An ugly surge went through the cavern as the ghouls registered Obi-Wan's fall. Qui-Gon and Pepi's opponents faltered, heads turning, as fanged muzzles sniffed out easy prey. The boy disappeared from view under a mound of snapping, fighting monsters.
"NO!" A useless spike of horror and denial tore through Qui-Gon at the sight. He let it all out in a shout which echoed off the ceiling. Broken joists and tumbled plascrete tossed the sound crazily. In the centred calm which followed his protest Qui-Gon saw the pause - ears flicking, bewildered - which went through the crowd of ghouls.
Beneath the pile of frenzied attackers Obi-Wan's sabre hissed into silence. Blank eyes lifted, and across the room, one after another, exploratory screams rang out.
Of course! Qui-Gon risked a glance at Pepi, saw from the angle of her veiled head, the stillness of her posture, that she had just had the same idea, at the same time.
Wrenching the comlink out of his pouch he twisted dials calmly. Emotions could wait until it was safe. Feeling the deadly urgency of the task would only make him perform it poorly.
Moving at enhanced speed it took him only microseconds to set the programme. Still it seemed too long.
He hit the button. Instantly the com burst out with a wail louder than an exploding starship. Breathing carefully Qui-Gon focused a little thought into defending his eardrums from the blast of sound. Only a moment later Pepi's comlink bellowed out a second tone, the sounds melding, then coming apart in an hideous asynchronicity. The slight difference of pitch set up harmonics like high mad voices shrieking between the two. A piercing note sliced through his head less cleanly than a million needles.
With his human hearing Qui-Gon found the onslaught only just bearable. But the ghouls had ears sensitive enough to hear the echoes made by the cracks in a paved floor. Under the battery of noise they blundered against each other, snapping, clawing - maybe keening; it was not possible to hear. Soon they began to collapse, going down before the cutting edge of sound like corn before the sickle.
Qui-Gon turned to Pepi. //Take the blasters from them. I must see to the boy.//
Hyperfocus between them was one-sided due to the mask, but he didn't need her acknowledgement. She would do what was necessary. Leaving her to it he leaped over the twitching bodies, raced to Obi-Wan's side.
There was nothing to be seen of young Kenobi. But blood was seeping from beneath the mound of unconscious ghouls in a thick portentous flood. Someone had died.
Oh, Obi-Wan. A host of emotions clamoured to be recognised - fear, regret, guilt. He began lifting the creatures away. Each one of them was heavier than a human, limp and difficult to shift. His heart raced and he stilled it I will fear nothing, regret nothing. I am a Jedi.
Many of the ghouls in the pile were corpses. Distracted by their desire to eat the boy they had fallen victim to the latecomers. Qui-Gon began to haul away bodies. Ripped throats glistened, and his hands grew slick with blood.
With a grunt of effort he lifted the final ghoul. This one was so mauled that when he moved it the severed neck parted and the head fell separate to the drenched floor. A feeding frenzy of ghouls was a fearsome thing indeed.
Obi-Wan looked very small in the centre of the ring of carnage. He had managed to curl himself into a ball. Lying on elbows and knees, hands clasped tight around the vulnerable nape of his neck he protected his face, throat and stomach, offering little but bone to the teeth.
Good boy. Qui-Gon thought, with a tremor of ridiculous tears. In the sabrelight there was no part of Obi-Wan which did not gleam crimson, and somehow it seemed unbearably poignant that he had reacted so well.
The Padawan's tunics were shredded, and when Qui-Gon touched the exposed shoulder his world stopped in a moment of sickening intensity. The flesh was cooling, corpse-like.
Qui-Gon rejected the flash of shock, pulled the boy up, easing the locked limbs apart. Obi-Wan's chest did not move under his master's exploring hands - no breath - and when Qui-Gon felt wrists and throat there was no pulse.
"No," his whispered denial was eaten by the monstrous noise around him, but he had not meant it to be heard. No! This bright, annoying, promising, angry, beautiful child could not be dead, just when Qui-Gon was beginning to care about him - surely? Surely the universe could not be that cruel again?
