up. And yet here it was – here it was in deeper intimacy than he had found at the Temple, a way of sharing the intensity of the master-padawan bond among a smaller group, rather than the interlocked system of two.

He sighed.

“What?” said Quinlan from where he had begun to make a fire.

“I’m glad Anakin has company,” was all Qui-Gon said. Perhaps outside of the Order he could find the companionship he had not had within the Temple – youths learning to coexist on their own terms. Perhaps he could find a way to be happy. He deserved happiness, and Qui-Gon had despaired so long of his own ability to give it to him.

Which led him down the trail to thinking once more about Obi-Wan, about the many times he had worried he was failing as a master. How might Obi-Wan have fared with someone else to step in, someone else to help him learn what Qui-Gon could not teach him? And yet if all was as it must be, the Force had ensured that he was the right master for Obi-Wan after all. The process of teaching him – of learning from him – had been the most rewarding of Qui-Gon’s life, and so often their unique combination of perspectives had led to the alignment of some challenging situation in their favor. Whether because of him or in spite of him, Obi-Wan had become a knight the Temple could be proud of.

Qui-Gon wondered if he had returned to the Temple yet. If he had heard Qui-Gon’s message. How angry he was to learn what Qui-Gon had done.

“Me too,” said Quinlan. “Aayla has been away from other Jedi kids for too long. I’m glad they seem to be getting along.”

Qui-Gon gave a noncommittal hum. He remembered having the same concerns about Obi-Wan when they had taken on more extended missions later in his teenage years. But then, adaptation was the only constant in a Jedi’s life.

The only constant in his, still and always.

It took them two days of walking to reach the temple that was their destination – but they could all feel it as they approached: the ripples it left in the Force, layers of history like rings on a tree, like calling to like. This was their history, the marks left on a place by the many generations of Force sensitives who had inhabited it – gone now, as the Order had grown more centralized, more concentrated in the Core, but the imprints on the Force were more and less than echoes, more and less than physical artifacts. Even Anakin seemed to sense it, tilting his head up as they approached, inhaling deeply as though to draw the sensation into his very lungs.

“Why do I feel like I belong here?” he said aloud. “I’ve never been here before.”

“Because there were Jedi here,” said Qui-Gon, “and you belong with the Jedi.” The temple loomed before them, so much smaller than the city-sized mass of buildings on Coruscant. The stones leading to its entrance were weathered and chipped, nearly overgrown with grasses and weeds – the living Force reclaiming what had always been its own. It thrummed through the temple, redolent with life. “We all do, though we have parted ways with Coruscant.” He could feel it settling into his bones, the certainty, and he gazed around at them – Aayla and Anakin rapt, Quinlan a little amused. That was all right. There was space for irreverence here. “These are the Jedi we seek to follow – the Jedi who spread out across the galaxy, who responded to the calls of the Force and the people who needed them.” He rose from his hoverchair and sank to his knees right there, on the green-padded stones, to let his consciousness spread into every blade of grass, every scurrying beetle, every stone. He was of it, and it of him. This was the inheritance of the Jedi – not the place itself, but the wisdom and memory that it had been imbued with, and he could almost dissolve into it.

“Right,” came Quinlan’s voice. “Well, I’m going in.”

They made the temple their temporary home for the next few weeks. There were enough edible plants and animals around to feed them, a running stream nearby to bathe in, and so much in the temple itself to learn from. Like Tatooine, Qui-Gon knew this could not be a permanent stop – knew that this was only the next step on their journey to embrace whatever future awaited them. But it was time to learn one another and to learn from their surroundings, to rest and eat and meditate and spar, to practice stillness and motion alike. It was time to read what Quinlan had saved from the Archives before severing his own connection to the Order, time to talk amongst themselves and listen to what the others had to say. Time to contemplate what would be next for them, to wonder what the sign would be that it was time to move on.

That sign came in the form of a ship.

It was evening in their third week at the temple, the sun descending gently towards the horizon, and Qui-Gon was leading the two padawans in a slow moving meditation, the basic technique of what would eventually be developed into a battle trance, when it arrived. The traces of it came in the Force, first: that extended awareness of their surroundings that allowed them to catalog every motion, every change, every possible threat or advantage. It was a sign of their progress that both Anakin and Aayla stiffened.

“What is that?” said Aayla.

“A ship,” said Qui-Gon calmly. He kept his focus, imbuing every motion of his body with intention. “Remember,” he said, “this kind of meditation does not mean lessening your awareness or ignoring what happens around you. It means keeping your focus through it, determining what attention to give to each demand on your consciousness.”

“It’s coming really close,” observed Anakin.

“Yes.” In this state, nothing was cause for alarm. Qui-Gon continued his motions.

“Like, really close.” The ship was coming into view now, high above them but drawing nearer with every second. Anakin’s observations were right – this felt intentional.

With a rueful smile, Qui-Gon let his dreamlike serenity dissipate, though the Force had given him no cause for alarm. “And sometimes,” he said, “your increased consciousness will tell you to stop what you were doing until there is a better time to resume. We’d better go investigate, but do try to keep your awareness in your body, if you can. Sharpen your instincts. This practice forms the foundation for slipping into and out of this state with greater ease as you continue to learn.”

“Yes, Master,” said Aayla, a habit she still hadn’t broken. Anakin said nothing, but the feeling of him in the Force was all liquid smoothness. This sort of trance was something that came as naturally to him as breathing – something he had mastered at nine years old in a podrace – but as Qui-Gon had learned in the last year or so, there could be no harm in returning to the basics once in a while.

They encountered Quinlan heading in the same direction – his cooking efforts abandoned for the same curiosity that drove them to find their unexpected visitors. The temple’s landing platform was as worn as the rest of it, but it was still serviceable enough for what it was – particularly when it was abandoned enough not to need the advanced space traffic controllers that the busier ports had. In all their weeks here, they had not encountered anyone else, and the brief entry in the standard-issue encyclopedia on Quinlan’s datapad had said that Dantooine was both large and sparsely populated. So who would be coming directly to the abandoned Jedi temple?

A sudden fizz of impossible excitement flashed through Qui-Gon’s stomach – and then, just as quickly, it dissipated. There was no use in raising futile hopes; if this visitor were somehow the person he most yearned for it to be, he would have been more mistaken about Obi-Wan than he could have ever imagined.

It was not Obi-Wan, of course. But the two figures who disembarked from the ship were not unfamiliar, either.

“Rowana?” said Qui-Gon, staring between the two of them in rare but complete shock. “Knight Axtin?”

“Rie,” said Rie Axtin. Qui-Gon didn’t know if he had ever seen her away from an Archive desk before; she was built round and solid and short in stature, but still taller than Rowana Navarr, a Togruta master who had been Qui-Gon’s contemporary since they were in the crèche together. Qui-Gon hadn’t remembered that Rie Axtin had been her apprentice, but seeing them side by side now, it was impossible to mistake the signs of that connection. “Since we too have now officially forsworn Jedi titles.”

“Hello, Qui-Gon.” He had not seen Rowana in quite some time – though they had both leaned more towards the diplomacy path, he tended to be sent on missions requiring a more hands-on touch, while she more often provided support to larger delegations. He found himself wondering about the nature of that support, because she looked nearly as tired as he always felt, and the feel of her in the Force was strangely worn. Still, she smiled at him. “I hope you won’t mind our intrusion.”

“Your intrusion,” he echoed. “You’re – you have – you two have left the Order as well?”

“I think Rie had better explain that,” said Rowana. She placed a hand on Rie’s shoulder, let it slip down her arm. “It was her idea, thanks to your inspiration.”

“I hope it’s not unwelcome,” said Rie. She drew in a deep breath, visibly centering herself in preparation to speak – notably less sure of herself here than behind a desk in the Archives. “The truth is, the things that you were studying – they weren’t just for you, Master Jinn. The questions you were asking are questions I have been pondering myself for some time. I have been working in the Archives since achieving my knighthood, and I came to realize that no one seems to be asking these questions anymore. There’s a – complacency, I suppose, to the Order now. To the very handling of information – there are the tiers of information and who is able to access it, the idea that it’s safer to restrict knowledge than to learn how to use it – and less inclination to be reaching out for that knowledge. A settledness to the idea that the Order is already the foundation of all knowledge, and a satisfaction with that, instead of reaching further.” A flush was rising in her cheeks now, embarrassment or agitation, and she stopped for another centering breath. “I know I sound like someone reaching for darkness, and I don’t believe in seeking power for its own sake – nor do I have any desire for it in myself. But knowledge and power shouldn’t always be equated. I think complacency can be a path to darkness, as well, and it’s one that no one seemed to be guarded against. It felt as though no one was asking questions anymore, the questions about where our knowledge comes from and why we are so certain of it.”

She had never been so open in all their sessions before, but how long had she been thinking these things, storing them up? She looked at him now as if imploring him to understand – and he did, though he hadn’t been aware of the extent of her own frustrations. “Did you bring this up to anyone?” he asked.

“The master archivists were not interested in hearing critiques from a young knight,” she said, her voice clipped. “I realize you didn’t ask for them either, but I couldn’t hold them in any longer. Your leaving seemed like a sign from the Force, particularly knowing what a toll my own master’s assignments were taking on her – the things she was being asked to intervene in” – She stammered to a stop, shaking her head.

“Rowana?” said Qui-Gon.

“Rie is protective of me,” said Rowana. Her fingers hooked into Rie’s, a motion Qui-Gon couldn’t help but notice – a motion that made his heart throb with an emotion he couldn’t identify. “I was never asked to do anything against my code, but there is a heaviness to political maneuvering these days that seems to be growing worse each day. It takes more and more of my strength, and I found that my judgment was growing clouded – as though wrapped in a heavy fog that I couldn’t see through.”

Qui-Gon remembered his own time in the Senate building, the persistent headaches that he had attributed to overexertion. They had not left him entirely since departing the Order, but they lacked a certain . . . stabbing quality since he had stepped away from Republic politics. “I understand,” he said. “So you just left?”

Rie nodded. “We pooled the credits we were given to buy a ship and tracked you out here.”

“But how did you track us?” Quinlan said. “We didn’t tell the Order where we were going.”

“We knew you had gone to Tatooine,” said Rowana. “We had hoped to find you there, but when we arrived, we could sense that you’d already gone. My apprentice’s excellent research skills brought our attention to the Jedi temple located in a neighboring system” –

“And my master’s senses guided us the rest of the way,” said Rie.

“Your senses, hm?” said Qui-Gon. “They told you we would have come here?”

"They tell me that a Jedi in crisis will seek out other Jedi when he can find them," she said, with an expansive gesture around them at the empty temple. "Or at least their echoes."

"Even as you sought us out?"

A smile played across her lips. "Even so."

A Jedi in crisis. Qui-Gon had not thought of himself as such, he realized, not since he'd left the Temple on Coruscant and thrown himself into an unknown future. The crisis then had been his inability to coexist with the structure that was meant to support him, and when its urgency had abated, he had told himself he was following the path that laid itself out before him. But was that not, in itself, representative of a larger crisis? No longer of conscience, perhaps, but of duty, of identity. If the Jedi were inherently reactive, responding to injustice or need, what was a Jedi who had no need to respond to?

But there was need out here, too, even if it was not fed to him through the centralized systems of the Senate government, of the Council's connections. Once, the Jedi had made homes out here, as well – had lived all over the galaxy, ready to respond as they were called, regardless of political will or centralized support. This temple had been the home of those Jedi – and it was not his home, but perhaps it had given him the clarity he needed.

More, it had brought Rie and Rowana to him.

"Well," he said. "If your intuition was acute enough to lead you to us here, then I think it is the will of the Force that we remain together."

"And is it the will of the Force that we move on from here?" Quinlan's voice held just a shade of irony, but Qui-Gon made no comment. The Force acted independent of doubt or faith. "This has been a nice rest, but I'm starting to think it's time we got back into action, don't you?"

"I can't speak to the intent of the Force," Rie said. "I've been too mired in structured research to have clarity on that. But I have a datapad and a curious streak, and I've found something that might be worth checking into soon. If you're ready to move on?"

"Yes!" said Anakin eagerly at Qui-Gon's side. "Yes, we're ready!"

Perhaps it was Anakin's impatience that drove his eagerness – his inability to sit still; his frustration with the meditations that required him to spend too much time with himself. But perhaps it was also a sign that he had internalized some of Qui-Gon's teachings, at least to an extent. He had left his mother to her work; had left with the promise of moving on to his own work, to his own Jedi life. Perhaps he was simply ready to embrace that life – to find meaning in the service and the sacrifice he had been asked to perform.

Either way, Qui-Gon would not correct him. "If Anakin says we're ready, then I will listen to him," he said. "Perhaps you would show our new companions to where we have set up our camp?"

Rowana hung back with him, though, when the others moved ahead. "Anakin Skywalker," she said. "Your new apprentice?"

"If he can still be called such outside the structures of the Order, yes," said Qui-Gon. Rowana was looking at him again, that piercing gaze reaching too deeply into his soul. As if she could see all that he didn't know how to say, even to himself.

“You know as well as I do,” she said, “that the structure does not make the teaching.” She gave him a smile, just a flickering ghost of the expression. “Your old apprentice misses you, by the way.”

Qui-Gon closed his eyes, let the sorrow work its way through him yet again. Of course Obi-Wan missed him – had he ever doubted that he would? That was the source of the pain: that he was here, discovering new dimensions to his service to the Force, and that Obi-Wan's path seemed ever to diverge from his own.

"And I miss him," he said. "You know how much." She would know even without her particular talents; she too was a master, except that her apprentice had come with her – had helped her to find this place. "But unfortunately it changes nothing about what must be done."

"For now, maybe," said Rowana. "But I don't think that you are as different from one another as you seem to think."

Qui-Gon and Rowana had never been close, never more than friendly acquaintances, but there was something about one’s crèchemates that could always get under one’s skin – particularly, perhaps, when said crèchemate was Rowana Navarr, who always seemed to know more about Qui-Gon than he would have wanted. He glared at her, only half playful. "And that's enough out of you," he said.

She chuckled, and the melancholy of the moment dissipated into the wind. "As you wish,” she said, and gestured for him to lead her on.

And so their small band became six, this eclectic combination of masters and padawans melding together into a small group of ex-Jedi engaged in that shared process of reimagining themselves: as a group, as individuals, as students and teachers alike.

Some of it was a process of working around physical limitations. Rie, it turned out, had her own reasons for training in altered lightsaber forms: a visual impairment that cybernetic technology and implants could not correct. The spectacles she wore were the best technology that had been found for it, but even they were not fully sufficient. It was part of the reason she had been drawn to archival work rather than more hands-on missions, where her particular limitations were less noticeable, but she too was determined to be able to protect herself and those around her if needed. She had concentrated her training in the third form and compared her alterations with Qui-Gon’s own – her awareness, for instance, remained concentrated in a smaller field around herself, keeping all of her limbs close to her body to make her a smaller target. Qui-Gon had hitherto been focusing on the reach of his arms as an adaptation for his limited mobility, but he tried out adapting her strategy and she his, trading tips and suggestions.

Rowana, meanwhile, had specialized in Niman – rare in the Temple these days – and she lent her expertise to Anakin’s training. Though Qui-Gon maintained his insistence that he not move past basic techniques and into specialization yet, Anakin picked up new forms with ease, and was well on his way to developing something all his own – a unique blend of the many different forms he had been introduced to.

It was not only in sparring that they could compensate for one another. The presence of four others meant that Anakin’s training was not solely Qui-Gon’s responsibility – and neither was the care for their basic needs. There were others around now to answer Anakin’s questions, to exercise with him when Qui-Gon’s energy reached its limits, to share the duties of cooking and cleaning. It was not easy, exactly, but their group was just large enough that the shared duties felt manageable – and just small enough that negotiation was possible.

Their new additions also brought the philosophical stimulation Qui-Gon had been craving – suddenly there were people here who were willing to talk with him about his research, to offer new perspectives and new questions to the ideas he had been considering, not only about the philosophy of the Jedi, but about how they might define themselves outside the Order: outside the political limits of the Republic but within their own moral and ethical boundaries and relationships to the Force.

And, perhaps most crucially, the skills Rie and Rowana had described using to find them became their way of determining what next to do and where to go. They no longer had access to the Council’s resources – but out here, outside of Republic space, they were not limited to the missions the Republic deemed worthy. And there were labor disputes, cruelties, and oppression aplenty.

It was all that Qui-Gon had once dreamed of doing within his limits as a Jedi – all the situations in which he had been forbidden to intervene. This kind of work could not be done by an organization with the size and power of the Order, he knew – about that, the Council was right – but it could be done by them. As part of their missions to live in accordance with their philosophy, as part of Anakin’s and Qui-Gon’s dreams to truly help, as part of their work to act both for the will of the Force and the will of the living beings who were all subject to it – it felt like he could finally come around to a new way of living.

There was just that pang, that ache in his heart that throbbed at the most unexpected moments – the memory of the person he couldn’t help wishing were here by his side.

Your old apprentice misses you.

Qui-Gon missed him, too.

Chapter Text

Zond was a moon orbiting the larger planet of Nidhat – and, like many moons, supplied a great deal of export power to the planet with very little regulation. From just within the atmosphere, as their ship zoomed towards the surface, Qui-Gon could make out the telltale bare patches amidst pockets of green – places where trees had been cut down indiscriminately, perhaps for lumber or perhaps for something else – and the occasional cavern or crater that indicated mining activity. He wondered what precious substances here were mined and then sold from Nidhat.

He also wondered who was doing that mining.

Nidhat, like so many planets on the Outer Rim, was not part of the Republic and not bound by the Republic’s laws. Qui-Gon had been on such worlds before – but always he had been deployed as a diplomat, there to speak first with the government on the planet before investigating the moons for himself. This time, he had been summoned by Rie Axtin’s diligent decoding of transmissions between the planet and the moon – and her between-the-lines interpretation of what they must actually mean about where their help would be needed.

This was not their first errand of this kind. Over the last few months, they had made many stops on disadvantaged worlds, guided by their feelings to people who needed Jedi assistance but lacked the political power to summon Jedi help – protective actions such as defending a town being ravaged by predatory cartels; relief actions such as assisting in the aftermath of natural disasters. This, though, was their most proactive political effort: the first time they had taken it upon themselves to engage in political action; the first time they had entered a system deliberately with the goal of reaching out to offer their services . . . whatever services might be needed.

“The majority of the petitioning was coming from a continent called Zul,” said Rie. She sat behind the pilot’s chair, which was currently occupied by Rowana – the only member of their group whose piloting could be called both competent and non-reckless – but spoke to Aayla, who navigated from the copilot’s seat. “My research tells me it’s a rocky area, relatively dry – that’s where all the health concerns are coming in – and landlocked.”

“North, then,” said Aayla. “We’re too close to coastline here.” Rowana adjusted her flight accordingly, and they passed the green spaces and entered an area of dusty brown. Always deserts for them, it seemed.

The ship’s comm terminal blinked, and Aayla started. “We’re being hailed,” she said. “Ordered to land.”

“Suspicious of us,” Qui-Gon murmured. “I suppose it stands to reason. They must not see much unfamiliar traffic here.”

“Or,” said Rowana grimly, “they have a reason to be suspicious of it.”

That suggested that matters between the laborers and the government were worse even than they had anticipated. “You didn’t find anything in your interpretations suggesting actual violence, did you, Rie?”

“The wording was cautious,” she said. “I only got the sense that there was an increasing demand for fairer working conditions on the moon – and that those demands were being ignored or insulted. As far as the details . . .” She shrugged. “I’m afraid I couldn’t glean anything more specific than that.”

“Well,” said Qui-Gon. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. Take us down, Rowana.”

They landed to a crowd of grim-faced people of many different species – mostly humanoid, but not exclusively – and more than one blaster muzzle, aimed in their general direction. “Who are you?” demanded a blue-skinned Twi’lek, stepping forward with enough assurance that they must be a leader of some sort. “We’ve had no word of arrivals, and you don’t have Nidhatian symbols on your ship. Did you just happen to land on our moon before coming to the planet, or have our beloved labor ministers hired outsiders to do their dirty work?”

Bad blood indeed, then. “No,” Qui-Gon said, keeping his voice as even as possible. “We come from outside Nidhat, yes, and you’re right that our arrival isn’t a coincidence. But we are not here on behalf of your government.”

“’Our’ government,” sneered the Twi’lek. “When they do anything for us, sure, we’ll call them that.”

“That is why we came,” said Qui-Gon. “We heard rumor of trouble here between the moon and the planet, and we wanted to offer our assistance.”

“Pah!” snorted a human behind the Twi’lek. “Tell it to someone who will believe you. We don’t need anyone’s help!”

His finger twitched. Qui-Gon sensed both the motion and the intent – the shot was not intended to kill or to maim, only to warn – but before he could say a word, a green lightsaber blazed to life beside him, held in the lazy, relaxed grip of Quinlan Vos.

“Might want to think before you shoot,” he said, and with a flick of his hand, the blaster wrenched itself free of the man’s grip to hover in the air.

Instantly, the mood changed. Blasters dropped to the ground, hands flew up into the air. The Twi’lek’s blue skin took on an ashy gray cast. The whisper rose up among the crowd, passing from one to the other: “Jedi!”

“Put it away, Quinlan,” said Qui-Gon. He nudged Quinlan aside and stepped forward, presenting his easiest, most diplomatic face. “Not quite,” he said. “We’re not affiliated with the Jedi Order, and are not here at their behest. But” – He shrugged, held out his hands. “We are here to help.”

“Nidhat?” said Obi-Wan.

“Yes,” said Mace Windu. “The call came from the planet, but it seems that the trouble is originating in labor disputes between the planet and the moon – disputes which have grown more and more tumultuous, particularly given that the laborers seem to have solicited external assistance. Given your history dealing with such conflicts,” he raised a meaningful eyebrow, “you were selected as the best candidate for this particular mission.”

Obi-Wan’s history with conflicts like this was mostly limited to a deeply-rooted injustice he and Qui-Gon had both discovered and addressed mostly by accident, but it was not done to question the Jedi Council on matters like this. “I am honored, Masters,” he said blandly. “And what is my purpose in this mission?”

“The planet of Nidhat is not officially part of the Republic,” said Master Billaba, “and therefore not officially under our jurisdiction. But it seems that their . . . challenges with the workers on the moon have grown desperate enough that they have considered revising their opinion – and, in so doing, reevaluating their reasons for delay. They have indicated that they might be open to joining the Republic, if the Jedi will help them with this dispute now.”

Her circumspect speech took Obi-Wan a moment to decipher, but when he realized what she meant, it was all he could do to keep his face neutral. “Forgive me, Masters, but are you sending me to put down a labor rebellion?” The blank shock of that thought drove Obi-Wan’s civility out of his head.

“Certainly not,” said Master Koon. “We are sending you to investigate the government’s labor practices and determine if they are fit for entry into the Republic. Hopefully the promise of Republic protection and voice will inspire governmental leaders to increase regulation and perhaps negotiate with the leaders of this labor dispute in a way satisfying to all. Your diplomatic experience would, of course, aid in that effort.”

“And the Chancellor would like information about the outside help these leaders are being given,” said Master Billaba. “If there is a band of mercenaries at large in the Outer Rim, he would like to know as much as possible about them.”

“I see,” said Obi-Wan. Something still felt off to him, but he couldn’t be sure if it was a real bad feeling, or simply the lingering impacts of his own momentary shock. “I will do what I can, then, Masters.”

The government of Nidhat was odious enough that Obi-Wan found himself almost wishing they would not join the Republic after all. Aesho Mapa, the Minister of Labor, was obsequious to Obi-Wan and imperious to everyone else, and the disdain with which he spoke of the faction of labor workers currently leading strikes, protests, and the occasional more explosive action made Obi-Wan more sympathetic to them, rather than less. Still, violence could not be condoned, and he was here to find a peaceful solution, if possible.

“The leaders have proven willing to negotiate,” said Mapa, giving Obi-Wan a suspicious sidelong glance, "once they heard that we had a Jedi to support us. Perhaps you will help them see reason, where we have not.”

