Qui-Gon breathed out, centred himself; emotionally in tranquillity, spiritually in the Force, physically on the inlaid star in the middle of the chamber. His fingers brushed the folds of his sash, hastily knotted during the brief detour to find quarters, and to replace Obi-Wan's passionberry blue blouse with something more appropriate. It would do.
Like the lowliest initiate awaiting instruction he settled into 'ready' stance, and repeated in his head his own, heretical mantra. Nothing but the Force. No Council, no Code, no Order, no Qui-Gon Jinn. Only the Force. He would need this reminder soon - he didn't need to be attuned to the future to predict that.
"Pleased, the Council are, with this Nimgon treaty." Yoda's ears were high and his large eyes moved from Qui-Gon to Obi-Wan as if he hoped to see a visible link there. Outwardly perfect, and silent as a Padawan should be, Obi-Wan's pleasure at this compliment was loud, bringing brief smiles like a rush of shooting stars across the chamber.
"You've proved you can work together once more, after the incident on Melida/Daan." Micah Giiett's plump face was pleased as he took up the task of speech seamlessly, but his jade green eyes were cool, preoccupied.
"In that case," Qui-Gon said, seizing this rare moment of good humour, "I'd like to commend Obi-Wan for his handling of the situation while I was injured, and humbly request that his status as a full Jedi Padawan be restored."
Master Windu, youngest and newest member of the Council, stiffened at the words 'humbly request'. A perceptive man, clearly, but a suspicious one. I'm becoming obvious, thought Qui-Gon, amused.
"So certain you are?"
"Yes, my Master. I am certain about Obi-Wan. He deserves to be reinstated. He deserves his chance at knighthood."
Astonished joy from behind him, and he felt rebuked; Didn't he know this? But I told him on Telos.
"Certain about Xanatos you were too."
Sometimes it was hard to believe the old creature was not being deliberately cruel. Qui-Gon knew it was an exercise, like Pepi's. He was used to it; absorbing the accusation, considering, replying out of his core convictions, but Obi-Wan was not, and this sentence had cut him deeply. Neither of us need extra doubt at this time.
But Yoda had challenged him. Yoda wanted him standing firm on the bedrock of his faith. It was a test. Very well then. "Xanatos also deserved his chance."
He knew he'd appalled them from the silence. Then "Have you learned nothing?" Evan Piell burst out, single eye glittering with contempt. "I thought when you refused to take on another learner that you had finally learned caution. It seems I was wrong."
Qui-Gon settled his weight a little more firmly, feeling entrapped, forced into giving pain against his will. I'm sorry, Obi-Wan. He could not reply to the Council with the words both they and Obi-Wan wanted from him. He could not say he knew the boy would not turn. He'd lost that certainty with Xan. They would have to settle for the truth.
"My caution, Master Piell, did not proceed from wisdom, but from injury." He paused, looking out at the skyscape - sun on glass - wishing for wings. "Life is risk. But I have learned not to let the possibility of failure overwhelm the possibility of success.
"Hmn." There was a gnarled look to Yoda's swamp-green face. Appreciation, disapproval, affection, exasperation all in one. Qui-Gon felt the brief nostalgic tug of childhood at the sight, and knew that he had both passed and failed the test.
Obi-Wan's turbulent emotions were like a small cyclone. Their discharge lifted the hair on the back of his neck. Of course Kenobi would read his resignation to the future as active mistrust, and feel rejected. It was Obi-Wan's pattern. I will explain later. But I can't say what I don't mean.
"Possibility of the Temple being destroyed, there is. Not likely it is. Not likely is Obi-Wan's turning. Agree with you we do. Reinstated, Padawan Kenobi is."
Now that between us we've taken all the joy out of it for him. "Thankyou, Masters."
It was bright and warm inside the room. With the open windows on every side it was like standing among the clouds. He was among twelve of the most powerful and accomplished of the Order. Why then was he on edge, as if - just beneath hearing - someone scraped a nail along the blackboard of life?
Was it because on the entire Council there was not one other Living Force adept? Was the discomfort he felt merely the oppression of the Unifying side? But why? The two sides of Force should be complimentary. How could they possibly be so out of balance that they were at war with each other?