Once more he turned away from his own emotions, forced himself to approach this with calm, like the Master he was. I may be missing something.
No heartbeat, no respiration, the body going cool, the bond between their minds silent. But why? Obi-Wan's back was a webwork of claw marks and bites, which would have been agonising had he been conscious, but were hardly lifethreatening. There was no other wound on him.
Qui-Gon shut off the comlink - he couldn't think in its din. Pepi followed suit. In the ringing silence which followed he could just make out the shrill whine of power-packs overheating, then a series of small explosions, sounding dull and far away, unimportant.
Kneeling as if for meditation Qui-Gon emptied himself again, gathered the white-hot Force of Coruscant and focused it into a compulsion. Wake up, Obi-Wan. The danger is passed. Wake.
All the shields were down, and the mind was blank. In its darkness Qui-Gon almost despaired, but he was nothing if not tenacious, he followed the boy's self down below thought, below sleep, below the unconscious, to the most primal level of existence. There, not even knowing what it was, the mind of his student stirred at his presence.
He fled instinctively back to himself, found his body had recoiled as though the relief and shock were electric. He heard himself cry out. An "Oh!" of averted heartbreak almost painful in its intensity.
"Is he dead, Master?" Pepi had come to stand beside him, keeping watch in case the ghouls revived.
"No." He successfully kept the tremble out of his voice, but suspected she heard it anyway. "No..." It took a little time to gather himself, scattered as he was from the contact with an alien soul. "No he's not dead. I told him to hide from the ghouls by pretending he was a rock. He's put himself into suspended animation."
"Clever." Pepi tugged the white silk veil off, revealing her head and neck. She tucked it into her tunic and smiled at him. "New apprentice?"
"Yes." The boy shouldn't wake lying on his damaged back, but he could hardly turn him over to lie face down in the blood. Carefully, Qui-Gon lifted the limp form and cradled it against his chest.
"A front runner this time?" Pepi's twisted grin mocked him even as she offered the conversation as a way to ground him in the present - rescue him from the terrors he had just been through. She was right, the situation was still not safe enough for him to work through any of that.
"Not exactly."
Her roughened voice rasped out a laugh like a plane across oak. "Figures."
Turning away, she walked to the three craters which now smoked in the floor. While he worked to uncover Obi-Wan, she had piled the blasters together and set them to autodestruct. A sensible action, he thought, half distracted by the boy's limp coldness. Why were there still no signs of life?
Turning the weapons over with her boot, Pepi put her sabre through the few which remained viable. Only when it was done did she give him a sidelong glance - an ugly mix of cowering and defiance she had adopted at age five, and he was sad to see she hadn't grown out of yet. "Not going to say anything? That's a minefull of money I've just blown up."
Both understood that the Council could have recovered half of the resale value of the salvaged goods - that they wouldn't be at all pleased by this.
Like her, he found the Council's acceptance of money from the sale of arms distasteful in the extreme. Like her, he chose not to mention it. "We could hardly carry them."
"True." An old bond flared with laughter in his mind, as she heard what he hadn't said. Once more, he let go of anxiety to give her a smile of complicity. It was very good to see her again.
Across the floor of the cavern movement had begun to herald the revival of the ghouls - a hand scrabbled and subsided, a head raised and fell back. "What about them?" said Pepi.
It would be a simple matter to go through the crowd cutting throats. An extension of the Jedi's usual responsibility of culling the creatures. A protection for the unwary traveller in Coruscant's lower levels.
Looking at the cruel teeth, the obscene faces - such a mockery of human, it was easy to detest the ghouls. They ate each other, they ate the Underdwellers - even those who worshipped them as gods - they crept into lower level apartments and ate the babies out of their cradles... All of that he could put right with a sabre stroke. And the unconscious creatures would feel no pain.
Qui-Gon wiped stiffening blood away from his apprentice's closed eyes. Some of it was the boy's - run down from wounds in his scalp where they had clawed him. Somewhere in the future was a parent he could spare from having to do this with their own child. If he showed mercy to the monsters, he condemned someone, somewhere to the huge anguish of their son's death. How could he do that? How could he do that to anyone?