Privately, after only a brief period of observation, Obi-Wan thought that the explanations he had been given for worker exploitation, while understandable to a point when considering the larger challenges of galactic trade, went far beyond “reason.” In an effort not to overplay his hand, though, he called upon the discretion that twelve years of apprenticeship to Qui-Gon Jinn had taught him and kept his mouth shut. For now. “I’m certainly interested in negotiating a settlement to which all parties will be amenable,” he said. “Where will we be meeting them?”

“They attempted to insist that we meet on the moon,” said Mapa with a sniff, “but I’m afraid their actions have made that impossible to trust. We would not risk your safety or our own at a location they control. Though you ought to expect that they ask you to visit the sites of their work; they were most insistent that you be given their perspective.”

Whoever they were, Obi-Wan thought, they were not wrong. Qui-Gon had always taught him to see firsthand what all parties in a negotiation were experiencing rather than to simply trust what they said, and it had served him well in his solitary missions until this point. “I will certainly wish to visit the moon during my time here,” he said. “To form my own understanding of their labor conditions and the motivations driving their actions.”

“Of course, of course,” said Mapa. “But for now, their leaders will be meeting us here. If you’ll follow me.”

The city of Crul was less densely packed than an equivalent space on Coruscant, but not as neatly organized; Obi-Wan could not stop glancing around, overwhelmed by sensation as Mapa led him through a block of buildings so mazelike that he had to rely on Force sense to keep himself oriented. It was a strange organization for a city that controlled the exports of mostly raw goods mined on the moon, and he found himself musing darkly on what this revealed about the separation between those who made the goods and those who sold them.

Although – could he be sure that those he was here to speak with were actually the ones making the goods? The warning of possible outside mercenaries had stuck with him, and he wondered uneasily who he would actually be negotiating with. Something was gnawing at him, something tickling at the edges of his senses, telling him that there was something off-balance here, something deeper than what he had expected to find.

He was soon to find out what it was.

He followed Mapa down a hallway in a large, well-lit building with vast windows and floors on which his footsteps echoed. Followed him up a set of stairs and into the room where the negotiations were set to take place. Looked across the table at where the labor leadership was arrayed – and stopped dead.

The labor leadership consisted of a Twi’lek and a human, both wearing threadbare clothing and determined expressions – but Obi-Wan could spare only a moment to take them both in, to let them register in his mind. Because beside them, seated in a chair slightly higher and more mechanical-looking than theirs, ashy-clay hair pulled back from his face and a steely, stubborn look in his eyes, was Qui-Gon Jinn.

In an instant, all of Obi-Wan’s thoughts – all of his long-honed control – disappeared in a surge of emotion that he could not mask. Qui-Gon. Here. Beyond any foolish hope, realized as if born straight from a ruthlessly-suppressed dream, feet away from Obi-Wan at the table of a labor negotiation – but not as a mediating Jedi presence; no, he was here as part of the labor force.

Of course he was. Of course this was where Obi-Wan would meet him again after more than half a year apart. A wild surge of laughter rose up in his chest, and he wrestled it down with all his strength, mastered the urge to gasp for air.

Across the table, their eyes met for the first time since they had hurled harsh words at one another and Obi-Wan had sent Qui-Gon away from his room. Qui-Gon’s gaze was as intense as ever, blue as a desert twilight and fixed unerringly on him, and Obi-Wan’s voice disappeared in his throat. He could not have spoken even if he had had any idea what to say.

A thousand emotions flickered across Qui-Gon’s face in the single instant that their eyes held, rippled in the Force around them – and then disappeared, toned back and calmed into Qui-Gon’s typical expression of impassivity. Obi-Wan forced himself to breathe deeply, to pull himself together and do the same, to keep his mind grounded in the present moment.

Even if in the present moment, Qui-Gon was sitting across from him at a negotiation table, opposed to him in a way he had never been before. But no – that was too simple a word to use to describe what was happening now, and Qui-Gon would have reminded him not to assume opposition at a negotiation, to rather seek for some common ground –

His mind ground to a halt. It was too strange to draw on Qui-Gon’s teachings with Qui-Gon here so close.

This must have been where the rumors of outside aid had come from, he thought. But a band of mercenaries – nothing could be further from the truth.

Or could it? He couldn’t know what Qui-Gon was doing these days – though “mercenary” was far from his typical style.

The sound of Mapa’s voice filtered in through his ears from what seemed like thousands of miles away; with a great effort, Obi-Wan dragged his consciousness back to the moment – rather, to the other aspects of the moment that were not the man across the table, the man whose very presence had sent him spinning helplessly through the void of his own shock. There was a task to be accomplished here, a task distinct from the world that had just been shaken beneath his feet. Mapa was speaking, and it was his duty to listen.

He dragged himself back to full presence in time to nod as Mapa gestured towards him. “Thank you for meeting us here, my friends,” he was saying smoothly. “This is the Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, who has been sent to our aid from the Republic, in the hopes that we might all find an easy and profitable resolution to this . . . unfortunate dispute.”

The other two across the table both glanced at Qui-Gon in open shock, and Obi-Wan suppressed a wince. Had Qui-Gon been speaking of him? What might Qui-Gon have said about him? Had they recognized his name?

Qui-Gon himself gave no sign of any disturbance. “That is our hope as well,” he said. “We look forward to hearing the terms that you have proposed for ending the exploitation of the workers on Zond. Your willingness to seek Jedi assistance suggests an openness to adhering to the labor laws set out by the Republic?”

That threw Mapa off. He blustered and huffed, in good company with the many other high-ranking officials Obi-Wan had seen unbalanced and frustrated by Qui-Gon Jinn. He nearly smiled before remembering that Qui-Gon sat opposite him at the table, rather than at his side with a hand for his shoulder, a meaningful look directing his gaze just so.

But he didn’t need Qui-Gon to direct his gaze anymore – particularly not when Qui-Gon himself spoke. Obi-Wan knew him; knew his strategies and his style – knew exactly how to respond in the game they had played together for so long. Unless Obi-Wan was very much mistaken here, this speech was not intended to unbalance him.

Qui-Gon’s presence was enough to do that all on its own.

But the words were an offer, if Obi-Wan was understanding them correctly – an offer to join in on the game he had played at Qui-Gon’s side for so long, now with a new position of power. An offer, an invitation, and a question: is this what you are here for?

As far as Obi-Wan was concerned, he’d never been instructed otherwise.

“Yes,” he said, “I am here as a representative of the Republic, meant as a neutral party to ascertain the truth of this situation for myself. While Nidhat does not fall under Republic rule, we do not have any official jurisdiction over this situation, of course, but we are happy to serve in an investigative capacity, and should circumstances change, of course we would be happy to provide our services.”

Qui-Gon would know, even if Mapa did not, that this was not true – that Jedi were only sent on behalf of the Republic to places that were considering joining it. He would have known from the moment he saw Obi-Wan at the table, so Obi-Wan saw no harm in confirming it for him – letting him know, subtly, of the power that his negotiators had.

None of this was outside the scope of his assignment, of course.

The shift in Qui-Gon’s expression was so infinitesimal that no one else at the table would be able to notice it – but Obi-Wan knew every minute expression that face could make, and this was one he had craved for most of his life: the tiniest hint of a proud smile.

“Yes, well,” said Mapa hurriedly. “Perhaps we had all better introduce ourselves, shall we? I am Aesho Mapa, the Minister of Labor on Nidhat, and this is Erdric Rudemo, our Minister of Trade. We both share a vested interest in ensuring that we are able to trade fairly and profitably with the goods and services produced in our economy.”

“And we feel it is equally important that those producing the goods and services are fairly compensated and kept safe,” said the Twi’lek on Qui-Gon’s left side. “My name is Palaras Laike and this is my colleague Sulen Lacer. We are two of the organizers of the labor movement here, though I should warn you that we come as representatives only; our movement does not rely on us to carry on and is not beholden solely to our word. All proposals and compromises must be made to benefit all of the workers, not just us. And this is Qui-Gon Jinn. He’s a” –

“An independent advisor,” cut in Qui-Gon easily when Laike began to flail. “Not from Nidhat or Zond originally, but bringing an outside perspective to the cause of the laborers here. Their arguments as to the severity of their conditions were . . . most convincing.”

“Yes, the conditions of work,” Obi-Wan said. “Perhaps your leadership might elaborate on those? I have been given official briefings, but part of my role as a neutral party here is to evaluate the validity of those claims for myself.”

This clearly was not what Mapa had been expecting – he flailed again, and Obi-Wan quelled a surge of satisfaction. He marveled at how clear his task had suddenly become from nothing more than the presence of Qui-Gon opposite him at the negotiation table. He and Qui-Gon might disagree on the applications of principles, they might disagree with the purpose of the Jedi Order – but, unless Qui-Gon had changed as to become unrecognizable in the last several months, they did not disagree about what was needed and what was right.

“Of course,” said Qui-Gon. “And we have our demands here, which surely you have read. But if you would like to inspect the conditions for yourself, perhaps a tour would be in order? I would be happy to show Master Kenobi to a few of the worksites on the moon that we have outlined as examples of the conditions we want to change.”

A shiver rolled up Obi-Wan’s spine at those words. “Master” was of course the appropriate address from a non-Jedi to a Jedi Knight, but he had never heard it from Qui-Gon. It felt simultaneously wrong and right – to be here in a position of some authority over the man he had called Master all his life and still instinctively gave that title. But there was no denying the respect in Qui-Gon’s tone when he used the words – and for him – someone who knew what they meant –

“That is amenable to me,” said Obi-Wan coolly, suppressing his turmoil with the practice of years. “Perhaps once we have begun our initial negotiations, you might show me around.”

Qui-Gon’s nerves were humming still when he, Palaras, and Sulen excused themselves from the bargaining table after several hours of arguing over contracts and conditions. He had been a diplomat for the Jedi Order for over two decades, and one of the most sought-after negotiators for unorthodox situations for the last ten, and he had never before been so unbalanced from the moment he’d sat at a negotiating table. All of the deliberate tricks the ministers might have tried could not have worked as well as the simple accident of waiting at the bargaining table and seeing Obi-Wan Kenobi enter the room.

Unless it was no accident. How much had the Jedi Council known or suspected about his presence here? What kind of word might be reaching the Republic about their activities outside its jurisdiction? Had Obi-Wan been expecting to see him?

No, Qui-Gon disregarded that thought. Obi-Wan had grown skilled at hiding his emotions, but Qui-Gon still knew him too well for that studied impassivity to fool him. Obi-Wan had reacted to seeing him in the room. Obi-Wan had not been prepared for this, either. Obi-Wan too had been thrown off balance.

But off balance in which direction?

“Qui-Gon,” murmured Palaras to him when they had safely boarded their ship, out of earshot and on their way back to the moon. He considered it a victory that the labor leadership had come around to speaking to them on such friendly terms in the month or so that they had been here. “I don’t know what to expect from Jedi involvement here. Should we be worried?”

“No,” said Qui-Gon. His voice cracked; he cleared his throat impatiently. “Unless the Order’s involvement with the Republic has changed greatly since I left, Jedi only go to the aid of government authorities when they are considering entry to the Republic. In this case, that would mean being subject to the Republic’s labor laws and such oversight as exists. It is not always what it should be, particularly not this far out from the Core, but it is certainly more oversight than Nidhat has now. I don’t know if the ministers were already considering petitioning the Republic for entry or if our tactics have simply driven them to a situation where they feel they have no other choice, but Obi-Wan as good as confirmed this for me during negotiations. We are in a strong position for bargaining.”

“Obi-Wan,” said Sulen. They were watching Qui-Gon closely, and he met their gaze with as much serenity as he could manage. “Is this someone you know, then?”

“Yes,” said Qui-Gon absently. He was still thinking about Obi-Wan’s face – bearded now; he had committed past the point of stubbled shadow – and the way he had carried himself: the confidence of a fully-fledged Jedi knight, waiting on the whims of no master – and yet he had picked up so easily on the thread Qui-Gon had offered him, resuming the games they had once played as if nothing had happened between them, but from a position of such confidence and strength –

It would be a disservice to Obi-Wan to take too much personal pride in this, to take any credit for the person Obi-Wan had become; still his heart ached with it, swelling until it threatened to burst.

“Yes,” he said again. “Someone I used to know very well.”

He would have to wait until tomorrow to see if that was still true.

Minister Mapa fluttered behind Obi-Wan throughout their entire journey to the moon.

“You should have someone with you,” he said as they approached the landing pad where Qui-Gon would be waiting – a sentiment he had repeated time and time again. “To ensure your safety. These people have proven to be violent; they could be luring you into a trap!”

This could have been the case at any other time, in any other situation. Obi-Wan could not reassure Mapa that he knew that it was not the case this time – that he knew the trap here was not about causing him physical harm, but rather a trap of a much more personal nature: a deception to both sides that served mostly to allow him and Qui-Gon time to talk in private.

“Even if it is a trap, I think I can take care of myself,” he said wryly, touching the lightsaber at his belt. “You brought me here to investigate your affairs, Minister Mapa. You must trust my methods.”

He knew, of course, that Mapa’s concern was not at all about his physical safety, but rather about his own inability to counter whatever Obi-Wan might see with explanation. Privately, Obi-Wan had no doubt that all of the labor organizers’ complaints and demands were entirely legitimate. He had seen enough in his time – and knew Qui-Gon well enough, no less – that he had no need to ascertain the veracity of their claims himself. But he did need to talk to Qui-Gon – and having some direct evidence certainly couldn’t hurt his ability to negotiate a solution here.

“I suppose,” said Mapa. “But – you’ll contact us if you need anything, of course. And we’ll meet you back here in two hours’ time.”

Two hours had been a hard-fought compromise all its own; Qui-Gon and the labor organizers had wanted the whole day, to show him several different sites; the ministers had wanted only an hour. They had settled on two, and an in-depth tour of one worksite. Obi-Wan could only hope that it would be enough time both to gather information and to talk to Qui-Gon.

Though he had no idea what he would say.

Qui-Gon was already there when Obi-Wan and Mapa landed their shuttle, waiting on the landing pad with all the self-assured serenity that Obi-Wan had ever known from him. He was still seated in the hoverchair he had been using the day before, and Obi-Wan could not help glancing at him, wondering if he had been wounded further in some way since they had last met. Wondering how life outside the Temple had treated him, how he fared in body and soul. Wondered – though he tried not to – how Qui-Gon was faring spending so much time with Quinlan Vos.

Qui-Gon looked good, he found himself noting – yet again – despite his stern remonstrations with his misbehaving thoughts. He still appeared tired, shadows haunting the hollows beneath his eyes, but his face was otherwise as composed as ever, noble in the calm that he wore with easy grace. His hair had grown a little longer, perhaps a shade grayer, but he wore it pulled back in the same style and his beard was trimmed as neatly as ever. He seemed broader about the shoulders and arms – or perhaps that was just a failing of Obi-Wan’s memory, the true awareness of Qui-Gon’s overwhelming presence lost to the long months of their separation. Seated or standing, exhausted or alert, he was vast in Obi-Wan’s awareness: indomitable in will and in the Force and in the physical space he occupied without apology. A mountain range, rising up from the planet itself; a tidal wave, fierce and unstoppable; an atmospheric storm that threatened to sweep away all Obi-Wan’s control and send him spinning helplessly into open space.

He swallowed and wrestled his thoughts into submission. He could not afford to let his feelings betray him – not here, not now. Not when they had so much to discuss.

“Master Kenobi,” said Qui-Gon warmly when he stepped out of the shuttle, and Obi-Wan’s mouth immediately went dry. He had thought too soon that he had his feelings under control, and he reeled them back now, back into himself, careful not to broadcast them – not now. “I’m pleased you agreed to meet me.” He inclined his head to Mapa. “And you, Minister Mapa. Will you be trusting me with the safety of your Jedi negotiator today?”

“He will,” cut in Obi-Wan before Mapa could speak up. “I’m at your disposal today, M – Qui-Gon.”

He corrected the fumble almost before he’d made it, but still cursed internally. He had been undercover with Qui-Gon before, but those missions had often involved Obi-Wan pretending he did not know the Jedi Master so that he could move about more freely and without scrutiny. As far as he knew, Mapa was not aware that Qui-Gon had ever been a Jedi, let alone that Obi-Wan knew him.

Qui-Gon’s eyes gleamed, and Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow back at him, as if to say, Don’t you start – and that flash of their old rapport bloomed warm in his stomach, as if no time at all had passed.

“I will expect you back in two hours, then,” said Mapa. “And if any harm comes to the Jedi, you will be answering to the full might of the Jedi Order!”

Qui-Gon inclined his head. “I will do all in my power to avoid that occurrence,” he said. “Two hours.”

With a flick of the hand, he gestured Obi-Wan to follow him, and they left Mapa behind with the ship.

They made the trek to the first of the mines in silence, and Obi-Wan glanced around himself, taking in the dusty dryness of the air, the unforgiving rocky landscape. What must it be like to work in such a place? He tried to distract himself with observations about where they were walking, about the planet, but could not stop thinking about Qui-Gon beside him. Wondering what Qui-Gon was thinking – if he too was just as distracted by Obi-Wan’s presence here? If he too had been so thrown off by the realization that they were together again, or if he had greater mastery of mind and could take this, like everything else, in stride.

The entrance to the mine was so narrow that Qui-Gon rose from his hoverchair and left it behind, beckoning for Obi-Wan to follow him. “Others with such mobility aids could not work here,” he said, his first words since they had left Mapa behind. “Which may be to their fortune, if not for the fact that it is one of the only ways to survive on this moon. There are few options for citizens here in general, and fewer for those with physical limitations.”

“But you can – do you” – Obi-Wan broke off, his cheeks heating despite himself. He should know better than to ask prying questions, but this was Qui-Gon, and Qui-Gon had always welcomed Obi-Wan’s questions when they came from a place of genuine curiosity. And also how could he not ask, when the last time he had seen Qui-Gon he had been walking regularly? What had happened in between?

Qui-Gon led Obi-Wan down a set of rough-cut, darkened stairs deeper into the ground. “I can walk,” he said. “Clearly. And perhaps had I remained at the Temple, I would have continued to refuse such aids out of misplaced pride that I refused to acknowledge as such. But I have chosen a life that taxes me more physically than the one I might have had on Coruscant. The chair allows me to save my energy for the efforts that truly need it.”

Still, he kept a hand on the wall, and Obi-Wan noted – with the senses of a Jedi attuned to every movement around him and with his own concern for Qui-Gon’s well-being – that he leaned on it rather heavily. He shook himself, jerking his attention away from Qui-Gon’s hand and onto the mission – onto the matter of their roles here. “Things like destroying equipment?”

He had read the reports; he knew what kinds of activities this group had engaged in. Knowing Qui-Gon – and, most likely, Anakin Skywalker and Quinlan Vos – had been involved made it all that much more likely.

Qui-Gon turned to face him, and the sudden mischievous flash of a smile on his face made Obi-Wan’s heart skip a beat. “That safety hazard could hardly be called equipment,” he said dismissively. “It should have been replaced years ago. You could argue that we did the leadership a favor. That does, of course, mean that I cannot demonstrate to you the inadequacy of the protective equipment provided here – but if you have an oxygen mask, now would be the time to use it. The fumes are worse when the mine is in operation, but the air is still . . . unfriendly to the lungs.”

Obi-Wan strapped his standard-issue breather to his face as he followed Qui-Gon out of the stairwell and into the cavern where the mining would take place. He watched as Qui-Gon pointed out the many places that the employers here had been cutting corners, the many ways that the laws of the planet permitted them to do so. Imagined, at Qui-Gon’s urging, having to work long, cramped hours here, breathing unsafe air, paid too little to compensate – all for the sake of a trade that did not take your own well-being into consideration.

He believed it all – but then, he had never doubted Qui-Gon’s word, or the workers’. Had never doubted the need – only the method.

“Is this what you intended when you left the Order, then?” he finally said when Qui-Gon had led him back up the stairs and reclaimed his chair. “Taking the law into your own hands, unbound by mandates or rules? Acts of vigilante justice?”

“I prefer to think of it as direct action,” said Qui-Gon easily. He activated his chair and began to lead Obi-Wan back across the rocky land, towards the landing pad where Mapa waited. “And no, my departure was reactive rather than premeditated. I did not have any plans for what my life might become; I only knew that I could not remain in the Order and that Anakin and I must forge a new path. I could not have imagined this, and I think if I had, I would not have trusted it. But the Force has led me to something better than I could have dreamed.”

“Better?” Obi-Wan repeated. He should have prepared himself for this, centered himself well enough for it not to hurt – but still the words bit like tiny barbs, to know that Qui-Gon considered his new life better than the life he had left behind . . . the life that had Obi-Wan in it.

“Better in ways I could not have articulated until I saw you at that table yesterday,” said Qui-Gon. “Because I understand now that the Force has guided us into the best possible places for us both.”

“What do you mean?” Obi-Wan couldn’t stop himself from demanding. “If you consider yourself beyond the limits of the Order, what does that mean about how you see me?”

“Don’t you see, Obi-Wan?” Qui-Gon stopped his chair and turned to face him, and Obi-Wan turned as well, helpless as he had ever been to break free of his master’s orbit. Qui-Gon’s eyes pierced him as they always had, blue and blazing, and abruptly Obi-Wan was a student again, slow to learn a lesson his master considered of the utmost importance to impress upon him – too important to wait for him to understand it himself. “You were summoned here by the government of this planet as a result of our actions here. We were called here by the need of the people we are here to help. Yet we both have the best interests of these people in mind. With Jedi on both sides of the bargaining table, aren’t we bound to negotiate something favorable?”

“But” – He had never understood if it was idealism or pessimism that drove this streak in Qui-Gon: a great trust in people’s ability to act responsibly, or simply a lack of trust in anyone but himself. “But there’s no way of being sure of that, or of being sure that your actions won’t change. You’re not accountable to anyone.”

“I am accountable to the Force,” Qui-Gon said serenely. “I’m accountable to the others that I work with. I’m accountable to the people here who have asked us for aid” –

“And who’s to ensure that you stay that way?” Obi-Wan challenged him. “If your decisions change, what can anyone do about it?”

“And if your orders change?” Qui-Gon pushed back. “Can we trust the structures to which the Order is answerable?”

They stared at each other for a long moment. Obi-Wan’s blood was up in the way it seemed only Qui-Gon could achieve; no one could so infuriate him so quickly – perhaps because no one’s challenges could strike him so deeply, right to the core of his argument. The truth was, he wasn’t sure who was right. He just knew that he couldn’t act in any other way, couldn’t muster the same trust that seemed to lead Qui-Gon so easily – and perhaps it was that inability that he resented, that block between them that had led to this wedge.

Qui-Gon’s eyes softened, though, and he reached out as though to rest a hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder – then drew back, as though unsure if contact would be welcome. Obi-Wan’s arm practically ached where he had not touched. “I do understand your perspective, believe it or not,” he said softly. “And I don’t know that my small group could sustain itself in this way if we grew much larger. But for now we are simply kindred spirits making the choice to continue working together – making it every day, driven by our interpretation of the Force and the needs around us. And I trust in what we can do especially because I know the Order has people like you carrying out its mandate.”

“Like me” –

“Trustworthy,” said Qui-Gon. “Compassionate. Principled. Committed to the common good above all else.” He smiled. “We sit on opposite ends of the table, Obi-Wan, but I don’t believe our wills are truly opposed in this. Do you?”

Obi-Wan was quiet. That sudden outpouring of compliments from his reserved master had struck him in the heart; his throat was too full to speak. Qui-Gon kept quiet as well, the only noise the slight whir of his hoverchair as he kept pace with Obi-Wan across the dusty plains. The sound of Obi-Wan’s feet beat a steady rhythm above it, those sounds not quite enough to muffle the starkness of the silence between them – the feeling that Obi-Wan could not name expanding in the air all around them.

The landing pad had only just come into view, Mapa not yet visible where he waited for them, when Qui-Gon said, “Wait.” Before Obi-Wan could respond, he reached out and caught Obi-Wan’s hand.

This brought Obi-Wan to an abrupt stop. All the world narrowed down to the pressure of Qui-Gon’s fingers around his, the zing of electricity up his spine as all his nerves came alive at once. The Force around him burst into sudden clarity, his senses sharpened until he could make out every sensation, every distant sound.

So focused on those feelings, he almost missed the very immediate sensation of something being pressed into his hand – at least, until Qui-Gon folded his fingers around it. Something small and hard and cold. A data chip.