Master Adinaiu raised her blonde head, fixed a dilated gaze on his face. "The tapestry is cut, and the threads fray into darkness. The web unravels on the loom..."
She shuddered and her slate coloured eyes focused suddenly. "Forgive me. A vision. Something Master Jinn was thinking." An eyebrow arched in inquiry, the only movement of her serene face, but her hands gave her away, rising to cover the tattoos on her cheek, as if she was trying to hide.
"I was thinking that the Force was out of balance. Wondering why only the Cosmic side is represented on the Council."
Her words touched off a nameless dread in him; was there something wrong with the nature of reality, the very shape of existence? He silenced himself ruthlessly, trying to persuade the vague realisation into more definite shape...
"The Cosmic side dominates because the Cosmic side is more important," said Saesee Tiin impatiently.
The moment passed - a stain lifted from the day's brightness, washed away, and the chamber was once more a pale oasis in the sky.
"And because the Living Force does not produce reliable Jedi." Councillor Rancisis smoothed the hair on his forearms, and smiled as though no insult was meant. But Qui-Gon was still trying to discern the shape and meaning of that vanished warning - too preoccupied for petty wordplay.
"Not always so, it was. Before the Sith wars more equally spread were the gifts of the Force. Think on this I will, Master Adinaiu, but for now, more pressing matters there are."
A general stir passed through the room, and an air of having dispensed with the pleasantries, getting down to business.
"This 'Nexus' you encountered," Giiett took up a datapad. The shaved stripes through his dense black hair reflected afternoon light as if glimpses of droid showed beneath the skin. "It was able to exert mind control over sixty eight delegates and two Jedi, simultaneously?"
Qui-Gon nodded, refolding his hands, abandoning his quest to make sense of the vision - understanding would come, or it would not - concentrating on the moment.
"And it was able to do this through hyperspace?"
"My feelings tell me that is the case, though I have no evidence."
"Your intuition we do not question, Master Jinn. Worrying this is indeed. Attack anywhere it could in future. And unknown its motives remain?"
"I had the impression, my Master, that the attack on Nimgon was a... a test run. That the more serious purpose would be revealed later."
"Playing with you, it was, when almost kill you it did?"
"Yes, I believe so."
Whatever else they thought of him, the Council had learned to respect his ability to survive. Unacknowledged, fear thrilled through the circle like an electric current.
In the pause, Qui-Gon took the opportunity to glance over his shoulder at Obi-Wan. He saw with regret how impeccably behaved the boy was, how masklike was his expression of calm. On the defensive already, and I haven't started yet...
Obi-Wan should be protected from what he was about to do. "Masters," he said, "As you know, my apprentice is highly attuned to the Cosmic Force. It is his impression that the Nexus forms a Galaxy-wide and long-lasting threat. I concur in this."
Obi-Wan looked up. Astonishment, confusion. Hope, tattered and feeble from being rebuffed so many times.
Guilt settled in the pit of Qui-Gon's stomach. He doesn't believe my praise? And then anger - a small point of anger Yet I've offered him nothing but acceptance since Bandomeer. What more can I do?
You could put him first, his heart suggested seductively, As you failed to do with Xan. This one could come first.
Before the Force? He felt like a monster for the disappointment he was about to inflict. But Obi-Wan was not just a child, he was a Jedi Padawan. He would have to understand.
Nothing before the Force, not even him.
"Wise your apprentice is, Master Jinn. Our top priority it must be to locate this 'Nexus'. Experience you have had of fighting it, useful that may be. Remain here you will until it is found, then your task it will be to neutralise it."
Obi-Wan sighed behind him, satisfied, vindicated, eager. The point of guilty anger became a flame. "I'm sorry, Master, but I can't."
"Face it again, you cannot?"
"I can't remain here and wait. I have already agreed to go on another mission."
An explosion of outrage all the more searing for being silent. Master Windu rolled his eyes, Master Yoda's claws tightened on his stick - that was all. Yet Qui-Gon felt as though he stood unprotected in the middle of a fusion reactor. Their gazes might have vaporised bone.