"It was not your mission to destroy them?" He tried to breathe out the emotion which threatened to overwhelm him at that thought. It would not loose - he could not get it past the aching, hollow place in his chest.
"No." Pepi's scarred face looked tight in the bruise-coloured light of their mingled sabres. Her range of expression was limited - this could have been either concern or surprise.
"Then," he looked past emotion to what he believed, "We should let them alone. We have no right to sacrifice them to an unknown future."
Settling Obi-Wan's weight more firmly against himself he picked the boy up, stood waiting for Pepi to take charge.
"I agree. Besides, just leaving them like this will thin them - those who wake first will eat the others." She lead the way out of the doorway, into a series of tunnels carpeted by slime.
"None of this is their fault, really." Her voice, an alto sanded rough by flames, whispered behind her as she opened a trap door onto what had once been a fire-escape. Now it was an empty artery rising straight up, chimney-black, through hundreds of metres of ruin. The ladder, hammered into the seeping walls, was hung with webs dripping ichor; clogged by dirt. Not even the spiders could survive.
"My mission was to trace the mass movement of blasters to the lower levels. Rumoured sightings of armed ghouls..." Pepi looked up, craning her neck back as if to see the sky. Indigo light from her blade lit only herself. Above her there was no end to the darkness or the rain of decay.
"You succeeded." A prompting only. Pepi's shoulders were bowed down with her achievement. She needed to talk. He gave her space to do so.
"Senator Ga-Gilly Mo'rush is hosting an important party tonight." Outlined in darkness, the shadows on Pepi's twisted cheeks were like the markings of the legendary Sith. Her voice was appropriately freighted with anger. "The ghouls were to be lead up to the Hospitality District and let loose inside the restaurant. They would certainly have killed him. Most of his supporters also."
"And the further slaughter would conceal the motive."
She nodded. Soiled rain dripped coldly down the long shaft above him. The horror of such an assassination attempt made it seem clean in comparison.
"Who would do such a thing?" A rhetorical question - he could think of dozens. Ga-Gilly was a thing the Senate was learning to despise - an idealist.
"That's the worst part." Pepi raised her hood against the foulness and became at once the picture of a perfect Jedi; poised, serene. He could read despair in the set of her hands. "Harith Organa."
"You're mistaken." He didn't mean that as it sounded. Not as a rejection of her worth. It was the edge of worry about Obi-Wan - still indistinguishable from a corpse in his arms - which sharpened his voice. Pepi however received it meekly.
"I feel that also. But the evidence does not support my feelings."
Had it succeeded this ruse would have removed two of the great Statesmen of the Senate. One in death and one in disgrace. Pepi's actions had saved Mo'rush, but if Harith Organa was in truth not responsible - if he had been framed - someone, somewhere would still have cause to celebrate.
Perhaps you're being paranoid, he thought, If the evidence is overwhelming you need to consider that it might be true. You have trusted too far before and been deceived.
"If I speak," said Pepi miserably, "I condemn a great man. But how can I stay silent?"
He pulled her into an awkward one-sided hug, Obi-Wan boneless between them. Slipping back into the role of Master for her just for this one instant of comfort he said "When you present your evidence to the Council they'll examine it minutely. They're good at that. They will discover the truth. And the truth is never our enemy."
She relaxed a little at that, raising her lidless brown eyes in a quick smile. "It's nice to see you again, Master. Thank you for saving my life."
He shrugged, surprised, "It's what I'm for."
The small movement rolled Obi-Wan's head off his shoulder to loll in neck-stretching discomfort over his arm. "Shouldn't he be waking by now?" Pepi asked, suspiciously.
"Yes."
"Don't tell me he's lost in there? You didn't teach him the way out?"
Guilt, like the zap of a stun-pole, stopping his heart for a moment. The emptiness in his chest echoed with it. If Obi-Wan was lost in his own mind that was his fault. Just as the boy's near fall from the bridge had been his fault. In trying to protect him I've lead him into danger unprepared. "I have taught him nothing."
