It was dark in Obi-Wan's windowless room, though light from the sitting room crept under the closed door. He lay and listened to his Master's movements: The tread which seemed too light for such a large man, distant whirr of sonic shower, muffled music, low conversation with the kitchen droid and a com-call, too soft for him to hear the words.
Melody, plaintiff and sweet, threaded through his awakening. There had been few mornings like this in his apprenticeship, and the room was no more familiar than any of the other thousand places he had slept since becoming a Padawan.
His thoughts drifted back to the kata session last night; moving over the worn floor, already scuffed and scorched by Qui-Gon's practice, into the centre of that lingering excitement and peace. His bow, and the smug smile, because he knew he was going to impress.
Obi-Wan slid his foot out into first guard, called the Force, preparing to leap into a high arc - to be the first comet.
"Hold!"
On the guard?! The smugness had left a sharp ache in his chest as it left. Why could he never get anything right for this man?
Blandly watchful, Qui-Gon's eyes had shown no disappointment as he came forward to minutely adjust the angle of Obi-Wan's back foot, and press the front knee slightly outwards. "Toes point the way you're going, or you lose power. And the twist should be in your hips, not the knee, or you'll damage the joint."
Fervently glad he had no other audience Obi-Wan had corrected, ruthlessly, silently, and started again. And again. Time narrowed into an eternal instant of concentration, measured only by gestures and an increasing tremble in his limbs. He still didn't know how long they'd spent, nit-picking the kata into atoms. All of that was subsumed and eclipsed by the sheer perfection of what he had achieved at the end.
Obi-Wan smiled in the twilight, reliving his own satisfaction, and the fleeting touch on his arm and warm 'Well trained' which were his Master's only words of praise.
He stretched, and his body protested, frozen by wear like a droid left out in the rain. Achievement and reconciliation were a sunlight at the edge of his mind, and he wanted to enjoy them, just for this one second. A woman's voice, soaring in song, and the smell of new bread insinuated themselves under his door.
This morning he had to decide who to betray.
A brush of awareness along the bond brought compassion and some distant sadness before Obi-Wan tightened his shields. So, Qui-Gon knew he was awake, knew too the dilemma he faced, and was giving him space to wrestle with it on his own.
Well then, there's no point hiding here any longer. He got up, wincing as the muscles around his ribs protested, and the joints of wrist and elbow set up a thin throb. Making his bed prolonged the moment of peace, but too soon he was pushing open the door, heading for the fresher.
I should tell the Council he plans to disobey them. If he told Yoda about his master's intentions it would display an emotional detachment and obedience to the Code worthy of a Jedi Apprentice. It was his duty, he knew it.
The common room was reeling with dancing pulses of light reflected from traffic and skyhooks glittering in dawn's multicoloured magnificence. Music filled the light, or the light filled the music, giving the cramped quarters a transcendence, as if they were floating in the Force.
Not exactly my choice, Obi-Wan thought, shutting the fresher door on the sound. It was too full of exaltation for his present mood.
Was it only his duty which made him want to inform on his Master's rebellion? Or was it a craven concern with his own status? He had been too close to a position in Agricorps, too troublesome in the recent past to believe himself safe now.
But why shouldn't that matter to me? he thought with a stab of renewed bitterness, I'm entitled to seize my chance now... The anger sloughed off him under the shower, like dirt, Now Master Jinn's given it to me.
The fact was that but for Qui-Gon he would be on Bandomeer right now. Yoda's regret had not plucked him off that filthy rock, nor had any of the Council demanded that Qui-Gon should come back for him when he left the Jedi on Melida/Daan. If he had a chance of knighthood at all it was because of Qui-Gon's haphazard loyalty.
"Maybe you should start thinking of him as a person, and not as your passport to knighthood." Pepi's words were as unsettling to him now as they had been among the stones. What place did personal relationships have in a Jedi's life, when the Code exhorted all to detachment? And yet it would feel so wrong to answer his Master's generosity with betrayal.