“My comm information,” said Qui-Gon. “I don’t know if I’ll see you alone again, and I’d rather not reveal our association to the leadership here. But if you ever want to reach me – for any reason – I want you to be able to.” He smiled again, a little sad. “It’s your decision, of course, but it’s a decision that you should be able to make.”

Before Obi-Wan could speak, Qui-Gon had activated his chair again, and Obi-Wan had to jog to keep up. By the time he had caught up, they were within earshot of the ship, and Mapa was waving to Obi-Wan. So he could say nothing – as if he knew what to say.

He closed his fingers around the chip and did not let go of it all day.

The next day, Qui-Gon was not at the negotiations.

Laike and Lacer were accompanied instead by Rowana Navarr – which, Obi-Wan supposed, would serve as his official confirmation that she and Rie had found Qui-Gon. And Anakin. And Quinlan. His gut twisted again with that awareness – with that wondering about how much all these others knew about his master that he could not now experience – but this time it was also alive with the knowledge of the data chip Qui-Gon had given him, the ability to communicate with him if he needed to.

He could know. He could find out. If he wanted to.

Master Navarr’s gaze flickered over to him when she introduced herself, claiming that Qui-Gon was unwell, which made Obi-Wan’s stomach churn in an entirely different way. Was that the truth? Had he not wanted to see Obi-Wan again, or was his health still in unstable condition? He remembered Qui-Gon leaving his hoverchair outside the cavern, remembered his words about needing an oxygen mask when working in the mine. Had their journey yesterday harmed him in some way?

He allowed himself the worries for one moment – allowed them to flood his mind, allowed them to scream their power at him – and then he breathed in, breathed past and through them, grounded himself in his body. It was a centering meditation Qui-Gon had taught him during his more turbulent teenage years: the ability to acknowledge and identify his anxieties, and then let them be but separate his consciousness from them. There was a time and a place for them, but that time and place was not now. He took each one, acknowledged it, and then banished it, with a promise to return.

When he had centered himself, Master Navarr was still watching him, but this time with a flicker of a smile.

She did not tag-team with him in the same way Qui-Gon had, but he felt the same surge of allyship with her – the same knowledge that they were there for the same purpose: the best for everyone, but especially the workers they were here to protect. She was less vocal than he was, but that was all right; the negotiation was conducted by Laike and Lacer, who knew what their movement needed. Master Navarr simply supported them with her presence, whispered to them a time or two to change their approach – and nudged Obi-Wan through the Force when needed to support them in turn.

The negotiations were settled in the space of only a few hours.

Qui-Gon lay in the dark quiet of their shared shack at the labor headquarters, knees bent up to fit the full length of his body on his sleeping couch. One hand trailed over the edge, absently ruffling Anakin’s hair as he tinkered with something on the floor. Rie sat in the corner, poking at her datapad – reading, perhaps, or picking up what traces she could of news alerts in nearby systems. The moment was peaceful, except for the roiling emotions in the Force around them.

For his part, they were regret – a regret and sorrow so heavy that he was struggling to release it, particularly when it was echoed in the weakness of his body. He had woken that morning with his chest a pit of quicksand and his limbs full of duracrete, and had known instantly that he would not be able to make it to the day’s negotiations. He had overdone it yesterday; he should have left after his tour with Obi-Wan, but he had been loath to depart the negotiations when he could watch Obi-Wan work: watch him so skillfully tease meaning out of opaque phrases and confront lies with delicate grace. His chest had ached with pride at the sight of it, at the knowledge that his apprentice had so grown into his potential – and he had not recognized that that ache must have been physical, as well: one of those warnings he still had such difficulty heeding when he wanted nothing more than to stay where he was.

And now he was paying for it. There was no doubt the negotiations would be finalized today, and he would have missed his chance to bid Obi-Wan a proper farewell.

Again.

“You’re thinking about him,” said Anakin beneath him, unprompted. His head had gone stiff beneath Qui-Gon’s hand, and Qui-Gon let his fingers slide out of his hair. “Obi-Wan.”

“I am,” said Qui-Gon – neutral, light, free of any response to the implicit accusation in Anakin’s tone. “I was sorry not to see him today.”

“You wish he were still your apprentice.”

In the corner, Rie’s fingers went still. She seemed to shrink without moving, as though wishing she could dissolve into the Force without drawing any attention to herself. But Qui-Gon could not spare her this – and perhaps he should not.

This insecurity in Anakin was something they had all been confronted with, now and again – was something they were slowly working through. Was perfectly understandable, given his situation; chosen Anakin might be by fate, but his life had been so rife with instability that he could not find personal security without the assurance of being chosen by others, as well. It was a delicate balance to walk; when to reassure him that he was worthy of being chosen and when to remind him that even the need to be chosen could be dangerous, could lead to the more poisonous forms of attachment.

For now, Qui-Gon chose to take Anakin’s words at face value. “I do not,” he said easily. “He has not been my apprentice for some time, but I have had little opportunity to see him in his element as a knight. I am proud of what I saw yesterday.”

“Am I as good as he was?”

Yes, doubtless a deeper underlying problem. Qui-Gon gathered himself together, scraping up his mental strength and composure to face it once again. “You are very different from him, Ani,” he said. “Your talents and skills are not lesser than his; nor are they greater. They simply lie in different areas. The urge to compare yourself to others can be a dangerous one, because it can distract from the particular things you are able to accomplish – and the particular things you are called to accomplish in each moment. You must learn to master that urge, to release your attachment to the sort of person you think you should be and what you expect from others in relation to it.”

Anakin sighed. The sounds of his metalwork resumed, and Qui-Gon tentatively returned his hand to his head. “It just confuses me sometimes,” he confessed. “You left the Jedi because you didn’t agree with them, but then we still talk about not being attached to things. We went back to see my mom, but I had to leave her again. I’m not supposed to love people, but then you talk about Obi-Wan like” –

“I have never said anything against love, and I never will,” said Qui-Gon sternly. “Love can lead to some of the most beautiful expressions of the Force’s will, and it can also lead to some of the most terrible things sentient beings can do to one another.” He had seen both in Anakin already but chose not to mention it. “This is why we are so careful and deliberate about our feelings, why we name them and understand them – and allow them to live within us without holding power over us. I do love Obi-Wan very much. I am proud of him and I have missed him. But when I was called to do so, I let him go, and I will do so again. I have great love for you as well, but it expresses itself in different ways. And your love for your mother was strong enough that you listened to her wishes and let her go as well when you had to. That is what we mean when we talk about being careful of attachment – we seek to love without doing harm.”

Anakin shuffled closer to him, letting Qui-Gon move his hand down from his head to his shoulder. The muscles were tense, but he did not resist the questioning touch. “I sometimes think only bad things happen to people who love me,” he admitted.

“That’s not true,” Qui-Gon said. “And we are all proof here. Do you think this is a bad thing, our group here? The work we’re doing?”

“No,” Anakin said. “But we’ve barely started. Couldn’t it still all go wrong?”

“It could, or it could not,” said Qui-Gon. “All that is in the hands of the Force. We respond to its calls and we serve it as best we can – and we accept what that might mean for us personally, with the knowledge that we are giving our lives in service to a greater purpose. In the end, death is a certainty for us all. We are just here to make our lives – and others’ – as meaningful as we can, while we can.”

Anakin let out a slight huff, but he leaned back into Qui-Gon’s grip. “There is no death, there is the Force?” he said, more ironic than a boy of nearly eleven should have been able to muster.

“There is death as we perceive it,” Qui-Gon said. “People we love die and are lost to us, and we too are bound to whatever transformation must come of giving up our individual consciousness and bodies.” He had been so certain, in that generator in Theed, that he was about to discover what that might mean. Perhaps it had lent him a certain philosophical placidity when it came to death: he had not died, but he had lost something regardless – and gained something new in the transformation. “But in the Force all is alive. When we listen to its will, when we act as its instruments, we are part of that larger flow of life – and is that not a form of immortality?”

“Is that what we’re doing now, then?” said Anakin. “Is that what all this is? Listening to the Force?”

From the corner, Rie spoke up. “We’re listening to the calls of people who need help,” she said. “Calls from the Force are always for us to interpret – we are limited to a single consciousness and all the particular experiences and biases that create that consciousness. It’s why we spend so much time meditating – learning to get out of our own way.” She gave a rueful laugh. “But in absence of perfect clarity, I choose to interpret very real distress calls as a call from the Force itself. Sometimes it speaks in more overt ways, after all.”

Qui-Gon nodded. “If everything is of the Force, then so must be the call to give aid.” He squeezed Anakin’s shoulder. “You have your premonitions and Rie has her research skills. They are different ways of connecting to the Force, but neither is superior to the other.”

“Yes, my prodigious ability to type words into a datapad,” said Rie dryly. “If you’re interested, my ‘research skills’ are starting to pick up what might be our next distress call. I don’t know how much longer we should expect to be here” –

“Not too long, I should think,” said Qui-Gon. “From what I witnessed yesterday, Obi-Wan has this well in hand. I believe we have done our part in, ah, amplifying the calls for change here. The political solutions will be determined from there.”

He had not thought about it in this way until he had seen Obi-Wan at the bargaining table across from him, but it had lent a new angle to his considerations of their place here, their role in creating change. Jedi must work within their mandates – but could Qui-Gon not, from outside the Order, create situations that would allow those mandates to change? Could their work draw Jedi attention to injustice and thus inspire the kind of lasting change that political negotiation might bring about? Suspect though the work of the Republic had become, perhaps his work from outside the political system might make some changes to the inside. Perhaps they might be partners from different places.

Beneath him, Anakin hummed. “This is what I thought being a Jedi would be like,” he said. “Helping people. Making change. I’m ready to move on, too.”

“It is the most important part of being a Jedi,” said Qui-Gon. “Even if we are not Jedi in name any longer. We’ll consult with Rowana when she returns, but if she agrees that we have done our part here, then yes, we should move on.” He let out a long breath, and all the energy that had gone into the conversation fled along with the rush of air. Not for the first time, he was overcome with gratitude for the help of the others who had come with him, for their support and their curiosity and their willingness to share the task of teaching. Anakin was a brilliant student and a worthy apprentice, but Qui-Gon did not know how he would have managed his instruction alone. “But in that case, I would beg your indulgence with me for a few more hours.” His eyes fell closed, his lips numb and clumsy, the couch beneath him engulfing him in the most exquisite comfort. “Before I can think about leaving, I am in dire need of more sleep.”

“Well done, young Master Kenobi. The Republic will be glad to welcome its newest planet into the Senate.”

Chancellor Palpatine looked strange in hologram form with the color leached out of him. Obi-Wan had never been on a direct comm call with him before. He bowed. “Thank you, Your Excellency. The government of Nidhat should be in touch with you shortly to arrange representation.”

“Yes, you’ve done well, Obi-Wan,” said Mace. “You are a credit to the Order.”

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan repeated. To hear these words – it was something he had dreamed of for years, something he had imagined hearing in his younger days when he had despaired of ever learning fast enough. But now, somehow, he was so distracted by his own wondering that he could hardly register it. “Then I just have one further thing to report.”

“Please, go on,” said the Chancellor.

Obi-Wan hadn’t planned to ask this with him here, but the Chancellor had been the one curious about the outside assistance, after all. He would find out one way or another. He sucked in a breath. “Masters, Chancellor – when you sent me on this mission, were you aware that the source of the outside help the people of Zond were receiving was Qui-Gon Jinn?”

He had had some time to think since he had seen Qui-Gon and had begun to wonder if this was another test. Jedi life seemed full of them, cropping up around every corner and everywhere he could think of to look. Had the Council sent him here to see how he would react? To test the strength of his loyalty? Or in the hopes that Qui-Gon would return with him, drawn back by the mere presence of his former padawan?

If the latter, they should never have doubted the stubbornness of Qui-Gon Jinn.

“Wondered, I did,” said Yoda. “Though we did not know. Confirmed this, you have?”

“Yes, Masters,” said Obi-Wan. “He was present for part of the negotiations and seems to have been aiding the labor movement for some time, though he did not tell me how long.”

“Qui-Gon Jinn,” repeated the Chancellor. “He left the Order, didn’t he? A year or so ago?”

“Half,” Obi-Wan said absently – then flushed. The Chancellor was not interested in pedantic corrections, and the Council did not need to know how closely he himself had been monitoring the time that had passed since Qui-Gon’s departure.

But his lapse had not been missed. Mace Windu turned a sharp gaze onto him, and Obi-Wan schooled his face into impassivity as best he could. He had never quite gained the knack – particularly not when speaking to other Jedi.

“About half a year, yes,” said Mace. “In the time since, we have also lost a few others who we believe to have allied themselves with him. Did you see any of those others, Obi-Wan?”

“Master Rowana Navarr is here,” he said. “That is the only other person I can confirm.” Though he was certain now that all other reports were accurate. How many others would they lose in the time to come?

“Is this dangerous?” said the Chancellor. “Having a rogue group of Jedi engaging in vigilante action?”

“I do not think so,” said Mace. “Qui-Gon Jinn left the Order on good terms, and although we may disagree with his methods, we cannot control what he does now, so long as he does not harm anyone or misrepresent the Jedi.”

“Hmm,” said the Chancellor. “I will take your word for that. But still, perhaps we might keep a closer eye on the doings of his group. I have worked with you for long enough that I would hesitate to underestimate you – and I shudder to think what havoc a group of Jedi unaccountable to any system could wreak.”

It was just what Obi-Wan had said to Qui-Gon, but he found himself protesting. “With respect, Chancellor,” he said, “I know Qui-Gon Jinn very well, and I don’t believe he would harm anyone unless the outcome would be far worse.”

“Perhaps,” said the Chancellor. “I will certainly take your assurances into consideration. I thank you again for your work, Master Kenobi.”

“As do we,” said Mace. “Your transport out should be leaving shortly. Will you be ready?”

Obi-Wan had hoped for a longer time – had hoped, perhaps, to encounter the labor leadership again and ask if he might be brought to Qui-Gon for a proper farewell. But he felt in the pocket of his robes, wrapped his fingers around the data chip Qui-Gon had handed him, a cool, comforting pressure.

If you ever want to reach me, for any reason.

He could if he wanted to. He had everything he needed, which meant that there was no reason to stay. To give in to his own desires for something so small as this would be ill befitting the knighthood he still felt compelled to prove he deserved.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’ll be ready.”

Chapter Text

Bolstered by their success in Zond, that was how their lives carried on for the next few months.

It was both similar and different from the lives they had known at the Jedi Temple – instead of being assigned their missions by the Council, who received their briefings from the Senate or from other contacts, they were seeking out their contacts themselves, based on feeling, premonition, and research. And instead of starting with governments, with diplomatic negotiations, they were starting from below.

They took to asking around when they stopped for more fuel or to work a bit for food, looking for leads that would guide them to the next place they were called to be. And in between it all they continued to learn – to teach one another, to practice meditation and sparring in ways that took into account their particular needs, their developing philosophies.

They did not encounter other Jedi on their missions, for the most part – although there were times when Rie, checking up on a planet or a system they had recently left, would note that it seemed Jedi presence had followed them there. Perhaps it was to work the smoothing-over hand to whatever havoc they had helped to wreak, or perhaps it was to check up on them – surely Obi-Wan had reported their presence to the Jedi Council.

He himself had not contacted Qui-Gon directly, which Qui-Gon strove to make his peace with. He had seen his apprentice again, as he had craved for so long, and had done all he could do – had given Obi-Wan his perspective and a way to communicate with him and left the rest in Obi-Wan’s hands. What more could he ask for than this? He had known when he left, after all, that Obi-Wan would not approve of his decision; had known that Obi-Wan’s beliefs and convictions aligned much more directly with the Order than with Qui-Gon’s. And Qui-Gon had a sneaking suspicion that, for all he had come to see the official Jedi Order as partners in their work, though coming from opposite ends, the Jedi Council and Senate leadership did not quite share his view.

And so it was only a matter of time before things changed.

The unrest in the Ista system was spread out across a planet and many moons – more widespread and pervasive than anything their group of six had attempted to take on before. And yet utterly impossible to ignore. Centuries of structural oppression had come to a head between two groups of humans on the planet – one which had been treated as second-class citizens for a long time – and protests had exploded around the system, met with violent response from law enforcement and little aid from the government. The ferocity of the tension had begun to affect Rowana as soon as their ship had entered the atmosphere, and Rie had been similarly stricken from her reading and the briefings she had given the rest of them.

The smoke from protests and battles was rising to meet their ship, landmasses all over the planet littered with patches of color that could only be crowds of people – protesting, demonstrating, fighting. Quinlan’s fingers flexed visibly inside his gloves as they drew nearer, and Anakin’s face was tight with anger.

Oh, dear. Qui-Gon had not thought through how a place like this might affect Anakin – how his strong sense of justice and inclination towards explosive emotion might play with this level of pervasive outrage, the hot throb of it in the Force. Anakin did not yet have the control that allowed him to retain his sense of judgment in the face of something like this, the ability to listen to the will of the Force and the needs of the people and separate himself from it, to do what must be done.

But he must learn it sometime. For all that teaching was the highest good and responsibility of Jedi to one another, it could not take precedence over heeding the call of the Force and the needs of the people they were meant to aid and protect. Anakin’s personal good could not come first here. They must simply weather this as a group, as best they could, and trust that he would have others around to guide him through it.

“Let’s land near one of the protests,” Qui-Gon said. “I think the only thing we can do now is to join the fight.”

Ista was perfect.

Outwardly, the expression on Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s face was all horror and kindly concern as he watched the images on the holo in the Jedi Council chambers – the chants of outraged defiance morphing into cries of pain as gas, smoke bombs, weapons were discharged into their mass. Internally, however, Darth Sidious was reveling.

Oh, the things sentient beings could do to one another! The pain they could inflict! The Jedi liked to believe that the Sith were a horror all their own, the source of all the pain in the galaxy – and it was that very blindness that had allowed them to miss their return, their slow rise over all these years, the way they had built and consolidated their power. What allowed them to miss, even now, the living embodiment of the Sith in their midst murmuring insipid words of shock and pain. The Sith were both a tool of the darkness and able to use the darkness as a tool; so long as there was darkness in the galaxy, the Sith would never die – and that darkness was even now continuing its slow creep into the very heart of the Republic, into the heart of the Jedi itself.

But the situation in Ista – no. This was no Sith-wrought spectacle, but merely a manifestation of the capacity of sentient beings to harm one another, the way that slow acts of cruelty could build on one another, layering fuel onto fuel – until the right spark caught and the whole thing burst into a conflagration that could not be contained.

No, the Sith had had nothing to do with this. But that did not mean it could not be turned to their advantage.

“Are you certain that Jedi presence would not inflame tensions further?” he asked aloud. “This is a horror, to be sure, but it is Ista’s horror. Already the secessionist systems begin to accuse the Republic of wielding its influence where it has no right. I should hate to strengthen their accusations. Is it right for us to interfere here?”

“With respect, Chancellor,” said Mace Windu, “it is not a question of right, but of duty. It is our responsibility as Jedi to step in where we see people in pain when it is possible we can help to alleviate it.”

Ah, Mace Windu. The man might have made a fine Sith, had he been molded right – and if he had, Sidious surely would have killed him eventually. But he would have found it a pleasure to match wits with him. As it was, he found the man despicable in a singularly entertaining way: his arrogance was a delight to watch, his self-righteousness about the light almost charming as he failed to notice the darkness eating away the foundations beneath his very feet. It was very likely Sidious would kill him personally as it was, and he looked forward to the day with the savor of anticipation that could not be rushed.

“Of course,” he said. “I would never dream of involving myself in Jedi business. But I would ask that you exercise some caution? This seems like quite a dangerous situation, and – ah, it is unsavory of me even to ask, but I have the reputation of the Republic to think about. I hope you will make it clear” –

“Our highest goal is to preserve peace,” said Mace. “The representatives we send will strive towards that end. We will not misrepresent the Republic or our mandate. Will that suffice?”

“It will,” said Palpatine, layering contrition into his voice. “And I must apologize if I have offended. I understand that the Jedi are called to higher matters than politics.”

“We only attempt to do in action what you attempt to do in laws, Chancellor,” said Mace.

And it was done. The pieces were lined up and in play, and Ista seemed to have presented itself as a solution to the problem that had been nagging at Palpatine for some time now – that little subsection of the Order over which he had lost control. Not that he truly thought Qui-Gon Jinn and his merry band of outlaws could pose an actual threat to the ongoing plan, but they were a nuisance – a nuisance that Palpatine might just be able to put down right now.

And maybe, if all went according to plan, this might deliver Anakin back into his hands.

It became nearly instantly clear that this situation was far beyond any of their ability to mediate – indeed, that attempting to do so would be so offensive to everyone involved in the situation that hostilities would only escalate. And so they flung themselves into their determination to protect. They joined protests and demonstrations, used the Force to protect demonstrators from the worst of the weapons thrown at them. On the occasion that blasters were drawn, they did not hesitate to use lightsabers to deflect them. What did they have to lose, after all? This fight belonged to the people of Ista, and their negotiations were theirs to make, if their governments would choose to listen to them. If all they could do was help keep people safe from violence, then it was what they would do.

At first, all they could feel was the drag of it – the toll it took on the body and soul not only to be in constant danger, but also to feel in the very Force around them what it meant to be surrounded by cruelty and selfishness and pain built up over centuries, all attempts at concealment stripped away at last. It hit Rowana first and hardest; she suffered from constant migraines brought on by the pressure of the Force from the intensity of the emotion and tension around them. Rie had withdrawn into herself, spending her nights reading desperately as if enough research might find a solution, somehow. Qui-Gon could see the light of it when he tossed and turned at night, unable to find sleep even as the effort to stay awake sapped at his strength until he wondered how he would ever sit upright again. Aayla sought to forge connections with the others her age, but found herself rebuffed and discouraged at every turn. Even carefree Quinlan was on edge and restless, tugging at his gloves to protect himself from the overwhelming sensory impact of anything he might touch.

Anakin, meanwhile . . . Qui-Gon had found himself grateful that Anakin’s training lightsaber did not have the power to kill or to sever limbs. His anger, the part of him that howled against injustice, roared like an electrical storm in the Force around him, flickering with such power that sometimes even Qui-Gon hesitated to reach out and touch him. It was an understandable emotion, and a sympathetic one, but it also felt too close to out of control – too close to the edge of doing something dangerous, something from which he could not come back.

But it was only natural – only a reflection of the currents already running in the Force around them. Being in such a place felt at first like living in a concentration of darkness – of all the worst urges of consciousness given space to roam, all the righteous anger of the oppressed set against the cold dismissal of the powerful – all emotions that could sweep a Jedi too easily away from the path of the light. During his bouts of exhausted sleeplessness, Qui-Gon found himself wondering if they were right to be here at all.

And yet . . .

And yet, it was more than that – and the longer they stayed, the more they began to build trust, the more they began to sense the light, as well. They could feel it in the camps that had formed outside demonstration sites, in the way those who had food brought it to share with those who did not. They heard it in the sharing of stories – the way that those who desperately needed to speak were given space and others listened. They saw it in the outpouring of solidarity and support among the people from so many places who had gathered together to share something, to stand for something. They felt it in the friendship that was tentatively extended to them, too – in the teenagers who eventually allowed Aayla to join their conversations and their meals, and then folded the rest of them in as well. In this example of sharing and unselfishness and will.

It was so different from any mission Qui-Gon had ever undertaken as a Jedi. They were here with these people instead of for them, devoting their power and skill to this cause without the authority of official Jedi presence. It was an example of balance between light and dark in the most unexpected place – but light and dark without intentional application of the Force, in their purest and most concentrated forms: in the simple cruelties and kindnesses that sentient beings were capable of inflicting on one another.

It was enough to make him rethink the whole concept of balance as he had been studying it – enough to make him wonder anew what balance meant in the context of a formalized Order devoted to the light. He believed in the Jedi – still and always – but was the Order truly as dedicated to the light as it believed? Where had the cracks begun to form? What was it that had clouded his senses at the Temple, where here his connection to the Force felt freer, easier – even if that did make it more painful at times?

The news came to them after they had been in the system for a few weeks, camped with the same people and lending their strength and skill as best they could. News traveled between demonstration sites, between protestors, through public and encrypted channels alike, and this came through both: there were Jedi in the Ista system.