She gave him a look - one that he recognised from his own youth; measuring, considering. But she only said "Just as well he's still under. You wouldn't make him climb with wounds like that."
"No I wouldn't. Is it far?"
"Very. I had to blow up the easier route, so the ghouls wouldn't return that way."
Qui-Gon took off one of his stola. He tore a length from the rags of Obi-Wan's tunic and tied the boy's arms firmly together. Hitching them over his head he hung the body from his shoulders, bound elbows at his throat. Then he tied the stola as a belt around them both. Much more manageable, though less dignified.
Night descended as he thumbed off his sabre, clipped it on his belt. Darkness encouraged the release of emotions. Safe now. Weep, rage; you're safe now. But it was lying. He set the temptation aside and began to climb, following the clank of Pepi's boots, the vibration of her swift, unburdened steps towards a still invisible light.
The rungs were slick. Movement made the ladder grate against its rusty supports.
"Watch it!" Pepi called from above. He leaned out, felt the whisper of air as a bolt kicked past his face. Beneath his foot the rails separated from the wall and twisted. Pointless to worry whether the rotting thing would support their combined weight, but - given the choice - he would have picked a nicer place to flirt with death.
Liquid still fell, greasy and foetid, drenching his hair, covering his hands. The itch of it crept beneath his cuffs, slid down his arms. Every grip became uncertain, and he could not trust his own fingers.
Against the back of his neck Kenobi breathed, once, the sudden heat a distraction. "Obi-Wan?" he murmured, but there was no response.
"Tell me about it," Pepi offered - nothing more than a gentle voice falling with the rain.
"About what?"
She snorted comfortably in the darkness, "Your new charity case - your 'not exactly' front runner. The boy. I thought you'd sworn off Padawans. What happened?"
How to sum it all up? He could hardly try, not while he had to focus so intently on the next movement, the next step up. His wrists ached already, and the tickle of the ooze had become a burn from fingertip to elbow. "They were going to send him to Agricorps."
"So?" She slipped into the 'Path of Doubt' exercise easily, questioning his answers, forcing him to refine, rethink, until he reached a pure truth.
"You should have seen him, Pepi..." Bandomeer flashed into his mind; another cramped, filthy space, Obi-Wan offering to die to save others. "So valiant. So certain. I couldn't let that potential go to waste."
"Why not?"
Why not, indeed. Had it just been his own emotions prompting him? His delight in giving the underdog a chance? The anticipated thrill of rubbing the Council's noses in it when Obi-Wan became a knight - 'See what you would have wasted!'? That would be an unworthy motive indeed.
He thought back, analysing feelings, thoughts, actions. "Because it was the right thing to do at that moment."
"How do you know?" There was a certain glee in Pepi's voice at having been allowed to put her old master on the student's end of this exercise. But he forgave her, just as he forgave himself the pride he felt for her. In three questions she had led him to enlightenment.
"The Force guided me."
"But if the Force guided you to be his teacher, why have you not taught him?" When she was pleased her voice took on the timbre of a woodwind instrument. It wound out of the dark sky like a thread of melody on which he could loose his doubts.
The Force guided me to be his Master. Whether he turns or not is irrelevant. The decision has been made. I must act on it. "Because I'm a fool."
"Pain makes fools of us all." Pepi murmured. A confession as well as sympathy. They shared the memories quietly, and then she said, unexpectedly fierce, "You're a good Master, you know. Xan made you doubt it. But he was wrong in that, as in so many other things."
Cold, and the fall of poisonous rain. The labour of putting hand over hand, climbing out. "He's dead, Pepi."
"Oh." Pepi's boots stilled, so that he caught up with her. The graze of her hem was a line of fire across his knuckles. "I'm sorry. I hoped..."
"I did too."
They began to climb again, the texture of sightlessness changing slightly - a mocking promise of light at the edge of endurance. Why were Jedi trainees so well muscled? A normal thirteen year old wouldn't be this heavy, surely?
"Well, if you will pick no-hopers you must expect the occasional failure."