"What do you mean?" Evan Piell asked at last, the fringes of his ears trembling.
"I have been asked to find a kidnapped child, and have agreed to do so. With your permission I will depart at once."
Obi-Wan's gasp of disbelief mirrored the Council's. Forgetting himself he took a step forward, eyes blazing. "You promised we'd be going after the Nexus. You promised me. It's important!"
It was a mark of how shaken the Councillors were that no one rebuked the Padawan for speaking out of turn. Instead, "Correct young Kenobi is. More important is the Nexus. Your stolen one, a planetary heir it is? A senator's child?"
As if that should make a difference! "No, just one of the common people of the Republic, whom we are pledged to protect."
"Lecture me on duty you will not, Qui-Gon Jinn. Brainless are you? Serve the people best you will how - by neutralising a device of massive evil, or by saving an unimportant child?"
Almost exactly the words which had come out of Obi-Wan's mouth on Nimgon. Ugly, impossible words that he would not, could not agree with. He met their outrage with his own. "Since when is the life of a child unimportant?"
"Since set beside a threat to the galaxy it is."
Qui-Gon lifted his chin, looked out at the afternoon traffic - shuttling in such straight lines it might have been machined onto the clouds. From a level below them a hawk-bat took flight, it's irregular course buffeted by exhaust fumes and slipwash. You and I alike, little friend.
"If I don't go after the Nexus you will send someone else," he said. "But if I don't go after the child, who will?"
"I don't know why we're even discussing this." Evan Piell narrowed his eye, scar tissue puckering over the second. "Master Jinn does not have the right to promise Jedi aid to anyone. He knows this. Those decisions belong to the Council and the Senate. As for this ridiculous quest - we do not have the resources to track down every missing person in the Republic. It was foolish of him to offer. His apprentice shows more sense."
Too angry to even speak to me, Qui-Gon thought, annoyed. In reply he shifted his stance, lengthening it, turning the right foot slightly inwards. A change from 'ready' to 'immovable' stance. Not the most subtle of comments, perhaps, but better than shouting.
Yoda sighed and rapped the end of his cane against the inlaid floor. "Enough! Correct Master Piell is, Qui-Gon. A strong Jedi you are, but not yours to waste is your strength. To the galaxy it belongs, to the Order. A servant you are, Qui-Gon. Forget it not you should."
Yes, a servant, but not yours. "I do not forget it, Master. The Force is directing me in this."
"Easy to say, that is, hard to tell with certainty. So sure you are that it is not your own heart you follow?
What do you follow, Master, if not your own intellect? Qui-Gon struggled with unexpected fury, not so much that they didn't believe him, but that they hadn't even bothered to check. Is it *assumed* that I'm lying? Assumed I'm incompetent? Or don't they *care* what the Force wants? "Sometimes my heart and the Force are in accord."
"Not one of those times this is. Forbid you this pointless quest we do, Qui-Gon. Remain here you will and await orders regarding the Nexus."
He opened his mouth, but there was nothing more to say. No arguments would convince when they so clearly had reason on their side. The only thing he could offer was his conviction of the Force's Will, and that had just been discredited.
Either he submitted to them now, or they would punish him later. He hoped he had distinguished his own views clearly enough from Obi-Wan's so they would not punish the boy as well. But he couldn't be sure. It was another guilt fissioning into anger in his chest. His tight mental shields suddenly felt claustrophobic. I have to meditate and release this. Soon.
He slumped, bowed, "I hear and obey my Master," and hoped that would be enough to get him back through the doors.
"It's going to be hard telling the Noyenks that you can't go after all," said Obi-Wan in a tone of sympathy as the massive doors hissed shut behind them. Obi-Wan was looking almost gleeful, Qui-Gon thought, as he slammed the call for the lift. Very happy indeed for a Padawan who'd just watched his master's character being destroyed, by people who were supposed to be friends.
"Yes," he said, trying to restrain his anger - it was like trying to shape water with his hands. "Which makes it fortunate that I'm not going to tell them any such thing."
Obi-Wan's quick step stuttered on the threshold of the lift, so that Qui-Gon had to pull him in before the floor fell out from under him. "You lied to the Council?" The storm grey eyes were shocked. He was so much their creature that sometimes it hurt to be around him.