Jedi! Qui-Gon glanced to Rie when the news came to them and found her looking back at him; she was the member of their little group who was most explicitly philosophically critical of the Order’s direction, and they had discussed the coexistence of the Order and balance with similar trepidation. What could it mean to have Jedi here in this place, here with them?

“They’re on the central planet,” reported one of Aayla’s friends who had been the one to bring the news. “But there’s an interview with them where they say they’ll be looking at the protest sites for themselves.”

“Good,” Qui-Gon murmured. He remembered the last time he had encountered Jedi on a mission like this – remembered Obi-Wan, the way he had determined to make his judgments for himself. And remembered, too, the skill of Obi-Wan’s negotiation, the way he wielded his own political power with such precision for the cause of compassion. He remembered his own words to Obi-Wan, that having Jedi on both sides of the negotiating table might be the path to a positive solution.

“Jedi?” said Fane, who frequently led chants and had the day before helped Quinlan defuse an explosive. “Will these ones be real Jedi?”

The question was enough to make Qui-Gon pause. What was it that made a Jedi real – affiliation or simple principle? He had stopped identifying himself openly as a Jedi, though it was clear whenever lightsabers were drawn or the Force was called upon, out of respect for his separation from the Order – and yet he had never stopped thinking of himself as one, as someone devoted to the ways of the Force. If a Jedi was a Force user dedicated to the light, then their work on Ista had been the work of real Jedi, even in the mistakes they had made and the ways they had gone wrong.

He said none of this aloud, keeping his thoughts on the matter to, “I would assume that they are affiliated with the Order, yes.” And therefore the Republic. Something slick and suspicious coiled in his gut. “We are not answerable to them, if that’s what you mean.”

“Who are you answerable to?” she asked.

She had come to like them well enough, Qui-Gon thought, over the last few weeks, to appreciate them as colleagues in the struggle, but never to trust them. She was right not to, for the very reason of this question. Again Qui-Gon thought of Obi-Wan, thought of his words about accountability, and tensed against another twinge of emotion.

“Officially, only ourselves,” he said. “And the legal systems of whatever planet we find ourselves on, although as you can imagine, there are exceptions. Personally, we are answerable to the call of the Force.” This was not a popular answer, but that was all right. It was not intended to be. “Right now, I consider us answerable to you – to your movement, to your needs – and would ask to be held to account if we do something to harm it.”

“Something like talking to those other Jedi?”

“Do you think that would harm your movement?” This was Rie, looking up from her datapad. “In what way?”

Fane shrugged. “Jedi work with the Republic,” she said. “They work with the government. The government here is the source of our problems. You’ve been here for a few weeks, but none of you can imagine what it’s been like to live like this all our lives. These Jedi will want to compromise with us, and we’re tired of being offered solutions that claim to be compromises but are just masks for more of the same. If that’s what we would get from you talking to the Jedi” –

“We have no power here,” said Qui-Gon. “We possess no secrets of yours that could not be otherwise accessed, and if we had wanted to sway you with Force persuasions, we would have done so long ago.” Had the thought even entered their minds, Qui-Gon doubted it would have accomplished anything, anyway; the strength and resilience they had found here would resist any kind of Force suggestion. “No false compromises will come from us as a result of this meeting, if it takes place. If you are truly opposed to it . . .”

He did want to see the Jedi, he realized. Perhaps it was in response to the questions he had begun to ask, a desire to test the integrity of the Order as it had become. Perhaps it was out of true hope that a meeting might accomplish something that had not yet occurred. Or perhaps it was a smaller, more personal hope – the foolish wish that Obi-Wan might be among them.

“We don’t control you,” said Fane. “Just as you don’t control us. You are always free to come and go as you want – we don’t conscript anyone to our cause here. Go see your Jedi friends if you want to.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Just know that if you do anything in that meeting to harm our cause, one way or the other – be that sharing too much of our information or doing something to turn those Jedi more firmly against us – you won’t be welcome back here. Do you understand me?”

Qui-Gon met her gaze calmly. “Perfectly,” he said.

They left the next day at dawn.

Their departure was met with a mixture of emotions: some sorrow, some relief. It was understandable, given their uneasy situation within this group – they had come to be accepted, even liked, but they were still and always outsiders. And now they must go to do what they could best do as outsiders: understand the perspective of the others who had come here from outside; negotiate with them if they could – at very least, hear what their impressions of the Force were here, what conclusions they might have come to.

Rie read them the path she had traced of the visiting Jedi through the news reports she could access, and Aayla located the next moon they would be likely to visit – but when they investigated camp after camp, they found nothing. No Jedi presence; no strange occurrences; no stirring in the Force to tell them where their visitors might be. Only confusion and impatience – people who could not fathom why they cared so much about finding these Jedi. Showing their own lightsabers and their own identities would hardly be productive in this instance, not when it did not truly matter to the people they were speaking to. And so, after a semi-thorough investigation, they set off again.

It was the same at the next moon, and the next. They searched for nearly a day, and by the time the sky had begun to darken, apprehension had begun to stir in Qui-Gon’s gut.

“Maybe we should go where they were last seen,” said Quinlan at last. “There might be something to find there that can give us a clue where they went next.”

Because the mood all through their ship had steadily begun to darken, all of them beginning to churn with the squirming suspicion that something wasn’t right here, that something had happened. That something, somehow, had gone terribly wrong.

“They can’t have been hurt, you don’t think?” said Aayla anxiously. “I mean, you don’t suppose something happened to them?”

Quinlan put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m not sure,” was all he said – and even he sounded grave.

When they landed on the next moon, the sky was dark and the air was thick with fear.

Fear? It was a common emotion in this system, these days, but there was something about this fear that was different – an unfamiliar wariness, an unexpected bitter tang on the air, an undercurrent of suspicion and shock and fury. Qui-Gon frowned at the others, but everyone else only shrugged back. Even Rowana did not seem to understand what this could possibly be about.

But when they ventured forth to find a camp, to find some people who might give them a clue, they were greeted with more fear – with muted voices and defensive postures and the assurance that somehow, the people they were talking to were holding something back. That they were not welcome here. That – somehow – they were the ones causing the fear.

And when Qui-Gon asked about the Jedi who had been here, the whole group of people rocked back from them with a gasp.

“Why are you asking us?” piped up one bold soul. “Don’t you know well enough?”

Qui-Gon frowned, but before he could speak, someone else stepped forward. “We don’t need to humor the murderers among us,” he said. “We’re strong enough together to take them if we have to.”

“We don’t want to take you,” Qui-Gon tried. “We’re just trying to understand” –

Rowana’s grip on his arm stopped him. “They mean it,” she murmured. “I don’t know what’s happening here, but the longer we stay, the more ire we’ll draw. We need to go back to the ship, now.”

Qui-Gon had learned not to doubt Rowana’s feelings before either of them had ever become a Jedi Master. He nodded, and they retreated without another word.

“Murderers,” Quinlan said thoughtfully, when they had all gathered in the common area of their ship once more, having decided to bed down for the night and resume their search in the morning. “They seemed pretty sure of that, didn’t they?”

“They did,” agreed Qui-Gon. “And they reacted in anger when we mentioned the other Jedi in the system. Do you suppose they might have done something?” The thought was nearly intolerable, his very mind flinching away from it, but he forced himself to speak. “Did the Jedi here” –

He couldn’t say it. Jedi killed when they had to, and Qui-Gon had done it himself. But the thought of a Jedi murderer, the thought of Jedi joining the oppressive government here in an effort to defend them from protestors – the thought turned his stomach.

Beside him, Rie let out a quiet gasp.

“No,” she said, and her voice was heavy with dread. “No, it’s” – She looked up, her face carved in horrified lines. “It seems the Jedi here are the ones who were murdered.”

When she lifted the pad to show him, Qui-Gon’s stomach lurched.

Three Jedi, three bodies strewn on the ground of one of Ista’s rocky moons. Bodies he knew, at least two of them, if not well – masters Varina Zendu and Sorv Nidor, and the third – that was a padawan braid splayed out beside the angled body – and all of them – oh, all of them –

All of them had been stabbed, cleanly impaled, right through the middle, the way Qui-Gon himself had been years ago, but without the ready assistance that had enabled him to cling to life – and those wounds, charred at the edges, cauterized –

Those wounds had been made by a lightsaber.

The walls of the ship spun around him; Qui-Gon clutched at the table where he sat to keep himself upright. “No,” he whispered. “Who – how” –

“That’s why they called us murderers,” whispered Rowana, her own voice thick with horror. “They thought we – they thought” –

“But – but this doesn’t make sense,” said Aayla, with the desperate air of someone grappling for a thread of reason. “There’s no one else who has lightsabers. No one else who would kill a Jedi. No one else who” –

Qui-Gon’s hand strayed to the center of his torso. Remembering pain was not the same as feeling it, but the shock and horror of it still stayed with him, the memory of how the wound had burned so hot it felt cold, how he had felt his own life slipping away. How he had not even been able to look up to see Obi-Wan, but had known he was still trapped behind that shield, helplessly waiting and still in danger of the very same fate –

“There is someone,” he said quietly.

“You think the Sith are here on Ista?” said Quinlan. “I haven’t seen anything that would indicate their presence here, and this unrest has been going on much longer than two years.”

“Haven’t seen anything until now,” said Qui-Gon.

“Let’s find them, then,” said Anakin. He had been quiet until now, but now he burst into white-hot flame beside Qui-Gon. “Let’s find them and make them tell us what they’re up to. Maybe we can stop them” –

“Do you think they’re here for us?” asked Rowana.

Qui-Gon shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But the danger has just multiplied tenfold – for us and for the people of Ista. We need to warn them.”

“Warn them of what?” said Quinlan. “That they’re in danger? They already know that. They think we did it.” It was a fair enough point, Qui-Gon supposed. “And if the Sith are after Jedi, I think the safer thing to do would be to leave the system altogether. Hope they chase us. Let the people here work out their problems on their own. Maybe we should have done that in the first place.”

Qui-Gon closed his eyes, reaching for his calm center, reaching for the Force – and it eluded his desperate grapple. Grief, horror, confusion, the exhaustion of the last several weeks made him clumsy, his focus slippery. He could not identify what was the right thing to do.

“I agree with Quinlan,” said Rowana. “Perhaps the next lesson we’re meant to be learning is recognizing when our presence does more harm than good.”

Qui-Gon breathed in. Listened to her words, let himself touch the Force currents around him – the familiar presences of the five others, who had become so dear to him in the last year. Listened to the distress raging in the Force around him – a battle between light and dark, untouched by Jedi or Sith, untouched by those sensitive to the Force – reliant on the will and strength and generosity of those already fighting it. Felt the way it could warp, the way it could so easily become their battle, overshadowing the needs of the system itself.

If the Sith were here – if the Sith had truly come to pursue them –

“You’re right,” he said at last. It was what they had done with Anakin’s mother, what they had done with the Order itself. Not everything was meant to be touched by the Jedi. It was another lesson in humility, perhaps, of the kind he had been learning for so long now: not everything could be fixed by deliberate application of the Force. Sometimes it was best to leave the people – and the Force – to themselves. “We leave at once.”

Always, Obi-Wan seemed to be the last person in the Temple to know anything.

He clearly needed to become better at listening around corners, or cultivating sources of gossip, or whatever it was his peers were doing that ensured they always knew something was happening before he did. He didn’t know what it was even now, but he knew that it must be something that concerned him – because for all their best efforts to hide their feelings, everyone he crossed paths with couldn’t seem to stop sending him sorrowful looks, or darting glances at him out of the corner of their eyes when they thought he didn’t notice.

And, given the state of Temple gossip for the last year or so, Obi-Wan could guess who it concerned.

But in this case, he wanted to know from someone he knew he could trust – and someone who would be straight with him: no teasing, no verbal shortcuts. Someone who would give him the full story as she knew it. So he reached out to Siri.

Siri had been a good friend since his youth, and had always been Obi-Wan’s choice for straightforward advice – verging on bluntness if she felt it necessary. And yet, even in the diminished hologram, her face and voice were full of sympathy. “Obi-Wan,” she said when she picked up the comm, sorrow dripping from her words. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry about what?” he said, keeping his voice steady even as his stomach gave an unpleasant twist. “Siri, no one ever tells me anything. What is happening here, and why is everyone looking at me as if someone died?”

“Oh.” Her hand came up to cover her mouth. “You’d better come to my quarters,” she said. “As soon as you can.”

He rushed.

It was unbecoming of a Jedi, perhaps, to do something so undignified, but he ran down the halls to Siri’s rooms. Knowing what he already knew, suspecting what he suspected – if the worst was coming, he wanted to know now.

“Qui-Gon,” he demanded, when the door opened to Siri’s quarters. “What’s happened to Qui-Gon?”

Siri winced. “Oh, Obi-Wan,” she said. “It’s not what’s happened to him.” The room throbbed around him, heat climbing from his chest up into his face, pressure expanding outwards in his head – and he thought he would always remember this moment, the sickening lurch in his chest and his stomach and his head when Siri said, “It’s what he’s done.”

As always, it was Rie who found it out.

Qui-Gon was meditating with Anakin and Quinlan, seated on the floor with their hands linked in a triangle, an exercise to release emotions. Fear and anger and grief still flickered in all of them from their time on Ista, most intense in Anakin, but startlingly strong in Quinlan as well. With their eyes closed and hands touching, Qui-Gon and Anakin could sense – in a place beyond words – not only his emotions, but the exercises he had learned to manage them: letting them flow close to the surface, letting them work their way through his mind and body and heart. Anakin’s own feelings were still intense in him, raging like a storm, but perhaps this could provide an example for him, a way of channeling the emotion and releasing it. Qui-Gon let himself drift in the intensity of their emotion, let himself feel it, let it flow through him –

And then heard it all, the tension and the fear and the grief, echoed in Rie’s voice, blaring suddenly through the ship’s communication system. “I need everyone to gather in the common room, right now.”

Her tone garnered results. Everyone was gathered within the space of only a few minutes, and she was – as always – seated at the table, staring down at her datapad. But when she looked up at them, Qui-Gon had never seen such dread on her round, pleasant face.

“There’s an alert out for us everywhere within Republic space,” she said. “We’ve been accused of the murder of the three Jedi on Ista’s moon.”

Siri had given Obi-Wan the news mere hours before its spread became official.

The bulletin was issued across Republic space. Images of Qui-Gon’s face – Qui-Gon’s and Rowana Navarr’s, perhaps due to Obi-Wan’s confirmation that she at least was working in league with him – pervaded the HoloNet News. The images were jarring to Obi-Wan’s eyes: Master Navarr’s face was twisted in anger, where he had only ever seen her gentle and didactic; and Qui-Gon’s was an image Obi-Wan could not place, could not even imagine where the news reporters had gotten it. He too looked displeased: his mouth set in a stubborn line, his eyebrows narrowed in irritation – the closest he had ever seen Qui-Gon to anger.

It was so different from Qui-Gon’s image in icons and recordings at the Temple: solemn, dignified, his face set in its typical serene calm. But even in this picture, Qui-Gon’s dignity could not quite be stripped away: his hair streamed down over his shoulders, his eyes gleamed blue, and Obi-Wan’s heart felt stretched to tearing. The same words, again and again: dangerous . . . do not engage . . . alert nearest Republic official immediately . . .

And he couldn’t believe it. He could not believe it – not of Qui-Gon, not of the master he had known all his life, not of the man who had spoken to him so earnestly only months ago on Zond about his desire for justice and peace. Of his respect for Jedi and the work they did, though he had left the Order for himself. He could not believe Qui-Gon would do this.

He did not know if everyone who had known Qui-Gon was being interviewed, or if he had been singled out for his known closeness to his master – but he was called before the Council to speak on his thoughts.

“Masters,” he said, when he was allowed to speak, “with all respect, I cannot believe this of Qui-Gon Jinn.”

“On the Ista system, he was known to be,” said Yoda. His voice was not without kindness, but there was steel beneath it, too – the tone that insisted he would not indulge any foolishness or willful self-denial. “Protecting the demonstrators there, were his people. Violence, there was known to be.”

“The wounds on the victims were made by a lightsaber, Knight Kenobi,” said Depa Billaba. “The circumstantial evidence is strong.”

“But Qui-Gon is not the only violent person with a lightsaber,” Obi-Wan pointed out. “Have you forgotten that he was nearly killed in the same way, Masters? By the Sith warrior we fought?”

“No,” said Mace Windu. “We have not forgotten it.” He leaned forward, hands on his chin, his eyes piercing Obi-Wan through. “But he survived that wound. These Jedi did not.”

Obi-Wan’s mouth popped open. “Are you implying” –

“We are not suggesting that Qui-Gon’s injuries were his own machinations,” said Master Windu. “But it may be that the Sith had some plan for him . . . some plan they are now putting into action.”

“We are not indicting Qui-Gon Jinn without a trial,” said Plo Koon. “Never fear that, Obi-Wan Kenobi. But we must talk to him. We must learn what happened here.”

“The reputation of the Order is at stake,” said Master Windu. “We assured the Chancellor that nothing would come of Qui-Gon’s absence to harm the Republic, and he now feels betrayed by us. More, we know that this danger poses a great and intentional threat to our own people. Qui-Gon must know of this, and yet he has made no effort to contact us.”

“If innocent he is,” said Yoda at last, “then face justice, he must. Why has he not done so, hm?”

Because if he didn’t do this, who did?

Obi-Wan’s thoughts roiled. Qui-Gon distrusted the Republic, and now he was wanted by them. He had renounced his work with the Jedi, and now the Jedi were renouncing him.

“Please forgive me for my difficulty accepting this,” he said. “But I have known Qui-Gon for more than half of my life now. He is not a killer. Masters” –

“And we have known him for even longer,” said Master Windu. “I have always known Qui-Gon to be ready to face his own mistakes and clear his own name. His absence speaks loudly here.”

“None of us is casting judgment on Qui-Gon before he presents himself to us,” said Even Piell. “But when that time comes, it will be the Council’s place to make that decision. Be careful not to get ahead of yourself, Knight Kenobi.”

Obi-Wan as good as recoiled from the rebuke in his tone – the implicit remember your place. But standing here in front of the Jedi Council, Obi-Wan was reminded too sharply of where his place had been for so long – at Qui-Gon’s side, just behind him, while Qui-Gon was making his own arguments to this very body. He had disagreed with Qui-Gon in private, then, though rarely before the Council – but now –

Yes, the Jedi Council had known Qui-Gon even longer than Obi-Wan had – but did any of them know him the way Obi-Wan did? They had seen the aftermath of his decisions, but not the integrity that went into making them; they had seen his willingness to argue his case, but perhaps they did not know that Qui-Gon was not one to pursue a hopeless argument when there was a way around it. Obi-Wan would have fought him on this, would have defended the Council’s impartiality – but now he looked at all these faces, with their minds made up, and abruptly he understood why Qui-Gon had not come back in the face of this accusation.

“Forgive me for my impertinence, Masters,” he said dully. “I would not question your judgment. But I have no information to give you.”

Except he did, didn’t he? Deep in the pocket of his robes, small and metallic – the data chip he had taken out so many times, had come so close to inserting into his own device – and always lost his nerve at the last moment. The information Qui-Gon had given to him, the link Obi-Wan had not quite dared to open. But it was waiting for him now if he wanted to know for himself. Burning a hole in his thigh where it rested, feeling like a beacon of light to the scrutinizing gazes of the Masters – this was Obi-Wan’s test of trust, Obi-Wan’s trial of loyalty and duty and detachment. He could turn it over to the Council now. He could give them Qui-Gon’s contact information. They could reach out to him, make their case themselves. Perhaps track him down, wherever he was, and bring him back for whatever trial they intended.

He didn’t. He bowed his way through his dismissal and went back to his rooms – to his own comm device.

Perhaps the time had finally come.

It was only hours after their impromptu, grim meeting – their decision to retreat to the Outer Rim to regroup while they determined what to do next – that Qui-Gon’s commlink beeped.

He looked down at it – at the unknown sender of a message whose contents he could not guess at. Was it someone in the Republic? Someone in the Order who had tracked them down? The person who had framed them, reaching out to deliver a message?

Or was it – could it possibly be –

The message was voice only, but the voice was so familiar that Qui-Gon closed his eyes as yearning lanced through his chest. He could see Obi-Wan’s face in his mind, the desperate determination, the stubborn set of the mouth – how this decision must have torn at him, but he had made it in the end and he was determined not to second-guess himself. Qui-Gon longed for him so fiercely in that moment, longed for the trust and the certainty that Obi-Wan had once had in him, longed to repair whatever had broken between him and the Order and come home.

“Master,” said Obi-Wan’s voice. “Qui-Gon. I know this wasn’t you. Can we arrange a meeting?” A pause, clipped off nearly before the end of the word, for the breath Qui-Gon knew Obi-Wan would be taking to calm himself amidst a rush of overflowing emotion. When the voice returned, it was breaking with a desperation that sent cracks radiating out through his own heart, his own resolve. “Please, I need to see you. As soon as possible.”

Chapter Text

Nighttime on Coruscant was a contrast of lights and darks when seen from the sky: the many flashing lights of space traffic juxtaposed against the darkening of the sky through which they flew. Qui-Gon blinked against it as their ship dipped down into the atmosphere, his eyes protesting against the city sights he had been so far away from for so long. His whole body protesting, all the way down to the constricting of the Force around him – so many life forms, all intent on their own errands, humming with complex thought and petty frustrations that choked the purity of connection to the Force.

Or perhaps it was simply that his connection to the Force was muffled here, and it had taken distance to see it clearly. Given what had happened so recently, he was finding that explanation more and more convincing.

“This is a stupid idea,” Quinlan said again, even as he guided them into one of the lanes leading to the spaceport.

“Yes, Quinlan, your displeasure has been registered,” said Qui-Gon from the seat behind him. “Many times.”

“And ignored,” said Quinlan. “Many times. But I thought it was worth saying again, since we’re on the same planet as the most powerful people in the galaxy, who are also likely to be looking for us, on a very dubious premise.”

“You know he’s only saying that because he has the boring part of the plan,” put in Aayla from the copilot’s chair. “But he is right. If this is a setup” –

“Obi-Wan would not set us up,” Qui-Gon insisted. All he had been able to think about for days was the ragged sound of Obi-Wan’s voice in his comm message: I know this wasn’t you. I need to see you. Obi-Wan didn’t pretend like that. If Obi-Wan said he needed him, then he did. “He’s honest.”

“Look,” Quinlan said, surprisingly gentle. “We all know you think the world of Kenobi, and I wouldn’t accuse him of trying to hurt any of us – especially not you. But he’s a good Jedi, before anything else – always has been. And if he thinks it’s all a big misunderstanding and luring you into a trap might be the best way to clear it up” –

“I know,” Qui-Gon nearly snapped. Did they think he hadn’t considered this very question himself? Did they think he hadn’t experienced Obi-Wan going behind his back before for what he thought was right? That had always been the biggest conflict between them, Qui-Gon’s willingness to work outside the lines and Obi-Wan’s determination to find a solution inside them. But –

But the lines had shifted, and Obi-Wan was not one to deny something when he knew it was true. Qui-Gon had known every part of Obi-Wan for so long, had watched him grow into the person he had become, had witnessed him step into the world on his own. He knew him – he had to believe that he did. For all that he had left the Order, he had not stopped believing in the good of the people who worked for it, even if their methods differed from his own, and of all of them he believed in Obi-Wan the most – always had. He could not abandon that trust now.

“I know,” he said again, softer this time, apologetic. “I’ve thought about it. But this is something that I have to do. And anyway – isn’t that why I have you two here to watch my back?”

“If we don’t get tracked down in customs first,” said Quinlan. “Or, worse, ground into dust by the bureaucrats. We’re getting in close to the spaceport. Are you ready?”

Qui-Gon rose from his seat, opening the hatch to the rest of the ship where the shuttle he had prepared was waiting. “I’ll get in position.”

They had procured this shuttle months before, had equipped it with scanner blockers mostly for Anakin’s amusement. It seemed that it was finally time to test them out.