His left hand missed its grip. In the nightmare instant of falling he was not a Jedi - no technique saved him, only a blind shoot of terror that made him lunge close and cling. The jerk and recoil of his movement shuddered through the miles of rust beneath him. "Will you stop..." why was it so hard to breathe? "Talking about yourself like that!"
"I thought you said truth was not my enemy?"
Distraction again, as she pretended not to notice his shameful display. What a fine Jedi she was. "Pepi. Just shut up and climb."
An alarm was blaring, filling the corridor with stridor. Lights flashed blue through smoke. Where am I?
The whole place was set to self-destruct. I have to get out! Have to... But which way?
He ran. Was there liquid beneath his feet? They dragged so. And the harder he tried the more they pulled back, so that fear caught him struggling like a fly in amber. Which way?
Passages appeared through the smoke, only to disappear when he had sloshed towards them. The strobe of sirens fractured him into tiny pieces, and he couldn't remember who he was. But I have to get out!
It was so cold - lifesupport had failed and the air was slowly turning poisonous around him. "Help me!"
"Obi-Wan?"
He remembered the voice - deep and softly accented. Something about obedience? A title... "Master?" He didn't know what it was supposed to mean, but it was a damn sight better than being in here alone. "Where are you?"
A large presence, silhouetted against the blaze of an opened door. "This way."
As he followed the flick of the shadowy cloak he could feel systems coming back on-line. Air circulating; and then memories, re-engaging in blocks.
Now he was walking in the Temple - the viewers gallery over the main dojo. How?
A young woman called him; "Ben?" Such yearning on a face which was the feminine mirror of his own. "Come to me, baby." He turned, felt solidity dissolving into an unfocussed sweep of green. A safety he could not return to. Mother though she was, she was leading him wrong.
No passages now, only the green, the blue wonder of a sky seen through newborn eyes, a painful blaze which must be the sun. I can't stay here! "Master!"
The man who stepped out of the light was certainly Qui-Gon Jinn, but wrong. Youthful, clean-shaven, the long glossy hair pulled into a tail down his back and secured with a silver clip.
"Who are you?" Obi-Wan recoiled.
The young knight stopped, puzzled. Then he raised a hand to his own smooth cheek. "Oh," he said, vaguely amused, "Embarrassing, isn't it? In my head I'm still thirty... But it is me. Come on."
"I don't..." On the edge of this primal meadow the smoke and darkness of the dying spaceship still beckoned. He could hide. He probably should. This man was not real.
"None of it is real, Obi-Wan. You're lost in your own mind." The combination of shrug and wry smile was very familiar, "I could hardly get in here physically, could I? Now hurry." He turned, pausing halfway to lift a smirk over his shoulder, "You're wasting Jedi time."
It definitely was Master Jinn.
Obi-Wan followed, and the landscape reformed around him - Temple again, snatches of Phindar, Gala, Telos, Nimgon, and suddenly he was being crushed to the ground; throttled, clawed, teeth tearing the skin from his back...
"Aaah!" He convulsed, trying to buck them off, and found himself falling briefly, jarringly off the bed.
"Whoa, Obi-Wan." Large hands caught his head an instant before it hit the grimy plascrete floor. "Welcome back."
Opening his eyes brought a squalid room into reluctant focus. His master, reassuringly himself, sat cross-legged, face in shadow, the over-curtained window at his back. He seemed to have discarded cloak and overtunic, and he smelled strongly of soap.
A patch of institutional striplighting spilled through the open door. The other Jedi stood there, also lightly dressed, but with her face and head completely covered by the muted shimmer of veil. She was facing outwards, on guard.
"W-where?" When he tried to talk his teeth chattered. Even the marrow of his bones felt icy, and though he could tell the room was suffocatingly warm still his body rejected it and clung to cold. A deep breath brought scents of smoke, incense, rancid flowers and old, spilled liquor. He coughed. He would not try that again.
The bedclothes were plastic; red, easily wipeable, frothed with slightly stained lace. "Ew! Master, where are we?"
"In a cheap brothel," said Qui-Gon calmly, "Can you walk?"
Obi-Wan was shocked speechless. I heard wrong! No way would he bring me to a... "Why?"