"I hear and obey my Master. And my Master is the Force. They know that already, even if they chose not to believe it."
In the close confines of the lift it was impossible for either of them to step back from their mutual animosity. The bond had turned into a feedback loop of anger, scaling up through the pitches to a peak neither of them would be able to bear. "You said. You promised you were waiting to act on the Nexus. That's what you said!"
And you're so ready to think I lied.
"I said I'd be alert to the Force's will as regards the Nexus. I am. It wants me to go after the child."
When the doors opened on their level it was like being able to breathe again. Obi-Wan plunged through, body language shouting a biting retort, but Qui-Gon noticed he didn't speak until he had settled on the most meaningful question. "Why?"
"I don't know," he tried to break the loop, speak gently - this was after all a boy who was very dependant on his approval. "I don't know the purposes of the Force. Perhaps it wants a different team assigned? Perhaps we're being protected. Perhaps the Council will still be searching for the Nexus by the time we get back. 'Why' was never my talent, Obi-Wan."
"It doesn't want another team. It wants us."
The wave of combined irritation almost made him act. Almost made him reprimand the boy for speaking out of turn. Except that finally Obi-Wan was speaking a language he could understand. Hard as pulling a planet out of orbit he eased down shields over his anger, contained it. He could not release it, yet. There were things to do first.
"If the Force wants us then it will have us." He brought his breathing under control, "At the appropriate time. Even the Council acknowledge that time is not now. Why should we remain here in idleness when we could be doing something constructive in the meantime?"
Obi-Wan's top lip disappears entirely when he disapproves. Qui-Gon noticed, focusing on the little detail in an effort to sidetrack himself. He was aware that beneath his own annoyance lay a well of affection whose surface had barely been ruffled by this.
He would have liked to think there could be an answering fondness in the boy, but doubted it. Doubted he had ever been anything other than a last hope, seized out of desperation. Like the Council, Obi-Wan too wished he would be someone other than who he was.
Qui-Gon didn't want to make this test - he dreaded the answer, especially when he felt so friendless - but it was better to know. "Obi-Wan, you asked me to be your Master. Do you now regret it?"
Obi-Wan looked shocked to the core. "No! No. Never."
"Then stop trying to turn me into Yoda. Learn what I have to teach."
Completely the wrong thing to say. A blast of outrage exploded from the boy like the wavefront of a thermal detonator.
Oh, shut up, Jinn, until you can say something sensible, Qui-Gon thought, defeated. He didn't venture another comment until they were home.
Kiew and Edeen Noyenk sat uncomfortably in the bare quarters while Temple droids worked flawlessly around them. Machines made the beds, took belongings out of storage and arranged them to duplicate the pattern in which they'd been left. It was not within their programming to notice the visitors' extreme unease, but Qui-Gon did.
Perhaps the silent droids frightened them, he thought, or perhaps it was the power of the Temple, pressing on their untrained sensitivity like a brilliant light on the eyes of a convalescent.
Qui-Gon breathed out and performed two rounds of 'To storm the stronghold' - a mental kata designed to harness fierce emotion. It worked about as well as trying to catch a hurricane in a butterfly net.
"They've said you can't go." Edeen rose, her lekku twisting over each other like wringing hands. As strong as she was, her insight was not surprising.
"But I will be going nevertheless." He hated the look in her eyes - the look of something maimed, eaten by a hunger she was unable to sate. "It will just take slightly longer to arrange transport, and you will not be able to stay here while you wait."
He caught the look of reluctant curiosity between the two children - envy facing pity. Each saw in the other what they could so easily have become. That could have been you, Obi-Wan. Now tell me I shouldn't fight for her.
"We're not beggars," said Kiew thinly, "And we wouldn't want to stay here." He had a small talent - just enough for its frustration to turn him bitter. He was lucky, compared with his daughter.
"I need to perform a shared memory trance with Edeen. I may know these pirates."