Is it betrayal to make him act like a Jedi?
Is it your place to tell him what to do?
Sighing, Obi-Wan shrugged on his tunics, folded the stola and laid them carefully over his shoulders, making sure the creases sat flat and even before winding sash and belt around them. Pulling the fabric tight he completed an armour of neatness - a defence against all the disapproving glances he would receive today. He could at least look the part.
My master overcame some pretty ruthless inner demons to take me on. So what am I going to do to repay him?
Long legs stretched under the table, Qui-Gon was cutting thick slices of new bread, spreading them with nut butter. Scents joined the dance of music and light, making Obi-Wan smile involuntarily, overwhelmed as a desert traveller in an oasis.
A bowl of dark chocolate steamed in the centre of the table, flecked with red and yellow spices. On the hotplate in the kitchen lay scrambled eggs and a brown, seeded loaf hacked into great slabs of toast.
"Wow!" For a second the moral dilemma could be pushed to a corner of his mind, as he contemplated a breakfast that seemed almost too luxurious to be allowed. Sitting down, he ladled hot, bitter chocolate into his own bowl and marvelled. "In the Initiate's refectory they make us have oatmeal."
Qui-Gon gave him a grimace of recognition, eloquent enough to make him laugh. Since the Initiate level refectory had not been reprogrammed for over a hundred years, his master must have experienced that unsweetened porridge for himself.
"I like to eat when I'm here," said Qui-Gon, without apology. He nudged the pot of butter towards his apprentice, "You never know otherwise where the next meal's coming from."
So he was fortifying himself for the forbidden mission. Obi-Wan's problem was written even in the food this morning. He dunked a slice of buttered bread into his chocolate and bit the end off before it dissolved. Do I tell Master Yoda his plans, and make him stay here? Or do I go with him?
Once before he had faced a similar decision. But the mission to Telos had not been expressly forbidden, merely disapproved of. Obi-Wan had felt no disloyalty to the Council in following Qui-Gon then. This was different. This was overt defiance. The punishment would be severe.
If I told them, I would be protecting my Master from the consequences of his own recklessness. He had heard the whispers in the corridors - how Jinn was strong enough and talented enough to be on the Council, but his rebellion held him back. He shouldn't always be fighting them - he should be one of them.
The rationalisation was tenuous at best, and did not make the feeling of guilt go away.
Oh, Force! He hated not knowing what to do. It wasn't fair that this decision should rest with him. It wasn't fair of Qui-Gon to put this kind of pressure on him. You're supposed to tell me what to *do* Master! You're not supposed to make it difficult for me.
Qui-Gon put down a bitten slice of toast, wiped his fingers on his trousers and passed Obi-Wan a datapad. The bright lines of text were heavy in his hand, and he looked at them without comprehension.
"Those are the courses of study I'd like you to take while I'm gone. The psychology of groups in warfare in particular is very..."
"You're going without me?!"
The option was so ludicrous it had never occurred to him. Like touching dry ice, so cold it burnt, Obi-Wan was unable to say what he felt - whether it was fury or an insane laughter. "You're leaving me behind again?!"
Of course - it should have been obvious! Any excuse to dump the unwanted student. Why had he ever thought yesterday's talk would make a difference?
"Obi-Wan, what kind of a monster do you think I am?" Qui-Gon drew himself up, his posture alert but not intimidating, his face nothing more than curious.
Trust. Obi-Wan reminded himself firmly, battling the welling up of years of insecurity, the certainty that the whole Temple was only awaiting an excuse to get rid of him. I promised myself I was going to trust him.
"If I order you to stay, you will have broken no vow. You can follow my orders and those of the Council." Qui-Gon's hand counted off points against the tabletop - even his gestures gentle. "You won't receive a reprimand, you won't be punished, your status will be secure, and I will not have forced you to come on a mission you do not believe in."