The shuttle was small – large enough to hold Qui-Gon and one other person if necessary. His hoverchair occupied the second seat for now, folded up for storage. From the pilot’s chair, Qui-Gon activated the engines and let his hands hover over the two switches he would need to flip at exactly the same time – the one to detach from the main ship, and the one to activate the scanner-blocking field. He could not activate the blockers until he was detached from the ship, or else the whole ship would disappear from the trackers’ fields for an instant, making Quinlan and Aayla suspicious when they landed without him – but if he activated them more than an instant after detaching, his own shuttle would be noticeable evading the traffic at the spaceport.

Quinlan and Aayla would have to take the chance of being identified. Although the Order knew they were in Qui-Gon’s company, only Qui-Gon’s and Rowana’s faces – as best they could tell – had been broadcast throughout the Republic with an entreaty to call authorities if they were spotted. Why Rowana’s face had been included, none of them could imagine, but hopefully it would prove a mercy now.

Aayla’s voice came through the intercom between the two vessels. “Are you in position?”

“Yes.”

“Get ready to detach,” she said. “In three . . . two . . . one . . .”

Qui-Gon reached for the Force, let it heighten his senses, prepare him to react – and flipped the switches.

The shuttle rumbled to life beneath him as it came away from the main ship, and then he was being buffeted by the strong wind just below the atmosphere. The controls felt unsteady in his hands, beneath his unpracticed grip, and he narrowed his eyes against the dark-bright of the traffic below him – staying high for now in an effort to avoid detection, trusting in the Force to prevent him from crashing into someone else before he could accomplish his mission here. “Did it work?” he said into the comm.

“We think so,” said Aayla. “Our fields don’t show you at all, and there’s no sign that we disappeared from the scanners at any point.”

“So we’re in for some thrilling bureaucracy,” put in Quinlan. “You owe us for this, Jinn.”

“I owe you for a great many things,” said Qui-Gon mildly. “Luckily, there are no debts between friends.”

Quinlan snorted.

“Remember the rendezvous point,” Aayla cut in. “If you aren’t there in three hours, we’ll come looking for you.”

“Likewise,” Qui-Gon said. “May the Force be with you.”

“Likewise,” said Quinlan, and the comm line cut out, leaving Qui-Gon alone with his thoughts.

With his feelings, rather – feelings so powerful that his sought-for serenity eluded him again and again. Obi-Wan had sounded so desperate in his message, so tormented, his voice rough and raw – and Qui-Gon could practically see his face, the haunted look in his eyes. In his padawan days, he would have been worrying at his braid; Qui-Gon wondered if a new nervous habit had replaced it now, one he had not been present to see – or if Obi-Wan had succeeded in his quest to break those habits altogether. If all that had been a lie –

It would break his heart, he allowed himself to acknowledge. If Obi-Wan were leading him into a trap, the damage of that betrayal would be far worse than anything that could happen to Qui-Gon if he were captured.

But it couldn’t be. Always, Qui-Gon’s feelings were a battle between the anxious rationalizations he had recognized so well in his apprentice and the surety at his core, the one tuned into the currents of the Force, that allowed him to recognize the truth of a vision or the rightness of a moment. This was no trap. Obi-Wan would not do this to him.

So what then was the source of this anxious anticipation, this churning in his stomach, at the thought of seeing Obi-Wan again?

He breathed deeply to calm himself, grounding himself in the reality of the moment: the controls in his hands, the trajectory of his flight. His meeting point with Obi-Wan was far from the Temple, far from the Senate building – in one of the more abandoned neighborhoods of one of the underground districts . . . a place no one would expect a Jedi Knight and a former Master to meet for clandestine purposes.

How had it come to this? Qui-Gon found himself wondering. He had feared the Order’s political entanglements, yes, but – he had never borne them any ill will. How had it come to a point of his own group being thought responsible for an attack on the Jedi? Who believed him capable of such a thing? Did Yoda – Mace – Depa – did they all think Qui-Gon would ever have done this?

Obi-Wan would tell him. Obi-Wan could explain to him what was happening. They would make a plan for how to proceed.

Qui-Gon guided his shuttle to a landing on an empty lot a few blocks away from their meeting point. He hoped the distance was enough not to make his shuttle too conspicuous, but not so great as to exhaust him from the journey before he could speak to Obi-Wan. Even this short flight had already worn at him; the intense concentration that piloting required ate at his reserves of energy more quickly than he remembered. The scanner-blocking field was still active, so the only danger was theft – which was not insignificant, in a neighborhood like this, but he would just have to take the risk. Nothing identifiable or valuable was left on board, and Qui-Gon disembarked with his folded hoverchair in one hand and anticipation trembling in his gut.

He unfolded the chair once the ship was locked down behind him and set off for his meeting point.

Obi-Wan was already there when Qui-Gon arrived – of course he was. Punctuality had always been his highest priority. Qui-Gon’s chair moved nearly silently by now thanks to Anakin’s modifications, but it made no difference – Qui-Gon could feel him as soon as he drew within range: the blazing familiarity of him in the Force, stalwart and determined and brilliant; that crackling electrical storm of intense emotionality that Obi-Wan always kept so tightly leashed, but could never quite hide from Qui-Gon, even now. And if Qui-Gon could feel him so intensely, what must he be reflecting in return? – the pride, the relief to see Obi-Wan well, the intense, aching fondness returning tenfold, nearly bringing him to tears –

Obi-Wan turned to face him, and all that emotion crashed together in waves as their eyes met, even across an evening-darkened street in one of the worse districts barely above Coruscant’s surface.

“Qui-Gon,” Obi-Wan breathed, and hurried toward him.

Qui-Gon brought his chair to a stop when they were just steps apart, and Obi-Wan froze, staring at him almost hungrily, as if drinking in the sight of him. Qui-Gon noticed only because he was doing the same.

Obi-Wan did not look so different from a few months before: perhaps a little more tired around the eyes, a little tighter at the corners of the mouth? “Obi-Wan,” he said warmly, and for a moment the urgency of their meeting fell away: all the tension of their circumstances, his companions’ distrust, whatever had soured against him in the Order. It was just him and his former apprentice, his pride and worry and that deep, deep affection that would never die away.

“Am I glad to see you,” Obi-Wan said fervently, and Qui-Gon could not doubt the earnest words. “I” – He shook his head, jerked forward in an aborted movement, his arms rising and then falling again.

Qui-Gon finished it for him. He rose from his chair and pulled Obi-Wan into his arms.

The embrace was – Qui-Gon didn’t know if he had ever held Obi-Wan like this, all-consuming and fierce and crushing, a wave breaking on a solid shore. Obi-Wan had always been smaller and leaner than Qui-Gon himself, but he had built more muscle mass sometime in the last year, or perhaps Qui-Gon had simply lost more of his own. Obi-Wan clutched him back with equal strength, his hands fisting in the back of Qui-Gon’s robe, his face crushed into the crook of his neck – a simple grasp for contact, for closeness, a coming-together after so much time at odds.

“I’m so glad you came,” Obi-Wan breathed against his shoulder. “I didn’t – I haven’t been able to” –

Qui-Gon pressed his cheek against the top of Obi-Wan’s head. “I will always come when you call me, Obi-Wan,” he said fiercely.

“I know,” Obi-Wan said. He withdrew, just slightly, gripped Qui-Gon’s shoulders. “I knew you would, even despite everything.” He shook his head. “I know you didn’t do this; I promise. I don’t know what’s happening, but I know you’re not involved, and I just – I had to see you.”

He looked almost ragged with desperation, and Qui-Gon’s heart ached. “I’m glad you wanted to,” he said softly. “I’m glad you don’t believe this of me.” He dared to smooth a hand over Obi-Wan’s hair, grown nearly to his shoulders now in the time since his knighting. It was a touch more intimate than he would have ventured in years – the sort that had been limited to recovery from life-threatening injuries during Obi-Wan’s apprenticeship, when Obi-Wan’s walls were lower and Qui-Gon’s emotions higher than his inhibitions – but now, in this evening-dark alley, with betrayal and distrust lapping at the very Force around them, he found the limits of his daring expanding in response. And perhaps Obi-Wan’s own reservations had thinned in response, because he leaned into the touch rather than shrugging it off. “Do the others at the Temple feel the way you do? Or do they believe I would” – He broke off, unable to finish the sentence.

Obi-Wan shook his head. “I don’t think they know what to think. The myth of your radical tendencies has had time to grow since you left us, and with Dooku now outright supporting talk of secession, especially given your own connection to him . . . it seems that trust has worn thin.”

“Dooku is” – Qui-Gon shook his head, remembering that conversation long ago – the one that had kept him away from his former master ever since. “Whatever Dooku is doing, he is skirting the edges of darkness. I did not leave the Order to join him; what he is doing is beyond what I would ever want. Obi-Wan. You must know” – His heart was racing now, threatening to send blood rushing to his head; he released Obi-Wan to sink back into his chair. He needed his strength for this conversation. “I would never attack Jedi on a mission like that. I was in the Ista system; we were even seeking them out to talk – I don’t deny that – but I would never. None of us would.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan said. “You’re not a killer.” He gave a tiny, sad smile. “I remember our mission to Oran when I was fifteen – it was the first time I’d seen you kill, and I remember what you did afterwards.”

Qui-Gon nodded. He remembered, too: he had made Obi-Wan stand with him for several moments while he lit a candle for the life he had taken and meditated on the cycle of life and death and return to the Force. He had always tried to instill in his apprentice that violence was not to be used lightly, and always with respect for the lives it could take.

“I’ve tried to tell the others this,” Obi-Wan continued, “but – fear is thick in the Temple, and confusion, and doubt. There has even been some suspicion that your survival was part of a Sith plot all along.” His voice cracked on those words, and Qui-Gon’s throat ached along with it. He had not been conscious for the immediate aftermath of his near-death, but he had pieced together enough to know how much it had hurt his apprentice; he could understand how something that affected Obi-Wan so deeply might cause him personal offense. “It makes me think about something you said before you left, about how the Force was harder to grasp for you. I had thought it was merely your injury, but I’m beginning to wonder if you were right about there being something more sinister to it. Especially now that I know you’re meant to be blamed for something you couldn’t have done. I don’t know – my testaments to your character don’t seem to be enough.” He shook his head; then, as if giving up on words, he reached out and caught Qui-Gon’s hands in his own.

They were so familiar in Qui-Gon’s grip, bringing back a dizzying whirl of memory: positioning Obi-Wan’s hands around a lightsaber; catching him by those hands at the edge of a chasm as Obi-Wan’s feet dangled in the air below; steadying them during a meditation to still a turbulent mood. But just holding them like this, touching for no other reason than the reassurance or comfort of contact – this was new for Obi-Wan. He had never been so tactile during his apprenticeship, and Qui-Gon wondered if he felt something similar to Qui-Gon’s own emotion now: this need to touch, to clutch, to hold onto something that felt it could be torn away so easily, something he had not been able to grasp for far too long.

Was this the attachment the Jedi Code forbade? It felt like an anchor to him now – a reminder of his love for the Order he had left, for all that it had touched within him. He had let Obi-Wan go when he needed to, and he would do so again, but the relief in having him here to hold onto practically sang with the Force, all the connection to light and life in Qui-Gon’s blood and in his soul responding to Obi-Wan’s presence. Surely there was something to be examined here, yet another pillar of being to understand in new ways – something he could study and bring back to Anakin, some piece of wisdom they all could learn from.

“We’ll have to find something else, then,” he said. “Some way of investigating. Someone wants to turn us against each other – or specifically to turn the Jedi Order against us. Who could be so threatened by” –

The hair prickled at the back of his neck an instant before the sound of the shot.

Obi-Wan’s lightsaber was alive in his hands before Qui-Gon could so much as register that they had released his, reaching out to deflect a blaster bolt that – Qui-Gon could see from its deflected trajectory – would have struck Qui-Gon directly in the throat from the side. He activated his own blade, green to Obi-Wan’s blue, like old times – but now Obi-Wan took on the largest share of defense, Qui-Gon providing backup to the rare bolt that made it past Obi-Wan’s guard. They were being fired upon from all sides, and they were forced back to back, Qui-Gon still in his chair to conserve his energy as best he could, the length of the lightsaber making up for the loss of height.

It was not the time to be distracted, but he could not help but marvel at his former student. Obi-Wan’s Soresu had become a thing of beauty, a glowing web of defense that wove about them, keeping all bolts away. After so long working to counter the limits to his mobility – and a few opportunities to put it into practice – Qui-Gon had settled into comfort with his own new style, relying on the reach of his arms and nudges of the Force to compensate for his inability to dodge quickly; his blade wove in between Obi-Wan’s, slower but precise.

“Qui-Gon,” Obi-Wan managed to gasp, “This isn’t my doing – I didn’t lead you into a trap, I promise!”

“I know,” Qui-Gon responded. This wasn’t Obi-Wan’s style – a trap of his devising would have involved members of the Jedi Council waiting to jump out and disarm Qui-Gon before he could stop them, not unidentified assailants with blasters. “Nor did I.”

“I know.” Obi-Wan sent another bolt flying back in the direction it had come from, and a shriek echoed from one of the buildings. “But we need to get out” –

Again that prickle of unease, again that sense of something wrong, something other – and then something else came flying towards him, hurled from the doorway of a nearby building – something too small and dark to be a blaster bolt. It landed on the arm of his chair and clung there as if latched, or with mechanical arms – and in an instant, the blasterfire stopped.

Qui-Gon didn’t think, didn’t analyze – he deactivated his lightsaber in the same moment he flung himself out of his chair, colliding bodily with Obi-Wan and bowling him to the ground. Obi-Wan let out a squawk of surprise, but for all his newly-gained strength, Qui-Gon had always had a size advantage over him – and paired now with the advantage of surprise, he was no match for the tackle. They hit the ground, rolling, and came to a stop with Qui-Gon’s body blanketing Obi-Wan’s – just as Qui-Gon’s hoverchair exploded.

For a moment the world was nothing but a cacophony of heat and sound and pain. Qui-Gon couldn’t parse out one individual sensation from another, but there was the vague awareness that all of his body had at some point lost contact with the ground – the jostling that suggested flying through the air, bouncing, before coming to a landing again. When the ringing faded at last from his ears, the pain began to localize: a tenderness around his jaw that suggested bruising and the coppery taste of blood from a bitten cheek; abrasions up his arms and torso, and – oh dear – a sharp, throbbing pain in his side –

“Master?” Obi-Wan’s voice, hushed, beside him; the sound of shuffling and scrambling. “Qui-Gon, are you all right?”

He groaned, running his tongue over his teeth and testing his jaw to ensure that all was intact. Not the priority now, perhaps, but he wanted to know.

“Qui-Gon.” Qui-Gon had regained enough equilibrium to realize that he was lying facedown, that Obi-Wan was kneeling over him, hands now running up and down his torso. “Master – oh no.”

“Shrapnel,” Qui-Gon ground out as Obi-Wan’s hand hit a white-hot area of pain. “Must have been – something sharp” –

“A shard of your hoverchair, looks like.” More soft shuffling noises, and then Obi-Wan was pressing something over the wound: his own robe, folded into a pad and bound to Qui-Gon’s side with his sashes. “I’m afraid it was completely destroyed.”

“Better than – either of us.” Qui-Gon groaned again, pressing against the ground to turn himself over and look up at his former student. Obi-Wan looked as bruised and scraped as Qui-Gon felt, but he seemed to have avoided serious injury, and Qui-Gon went weak with relief. “Anakin will be devastated, though – after all his modifications.”

 “If you’re well enough to joke, you must be all right,” muttered Obi-Wan. “We need to move, though – our attackers seem to have vacated while the blast went off, but they’ll be back soon to collect us or chase us down. Can you walk?”

“For now,” he gritted as Obi-Wan crossed over to his uninjured right side and slung Qui-Gon’s arm over his own shoulders. The impact – and the pain – had sent adrenaline rushing through his veins, sharp and cold, lending him the strength to rise to his feet, leaning on his former apprentice’s shoulder.

The motion was jarring and painful, but the wound did not seem to be bleeding fast enough to soak through the pad of Obi-Wan’s robe. Qui-Gon kept a hand over it, testing it, but was pleased to note that this wound did not seem anywhere near approaching the severity of the death-blow that had been his last major injury. “Where are we going?” he breathed.

“First place I can find that seems safe,” said Obi-Wan. He was breathing hard, laboring under Qui-Gon’s weight. “Unless you have a better idea?”

“No,” Qui-Gon said. “There’s a rendezvous point – I’m supposed to meet some others there, but I don’t dare lead our attackers to them. If you have to leave me behind, maybe you can find them and get” –

“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Obi-Wan. “I’m not leaving you behind for these people to find. You must admit that would be a terrible tactical move.”

Qui-Gon laughed, and that slight moment of release seemed to drain all the strength from his limbs. He cursed internally as exhaustion crashed over him, the kind that made it nearly impossible to simply walk straight unencumbered, let alone with a wound in his side. He fought to keep himself upright, but clearly the change in his weight was noticeable to Obi-Wan, who grunted.

“You never made this look so hard,” he panted out from beneath Qui-Gon’s arm, his own tightening around Qui-Gon’s waist. “When it was me, and I was your student” –

Despite himself, Qui-Gon snorted another laugh. The sharp expulsion of breath made him dizzy, a symptom which he had no idea whether to attribute to blood loss or to his semi-regular bouts of vertigo. “I have a rather significant – size – advantage on you,” he gasped out in turn. The memories were – they had not been pleasant at the time, but Qui-Gon could remember more than one instance that he had simply scooped Obi-Wan into his arms or over a shoulder rather than let him attempt to support his own weight. “Which made things much easier for me than they are for you now. Apologies.”

“You should apologize,” groused Obi-Wan. “I’m sure all of this is your fault, if we just go back far enough.”

“Likely,” Qui-Gon acknowledged. His head was very, very light, and sensation was beginning to blur, blackness swimming before his eyes. “Obi-Wan?”

“Mmm?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to pass out now,” he said faintly. “I’m . . . I’m very . . .”

Unconsciousness was a tight black chasm; he was sucked through it and then out again as if waking from sleep. He was flat on his back on a hard, chilly surface; most of his body was throbbing with some variety of pain; and above him tall buildings shot in blurred spires into a traffic-streaked sky, all haloing the concerned face of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“What . . .” He blinked, piecing together what he had thought was dream and realized was real memory through the fog of his still-waking brain. “Ah. I’m sorry.”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “You should be.” His whisper was tight, choked. “You frightened me for a moment.”

“I understand.” Oh, he wanted so badly to close his eyes and let the world fade away, but the distress on Obi-Wan’s face kept him in the moment, in his body. “I think it wasn’t blood loss. At least, mostly not blood loss.” He rolled his head to one side, then the other. “Are we still in the alley?”

Obi-Wan nodded wordlessly.

“Obi-Wan,” said Qui-Gon softly. It was not the time for this, but he couldn’t bear that look on Obi-Wan’s face: that raw lostness, as though no time had passed since he was an apprentice seeking his master’s reassurance. “Talk to me.”

Obi-Wan shook his head again, pressed a hand to his mouth for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I’m overreacting. It’s only – it brought up memories.”

“I know.” Qui-Gon let his left hand wander over to his side, probed carefully at the pad over his wound. Not yet soaked through; perhaps it had even stopped bleeding already. “But I’m all right.”

“I know you are.” Obi-Wan sounded as if he didn’t quite believe it. “It’s just – I hadn’t realized – I don’t know what I would do if I lost you.”

The words, and Obi-Wan’s voice, were raw, honest – emotion naked on his face in a way Qui-Gon had not seen it since his padawan days, since Obi-Wan had rushed forward into his new life and into his wholehearted embrace of the Code Qui-Gon had begun, piece by piece, to reject: fear, relief, and something softer, something Qui-Gon could not begin to name. He reached up and touched Obi-Wan’s cheek, as he had not done in years – not since a different time he had found himself lying injured beneath his apprentice.

Then, he had thought he was dying. Now, there was only relief in the knowledge that he was not.

“You would manage,” he murmured anyway. “You’ve made quite a good job of it already, after all.”

“That doesn’t mean I would have chosen it.” Obi-Wan’s eyes sparkled with tears, colorless and gleaming in the light-smeared darkness of Coruscant night. “I never wanted to be without you. Qui-Gon – Master” –

He whispered the title with such reverence that Qui-Gon’s untrustworthy heart stuttered with it, threatening to burst with all the affection of a lifetime of mutual devotion. And then Obi-Wan’s voice choked off and he gave a helpless jerk of his head, more expressive than the words he seemed to have abandoned. His hand cupped Qui-Gon’s cheek, and he leaned down instead.

The press of Obi-Wan’s lips against his own was brief, shallow, yet Qui-Gon’s heart thundered with it, his senses overwhelmed all at once by the contrast of soft lips and bristling stubble, the whisper of Obi-Wan’s breath against his face as he drew away. His own lungs were empty, devoid of any air, and for that moment he did not miss it – his chest swelled instead with everything that Obi-Wan was, all he had been and all Qui-Gon had watched him grow into, this kiss the blossoming of something new from all they had ever been to each other and all they had the potential to become. Something cracked open in him, warm and sweet, spilling over in his chest with the glow of wonder.

Obi-Wan pulled back and passed a hand over his mouth with a breathless laugh. “If you only knew how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he confessed.

Qui-Gon’s insides went soft and cold, the shivering texture of powdery snow; revelation and confusion and something else all mingled together. There was too much to sort through, to reorient in his mind and his heart, but he cast that aside to focus on the moment at hand. He reached out, fingers groping in the air to catch Obi-Wan’s hand as it lowered, and he opened his mouth to speak –

And a thud echoed from somewhere in the distance, followed by the sound of shouting voices.

“We have to move,” said Obi-Wan, and the moment was gone, replaced by the more urgent need to find safety. “We have to get out of here, and you need medical attention. I can bring you with me” –

“Not the Temple,” Qui-Gon cut him off. “You can’t take me back there now.”

Obi-Wan jerked his hand out of Qui-Gon’s grip, glaring down at him. “Do you think so little of us, then? That we would turn away an injured” –

“Obi-Wan, no. Not you, not the Jedi. I bear the Order no ill will, and I would never question your honor. But this – it’s too close to home, whatever is happening. And after what’s been done, what I’ve been accused of – I can’t go back there now, for fear I wouldn’t be able to leave again.” Obi-Wan was biting his lip, the nervous habit so familiar from his padawan days, and yet now mingled with the memory of how that lip had felt brushing so lightly against Qui-Gon’s own, and with an effort he pulled his mind back into the moment. “Search your feelings,” he said gently. “Do you truly think I would be safe there?”

Obi-Wan sighed and slumped. “No,” he admitted. “No, you’re right.” Qui-Gon would have teased him for admitting it, but Obi-Wan rushed on too quickly for him to speak. Knowing, probably. “But where can we go then? You mentioned a rendezvous point?”

“Yes,” Qui-Gon said. “I’m supposed to meet Quinlan and Aayla there in” – He strained to glance at his wrist, to get any sense of the time. “Probably sooner than I can reach it, but they will start to look for me if I don’t return on time. I have a shuttle – that is, if it hasn’t been found or destroyed or sabotaged. Would you help me get there?”

“Of course,” said Obi-Wan. “If you’ll trust me with the location.”

“Obi-Wan,” said Qui-Gon, “I would trust you with anything in the galaxy.”

Obi-Wan ducked his head, then let a mask of resolve settle over his face. “It’s settled, then,” he said. “Can you get up again?”

“I’ll manage,” said Qui-Gon grimly. His side throbbed, and his head had begun to ache, and his limbs felt as though they had been weighted down with sandbags, but when Obi-Wan slung one of his arms over his shoulders and helped him rise to his feet, he managed to take weaving steps under his own power, with some aid from the Force. Oh, but he missed his hoverchair. Why in all the worlds had he tried to go so long without one? “I don’t suppose our friends with blasters would be willing to compensate me for the destruction of my mobility aid.”

“That might be reaching a bit too far,” said Obi-Wan, but there was a hint of a smile in his voice and Qui-Gon congratulated himself for the slight lift in his spirits. “I’m no mechanically modified hoverchair, but I’ll do what I can.”

They stumbled on through the darkened streets, senses stretched wide to keep from encountering their assailants. The explosion and their subsequent flight had disoriented Qui-Gon at first, but after a few wrong turns, he managed to straighten himself back out and remember the way he had come, following the vague presence in the Force of his own path back to the lot where he had left his shuttle –

To find nothing. The lot was empty, silent, with no sign that Qui-Gon’s shuttle had ever been here.