"Because I don't imagine we want to stay here any longer than is necessary."
Obi-Wan gave himself a mental shake, checked himself out. The back which he remembered being torn to shreds was now only stiff and tender, like a sunburn. "Yes," he said, trying to rein in horrified curiosity, "I feel fine. But I mean..." He waved a hand towards the highly educational scene painted on the wall; tried to look without looking, "Why?"
"You were injured and we were all covered in toxic waste. This was a safe place to get a bath. The lower levels are - in their own way - more dangerous than the Underworld. I couldn't have healed you on the street."
Thank the Force! That seemed innocent enough - but still... "Couldn't we have just gone to the Temple?"
"Carry your unconscious body for four hours through the rush hour man-jams while our skin dissolved?" Qui-Gon sounded flippant, but looked as though he had just been insulted, "Yes, I suppose I could have."
When Master Jinn was annoyed all the lines of his face hardened, drawing attention to the sheer size of him, all that brutal power. At times it was as though, werewolf like, a rarely glimpsed monster stirred within him, and Obi-Wan saw the man who had hunted his previous apprentice relentlessly across the galaxy - to kill him.
Though he didn't know what he'd done wrong, he was aware he'd gone too far. I'm sorry, Master. I can be perfect, honest. He scrambled to his feet and presented the image of an eager Padawan to his master's irritated stare. "I'm ready to go when you are."
He pulled at the pastel blue shirt he was wearing, trying to make it look less ridiculous. The movement released a wave of perfume. The combination of passionberry and mothrepellant made him gag. A small twist of that distaste must have shown, because Qui-Gon's mouth thinned, and he indicated a pile of rubbish in the refuse sack by the door. Two cloaks and three tunics sodden and smoking with filth lay in a pool of blood and ooze. "By all means wear your own clothes if you prefer."
Force! I'm in trouble. Trying to be less annoying, Obi-Wan folded his arms, bowed his head, and waited to be commanded. A pattern of cigarilo burns on the floor matched the constellation of the Bantha. He studied them carefully, until Qui-Gon had sighed out his anger.
When he dared to look up he found himself being beckoned over to stand before the tall woman at the door. "Pepi, this is Obi-Wan Kenobi, my Padawan. Obi-Wan, this is Jedi Master Perpetuity Oser."
Master Oser had to bow slightly to take his hand. He realised with a shock that she wore flesh-coloured gloves, fine as skin but slightly cooler. Her face was no more visible up close than it had been at a distance. "Hello," she said, "I'm the apprentice no-one talks about. I'm the success."
That was pointed, though he wasn't sure who at, or who he should be defending. Her presence was lively, but austere, like a cold spring breeze, and he found her invisible face disturbing. This was Master Jinn's first Padawan? She was a little scary too.
"Come, then." Qui-Gon led the way along a grubby corridor lined with closed doors, into a lift that smelled of urine.
Obi-Wan kept his eyes on his boots as they entered the reception area, but the comments still made his face flame, and his stomach was unsettled by shame. I have done nothing wrong. He lifted his head and fixed his gaze on his master's hands as they counted out small change, passed it across the chipped desk to the overpainted madame who sat there.
"Thank you for your hospitality," said Qui-Gon, in a gentler tone than he had used with Obi-Wan since he woke. One of the bodyguards behind her sprayed slab-coloured spittle as he laughed at the remark.
The old woman looked surprised but touched by his politeness. She took the credits slowly. "Do come again."
And Obi-Wan felt that his day could not get worse.
The streets were a new oppression. Even the beggars were armed, and he was jostled by thin men with scavenger's eyes. They passed a gang of swoop riders. Obi-Wan could feel the gazes, taking in his master's height, the unwavering confidence of Qui-Gon's stride. The dangerous mystery of Master Oser beside him, the lightsabre at his own belt.
It took almost more control than he possessed to remain disinterested as he passed the predatory stares. And it was impossible not to get twitchy once they had passed the gang and their backs were exposed to blaster fire.
Master Oser leaned down so that her swathed face was near to his. Light filtered through the cer-silk, and he could see a suggestion of a head. It looked human.