And again, it hadn't been what he feared at all. Obi-Wan drew a huge breath, flavoured with chocolate. Not because he didn't want me, but because he's trying to protect me from what he has to do. In the aftermath of shock and reassurance, his own priorities settled themselves without thinking. Relief was a euphoria as wild as the music.
"I may not believe in the mission, Master, but I do believe in you. I want to come with you. I want to learn what you have to teach."
Qui-Gon's eyes widened in a look of stunned vulnerability, strange on his battlescarred face. There was a full minute of silence, coloured with strained and uncomfortable joy, before he recovered his serene smile.
I really got him that time, Obi-Wan thought in triumph. His appetite returned a hundredfold. He filled his plate with scrambled eggs and toast almost as a celebration. I really touched him. Maybe Master Oser's right after all!
"So where do we start?" he said, "How do we get a spaceship, when we don't have any money?"
Second-hand sunshine, reflected from a window far outside, filled the hangar with touches of saffron. "I've never seen so much junk in one place," Obi-Wan muttered as he trailed at his Master's elbow across the stained durasteel floor, "We've come to relocate some Jawas?"
Secretly he was a little thrilled to be so close to so many classic ships. They've even got a Mobquet 'Cloakblade' with the TCL sub-frequency shields...but the gunports are wrong. He craned his head to examine them, the desire to look like an impeccable Jedi warring with curiosity. Was that a series he hadn't heard about, or just an illegal modification?
Without warning, Qui-Gon turned and caught him gawking. He didn't know if it was his joke, or some inner humour of Qui-Gon's which warmed the ice-blue gaze that settled on him then. He made a mental effort to remember that he wasn't being laughed at.
"You want to explore, Obi-Wan?"
"Would it be appropriate?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth he cursed himself. Damn! Did that sound like criticism? As if he was second guessing his Master? After the brothel incident, he knew how much Qui-Gon hated that.
"We're no longer acting in an official capacity, Obi-Wan, and I'm looking for a friend. Consider this..."
Accustomed to the Masters at the Temple, for whom everything was a lesson, Obi-Wan just knew the sentence would end 'Consider this a test', and wondered what he was being examined for this time. So it shocked him briefly to hear his master conclude "A chance to relax."
What that had to do with being a Jedi, he didn't know, but there was still the question of those gunports. "Thankyou Master." He bowed and ran back to peer more closely at the Cloakblade before Qui-Gon could change his mind.
Mobquet designs were so beautiful. From directly below the Cloakblade curved in a silver smoothness which seemed to capture the joy of flight. Along its winglike sweep the weapon ports had been modified with the painstaking care of an artist, until it was hard to believe they were not part of the original design. They so much should have been.
Breathing deep with appreciation and awe, Obi-Wan wandered among grounded spaceships. They loomed in the light and their own shadow like fallen giants, morbid and eerie with their broken backs and exposed guts. Warming air was filled with an olfactory syrup of grease, insulation, and the thin indefinable strangeness which was the smell of deep space.
Distant, framed in the vulnerability of dismembered machines, a figure surrounded by fireworks welded a torn bulkhead. The sight of such industry made Obi-Wan feel guilty. Why was he wasting time when a child's life was at stake?
He shook off the allure of model numbers and liveries, made his way around the unbelievable presence of a small Ithorian Cloud Village, and ghosted to his Master's side once more, ready to get on with the mission at once.
Qui-Gon was crouched beside a veteran speeder. Arm propped on the door, he passed a spanner to the man underneath - a hand in surgeon's gloves reaching out to clasp it. A voice, tinny and hollow from the depths of the engine, was saying "...and Naptali's number four husband died about three weeks ago."
Qui-Gon propped his chin against his forearm, welcoming Obi-Wan back with a sideways slide of the eyes and small smile. "Was she very upset?"
"Nah. Couldn't replace him fast enough. Nnnh! Hand me the seven eighths ratchet would you?"