“Of course,” he muttered. “I knew it would be too much to hope for.”

“Do you think it was our friends?” said Obi-Wan. “Trying to cut off your escape?”

“Maybe,” Qui-Gon murmured. “Though they would probably have placed another explosive or a tracking device on it and left it for us. It feels more likely that this is simply an unfortunate coincidence of some petty thievery. Unless” –

“Unless they didn’t need to track you at all,” said Obi-Wan darkly. “You said you were meeting people here. Where did you split up?”

“Quinlan and Aayla,” breathed Qui-Gon. “We split up at the spaceport – I detached to come here without being tracked; they were meant to provide a distraction by landing legally and then meeting me here. If they were detained – or if someone caught them” –

“Why, Qui-Gon!” came the voice from above them. “I’m touched. I didn’t know you cared.”

“Quinlan!” gasped Qui-Gon. He would have jumped, but his arm around Obi-Wan’s shoulders kept him from betraying his surprise too openly. Instead, he looked up just in time to see Quinlan Vos vaulting out of an air speeder parked on one of the abandoned buildings above them, flipping in the air and landing in a crouch so close to them that Obi-Wan shifted them back. “You’re . . . here. How are you here? And where is Aayla?”

“She’s back at the ship,” said Quinlan. “The bureaucrats let us go earlier than we’d expected, so we were waiting for you at the meeting point when we lost signal from your shuttle. Figured it meant something had happened to you, especially when we couldn’t reach you either, so we tracked it to its last location and I, uh” – he jerked a thumb up at the speeder – “borrowed a ride to go look for you.”

There was too much to unpack in those few sentences, so Qui-Gon stuck with practicalities. “You couldn’t reach me?” He reached for his belt automatically, for the comm unit that resided there, and found only half of it. It must have been destroyed in the explosion, and he hadn’t noticed it amidst his other concerns. “Ah. Well. It was very thoughtful of you to come for me. We ran into some unexpected complications.”

“I can see that.” Quinlan looked them over, his eyes lingering on Qui-Gon’s waist – on the hastily-bound wound, or on where Obi-Wan held him? – before coming to rest on Obi-Wan with a cool, almost challenging stare. “Kenobi.”

“Vos,” said Obi-Wan. His arm tightened around Qui-Gon’s waist and his shoulders went up, just slightly, stiffening in a posture Qui-Gon had rarely seen him adopt even in his padawan days. Pride, returned challenge – and something else he couldn’t name. Couldn’t dare to try.

It was not the time to think about this, not the time to wonder. “We were attacked only minutes into our meeting,” Qui-Gon said. “They had blasters and some kind of explosive device. Shrapnel was my undoing.”

“You were both attacked?” said Quinlan, staring back at Obi-Wan with that same challenging look. “Both targeted?”

Obi-Wan drew himself up. “If you’re suggesting that I had something to do with this” –

“Both,” Qui-Gon cut in, in the firm tone that had shut down many a fight between unruly padawans in his Temple days. “Obi-Wan dragged me out of there, Quinlan. He saved my life.” He looked down at Obi-Wan, and the look that met him made his mouth go dry, his next teasing remark weaker than he had intended. “It’s a bit of a habit of his.”

“I just wish you’d stop needing it,” said Obi-Wan softly. “You wouldn’t consider making fewer enemies?”

“Him?” Quinlan snorted. “You might as well ask a fish to consider breathing air. But hey – what about your enemies here? What happened to them?”

“Nothing,” Qui-Gon said. “They’re not far off, in fact. Maybe, since you have transportation . . .”

“We could track them!” Obi-Wan said. He had been frowning since Quinlan’s last statement, but his face was alight now. “We might be able to learn something about where they’ve come from.”

“You mean, I might be able to.” Quinlan raised a gloved hand. “I say let’s go for it. They won’t have counted on this.”

It was decided that it would be simpler for Quinlan to bring the speeder down than to try to lift Qui-Gon up to its level, and when it was in position at last he let himself fall into the back seat in an exhausted daze. As the other two conferred over the details of the tracking, he let himself drift into the meditative state he had cultivated for moments such as these – one not so far removed from sleep, his levels of energy and responsiveness low enough as to be nearly nonexistent, but with a heightened awareness of the world around him that allowed him to make almost subconscious observations and connections.

In this state he could pick up the tension between the two men in the speeder with him, expressed less in words than in tone and gesture, a sort of defensive, protective challenge that seemed to have him at its heart. How sad it was, he thought dimly, that such emotion – and such manipulated circumstances – might place two brilliant young men at odds like this. Perhaps it was evidence in favor of the repression of emotion that was the Order’s interpretation of the Jedi Code – or perhaps it was evidence of exactly the opposite: that emotion ought to be expressed and understood, rather than suppressed or wished away. And, too – how fortunate it made Qui-Gon, that such emotion could come from such deep care. That he could have found such brightness and beauty in his life, for all the tension of their circumstances, when only two years ago he had worried he was spent, lived past his use.

That Qui-Gon would not be joining the tracking and fighting efforts was a foregone conclusion, but he noted the current of sorrow that ran through him anyway when Obi-Wan and Quinlan both sprang out of the speeder upon locating their assailants – something related to watching his former apprentice engage in combat without him. It was not a lack of confidence in Obi-Wan’s abilities, not even so much that he missed combat for himself (he did, sometimes, but at the moment the pain in his side was enough to remind him of its downsides) – but the loss of the days when they had been a perfect partnership, a team who moved easily and seamlessly together without need for words, understanding one another’s every motion.

How long had it been since they had been synchronized like that? Was it something that could ever return for them again?

And of course, that thought brought him back to the memory of Obi-Wan’s lips on his, a kiss whose meaning he could not parse, either for Obi-Wan or for himself, yet nevertheless which would linger on his lips and in his thoughts until he could understand –

“Qui-Gon?”

They were back, and he surfaced from his half-trance state with some effort. “The attackers?” he said blearily.

“Escaped,” Obi-Wan said. He was rumpled, his hair in disarray and his tunics fluttering about him without the sash to tuck them in, but did not look injured. “Picked up by a ship and rushed away before we could track them further. We don’t think it’s worth pursuing them with just this.”

“No,” Qui-Gon agreed. “We can’t leave Aayla waiting alone for long – and you should get back to the Temple soon.”

Obi-Wan’s hand hovered for a moment over Qui-Gon’s cheek as if deciding whether to touch. Before he could make his decision, Quinlan’s voice cut in. “But we did get this.” In his gloved hand, he hefted a blaster, perhaps dropped by one of the assailants. “I figure we should find out where they’re getting their weapons, don’t you?”

“If you’re up to it,” Qui-Gon said.

Quinlan grinned, a little rakish. “I’m always up to it.”

Qui-Gon had come to know Quinlan well enough to recognize a front, but he would not be the one to reveal it before Obi-Wan. After their experience on Ista, he had grown more cautious about asking for the assistance of Quinlan’s psychometric abilities, learning as he had the toll it could take on him to learn too much, see too much, of what someone or something else had experienced. It had made him more observant – had made him wonder if that extreme situation had only revealed a deeper and more everyday disquiet. But if Quinlan had volunteered for this now, Qui-Gon would not question his decision . . . perhaps especially not in front of Obi-Wan, not with this tension radiating between them.

Quinlan pulled off his glove and gripped the blaster barehanded, closing his eyes. Qui-Gon knew that the flashes Quinlan witnessed expanded time in his own mind, but it was only an instant before he opened them again.

“The Senate building,” he said. “I can’t get anything more specific; it’s fuzzy, but – this blaster was in the Senate building at some point.”

Obi-Wan flinched, and Qui-Gon placed a hand atop his to ground him. “I suppose you were right after all,” Obi-Wan said softly.

“Maybe,” Qui-Gon said. “Though location doesn’t reveal anything about motivation or intention or person. It could be mere happenstance. But still – Obi-Wan, tread carefully when you return. Don’t get yourself into something that might put you in danger.”

“More danger than my association with you?” Obi-Wan shook his head. “I can continue trying to clear your name” –

“You don’t have anything to clear it with,” Qui-Gon reminded him. “And if it might draw more suspicion to you, with the climate of things as you’ve described them, you shouldn’t put yourself at risk without reason. Sometimes the right action to take is to wait until the moment to act presents itself.”

Obi-Wan turned his hand under Qui-Gon’s to grip his fingers. “You can take the Jedi Master out of the Order,” he murmured. “All right. But I will find out what I can. Will the comm code I have still work to reach you?”

“Yes,” Qui-Gon said. “But if you need help before we’ve left the system and I can replace the device – Quinlan?”

Quinlan passed Obi-Wan his comm without a word. He had replaced his glove and was rubbing his hand thoughtfully. Qui-Gon sent him a questioning glance as Obi-Wan synced their devices together, and Quinlan gave him a reassuring nod.

“All right,” Obi-Wan said. “I suppose I’d better be returning, then.”

“Yes,” said Quinlan. “We shouldn’t bring a . . . borrowed speeder so close to the Temple. And we should be getting back to Aayla. I want to make sure she’s all right.”

“I suppose that’s for the best,” Qui-Gon agreed. Still he found himself hesitating. This wasn’t how he had imagined saying goodbye – it wasn’t how he had imagined any of it. His head was whirling and his body ached and he wanted quiet and stillness and sleep – but more, he could not stop feeling the phantom press of Obi-Wan’s lips against his own, a touch he had never imagined before, a touch he didn’t know what to do with now. The urge to wrap Obi-Wan in his arms and never let him go now overlaid with something new, something other, that he couldn’t explain or understand, that he couldn’t speak of now in such a compressed time, with Quinlan still hovering in the front seat as a witness. “Obi-Wan” –

“Go,” said Obi-Wan softly. He squeezed Qui-Gon’s hand gently, and Qui-Gon pressed it back with greater urgency. “Keep searching for answers from outside; I will look from inside. We’ll talk again when we’ve found something.”

“Yes,” Qui-Gon said. “Yes, of course. I – may the Force be with you.”

“May the Force be with you, Qui-Gon,” said Obi-Wan, and with one last nod to Quinlan, he opened the door of the speeder and disappeared into the dark.

Chapter Text

“Qui-Gon.”

Qui-Gon opened his eyes from where he lay in his small bunk in the room he shared with Anakin. (Rie and Rowana had considered the needs of their small group in the ship they had purchased: it had three bunker-like rooms, one for each master-padawan pair in their band, where they slept during the many periods between missions when they had no rooms on land.) Space travel was not kind to his body; it drained his energy while simultaneously robbing him of the ability to sleep – though these days, it was more than just space travel that made sleeping difficult.

He shook his head slightly as if to banish the thoughts and turned to where Rie stood in the doorway, Rowana hovering behind her shoulder in a protective-supportive posture that made Qui-Gon’s heart ache. Seeing them as they were, so synchronized with one another, just made him think about –

He cleared his throat. “Yes?”

Over Rie’s shoulder, Rowana gave him a measuring look.

“Something strange,” said Rie. She took a few uncertain steps into the room, looked to him for permission, and then crossed to his bunk when he gave her a reassuring nod. “A distress call from the Gydumir system, directed intentionally to us.”

“To us?” Qui-Gon said. This was strange enough to shake him free of his mood, snap him back into the moment. “By name?”

“Not by name, exactly,” said Rie. “But the message specifically asks for the Jedi who do not answer to the Republic.”

Qui-Gon pushed himself upright and leaned against the wall. “’Do not answer’ is . . . perhaps an understatement of our relationship to the Republic now.”

It had been over a month since their accusation. Over a month of near misses in Inner Rim worlds, when they had dared to venture closer into Republic space; over a month of bulletins warning about the danger they posed to peaceful citizens – and the danger they posed to the government and the Republic. Over a month since the Republic, it seemed, had turned Qui-Gon’s own suspicion back on him tenfold – and dragged the others down with him.

And yet, somehow, none of them had turned their backs. None of them had renounced their strange little group and what they were trying to do together; none had run back to the Order and the Republic. He would have understood if they had, but it seemed that the principles they had built together, the work they had been trying to do, were stronger than the moment’s temptations. That the way they had been turned against the Order had only strengthened their resolve to determine what had gone wrong.

Not, of course, that they had had any success at that as of yet.

“Yes, that would be part of why I have misgivings,” Rie said with a grimace. “But the message came through unofficial channels and seems to indicate a distrust of their Republic representatives and their own planetary officials. They ask for the assistance of those ‘committed to the common good over the government.’ It’s . . . laid on rather thick.”

“Hmm.” Flattery could indicate many things, and it should not alone be a reason for suspicion – but it certainly contributed here. “And should we assume that someone who is willing to equate the murder of Jedi with ‘the common good’ would share our own standards?”

“Yes,” said Rowana, “that would be my concern, on the very slim chance that this is a genuine distress call.”

And the chances were slim. Gydumir was within the Republic – within the worlds where Qui-Gon and Rowana (and by extension anyone who traveled with them) were accused as wanted criminals, as murderers of Jedi, worthy of calls to Republic authorities on sight. Even if there were people on the system who wanted assistance from outside the Republic, why would they call on a group who had been hailed as so dangerous they should not be engaged? There were people who would make such decisions, but – it seemed a stretch. Seemed much more like a trap – something they could ill afford right now.

“Perhaps we ought to meditate on it,” Qui-Gon said. “Wait for the Force to show us the way.”

As though in response to the words that had barely left his mouth, his commlink chirped.

The very sound of it sent a spike of adrenaline surging through him. It was a rare sound, heard only three times since they had been declared murderers – because there was only one person who ever contacted Qui-Gon through this device when all six of their group were on board their ship. Qui-Gon’s heart jumped; had he been standing, his legs might have buckled.

He did not bother to dissemble, not in front of Rowana, who would have been reading the pulses of emotion he sent off despite himself; nor did he bother to wave the other two away. He snatched up the device from where it lay on his bedside table – easily within reach – and accepted the call.

“Qui-Gon?” Obi-Wan’s hologram flickered into view, faint and blue, the outline too blurred to make out any specific expressions. All of their conversations had had weak visual, if they had been able to manage visual at all, and Qui-Gon hoped it was simply their distance and lack of a shared system creating the disturbance. “Is now a good time?”

“It’s as good as any,” said Qui-Gon wryly. “So long as you haven’t yet been caught corresponding with a wanted criminal. Do you have anything new to share?”

Obi-Wan hesitated, or perhaps it was simply a glitch in the call. “No,” he said at last. “I suppose I just – well. Never mind. Is there anything new on your end?”

Qui-Gon looked up at Rie, eyebrow raised in question; she nodded in permission. “There might be,” he said. “Can I count on your confidence?”

“Of course.” Obi-Wan almost sounded offended, but Qui-Gon had not asked for himself. The others here did not have the same reason to trust Obi-Wan; he would have to hope that their trust in him extended far enough for this.

“We’ve received a rather unusual call to Gydumir,” he said. “It seems strange to be summoned into Republic space, where we are either wanted or feared. Have you heard anything about a plot?”

Obi-Wan was silent for some time. Then, voice strange, he said, “. . . I’ve been deployed to the Gydumir system. That’s why I called you. I’m preparing to leave within hours and may be unreachable for some time to all but the Council.”

Qui-Gon glanced up once more – Rie’s and Rowana’s faces were nearly identical, puzzled suspicion – and then back at where Obi-Wan had rested a hand on his chin, toying with his beard. A new nervous habit? “Deployed for what reason?” he said.

“The senator from Gydumir has expressed suspicion of some entrepreneurs working in a set of factories creating various metals,” Obi-Wan said. “Apparently, the planet is nearly entirely ocean and the water temperatures make it perfect for tempering and manufacturing. He has come to the Jedi with fears of an upcoming coup that would encourage secession from the Republic, armed with weapons made at one of these factories.”

Rie stepped into the sightline of the hologram, just behind Qui-Gon. “Our distress call reads nearly like a mirror image,” she said. “Suspicion of the government, fears that these weapons will be used by law enforcement to oppress citizens. Perhaps drawing on our known activities on Ista.”

“They mean for you to be there,” said Qui-Gon slowly. “And they want to lure us in as well.” He had been asking the Force for a sign, hadn’t he? “I think this may decide us. Don’t worry about being out of communication, Obi-Wan. I have the sneaking suspicion that I will be seeing you on Gydumir very shortly.”

“As long as you don’t get yourself killed before then,” said Obi-Wan. His tone strove for lightness, but Qui-Gon had known him too long to believe it.

“I’ll manage somehow,” said Qui-Gon. “I don’t know how or when I’ll see you, but I suspect it will be soon. We’ll know more then.”

He deactivated the link and turned to Rowana and Rie. “That was the answer we were looking for, I think,” he said. “We have to respond to the call.”

“We’ll tell the others,” said Rowana. “That way you can return to your rest.”

The look she gave him lingered even as they left, and not for the first time, Qui-Gon found himself reflecting ruefully on the unexpected downsides of a crew member who was so sensitive to emotion. Surely she knew far more than he would have liked about the preoccupations of his idle mind.

Because as soon as they left his room, with nothing but the hum of the ship to distract him, Qui-Gon’s thoughts slipped back into patterns that were already becoming familiar. He was not resting; he was not contemplating Gydumir or what might happen there; he was not meditating. Rather, he was thinking about lips.

Specifically, he was thinking about Obi-Wan’s lips and how they had felt pressed against his own. And – as always – that thought moved into a rumination on the nature of kissing, what it might mean to those engaging in it, and what it might have meant for Obi-Wan to have engaged in it with him.

Lips were not a feature of human anatomy Qui-Gon had spent a good deal of time thinking about, particularly not in this context. Kissing on the mouth was not a gesture of affection commonly practiced among the Jedi, though it had been on some of the planets Qui-Gon had visited in his time. He had of course bowed to the customs of politeness wherever he was, but beyond that he had felt the touch of another’s mouth to his own very rarely.

Obi-Wan’s he had felt only once, during a near-drowning scare when Obi-Wan was fifteen. Qui-Gon had beaten the water from his chest and breathed air into his lungs until Obi-Wan gasped and coughed and revived, and then he had fought the urge to wrap his apprentice in his arms and squeeze him to near suffocation yet again from the desperate relief that he had not lost him. That was –

That was something entirely other.

But no – no, it was not completely other, and it was that which gave him pause. He loved Obi-Wan fiercely, with all the intensity of their twelve years as master and padawan, when Obi-Wan’s training had been Qui-Gon’s highest priority below the needs of the mission and the galaxy, with all the depth of the trust and familiarity they had worked so hard to build between them. How he felt now could never be separated from that intensity; that was the foundation of his love for Obi-Wan, whatever was built atop it. But what they seemed to be building now – what Obi-Wan’s actions and Qui-Gon’s thoughts implied that they might like to build – would by necessity look very different. For in all those years of intimacy, in all that love, in all that trust, never once had the thought crossed his mind –

Qui-Gon had been celibate all his life, at first by happenstance and then by choice. The sharing of bodily affection was unfamiliar to him beyond the clinical awareness of anatomical reality. But he knew well that Obi-Wan did not share his personal inhibitions. The press of lip to lip – that simple action that had thrown Qui-Gon’s entire sense of himself and Obi-Wan into disarray – was as familiar and casual to his former apprentice as the first kata of Ataru. Obi-Wan had engaged in a considerable amount of sexual activity during his time as Qui-Gon’s padawan, and doubtless had continued the habit into his knighthood. Qui-Gon had known about it; had never been bothered by it. Had counseled him, even, reminding him to take care with his partners’ hearts and with his own. For all that Obi-Wan took his responsibilities seriously, this particular activity was one he seemed to take almost lightly, the seeking of pleasure nothing more than a pastime for him.

And because of this, Qui-Gon could have no way of knowing what it must mean for him now. No way of knowing if those habits had continued after his apprenticeship had ended; if they still meant as little to Obi-Wan as they ever had. In so many ways, he had never been farther from Obi-Wan than he was now.

And never had he wanted so badly to draw him closer.

The question, he realized, was not only why Obi-Wan had kissed him, but why he wanted so desperately for him to do it again.

In the few communications they had shared since their last meeting, they had not spoken about what had passed between them. Obi-Wan had not brought it up, and Qui-Gon had not dared to ask. There were bigger things to concern themselves with, and how was one to have this conversation over a commlink, particularly when he did not know when he would see Obi-Wan again?

But now he did know. Now Gydumir awaited him, and a trap, and –

And Obi-Wan.

He allowed himself one heavy sigh, one heaving breath from deep within him that spoke of nothing but self-indulgent wallowing. This was why he had chosen celibacy so deliberately in his life; he had realized in his young adulthood that urges of the body would, for him, always be woven with attachment of the soul – that whatever he was experiencing now, for all that he lacked the framework to understand it, could not exist if he did not already hold Obi-Wan so high in his heart. Such feelings, if he allowed them to rule him, could be distracting and confusing; could muddle the clarity of his purpose, his connection to the Force within himself. Everything he had said to Anakin about attachment still held; he still agreed with the Jedi about this much, at least. The love that he felt for Obi-Wan must not be allowed to lead him astray; he must find a way to hold it as the dear thing it was while still managing to put the mission first, to keep himself focused and clearheaded. To ask the larger questions: why had Obi-Wan been sent here? What was meant to happen once they met?

He reached deep into his body, grounding himself from the inside out: felt the pulse of blood through him, the alignment of muscle and organ and bone, the flow of the Force through it all. Followed that flow up through layers of muscle and into his skin, felt the pressure of the bed beneath him, the cool recycled air of the ship. Out of his body and into the world around him, the flow of the Force through the five other people who occupied the ship and the collection of plants he had built over the last several months, collected under grow lights and expanding the awareness of life even in their ship, even in the emptiness of space. Felt his way out further, through the walls and into the vacuum – here his connection was weaker, with the emptiness that surrounded him – but it was not truly empty, was it? It housed the thousands of worlds filled with life, where the Force tugged people this way and that, established its own balance – the worlds of people who might need them, who might even now be used as pawns in some larger game.

That must be his focus now: the Force and its flow, the constant struggle for balance, the larger plot that he had yet to discover.

He breathed into it, feeling the way his breath joined the air of the spaceship, the way that air was pumped out into the vacuum. The way that he was connected to and disconnected from that larger system of life that they traveled through; the way that whatever came of this new mission would need his full presence. He was part of every world, every system. He was part of the eternal Force, more attached to that than he was to his own body. No other attachment could ever take precedence over that.

Another sigh – steadying this time; connecting. An intentional intake and release of breath, spreading through his body and the systems it connected. Bracing. Preparing. A mission awaited him, and he would be his full self for it.

And then he settled back into his bed and tried in earnest for more sleep.

At the controls of his small Temple-owned ship, Obi-Wan was struggling to center himself.

His distaste for flying was known well enough now to be something of a joke around the Temple, which he mostly managed to receive with good grace – but today, that was not the source of his concerns. How could it be when there was so much else he did not know, so much that might reveal itself so soon?

He curled his hands around the armrests of his seat, grappling for that physical connection, as Qui-Gon had taught him. Qui-Gon would have told him to reach out for anything living around him, but on a ship, he would have to make do with what he had available. His jangling nerves would have earned him a scolding, were he still a padawan – and perhaps that was the true indicator of knighthood: not that he possessed his own wisdom, but that he had been in an apprenticeship long enough to hear his master’s voice in his head at every turn.

Of course, the echoes of Qui-Gon’s voice in his mind were the very thing that now made it so difficult to find peace.

Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon was nearby, was even now making his way towards the same planet where Obi-Wan now traveled; most likely, to the same landing pad, to the same place. What could this be but a trap meant to target them yet again?

He could not be sure if this had been the intention when they had been ambushed in Coruscant, but surely their attackers had gleaned his identity, knew that he was in contact with Qui-Gon – that he was a danger to them. Whoever they were. He had heard nothing in the Temple, nothing in the Senate, for all he had listened, to indicate any kind of plot against Qui-Gon – but what he had heard was alarming enough. Opinion of Qui-Gon at the Temple had swayed so easily into mistrust and fear – fear unacknowledged, and thus the more dangerous for it. If Qui-Gon Jinn could fall to the dark side, was the tenor of the whispers, who could not? And yet no hint among the whisperings that their own fear, their own refusal to acknowledge that something else might have gone wrong, was in itself a hallmark of the dark.