"No!" As if he'd heard something indecent Kiew rose and strode to Edeen's side, draping a head-tail protectively over her. "You're not touching her. I know what you Jedi are like; getting inside people's minds, twisting them. She's not going to end up some brainless slave like him. He nodded at Obi-Wan, who had settled into perfection by the door - hands in his sleeves, face a complete blank.
If you only knew... The injustice of Kiew's fear cracked the shell Qui-Gon had placed about his anger. Something pushed out, like a dragon hatching.
"I'd like to, Da. I wanna see how it works."
She was a musician who had been raised in silence. He so much wanted to offer her an instrument and teach her to play.
"No. None of that Jedi stuff. You're normal Edeen. You're not like them."
"Edeen will never be normal," Calm, be calm. "Edeen is extraordinary, and she's suffering."
"You're not getting her." Kiew pulled the girl close, shrinking from the Jedi Master as if from the leader of some brainwashing cult.
But isn't that exactly what we are? "Be at ease, Ser Noyenk. Though I might wish to, I cannot take her. We don't steal children. And she's too old."
He went down on one knee in front of the girl's chair and felt the clawing wave of her need intensify. How does she live with it? How does he not see it? "Is there anything you can tell me then, which might help?"
She tilted her face up as if basking, and smiled. "I thought about it loads. I kind of knew you should see this." Pulling a sheet of flimsy from her pocket she handed it to him, taking care that their hands would not touch.
The drawing showed a winning sabacc hand over the image of a glowing stone. He recognized it immediately. "This comes from the 'Fool's Array' casino on Skip 5. Smuggler's Run."
"It was a patch one of them had sewn on his sleeve."
"You have good instincts. This will certainly help."
The Force compressed around her, almost as frustrated with her inability to reach it as she was. He felt it like a hand of light in the small of his back, pushing him forward to give help. "It may take a few days to find and ready a ship. In that time, Edeen, will you allow me to teach you some simple techniques?"
Her father's response was to drag her to her feet. He was trembling, pointed teeth bared. "She's my daughter. You keep away from her."
"Just some simple things; centring, dispersal. To give her control over what's happening to her. Can't you see it's devouring her?"
"There's nothing wrong with her! She's normal. Not like you or your zombie boy. She's normal!"
The door slid open for him. He pulled Edeen out by the arm. Qui-Gon thought he had never seen a more profound look of defeat than that on the face of this ten year old girl.
Damn it! He couldn't steal her, couldn't heal her without her father's permission, Damn us for not caring. And damn you Jinn for being so useless. Damn you for being powerless. Damn *everything*!
Their shadows were still on the doorstep when Obi-Wan stepped forward, incandescent with rage. "I don't believe you!"
But Qui-Gon wanted to hit something. He wanted to put his fist through something and feel it break. "Go and find Pepi, Obi-Wan, I can't talk to you now."
He turned his back, and the boy's laser-hot gaze raked his spine as he fled.
The stone meditation garden was full of silence, so that Obi-Wan felt as if his very aura was too noisy for it.
Master Oser's sleekly veiled head lifted and turned as his footsteps broke her contemplation. He supposed she was looking at him, but couldn't tell. Why would she bother anyway? At this moment, Pepi seemed a living metaphor to him. That's what he wants from an apprentice. He wants me to be faceless.
But even that wasn't true. Even his perfection seemed to do nothing but irritate. He didn't know what to try any more.
Pepi patted the bench beside her. It was stone, mossy. The high ceiling of the huge room was hidden by artificial cloud. Blurred light was a faux-sun to their left; a simulation of dawn on some quiet, grey world. Mist curled around the stones and dripped in gentle music from the beards of olive-drab and jade lichen, the old, stunted trees.
When Obi-Wan sat he could see dawn's shadow, etched in black on all the lines of raked gravel. Straight lines, rippled by the embedded rocks, like the Cosmic Force of harmony, perturbed by the Living Force of planets, or of men. Sometimes - such was the intricacy of the pattern - the smallest thrown stone made larger ripples than the stationary boulders.
"Just look for a moment," said Pepi. Her lowered voice still sounded sore, but there was none of the reproach he had expected from her. Was this...a lesson?
Determined to do well in front of his Master's first apprentice he composed himself, looked at the rocks, and found they were telling him exactly what Qui-Gon had. Sometimes the pebbles made the biggest splash. He could actually see it happening; written in the earth before him.