Ill at ease with this pointless chit chat, Obi-Wan breathed in, anchoring himself in this time, and out, accepting awareness of the moment. Master Jinn didn't look impatient, after all. He looked... Oddly enough he looked at home.
In the Temple Qui-Gon walked straighter, head high, as if he flouted a hundred disapproving glances with each footstep. Obi-Wan had admired the calm dignity with which he treated other Jedi, the pomp and rank he wore like his cloak. Here he had shed all of that. But for the clothes Obi-Wan wasn't sure he could have told his master from any other mechanic. He found it unsettling. Like negotiating with his own killers on Nimgon, Obi-Wan felt his master picked some strange places in which to relax.
"Nnh...ugh! Good, that's done." With a practised squirm a large man emerged from beneath the speeder. Coveralls, which must once have been blue, were slightly tight over the beginnings of a paunch. His blond hair was liberally peppered with dirt, and grease had settled in the laughter lines around his eyes, tattooing him with the marks of good humour. The eyes which settled on Obi-Wan were indigo, full of surprise. "You've got news yourself, Kai?"
"News and a request, Chen. I need your help."
The man's head raised like a stava scenting prey. His wary eyes narrowed. "Urgent?"
"Yes."
Peeling off the gloves, letting them fall to lie like distended spiders on the hangar floor, Chen strode away. "Come and have breakfast, we'll talk."
On the far side of the hangar solar collectors bathed an unlikely garden. Shallow trays bore alpine flowers and hardy, wax-leaved plants content to grow even in the heavy vapour which flowed sluggishly across the floor. Larger containers held taller plants - tigaspikes, buttercups, the faintly luminous Harmosa Nisii of Raaltiir, and a stand of elegant whispering grass from the meadows of Alderaan.
Obi-Wan recognised several medicinal species from xenobotany classes. There was a veritable gene-bank here. As he turned a corner of the wandering path he found himself surrounded by an air strange for Coruscant - ancient but paradoxically young - the dirt and sweetness of forgotten soil. Sunshine was warm on his bare neck. Looking back he saw mirrors filled with sky, and for an instant he was standing weightless in a garden at the edge of the world.
Then an angle grinder started up, shredding the illusion. Behind the mirrors someone swore inventively. "Chen? Where are you?"
"Go ahead." The blond man turned back, "Sounds like I've got an emergency of my own. Give me a second to get it sorted."
Obligingly, Obi-Wan stepped up to the door. It didn't move. He reminded himself about tact and acceptance, and flapped a hand over the sensor, but it was locked.
"Let me." Qui-Gon leaned over his head and placed his palm on the lockplate. There was a silence between them as the device scanned his fingerprints with amber light. Then the door slid open, betraying an intimacy with this place far beyond the realms of usefulness. The door is keyed to him? Why? Curiosity alert, Obi-Wan ducked under the outstretched arm and went in.
Disappointingly there was nothing more interesting inside than a small family apartment.
Little bigger than their rooms at the Temple, a bed was folded up into one wall, and above his head another dangled from carbon cable. More plants crowded the corners like gossiping neighbours, framing an archway and cluttered kitchen. Beyond the dirty crockery stood a strip of light where disembodied colours twisted as if in some slow lightsabre kata. What in the Core was that?
Sprawled across the floor lay a teenage boy, head obscured by the virtual reality mask which was his schoolroom. In the coms alcove a little girl with bright green hair played an educational holovid.
Coming past Obi-Wan into the room, Qui-Gon knelt down at the girl's side, his face reflected in the view screen of her game. Squealing, she dropped the console and flung herself on him, locking small hands around his neck.
Bemused, and somewhat disapproving, Obi-Wan watched as his master stood - the infant still clinging to him - and tried to pluck her off, stola coming untucked as she resisted with all her strength. As soon as he had pried a hand away the other would latch firmly back on him as she threw her weight into what was obviously a familiar game.