"You and I need to have a little talk," she whispered. The threat made the Rider gang seem suddenly tame.
Qui-Gon looked up at the monumental staircase which ran, ziggurat-like, up the front of the Temple. A hooded form he did not know swept down and gave him a nod of recognition before sailing majestically into the crowd.He was well aware of how narrowly his party was being watched. Sightseers and tourists swarmed around the building. There was a reporter, who had seen Obi-Wan's oversized shirt and was wondering what it portended. There was a family of rich Biths, about to take a holo of Pepi. There stood a Tiw'lek father and daughter looking lost and worried...
The Force nagged at him - he had a sense that he was missing something important. Too distracted by his own emotions, too annoyed, he was overlooking something obvious, and vital.
To pause here was to invite being mobbed by the idle and curious of a thousand star systems. But it had to be done. Perhaps if he simply waited, the thing would reveal itself.
He was aware of the Tiw'lek man giving him a sidelong look, the faded blue head turning in his direction as if twisted by a torturer. Obi-Wan had gone ahead and now strained forward like a dog on an invisible leash. So focused on reporting the Nexus that he's missed the Force's call here. That was a fault which must be corrected.
"Ungrateful little thing, isn't he?" Knowing her master well, Pepi had found a comfortable wall to lean on while she waited for his revelation to manifest itself.
"He was unconscious, Pepi." Qui-Gon defended the boy against the reproaches of his own heart, I grieved for him, I carried him on my back through a waterfall of acid, I healed him and brought him home. "He doesn't know what happened, but even if he did, why should he be grateful? It was no more than my duty."
And the fact that he repayed me by virtually accusing me of immorality just shows how little he knows me. It is pointless to feel insulted.
Yet he was hurt. It seemed he could do nothing right for Obi-Wan; he would never match the boy's expectations of what a Master should be. The constant criticism was wearing. And now I must face more of the same from the Council.
The Tiw'lek's little girl was tugging at her father's hand, pointing at him. Too plump for health, her face had the nervous cynicism of a much older woman, and her presence in the Force showed the bright deformity of an untrained sensitive. Was she what he was being held here for?
"Place, Padawan."
Obi-Wan's eyes widened at the discipline - in the sunlight they were briefly as blue as his shirt. "Yes, Master." He raced back to take up his place just behind Qui-Gon and to his left.
"Excuse me." The father edged forward, lekku in a knot behind him which spelled anxiety, "Are you a Jedi?"
The man's stance could only be described as cringing - he hated being here, hated Qui-Gon, hated the word 'Jedi', which hissed reluctantly from between his pointed teeth. Something very important must be forcing him past all that, goading him to speak.
Qui-Gon inclined his head, feeling the nagging ease; the sense of relief which told him that this was indeed what he'd been waiting for. "I'm Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. This is Master Oser and Padawan Kenobi."
The man did not look, but the little girl was watching Obi-Wan with a look of worshipful envy that tore his heart. It took no skill to read yearning in every line of her body. Pity made him regret calling Obi-Wan back, confronting her with his - relative - perfection. They were much of an age, and she was, if anything, stronger in the Force than he was. So wasted, and so tragically aware of it.
"My name is Kiew Noyenk." The man had midichlorians enough to fill the Force around him with his own gnawing pain. He carried its aura with him, sucking in happiness like a singularity - giving nothing back but darkness. "This is my daughter Edeen." He wrung his hands, the sharp red nails vivid against his blue skin. "I have another daughter...Oh! my Neeta... And she's been...she's been kidnapped."
His voice trembled, and the weak pink eyes filled with tears. It cost him a great deal to go through this humiliation, in front of a Jedi, Qui-Gon could tell, but he sacrificed everything for his daughter's sake.
In the full gaze of the crowd, the unwinking stare of the reporters' holocameras, Kiew Noyenk went down on his knees in front of Qui-Gon, lifted shaking hands to pluck at the hem of Qui-Gon's tunic. "Please, Jedi Master, please. Find her."
Why not see what else I have written and am interested in.