Maybe the Force *does* want us to chase this pebble first? Maybe he's right? The surprise he felt at the thought was a revelation in itself. Shouldn't I have *expected* him to be right? He is my Master. I should trust him to know these things... He followed the thought to an astounding conclusion. I should trust him.
Oh, Force! This was an uncomfortable insight. I accused him of not trusting me. And then I didn't trust him; to keep me on; to come for me in the tombs on Nimgon; to follow the Force's prompting about the Nexus. I really thought he was the kind of man who'd go back on his word, abandon me, and betray the Force. And he knows it! No wonder he's angry.
Remorse hurt, and he didn't want to explore it. Not while Master Oser's invisible gaze might be examining his every expression. Alright, so I haven't been faultless. But neither has he. His Master's oath is to teach. So why does he give *me* nothing but excuses? He'll teach that Edeen creature, but he won't teach me?
"Picture the garden as water," Pepi's grated alto sanded across his temper, smoothing it for a while. "Do you see? Everything has its place and the ripples are tranquil."
"I see." In the risen light the gravel had taken on a pewter sheen. Easy to imagine it as a sheet of placid liquid.
"Now take one of the stones out. What happens?"
Suck and hollow - a vacuum quickly filled by disturbed dirt. Turbulence, whirlpools and waves throughout the whole pond. Then a settling, sediment sinking, the crashing discord smoothing into a new shape, a new calm. Obvious.
Pepi straightened her shoulders, hitched round to face Obi-Wan more squarely. "Did Qui-Gon kill him?"
"What?" The sudden turn in the conversation threw him; he was still trying to figure out the 'missing stone' lesson.
"Did our Master kill Xanatos?"
"Yes," he said, automatically, and then training in exactness caught up with him, "Well, no. Not really."
"Which?"
"He killed himself rather than come back with us."
The look on Xanatos' face had been one of insane triumph; as if his death was the worst thing he could do to Qui-Gon. Did that make sense? "He stepped back into a pit full of acid. Master Jinn wasn't quick enough to catch him."
And yet Qui-Gon had tried. Why? If he hated the man, even if he felt nothing for him, why that instinctive movement to save?
"Chuuba!" Pepi whispered, "That's almost worse."
In the mercury-silver light Obi-Wan half expected to see her breath ruffle the surface of the garden. The image of the uprooted stone recurred - the turmoil of displaced water; slap of waves. Had Pepi meant that Xanatos was the stone, torn from Qui-Gon's life, leaving necessary chaos in its wake? That Obi-Wan should wait, and things would smooth out again once the grief and loss had passed?
To suppose such a thing was to suppose that even a Jedi Master was not beyond emotion. It was to suppose a thing totally against the code. No. The analogy must not hold. She must be wrong.
Pepi had put her hands to her cheeks. The veil glinted like dew, pulled tight over the curves of eyebrows, cheekbones, a curiously shallow nose. Not *quite* human, then.
"Master Jinn said it wouldn't haunt him." Obi-Wan offered, unsure if it would be taken as comfort or as criticism.
"But not that he would be unaffected. To grieve is to heal, Obi-Wan. Besides, I'm sure he feels he owes Xan his sorrow. No one else in the galaxy will mourn the little bastard."
Either she didn't understand anything or the shape of his situation was completely different from what he had believed. Obi-Wan wasn't sure he liked either option.
"Maybe you should start looking at him as a person, and not just as your passport to knighthood."
Oh right! Obi-Wan had quite liked her up to that point; she'd helped. But he didn't have to sit and take personal abuse from her. He could go and get that from Qui-Gon. Getting up, he bowed. "Thankyou for your wisdom, Master Oser.
Pepi's head raised. He had the distinct impression that under the veil she was smiling, or smirking. "Any time, little brother."
Masters! Force! Who needs them? But as he left the meditation garden it wasn't Pepi's rebuke that followed him, it was the picture of an island being torn from the lake and thrown away.