The sense of an established tradition nagged at the Padawan unpleasantly, and he did not like the open enjoyment on Qui-Gon's face. Jedi should not act like this. Jedi did not seek entanglement with the world. That way lay divided loyalties, hostages to fortune, opportunities for blackmail. This open affection was ...almost as unwise as the whole mission.
At last the girl escalated her tactics, grabbing a handful of Qui-Gon's hair, pulling the tie to one side so a length fell in his eyes. "Oh, that's cheating!" the Jedi Master exclaimed, fixing her with a look of devilment which made her burst out laughing in anticipation. Then he tickled the bared ribs with anatomical precision. She shrieked again, face red with mirth, and drove both of her knees into his stomach.
"You hurt me!"
Qui-Gon's fake shock was enough to make her bounce in his arms crowing "I won. I won!" She stared at Obi-Wan with strange lilac eyes. "I always win."
It really wasn't right, Obi-Wan thought, as the boy emerged from his virtual cocoon to imprison the flail of his sister's elbows and some part of Qui-Gon's back in a hug of quiet pleasure. There is no emotion, there is serenity, yet the room was full of enjoyment, as multicoloured as the unexplained light along the corridor.
Was this some sort of test?
"Buki," Qui-Gon smiled at the boy, then bent to deposit the girl unceremoniously on the mat, "And Mairiah, this is Obi-Wan, my new apprentice."
Since they were important in some unspecified way to his Master, Obi-Wan slid his hands into his sleeves and gave them a small bow, determined that he at least would act like a Jedi. Mairiah grinned at him briefly. Buki straightened and wiped a hand through his piebald hair - oak blond streaked with blue - before holding it out in a gesture of forced politeness.
The boy was a lightweight, Obi-Wan thought, taking the hand reluctantly. About his own age, tall, gangly and with an air of otherworldly innocence, his handshake was nervous and he eyed the Padawan as if Obi-Wan's mere existence was a threat.
I'm not the problem. You are. Obi-Wan thought with an upswelling of protectiveness so fierce it surprised him. He understood instantly that the family's welcome constituted a threat to Master Jinn's very existence as a Jedi. Obi-Wan did not want to see Qui-Gon fall prey to the dangers of their love. He wanted to hurry him out of this place, back to his true path, before he forgot who he was; before he forgot he had an apprentice at all.
"Saved any interesting planets recently?" A woman had emerged from the area of light beyond the kitchen and now leaned against the archway, arms folded, face glad. It was obvious where the children got their colouring - her plaited hair was many shades of blue and her skin the iridescent white of pearl. Small green scales fanned over her cheekbones and glinted as she grinned.
"A few." Qui-Gon stepped close to take her hands. "You've kept this one together while I've been away?" He smiled down on her.
"Just about," she said, laughing. The clasped hands lingered, Obi-Wan thought, rather longer than was strictly necessary. He permitted himself a frustrated sigh.
Chen came in, and Obi-Wan suffered another introduction with as much grace as he could muster. Behind the adults' politenesses was a certain wariness of him, as if once again the spectre of Xanatos preceded him. He wondered how long they'd known his Master, and if he had to compete with Pepi in their eyes also. When would this be over, so they could get on with the mission?
"So," said Chen at last, when they had refused breakfast and accepted mugs of tea, "What can we do for you?"
"Do you have a working ship we can borrow?"
Chen's pleasant face furrowed, and he dug around in the sofa cushions for a datapad. "You getting in trouble again, Kai?"
"Nothing I can't handle."
"And dragging the boy into it?"
"It's a kidnapped child, about Buki's age. I've been ordered to let it go, but..." Qui-Gon spread his hands to indicate how helpless he was to obey, and they nodded, understanding. "As for Obi-Wan, he volunteered."
All three of them smiled at him. He had never been the focus of so much approval before. It seemed a shame that it should happen in a place where he felt his master's judgement was impaired.
"Chuuba!" Chen swore, setting datapad and caf mug down simultaneously, "I can't have one ready this week. Not earlier than ten days."