It was as though a cloud had fallen over the senses of everyone at the Temple – or perhaps, more damningly, that cloud had already been there, and this was merely the first time Obi-Wan had found himself outside it. As though without Qui-Gon in the Order for Obi-Wan to argue with, he had been forced to see things more clearly for himself. He could not be sure if it was a test of his loyalties or something far beyond that: a question of his convictions. The suspicion of Qui-Gon at the Temple could be indicative of a far deeper problem, and it raised greater doubt in Obi-Wan than his fear for Qui-Gon himself.

But he did fear for Qui-Gon, though he tried not to – though Qui-Gon would surely reproach him for it. Seeing him again, however briefly, had brought up too much painful memory: too much sense memory of holding his master’s limp body in his arms, pressing his hands desperately to a wound – and though this situation had been far less serious than the last, the memory of it lived in Obi-Wan’s body and hands and heart. Knowing that Qui-Gon was now vulnerable to the suspicion of those who had once loved and trusted him only intensified that fear. Qui-Gon himself would counsel Obi-Wan to breathe into it and let it go, but even the very memory of those teachings tightened the knot within him.

And then, of course, there was the other matter. The other memory he could not release, the ghost-sensation on his lips that made his cheeks burn in combined embarrassment and yearning – the revelation of a desire that Obi-Wan had suppressed for too long –

His astromech droid beeped and whistled their impending approach to the landing platform to which they had been summoned – one of the few above-water surfaces on Gydumir. The planet was otherwise covered entirely with ocean, with mostly underwater dwellings and a few landing platforms established for commercial spacecraft. Its people were aquatic, mostly, but the manufacture and trade of metals had brought pockets of offworlders here, who had established their own dwellings sometimes on and sometimes beneath the surface. A situation rife for unrest, particularly in light of the disaster on Ista – and surely that was why it had been chosen for these purposes.

The official request for Obi-Wan’s presence had come from the senator representing the planet; they had asked for a Jedi to investigate rumors of rebellion among one such pocket of offworld workers. Obi-Wan had ostensibly been put forth as the favored candidate due to his experience with investigative missions in both his apprenticeship and his knighthood, but careful questions about who, precisely, had recommended him had garnered no response.

He narrowed his eyes to gaze down on the landing pad. One of the senator’s aides was set to meet him here, to explain the situation in more detail, and then to give him information about where to find the factory in question – but it was expected that he would undertake the actual investigation alone. Details about what precisely he was looking for had been sparse.

Apprehension coiled and twisted in his gut – anticipation of foul play, surely. But as much as he insisted, he could not quite convince himself that it was not related to the knowledge that Qui-Gon too had been summoned here.

Obi-Wan shook his head as if to clear away the thoughts, taking the controls from R3 and guiding the ship down into a landing.

The man who greeted him was named Pranay Tyrnith, the senator’s aide – or so he claimed – a twitchy human who worked for a government of Nautolans. He glanced about himself all the while as he greeted Obi-Wan, a gesture which Obi-Wan did not need Force abilities to understand. He restrained himself from letting on that he had seen – from letting on that he had any suspicion at all, though his own nerves fairly hummed in anticipation of whatever else Tyrnith might be waiting for.

The senator’s aide. That was easy enough to look up; the Republic kept all its staff on public record.

Humans on the planet wore protective wetsuits and oxygen masks, though the buildings themselves were watertight. Obi-Wan probed his subtly with the Force as Tyrnith passed them over and found them intact. He did the same to the small submarine he was given for transportation, and his own limited skills with machinery – and tests with the Force – seemed to indicate that all was well there, too.

“I’ll leave you to explore on our own,” said Tyrnith. “But you’re more likely to find answers at tide-up, when the workers leave for the day. Hopefully you’ll be able to get in where we have not been able to, without triggering any alarms.”

To get in, then. They wanted him inside.

Obi-Wan reassured him, accepted what he was offered, and retreated to his submarine.

Tide-up was Gydumir’s equivalent of nighttime: in an underwater world, the motion of the sun above meant less for regular rhythms of activity and rest. It had no fewer than eight moons, though, all of which followed different orbital channels around the planet. There was a period of several hours per day when the four moons on that hemisphere of the planet were all in close alignment, at which point the waters became choppy and unsafe and most of the citizens retreated to their homes. Tide-up was when they rested, and tide-up was when Obi-Wan was meant to investigate.

What would happen if he went in earlier, he wondered. If he simply entered the factory during the day, while its workers were still inside? But he did not want to draw suspicion onto himself before he could investigate his own suspicions about how he had been drawn here.

In the factory at tide-up, then. It felt like some sort of mystery game he was still struggling to puzzle through.

The factory itself was a large hunk of suspended metal and duracrete, swaying slightly as the tides grew choppier around it. The workers hooked lines at their belts into metal rings outside the doors, then made their way slowly through the waters to their own vehicles. The tides grew stronger even as Obi-Wan watched, but gradually everyone had gone and the factory was abandoned.

He had been given such a line himself, and his own submarine had a similar hook. Obi-Wan raised his oxygen mask, ejected himself carefully from the vehicle, hooked himself in, and began to make his own way across the tides and into the building.

Tyrnith had been right – perhaps too right. Obi-Wan did not trigger any alarms, or perhaps no alarms had been set. The locks were not meant to withstand the touch of a Force-sensitive; he was in with a quick twist, and the door fell shut behind him with an ominous sound that only intensified his apprehension.

Still, he was here now. What was to come would come, he thought, and smiled ironically at the echo of Qui-Gon in his own words.

He pushed his oxygen mask down around his neck for now, removed his waterproof gloves, and wiped saltwater from his eyes. Investigation. He had been called here to investigate, and that was what he meant to do.

Water planets, it turned out, were not especially friendly to hoverchairs.

Surely, those who lived here underwater and could not move freely under their own power had some other aid built for their environment; Qui-Gon, as a visitor, did not. His chair could not be trusted to support him beneath the surface of the water, and it had limited use on the small platform where they had landed to meet their contact.

Tyrnith, the man who met them on the landing platform, offered his apologies to Qui-Gon when he left his newly-procured chair on their ship and walked carefully across the platform with Rowana at his side. Quinlan and Anakin had both lobbied to come with him, but if their faces had been kept off the HoloNet until now, Qui-Gon saw no reason to add them.

Tyrnith. He could feel Rowana internalizing the name to look up as soon as they were out of this man’s sight.

“Thank you for coming to our aid, former Jedi,” said Tyrnith. He was a nervous man – human, as far as Qui-Gon could tell, wearing a wetsuit and with an oxygen mask hanging loosely around his neck. “We hoped you would receive our distress call. We simply can’t trust the Jedi Order any longer, not when it comes to this kind of fear.”

Qui-Gon and Rowana exchanged glances. “Well,” Qui-Gon said wryly, “you may have heard that our relationship with the Jedi Order is not especially friendly just now.”

The words burned in his throat. They had agreed not to begin by proclaiming their innocence – if the people who had called upon them truly were the sort who would condone the murder of Jedi, then they could not be trusted – but to avoid doing so, even obliquely and without explicitly self-incriminating, made his stomach twitch with disgust.

Worse still was Tyrnith’s cagey reaction. “No,” he said. “And we cannot trust anyone affiliated with the Jedi or the government in this. Our representative in the Senate cares too much for our standing in the greater galaxy, and those of us who have expressed concern over the methods used to achieve it are threatened. We are worried that their hostility to us will escalate into actual violence.”

“Well,” said Qui-Gon, “it is our goal to prevent violence wherever possible. We are glad to help you, so long as our aims remain the same. Are you seeking diplomatic assistance?”

“Investigative, if you wouldn’t mind,” said Tyrnith. “We’ve attempted to break into their headquarters to do our own reconnaissance, but haven’t been able to thwart their security systems. For someone with Jedi abilities, though . . .” He spread his hands.

“I will certainly do what I can,” said Qui-Gon. “I assume I will require protective equipment?”

“Yes,” said Tyrnith. “I have prepared two suits and oxygen masks, one set of gear for each of you. Will that do?”

“It will more than suffice,” said Qui-Gon smoothly. “Rowana will stay with our ship; I will go in alone.”

“Alone?” said Tyrnith. “Are you sure – I had imagined it would be both of you.”

“If you only require investigative work, then I am sure I can call on Rowana if I need assistance,” said Qui-Gon. “Give me just a moment to change on my ship, and then I will be at your service.”

The others descended upon them as soon as the ship had sealed against prying eyes. “Well?” said Quinlan. “What do you think?”

“He’s insincere,” Rowana confirmed. “Unfortunately, I can’t glean anything more than that. His anxieties are . . . clouded.” A frown tugged at her brows. “Not unlike the cloud I sensed over the Force at the Temple. It makes me uneasy.”

“And me,” said Qui-Gon. “He wanted both of us to enter that factory. And he didn’t give away one way or the other whether he believed us responsible for the murder of those Jedi. If he is working for the person actually responsible” –

“So you’re not both going in?” said Quinlan. His eyes gleamed at the sight of the suit held loosely in Rowana’s hand. “Need someone else to watch your back?”

“I should go with you!” said Anakin. “You were planning to go in by yourself? If it is a trap, I bet you’ll need someone who can move fast.”

Qui-Gon shook his head ruefully. How had he ended up with so many adrenaline-seekers after all this time? Or had Obi-Wan’s cautious practicality simply shielded him from what other Jedi Masters were regularly subjected to?

“I will,” he said. “But what good is it having such talented companions caught on the inside? If this is a trap, I have no intention of escaping from it until after it is sprung.” He glanced at Quinlan. “I have the sense your tracking abilities will be needed. And your mechanical skills, Anakin.”

A slow smile spread across Quinlan’s face. “Kenobi always said you liked to walk straight into situations without thinking them through,” he said. “Now I realize you do think them through – you just act as if you hadn’t.” He tilted his head. “I can respect that.”

Obi-Wan.

Qui-Gon swallowed. Obi-Wan would be here, somehow, somewhere. Here? Here, on the other side of the trap? This could not be coincidence.

“Anakin,” he said, “take a look at Rowana’s suit before anyone puts it on. Maybe you can work out how to replicate its mechanisms for when you follow me. Perhaps some of you can set to researching this Tyrnith – or the general situation on this planet – while the others follow me? Make sure you are not spotted, but I think it’s time we begin to understand what is happening, and who is manipulating us.”

His orders were met with varying levels of satisfaction, but he didn’t have time to make sure everyone was happy with the plan. Ignoring the protests, Qui-Gon changed quickly into his wetsuit and oxygen mask and disembarked the ship on his own.

He was already swaying a little on his feet, the effort of retaining his balance – on top of the exhaustion of space travel – taking a toll on his body. Truthfully, he was not quite as confident in his solitary activities as he had claimed, but that was yet another reason he should be the one to walk into situations like this – to ensure that the strength remained in the hands of those who would have to pull him out.

“Where is your colleague?” Tyrnith asked when he emerged. He had been standing on the platform, shifting nervously from foot to foot, for what seemed like too long.

Qui-Gon smoothed a mask of impassivity over his own unease. “She will meet you when you return here,” he said. “Perhaps you might give her more information on the political situation here while I investigate in person. I imagine you will lead me to the space I am expected to investigate, but not accompany me inside?”

“Your imagining is quite astute, Master – er – uh – sir,” stammered Tyrnith. “Forgive me, but I can’t be seen in the site, for fear of drawing suspicion to myself” –

“I understand perfectly,” Qui-Gon assured him. “Please, lead the way.”

A small submarine was waiting for them at the edge of the platform, bobbing up and down in the choppy tide. Bodily control developed and honed over Qui-Gon’s entire life kept him from seasickness at the sight, but the motion still did no favors to his tendency towards vertigo. He sank into one of the seats with concealed relief, trailing his hands over the side of the submarine before the hatch closed with Tyrnith beside him.

The water was murky around them, the tides hammering at the edges of the little vehicle. It must be what Rie had called tide-up, when she’d shared her research about the planet: what passed for night on this mostly-underwater world, when the tides were stronger and more difficult to traverse. The thought crossed Qui-Gon’s mind that he might be expelled abruptly and stranded in the water, here to be left to the mercy of the tides – but his feelings told him that would be too uncertain a method of murder. Particularly not when, for all he had been able to ascertain, his wetsuit and oxygen mask were both intact.

No, he sensed that he was meant to make his way inside.

The factory loomed before them after only a few minutes of travel – it was not far from the landing pad, then. Tyrnith glanced around as he brought them nearer, and Qui-Gon followed his gaze subtly, but could not find what he might possibly be looking for.

Ah, well, he thought grimly. That was always the most exciting part of a trap – determining what it was that you were supposed to be falling into. Often not until you had actually fallen far and hard.

“Here,” said Tyrnith, sudden and urgent. “This is where you’ll go in. I’ve brought you as close as I can, but” – He cast Qui-Gon a look of regret – “I can’t be seen entering here; I’ll draw too much suspicion onto myself” –

“Will you leave me the craft, then?” asked Qui-Gon mildly. “Or am I to make it through the tide on my own?”

“The tide slows, this near to the structures,” said Tyrnith. “But I can give you a line to the craft, if you wish, that you would then detach once you have reached the door.”

“That will serve,” said Qui-Gon. Another thing to touch, at least. And, yes – as good as confirmation that the trap was inside the factory itself. He fitted the oxygen mask over his face, hooked the line Tyrnith offered him to his belt, and allowed himself to be ejected from the submarine.

Stepping out into the pressure of the water was not unlike stepping out into space – except that the pressure did not crush him but only folded around him, allowing him to move slowly forward. Tyrnith had not been lying about the tide; it was slower around him than it had appeared from within the vehicle. He made his way forward in slow strokes, adjusting to the sensation of water around him – and then he was at the door.

There were alarm systems here, he noted, but nothing that couldn’t be easily disabled with the Force. He nudged the equipment with his mind, certain even as he did so that he was locking the doors behind himself, and entered.

As soon as he had done so, the door locked behind him in truth.

He could sense it as soon as it happened – that the trap had been sprung. He was alone here, and there was no getting out.

Well. He supposed it was time to determine what he had walked into.

Walking through an underwater factory was . . . disconcerting. The only windows in the place were high up, letting an eerie green light filter in, dancing off the walls with the patterns of the water. Sounds echoed in the large metal-and-duracrete structure, but only in one hall at a time – otherwise, they seemed completely cut off from one another.

Was this even a factory at all? Qui-Gon began to wonder. The first hall he had entered was completely empty, leading down a long path to another door. Behind that door, there were rows of machines – but not enough for the kind of mass production their research had indicated was the concern here. He made his way down hallway after hallway, trailing his hands along walls and over surfaces. He could leave an impression of his presence here in case he was meant to disappear without a trace.

Unless this was meant to be another framing. That thought struck him to the core. Obi-Wan had been called here, too. He was out of Qui-Gon’s communicative reach, and he had been summoned to the system, and Qui-Gon had not seen him. Was Obi-Wan to be the next murder on the list of their mysterious foe? That would be a devastating blow to the trust he had professed in Qui-Gon, wouldn’t it?

Dread rushed through his blood, heavy and cold in every limb. His pace quickened.

The hallways grew tighter on the way to what must be the center of the factory – the center of the trap – tighter and darker, until he was feeling more than seeing his way through. And then – there – his hands pressed against a round, bolted door, the only way to go on.

This was it, he sensed – something about this was either the purpose of the trap or the reason it had been laid in the first place. Perhaps both. So he pressed his hands to the door, preparing to use the Force to slide the bolts free of their place –

And to his surprise, it had already been done. The door swung open, bolts already free of their lock, with a loud clanging noise that made him start, take up a defensive posture, his lightsaber leaping into his hands.

Within the room, there was a gasp – and then a hum, and a blaze of blue light. Qui-Gon ignited his lightsaber on instinct, raised it –

And found himself staring between the beams of two blades, his own and another, directly into a well-known, dearly beloved face.

“Ah,” he said, and the dizzying rush of relief nearly made him stagger. “There you are.”

It was all he could say before the floor dropped out beneath them.

Chapter Text

The lurch in Obi-Wan’s chest at the sight of Qui-Gon, the sound of his voice, was so visceral that for an instant he failed to notice that the lurch was real: that the floor had physically vanished from beneath his feet.

Instinct caught up less than a second later, though, and he was reacting: deactivating his lightsaber until it shrank to nothing in his hands, so as not to wound himself on the blade; reaching out to the Force currents around him to reorient himself in space, ready himself to absorb and redirect the impact of a landing. He could sense Qui-Gon doing the same beside him – here, real, alive – could sense the walls around him and the ground somewhere far beneath him – ground, not water, though he readied himself to pull up his oxygen mask if he needed it. The walls surrounding them were narrowing, no longer the wide room of above but some kind of chute; it was growing darker, as well, and he could not even see Qui-Gon, let alone the walls that enclosed them – and then he had to stop taking stock, because the ground was rushing up beneath him.

He bent his knees to absorb the shock within his body and reached for the Force to soften the worst of the impact. A huff from Qui-Gon indicated that he too had landed, and Obi-Wan was stretching an arm out to steady him before conscious thought had caught up, but the arm caught only the edge of Qui-Gon’s side as he straightened up. Qui-Gon inhaled sharply at the touch, and Obi-Wan could not stifle a hitch of air himself – at the feeling of Qui-Gon’s body against his arm, softer to the touch than it had been during his apprenticeship, but still strong and solid – at the knowledge that it was really him, here, confirming all their suspicions, and yet none of that was as important as the fact that it was him –

Here. In the same place. On purpose.

“Where is here, anyway?” he murmured to himself aloud.

“Where indeed.” Qui-Gon shuffled closer to him, not quite touching, but close enough that the shape of his body vibrated in the Force currents Obi-Wan could sense around them. Qui-Gon was a beacon in the Force, radiating such strength and presence that Obi-Wan’s knees nearly went weak. “I admit, this isn’t what I was expecting.”

Above them, a loud clunk, and then the darkness was complete and the space constricted, air flowing less freely. Another, quieter clunk, and the space reoriented around them – and they were sinking.

“Nor I.” Obi-Wan felt for the walls around them, fought a spike of claustrophobia and vertigo. “Is this some kind of box?”

“Two Jedi in a sinking box,” Qui-Gon said thoughtfully. “It could be a sort of logic puzzle.”

He sounded as calm as he ever had in any of their equally ridiculous situations during Obi-Wan’s apprenticeship. Obi-Wan fought down his own urge to panic. “You let me know once you’ve figured out the answer,” he said. “In the meantime, I’d like some light in here. Stand back.”

Qui-Gon backed away from him as Obi-Wan ignited his saber again, bathing the chamber in blue light. Once he had finished blinking to adjust his eyes, he let them wander about to take in their surroundings. The room was as narrow and small as he had imagined it at first, tiny and windowless . . . and sinking indeed. That was the reorientation he had noticed at first: that second clunk must have been this box being detached from the factory, somehow, and now they were drifting down through the water at an unhurried pace.

And Qui-Gon was standing opposite him, face lit blue in the glow of Obi-Wan’s lightsaber, glancing around with curious eyes.

“A trapdoor,” he said, “leading down into . . . a box? Some capsule set to detach from the main space of the factory, but only once two people stepped on it. Or perhaps activated from some distant chamber by someone watching us? Whoever set this trap wanted both of us out of the way at the same time.”

Obi-Wan hummed in agreement as he scanned the walls again, this time looking for any hint of vents or breathing apparatus. The capsule must be watertight, or they would already see and hear signs of flooding, but given their oxygen masks, flooding would be welcome. As it was . . .

“Air for a few hours, maybe,” said Qui-Gon. “Then a few more if we put on the masks. Do you suppose we can cut our way out?”

Obi-Wan probed at the thick walls with a hand; with the Force; then, cautiously, with his lightsaber. As soon as the plasma made contact, it flared up, crackling dangerously, throwing off sparks – and not moving. There was no give beneath the blade, and when he withdrew it, the only sign of his cut was a smooth scorch mark on the surface of the wall.

“Shielded,” Qui-Gon noted. “Perhaps below the surface? Our captors were taking no chances.”

“You’re remarkably calm about all this,” Obi-Wan said dryly.

Qui-Gon shrugged. “New experiences are always interesting. I’ve never been shut in an underwater box before.” He rested a hand on Obi-Wan’s arm, and Obi-Wan’s heart sped up despite himself. “It’s an ingenuity I have to respect.”

“I don’t,” said Obi-Wan. Qui-Gon’s hand was on the arm not holding the lightsaber, so he didn’t even have to shake it off when he raised the blade to the ceiling. “There must be bolts up there that hold the ceiling in place – something we can loosen.”

“Would you like to sit on my shoulders?”

Obi-Wan hoped that the blue glow of the lightsaber concealed the flush spreading across his cheeks. Any touch – any thought of contact between them now, the thought of Qui-Gon’s shoulders beneath his thighs, after what had passed between them the last time they had seen one another – He could not be sure if Qui-Gon had understood what that kiss had meant to him, what any touch would mean to him – his master was inclined towards touch as an expression of affection, yes, but he had always seemed aloof and apart from the more intimate forms of contact that Obi-Wan had familiarized himself with during adolescence and adulthood. Urges of the body seemed beneath Qui-Gon, somehow, restrained within his self-controlled serenity – but how might he respond to Obi-Wan’s own if he were forced to contend with them?

“Are you sure you can hold me?” was what he asked instead.

“I may pay for it tomorrow, but let’s turn our minds to ensuring that there is a tomorrow, hm?” Qui-Gon released Obi-Wan’s arm and turned to kneel before him, presenting his back. “Up.”

Obi-Wan swallowed. He deactivated his lightsaber and returned it to his belt before placing tentative hands on Qui-Gon’s shoulders – broad and strong beneath him, as indomitable as he had ever been in Obi-Wan’s youth. After everything, still solid, still here. He pushed himself up, as gently as possible: hands, then knees, then up and over, until his legs dangled over Qui-Gon’s shoulders – and he brought all his bodily control to bear against his own reactions, his own desires. Qui-Gon rose, slowly and carefully, until Obi-Wan’s head nearly brushed the ceiling.

“That’s enough,” said Obi-Wan, and he felt the body tremble slightly beneath him as Qui-Gon braced his legs. He would be fast, he promised himself, running his hands over the ceiling – smooth, as far as he could find it. As though it had always been here, always been connected, with no bolts or latches that he could find.

“It’s as though it sealed into itself,” he said finally, heavily. “I can’t feel the latches at all.”

“We know they were manufacturing new kinds of metals here,” said Qui-Gon thoughtfully. “Perhaps this is some of their technology, brought to bear against us.”

Obi-Wan tapped his head and then slipped down from his shoulders as gracefully as he could, mourning the lack of contact even as he stepped aside. “What do we do now?”

“Hmm,” said Qui-Gon. “We wait.”

“Wait for what?” said Obi-Wan. “Someone to come retrieve us? Or to come rescue us from the depths of the ocean? Or for some brilliant idea to occur to us?”

“Any or all,” said Qui-Gon. He leaned back against one of the walls and let himself slide down into a seated position on the floor. “The Force will provide. And I didn’t come here alone or unprepared, you know.”

Obi-Wan scowled at him – wasted in the lack of light, but satisfying to do – and moved to sit as well. “I hate when you’re cryptic.”

He could not see Qui-Gon’s face, but the smile was audible in his voice when he said, “I know.”

Obi-Wan shifted to the side, letting his shoulder find Qui-Gon’s – pressing against him and then relaxing, to let his arm rest against Qui-Gon’s. It was both the solid comfort of touch and an invitation, if Qui-Gon would take it up.

They sat in silence for some time, and Obi-Wan listened to the sound of Qui-Gon’s breathing. It was a comforting sense memory, bringing him back to the days when he had been a padawan, sitting next to Qui-Gon on some transport or another, venturing off or returning from their latest mission. He had not thought, at that time, that he would miss that time spent in quiet meditation or contemplation or simple company, and now he found himself craving it.

“Are you – feeling all right?”