Obi-Wan heard the snap of blasters first. As he turned the corner the corridor's drab walls were angry with reflections of red light, so thick as to be almost continuous. The air tingled with the smell of ozone. Static brushed like a living thing along his nerves. Confusion and anger skittered into excitement as he slid into the shielded viewing area of one of the private training rooms.
In the centre of the blast screened space, Qui-Gon fought fifteen training remotes. They floated around him - lethal, agile - in an almost unbroken sphere of searing fire. Changing direction, angle, velocity with perfect randomness between each shot, they whined as they fired and recharged. There was no pattern to their attack. Nothing to predict or exploit.
When a droid was hit by a reflected shot it would deactivate for ten seconds, leaving a sliver of safety in the firestorm. In those narrow spaces Qui-Gon stepped and wove the light as if it was a dance he faced, not death.
He moved with a grace astonishing in a man his size. Fast - making it look effortless, but pushing himself. The green blade wove sigils of light, overwrote them, with almost invisible speed. His hair, flying, clung along his cheek, but there was no sign on his enraptured face that he felt its irritation.
This is meditation for him, thought Obi-Wan, looking at the expression of calm purity, feeling through the bond the residue of anger being burnt away, its place being taken up by something still.
Peace in the centre of the storm. It was the whole dichotomy of the Jedi. It was the spirit of the Code, in rapid, decisive action.
Obi-Wan's anger faded as he watched. I want that. I want him to teach me that. And it could not happen unless he managed to repair what was broken between them. Accusations would not help.
He waited as his Master put away the training remotes, pulled the damp hair away from his face and retied it. The sounds of the Temple - hum of air and power, muffled footsteps, distant conversation - formed an overlay on deep silence.
Nothing about Qui-Gon broke that silence as he came over to the bench, sat down beside Obi-Wan with his large hands splayed and his head bent. He brought with him some of the charged calm of his battle, like the freshness just after a thunderstorm has passed. What do I say to him?
"Master?"
"Yes, Padawan?" Even the soft voice was remote with peace. Obi-Wan felt suddenly guilty for disturbing that profound communion with the Force, but this had waited long enough. No more.
"Master, I'm sorry." He hadn't thought of it beginning with an apology, yet there the words were, fluent, as if he'd rehearsed them. Perhaps he had, subconsciously, in all these long weeks of doubt.
Qui-Gon lifted his head with a look of surprise. He too had obviously not expected those words. Don't let him talk, or I won't get it out.
"I know you didn't want me in the first place." He gestured furiously - there were long subtexts to that sentence which he couldn't quite get into words. "I mean, you weren't the only one who didn't want me; none of them did. But you gave me a chance, and I wrecked it."
Don't talk. Don't talk, he pleaded silently in the pause, while all the memories surged and left him feeling hollow. Qui-Gon, an expert at reading silences, said nothing, but he looked away, and that made everything easier.
"I said I was totally committed. I said you could trust me, and then I dumped you in the middle of a war." How terrible it sounded, put like that. Part of him wanted to make excuses, but Master Jinn knew the excuses just as well as he did.
"Then when I mucked that up. When I changed my mind - again - I expected you to take me back, like nothing had changed. And you did."
A bald summary of all that faltering, all that doubt, but accurate enough in its way. An ache in his fingers surprised him - he looked down to see his hands wringing the hem of his tunic, knuckles white. And I hoped I was looking calm! He thought of unclenching the fists, but why? They expressed his feelings much more accurately than he could.
"I got used to the idea that no matter what I did, you'd be there for me. You'd forgive me."
Now the challenge - had he softened it enough? Would it look like just a selfish demand? "But now it's you who's gone away."
A stir of response. He flung out a hand to stop his master speaking. "Oh, you let me tag along behind you, like some kind of inconvenient bag you can't figure out where to put down. But you're not there any more. I ask you to teach me things and you say 'tomorrow'. When's it going to be tomorrow?"
The anger of facing a situation he didn't quite understand, of not having the solution, coloured his voice. He heard himself sounding aggressive, when in fact he felt like crying.
Qui-Gon opened his mouth, breathed in, his harsh, expressive face showing understanding and ...contrition? Obi-Wan interrupted for the last time, getting the last of the poison out, getting the wound clean.
"I don't know what to do. I know you've got every reason not to trust me, but I can't go on like this. Show me what to do to make it better. I'll do anything."
A silence. Obi-Wan was conscious of the weight of the building around him, like the weight of the Jedi tradition, ancient, elegant, and so heavy. He was conscious too of Qui-Gon beside him, settling his head into his hands, all the glory of strength and power transmuted into weariness. Did I do that to him?
"Obi-Wan, when Cerasi died, how did you feel?"
It was like being slapped. Whatever he had expected - a test, maybe, some difficult task he could take on to prove himself - this was not it. Only his newfound resolution to trust made him tell himself this wasn't an attack.
"Did you go on with your duties? Talk to people?"
He didn't want to remember this; the madness, the desolation, of those days, but he had said 'I'll do anything.' "No. I ran 'til I fell down, then I hid, and then I got up and ran some more."
He watched his master's hands, they tightened, pushing back through the long brown hair as if Qui-Gon was trying to wipe something away. It struck Obi-Wan suddenly that this was not the posture of a man at peace with himself. Is it like Pepi said? Is he in pain too?
That thought violated the centre of his universe. Qui-Gon was not vulnerable. Judgemental, yes; stubborn, inflexible. Not vulnerable.
But his master had propped his head against the wall, was watching the dust circle in the sunlight, and talking very softly, as if to himself.
"I carried him into the Temple in my arms. He was eighteen months old, and so excited, but the journey was long. He fell asleep on my shoulder as we waited to debark, and I carried him through the doors, like the son I'd always dreamed of."
He risked a sideways glance at Obi-Wan, the wry smile which so often covered humour now covering an anguish Obi-Wan had never suspected. "They seem to think that because, at the end, he was an enemy of the Jedi, I should feel satisfaction now he's dead."
"Xanatos." Like the rest of the Temple Obi-Wan had always thought the force which drove Qui-Gon to hunt his evil apprentice was vengeance - for the betrayal, for the times when Xan had turned on him, tried to kill him. That thought had shaped his understanding of the bond between himself and his master; there had always been a fear underneath the need, a sense that if he went too far the same power would be turned against him.
"If only all other choices could be taken away from him, I was sure he'd turn back. He'd see he was wrong. He'd come back to us. I had no idea how much that hope sustained me. But now it's gone...."
The smile died, the mouth compressing into a line of misery. "I had to kill my son, Obi-Wan. I hope you never understand what that feels like."
His throat closed. Force! Suppose everyone had expected him to be pleased at Cerasi's death. Suppose they had thought it would make no difference... "It wasn't me at all, was it? You were just hiding."
"Running, and hiding and running some more."
Obi-Wan took a shaky breath, wanting to say sorry, but he had wasted those words already. They wouldn't help again.
"But not just that." Qui-Gon sighed, mastering his grief - his face smoothing, the smile returning like a banner of defiance to the universe. "I was scared too."
"You!" He was sure this was a joke - an attempt to break the tension, get things back to normal. The idea that Qui-Gon could be scared was too stupid to be anything else.
"I took that bright, brilliant child, trained him, and somewhere along the way he fell, and I didn't catch him. Something I did, or didn't do, sent all that glory into the dark. I have been so terrified of doing the same to you."
He gave a small snort of laughter, rueful, but warm, and Obi-Wan felt like a diver, coming out of deep water into the air.
"I don't think I could survive killing you too, Obi-Wan."
Could he bear it, that he had a master who was human, who could be hurt and afraid, just like himself? A master whom he could hurt, sometimes without even trying. What a strange thought...
"But," Qui-Gon sat up straight, Force like a globe of light around him, "You heard what I said to the Council. I've had enough of fear. Yes there's risk. Sometimes not to take the risk is worse than to fail. The prize is worth it."
He rose, stretched out his right hand. Obi-Wan took it, and was pulled to his feet.
"Today is tomorrow. I want you do the kata 'Three comets at aphelion'. Your stances are appalling."
"'Three comets!'" Joy came out sounding like indignation, "That's a kata for babies!"
The mischief was back, gleaming behind Master Jinn's blue eyes, "Then you'll find it easy."
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