He cringed even as the question left his mouth. Why had he worded it like that? And yet he could not deny that it had preoccupied him, the desire to learn the shape of Qui-Gon’s strengths and limitations, to relearn some of that intimacy that had once been his to know and now belonged to others. He knew that nothing about Qui-Gon belonged to him, but still it was a struggle to release that desire to know, that need for connection.

“As much as ever,” said Qui-Gon easily. “I suppose the benefit of this particular situation is its lightness on strenuous physical activity.”

“This particular situation,” Obi-Wan sighed. They had time; they might as well discuss practical matters. Certainly he didn’t know what to say of the more . . . intimate ones. “Someone wanted us both out of the way, you were saying?”

“Possibly all of us,” said Qui-Gon. “Tyrnith seemed surprised and alarmed when I announced that Rowana would not be accompanying me to the factory. They must have wanted to make a clean sweep of us.”

“Then I too have been judged to be a danger,” said Obi-Wan. His stomach squirmed when he thought about his conversations over the last few weeks. Had his communications been tracked by the Temple? By the Senate? Had their attackers from that alley in Coruscant judged Obi-Wan to be too great a threat to be left alive? “But by whom? Tyrnith – that’s the same person who met me, and he claimed to be an aide to the Senator.”

“Easy enough to find out, if it’s true,” said Qui-Gon. “Of course, he made no such claims to me. And our attackers’ weapons too could be traced back to the Senate. It seems certain that there is some form of government involvement in this plot, whatever it is, though I can’t accuse anyone of it outright.”

“Yes,” said Obi-Wan slowly, “but I fear it goes deeper than that. My association with you – after you were officially declared an enemy, anyway – can only have been found out by having my comm unit tracked. The only people who can do that are either within the Temple or closely connected to the Council – close enough to have access to our communication systems. That limits our suspicions to the Council, or those at the highest levels of government.”

“And do you suppose that’s where the suspicion of me is coming from?” Qui-Gon said. “Masters Zendu and Nidor – and the padawan, I don’t know her name” –

“Ele Maar,” said Obi-Wan heavily. “Fifteen years old.”

Qui-Gon’s arm pressed harder against Obi-Wan’s. “Yes,” he said. “The rising Sith are the only ones I can think to blame for such a horror. Why would the Council suspect me, rather than them, without strong outside influence?”

“I told you before,” said Obi-Wan, “the whispers at the Temple connect you directly with the threat of the Sith. You were touched by the dark side, physically, and it has been easier than it should be to turn that into suspicion that you may have begun to turn yourself. That the goal of the Sith warrior was to create an insidious threat within the Order itself.”

Sitting here, pressed against Qui-Gon’s side, the very words were poison in Obi-Wan’s mouth. They always had been – the worst moment of his life turned into a cause for doubt and distrust. He had watched his master struck down, had cradled him in his arms as life fled his body. He had listened to what they both thought would be Qui-Gon’s last words. He had watched as Qui-Gon struggled to recover from that wound, had seen the changes to his body and his abilities – and his spirit. Yes, Qui-Gon had changed, but in so many ways it was only to become more himself: more dedicated to his principles, more in tune with the Force around and within him. Even now he sang with it, so alive with the light that every molecule in Obi-Wan’s body, every particle of his own consciousness and his own connection, strained towards him.

Obi-Wan could not leave him again, he realized. Something had changed in his own connection, in his own principles. He had always been dedicated to the Order, but – perhaps all along, Qui-Gon had been teaching him what it meant, above all, to be dedicated to the light.

Qui-Gon sighed against him, a sad, gentle exhalation. “I am sorry to hear it,” he said. “That people who once trusted me can be so easily swayed. It makes me worry that fear and distrust are at work in the heart of the Order – at the heart of the Republic. And surely that cannot be unrelated to the threat of the Sith. Are not fear and despair the tools of the dark side?”

“I think you’re right.” Obi-Wan should have been used to saying those words by now, after twelve years of apprenticeship to this man, and still there were more ways to be surprised. But it was more than personal pride, now, but deep disappointment – in himself, in the Order he loved and trusted, in the way it had been twisted without his ever realizing it. “I couldn’t believe you – you understand that I couldn’t believe you?”

“I understand,” promised Qui-Gon. “And I didn’t think you were wrong, either. Just because I could no longer work with the Order didn’t mean that I stopped believing in the mission of the Jedi – or respecting those who remained. I could never lose full faith in the Order as long as it was the place you belonged.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes stung. He shouldered closer to Qui-Gon, felt Qui-Gon return the motion, until their arms were pressed tighter together – wetsuit to wetsuit, without the warmth of skin, but with all the comfort of closeness. “Qui-Gon” –

Qui-Gon moved beneath him, his hand sliding up Obi-Wan’s arm to cup his shoulder, then higher, ungloved fingers nudging at the opening of the suit: the bare skin of Obi-Wan’s neck. “When we last saw each other,” he murmured. “I didn’t have the chance to ask you” – He broke off. Their faces were so close now that Obi-Wan could feel Qui-Gon’s breath against his cheeks, could feel the whisper of motion as his tongue darted out to lick his lips. “I wondered” –

Obi-Wan didn’t think. For once, he cast aside all worries about the future or the past; all concern for right or wrong, for what might come about as a result of his actions. He let it all go – let himself exist, for once, thoroughly and completely in his body, in the moment, in the here and now. He leaned into the warmth of Qui-Gon’s body, the hand at his neck, the face so close to his own, and kissed Qui-Gon for the second time.

Last time, he had been tentative, even timid – had offered the kiss as an expression of feeling, as a substitute for all the words he had never known how to say; had given Qui-Gon no time to respond, in words or otherwise. This time, with nothing to do but wait, with nothing to distract them but one another, the kiss was nothing of the sort. Qui-Gon’s head tilted up against his, his mouth pliant beneath Obi-Wan’s own, and Obi-Wan pressed deeper, nudging Qui-Gon’s lips apart and cupping his own hands at the back of Qui-Gon’s head to hold him just so. His fingers tightened in wet hair and Qui-Gon made a small sound, soft and surprised, at the back of his throat – and Obi-Wan felt an answering groan resonate in his own.

They broke apart, both breathing hard. Blood pounded in Obi-Wan’s head so hard he felt light-headed with it, dizzy from the feeling of Qui-Gon’s lips against his and the willingness in his touch. Qui-Gon’s hair was wet and tangled between his fingers, spiked and twisted with salt, and Obi-Wan fought the urge to wind his hands deeper into it and pull.

Qui-Gon’s hands were busy as well: shaping Obi-Wan’s head, stroking down over his cheekbones and along his jaw. Obi-Wan shivered when they brushed the vulnerable skin of his throat, tilting his head back to allow Qui-Gon better access and yearning for the press of his lips there. But Qui-Gon did not move to kiss him again, only touched him wanderingly – no, wonderingly, as though Obi-Wan were some marvel of craftsmanship beneath his hands.

“I never thought you’d let me do that,” Obi-Wan breathed at last, unable to keep quiet – unable to wait, to let this work itself out without words, without some kind of confirmation.

“I never imagined I would want you to,” said Qui-Gon quietly. His hand had found a damp lock of Obi-Wan’s own hair, twisting it lightly and setting Obi-Wan’s whole scalp alive with electricity. “All of this is new to me, Obi-Wan. I don’t know what it means for you to do this, to say that you’ve wanted it” –

“What it means for me?” Obi-Wan echoed. “It means that I love you.” He quivered with the rightness of saying the words out loud, with the delicate ridge of Qui-Gon’s ear that his right thumb had just discovered and the shiver that it sent through Qui-Gon when he stroked it. “It means that I want you. It means” –

This time it was Qui-Gon who kissed him, fitting their mouths together with a strangled gasp, his hands tugging Obi-Wan’s head in closer. His lips were clumsy, unpracticed, but passion burned behind his touch, burned in the surge of his body into Obi-Wan’s space. The Code taught that passion must be subsumed in serenity, and yet now Obi-Wan knew what it felt like when the whole of Qui-Gon’s prodigious internal stillness, all of his long-practiced calm, was bent on one single task. Qui-Gon was now and always himself, all the way to the rootedness of his presence in the Force, and Obi-Wan could feel it in the touch of his hands, the movement of his mouth. The Force sang between them, alive with their connection to one another, with the intensity of Qui-Gon’s focus on him. Skill did not matter, experience did not matter, to this relentless devotion: all the love of twelve years of partnership, of two years of missed connections and unspoken words, of endless respect and deep-rooted trust. Obi-Wan had never been kissed like this, and he wondered in a wild flash if he ever would be again.

“I have always loved you,” Qui-Gon whispered against his lips, ragged and wrecked in a way Obi-Wan had never heard him, had never even dared to imagine. “Only now do I begin to understand what it means to want you. Obi-Wan” –

He was cut off by a thud.

Obi-Wan flinched, startling away from Qui-Gon on instinct to place his back against the wall. Another thud, decidedly on the outside of their little prison this time, and he ignited his lightsaber, blue light blazing into the space they had created between them and illuminating them to one another at last.

He had never imagined what his master might look like after being thoroughly kissed, and he gave thanks that his youthful imagination had never stretched so far. This image – Qui-Gon’s pupils wide and dark (though contracting rapidly at the brightness of Obi-Wan’s blade), a flush high on his cheeks, lips pink and half-parted still, hair raked into damp ridges by Obi-Wan’s questing fingers – would have driven his younger self to distraction. He could only spare a moment’s appreciation before snapping back to the more pressing concern, the sound – threat or savior? – from outside.

And then another sound – one he knew far too well.

“Well done finding the trap,” came the voice of Quinlan Vos. “Now if you want to be freed, you better find a corner to hide in and cover your head.”

The hunk of duracrete and metal Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan had found themselves trapped in was indeed too strong to be freed from by the Force alone – unless that Force user was Anakin Skywalker. Using a combination of mechanical ingenuity and raw power, Anakin had loosened the nearly-invisible bolts holding the box together, then blasted the whole thing apart in a stunning demonstration of what a momentary release of self-imposed limitations could do. That the release must be momentary could be dealt with later.

Now Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan sat crammed with Aayla and Anakin in the back of the submarine Quinlan had “borrowed” from Tyrnith after he had returned from dropping Qui-Gon off. (Obi-Wan’s had mysteriously vanished from outside the factory, as if no one had intended for him to have a vehicle to use to escape.) Quinlan sat in the pilot’s seat, Rie and Rowana pressed together in the copilot’s chair. Obi-Wan was pressed just as tightly against Qui-Gon’s side, a position he should have been accustomed to after all they had shared together, and yet he could not stop himself from marveling at the closeness, darting glances to the side to take in the slight flush in Obi-Wan’s cheeks, the shape of those lips that had so recently opened beneath his own – and, often, to catch Obi-Wan giving him the same kind of sidelong look.

But putting emotions like this aside was just what he had counseled Anakin to do, and Qui-Gon must practice it for himself now. With a great effort, he pulled his mind away from the way his skin tingled where Obi-Wan was touching him and back to the moment: to the needs of their situation.

“Tyrnith is a Senate aide, all right,” Rie was saying. “And one on relatively thin ice, as best I understand it. He was involved in several scandals last year; it would be strange for him to be acting independently of instructions, especially for something as significant as this.”

“But it does make him a convenient fall guy,” pointed out Quinlan. “If things go wrong, he’s easy to blame. And doesn’t have a lot of credibility if he tried to blame it on someone else.”

“Murky,” Qui-Gon mused. “No one directly traceable to this plot, and someone ready to take the blame for it.” It was just what had frustrated him in the Senate before his departure – all these bills and squabbles, all seeming so logical if you traced them from start to conclusion, but with no reason for them to have truly begun in the first place. All contributing, in the end, to greater strife.

“Just like the blaster from our past attack,” said Obi-Wan. “Traced to the Senate, but to no particular individual.”

“High up in the Senate, though,” said Rie thoughtfully. “As you said, Obi-Wan, the ability to track your comm would have had to come from either the Council or Senate leadership – and I think we can rule out the Council. They may have fallen victim to this framing, but they wouldn’t have known about it.”

“What makes you so sure?” said Quinlan suspiciously.

“Because only Qui-Gon and Rowana were on the news,” Rie pointed out. “The Council knows about all of us in this group. Why would they not have at least shared pictures of you and me, Quinlan, even if not the padawans?”

And they were back to this. “That has puzzled me from the start,” Qui-Gon mused. “Why only share pictures of the two of us? My own departure from the Order was relatively public, but why involve Rowana in this?”

Beside him, Obi-Wan made a small, guilty sound. “I think I may be responsible for that,” he said. “When I reported on my mission to Nidhat, I mentioned that the two of you had both been present for negotiations. I can’t help thinking that’s where the Chancellor must have gotten the information.”

Something cold and metal seized hold of Qui-Gon’s insides. Abruptly, the space around him seemed that slightest bit smaller. “The Chancellor?” he said quietly.

The submarine was crowded with far too many people, windows fogged with their breath, and yet still somehow Qui-Gon’s words seemed to echo off a large, expansive space. For a long moment, no one spoke.

There was no strong argument that whoever had gone about victimizing their small band was connected to the clouding of the Force around Republic affairs, nothing solid or certain – but abruptly Qui-Gon was remembering headaches and confusion in the chambers of the Senate; remembering Palpatine’s strange interest in Anakin; remembering that he was perhaps the only person outside the Jedi Council who had known his plan was to go to Anakin’s mother, and the mysterious, untraceable attack against her –

“Surely not,” said Rowana at last, quietly, but the disbelief of her words was not echoed in her tone.

“All the evidence is circumstantial,” agreed Aayla. “It’s not enough to mount a case.”

“Mount a case?” said Anakin. “Against the Chancellor? He’d never do something like this!”

Qui-Gon could not argue with him – mostly because he could hardly be sure himself. Aayla was right: they had no evidence, nothing beyond suspicion, and even that suspicion was based far too much on slim coincidence. The Chancellor surely shared information with those he trusted, and he could be just as easily deceived as the rest of them. “No one is mounting a case against anyone,” he said. “The Jedi Council is not a court of law, and we are not seeking to take any action, only to clear our own names. Obi-Wan has a communications device that can contact the Council, and he was lured into this trap just as we were. If he speaks up for us, perhaps this will be enough to convince the Council of our innocence.”

And they might look elsewhere for their guilty party, he did not say. It was too soon to be certain of anything – only what they knew: that they had not done this, that there was someone else out there with a vested interest in their accusation, and that they needed allies as soon as possible. Though the one they had already found was the one Qui-Gon would choose over any other.

“And will he?” said Anakin.

The edge to his voice was enough to bring Qui-Gon’s meandering thoughts to a halt; sparks fairly crackled in the air around him. Slowly, Qui-Gon turned – and saw out of the corner of his eye that Obi-Wan was doing the same.

Anakin’s arms were folded, his hair plastered to his face with saltwater. The oxygen mask he had removed hung around his neck, and none of it made him look any less formidable – because the look in his eyes was the same Qui-Gon had seen when he had said goodbye to his mother, when he had confessed that he felt no regret over the deaths of the people he had killed. Fierce loyalty, anger, and suspicion – attachment. The kind that Qui-Gon had had to counsel himself away from yet again.

“Qui-Gon missed you,” Anakin said. “But you didn’t come with him. You stayed where they were accusing us of murder. How can we trust you now?”

“Anakin,” Qui-Gon began, but Obi-Wan raised a hand to stop him.

“You’re right,” he said evenly. “I’ve given you personally no reason to trust me. I’ve been affiliated with the Order that has caused you pain and hardship. But I’ve been helping Qui-Gon from within the Order, and I’m assuring you now that I mean you no harm. If you can’t trust me, do you trust Qui-Gon?”

Anakin hesitated.

“Trust is part of the relationship between master and apprentice, Anakin,” said Obi-Wan. “I learned to trust Qui-Gon, and he never let me down. Can you trust him, too?”

Long, long silence, layered over the whir of the submarine’s engine and the splash of water around them. Anakin did not speak.

“Search your feelings, Ani,” said Qui-Gon at last. “Recognize the anger and mistrust for what they are. Honor them for trying to protect you, and then reach deeper. You will find the truth in the Force beneath.”

For the truth was there. Perhaps not the truth of what would come in the future – but the truth of the moment: the truth of Obi-Wan’s sincerity. The truth that something had changed – and Qui-Gon could not know exactly what it was, but he suspected it might have something to do with the press of Obi-Wan’s lips against his, the rake of his fingers through his hair, the surge of the Force between them: the rightness of knowing they had found their way back into one another’s orbits, where they had always belonged.

Perhaps attachment could clarify things, as well as muddling them.

Slowly, after long moments, Anakin nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I trust you, Qui-Gon. So I guess that means I trust him as well.”

Had he been standing, Qui-Gon’s knees would have gone weak with relief. This question of trust was bigger than this moment, he realized – bigger than only Obi-Wan and what he had or had not done. It implicated the other attachments Anakin had formed, the place he would lay blame for the other wounds he had suffered. It would, Qui-Gon sensed, come to be very important in the days to come.

He said nothing of that, of course. All he said was, “Thank you, Ani.” Teaching was not a question of immediate results, he reminded himself. It was a process of patience and growth that took years and years, and his and Anakin’s journey had still only just begun. This was a start, just like so many of the other starts – a foundation to build on. “It’s settled then. I will go back with Obi-Wan to his ship and we’ll contact the Jedi Council. I’ll serve as evidence for his claim that we were both lured into a trap. We don’t have greater evidence than hearsay, but we aren’t asking for action so much as for vigilance. We are not asking for the Order to turn on the Republic – we’re just asking them to examine their ties, to examine the Senate, and to consider where they might be too entangled.”

“Good luck with that,” said Quinlan cheerfully from the pilot’s chair.

Rie laughed beside him, a tiny snort that broke the tension that had descended upon their group. Qui-Gon let himself breathe out.

Obi-Wan did not seem quite so relieved. “Thank you for your optimism,” he muttered.

Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow at him, remembering abruptly the strange tension between Obi-Wan and Quinlan the last time they had all been together. The two of them had been alternatively friends and enemies when padawans together, clashing over their preferred methods for solving a problem but always standing up for one another when called to do so. Not unlike his own relationship with Obi-Wan, he thought wryly. But then, Obi-Wan was argumentative by his very nature; it was only reasonable that his relationships would either accommodate it or break under the strain. This felt like something different from Obi-Wan’s typical contrariness – something deeper.

As if to confirm his suspicions, Obi-Wan averted his eyes from Qui-Gon’s gaze, pink rising in his cheeks.

“That’s what we’ll do, then,” Qui-Gon said, letting it go for now. “Obi-Wan and I will contact the rest of you from his ship once we’ve made the call. We’ll arrange a place to meet depending on what we hear and then we can decide what to do next.”

It was not his most popular plan – but then, Qui-Gon had made executive decisions before. And of course, his desire to be alone with Obi-Wan could not solely be attributed to his eagerness to contact the Council. He yearned to speak with him about the kisses they had shared, the brief words they had exchanged. To understand what it could mean for Obi-Wan to love him, for him to love Obi-Wan, in a way both inextricable from the bonds they had shared as Jedi, as master and padawan, and yet growing outside of those bonds into something else entirely. To understand what it could mean for them to remain Jedi, within or outside the Order. To understand what Obi-Wan meant to do about his connection to the Order, pending the results of this conversation.

When they reached the ships, there was no one else around. Tide-up had sent those who had greeted them back into their homes, perhaps – or this operation was simply not well enough known to garner extra security. Or it was another trap. But Qui-Gon followed Obi-Wan into the small, Temple-owned ship, let himself gaze around at the familiar austerity of it – so different from the ship that was becoming the closest thing that his group had to a home.

It made him hesitate – knowing that he had so little to offer to Obi-Wan, that the work and the accommodations of his group could not compare to the structure and stability of the Order. Structure and stability, two things Obi-Wan had always craved. Could he ever exist outside the Jedi? Could Qui-Gon ask this of him now, when he could not have done so a year before?

“Obi-Wan, wait,” he said, even as Obi-Wan keyed the commlink on the ship. “Before you make this call, I” – He grasped at Obi-Wan’s hand, caught it in his own. Obi-Wan’s fingers were warm in his, and he could feel the pulse fluttering in his thumb. “I need to know” –

He didn’t know how to name it. Would this be the last time they saw one another? Would Obi-Wan go back to the Order and risk being cut off from missions, if the risk of encountering Qui-Gon was deemed too great? What would become of them after this? Something was about to change, and only this call could tell if that change would be deep enough to rock the foundations of the Jedi Order or more localized, specific to Qui-Gon himself. What could he expect from Obi-Wan when it did?

And perhaps Obi-Wan could read Qui-Gon as well as he ever had, because he understood. “I’m with you, Qui-Gon,” he said quietly. Steadily. A tiny smile tugged at his lips as he added, “Master.” He squeezed Qui-Gon’s hand and leaned in to nip at his lips: once, twice; almost teasing, if it had not been so tender. Qui-Gon sighed when he drew away, pliant in Obi-Wan’s grip, captivated by the certainty in his eyes and his voice. “Whatever comes next, whatever they say. I’m with you.”

Qui-Gon lifted his free hand to Obi-Wan’s face, brushed it over a cheekbone, back past his ear, into the hair beginning to dry into stiff, tangled clumps. “With me out here, or with me back at the Order?”

“I suppose that depends on what the Council says, doesn’t it?” said Obi-Wan.

The mischievous smile on his lips made Qui-Gon’s heart flip in his chest; he inclined his head and kissed Obi-Wan again. Ah, but he could learn how to do this, he thought as Obi-Wan’s hands curled into the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him in closer; as Obi-Wan’s lips nudged his own apart, full and soft and open. He could learn this as he had relearned so many other dimensions to the capacity of his body for change, for new kinds of motion. He could learn how to move against Obi-Wan’s body as he had learned new ways of moving with a lightsaber; could learn every part of how Obi-Wan’s lips felt against his own, the shape of his head and neck and shoulders beneath Qui-Gon’s hands.

In this, perhaps Obi-Wan would be the perfect teacher.

That thought sent a rush of warmth through him, flooding his heart until it threatened to overflow; the simple truth of Obi-Wan’s presence here, the knowledge of his steadiness, his promise, filling something in him that had been empty since he had left the Order.

“You are a marvel,” he whispered when the kiss broke, when he drew back at last with a hand still resting against the side of Obi-Wan’s neck, feeling his fluttering pulse, still breathing their shared air. “I am in awe of the knight you have become, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Whatever I am is thanks to your training,” said Obi-Wan. He stroked his thumbs along Qui-Gon’s jaw, his eyes soft and gleaming. “Even if you do insist on shaking the foundations of my world.”

“Sometimes, the foundations that support us need to be shaken,” said Qui-Gon. He took a deep breath, and the moment expanded around him, vast with possibility and promise for the future – for a crisis potentially averted, for a new kind of harmony, a new kind of balance. But even if those hopes were not borne out, even if this change could not root out the darkness winding its way into the Order itself, the here and now must be enough for him – this love, this potential, this connection that he had not allowed himself to dream he might have again. “Shall we pass on our newfound knowledge, then?”

“Let’s,” said Obi-Wan, and he let his hand trail down the side of Qui-Gon’s face and neck, along his arm, to lace their fingers together even as he turned once more to the controls.

What would come would come – had that not been the greatest lesson of Qui-Gon’s new life? Two years before, struggling to understand how he had lived through a wound that should have killed him, struggling to understand why he had lived when his old life seemed so impossible to reach, he had vowed to let the changes be a lesson from the Force to take what came with grace and surrender. Had vowed to follow the path the Force set before him, to follow its twists and turns even when they led him to places he could never have imagined.

And indeed they had – for could he ever have imagined that he would sit here now, side by side with Obi-Wan, reunited after their paths had led them so far in opposite directions that such a reunion would have seemed impossible? Could he ever have imagined this new turn to his love for Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan’s for him – this blossoming of their treasured relationship into something new and strange and equally precious?

He could not predict what the Council would say when Obi-Wan called them now. He could not predict where the next steps in this path might lead him. But perhaps now he could trust that Obi-Wan would walk them with him – not for Qui-Gon alone, but because at last, their principles were leading them in the same direction.

Obi-Wan’s hand squeezed his, grounding him in the present – in the immediate moment – and with his other hand, he reached again for the comm.

Together, hands interlinked, they prepared to move forward into their future, whatever it might be. And around them, the Force seemed to hum in alignment.