"That's too long." Qui-Gon looked down at Mairiah who had positioned herself on his knee and was now pulling at his tunic. "We need to get to Skip 5 by tomorrow. How about one of your contacts?...What is it May?"
"Where's my present?"
Contacts? Obi-Wan wondered. Chen's sidelong glance at him was not reassuring. And presents? However eccentric his master might be he would not spend Jedi money on 'presents', surely? That would be totally inappropriate from a man whose every expenditure had to pass scrutiny by Temple Auditors.
"They're not going to want to take Jedi, Kai."
"Then we won't be Jedi."
"Give me a moment."
Chen disappeared into the small com alcove. The sound of privacy shields clicking into place was an admission of guilt. Who else could his contacts be on a journey to Skip 5 but smugglers and criminals? Again, Master Jinn's level of comfort with this appeared to Obi-Wan to be too high. He seemed to have a habit of picking up undesirables and not putting them down again even when it was safe to do so.
The woman, Amarah, refilled the mugs and brought out prepackaged muja muffins from the cooler - she was obviously no cook - then stood at Qui-Gon's shoulder to frown in false sternness over her daughter's greed.
"Ah, the present." Qui-Gon reached into the inner pocket of his tunic and brought something out. "Hold out your hand." He covered the five-year-old's palm with his own, her whole forearm disappearing beneath his fingers.
"Spiky!" she exclaimed and revealed, like a conjuror, a pale yellow seed the size of an almond. "What is it?"
"If Buki can make it grow it will be a Madderly vine."
The boy scraped back his chair, stumbled, ran his knee into the table leg and lurched for a datapad, all with an expression of demented anticipation. Obi-Wan drew himself together as if his body subconsiously wanted to distance itself from such clumsiness.
"Look here." Buki held the data entry for Mairia to see, showing her the indigo and gold flowers. "And it smells, Kai?"
"Yes," Qui-Gon smiled at their eagerness, "Bittersweet. A refreshing smell.
"I'll train it over the door then," Buki enthused, "So we can walk in and out through scent." He caught himself, his pale face and water-blue eyes flicking from inspired to apologetic in an instant. "May I?"
"Of course!" said his mother, "The garden is yours, but will it have enough soil in that pot by the door?"
They launched into a conversation which reminded Obi-Wan painfully of his stint in Agricorps. He felt half relieved, half jealous. No financial impropriety then, but the seed must have come from the vine which grew on the Governor's palace on Nimgon. In the middle of a mission with Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon had been thinking about this family. It didn't help that Buki had received the gift with all the delight Obi-Wan had so conspicuously failed to exhibit over his river stone.
Trust, remember?
Buki could not follow where they were to go. And once away from here, Obi-Wan would ask about all of this. Perhaps, like the abandonment this morning, it would bear another face once Qui-Gon had explained it.
He ate the rather soggy muffin in silence, drank his tea while they waited for Chen's 'contacts', and tried not to sigh again too loudly or too often.
Weather control had said it would rain, Qui-Gon thought, uncomfortably conscious of the weight of the blaster at his hip, holster strap around his thigh unfamiliar and irritating as he knelt to meditate. And it was raining. It was hard not to feel as if the predictability took some of the joy from the experience.
Still it was beautiful. Through the common room's narrow window he could see many different shades of white and grey. Traffic's turbulence was written in ghost shapes amid the steam and fume. The sound of water against the glass was the sound of empty peace; melancholy and calm.
To the music of rain he unravelled his signature in the Force, hid it between the lines of sentient static and the many small presences in air and water. There was no sense of coming apart - if anything he felt more aware of the immediacy of himself and of the world. He knew he had succeeded only when Obi-Wan came running into the room with a look of panic.
"Oh, I..." the boy skidded to a halt - his face all roundness; open eyes, open mouth.
"I wasn't leaving without you."
"But I can't..." The unguarded moment passed quickly, Obi-Wan straightened his posture, pulled his jacket taut and smoothed his face into an expression of faint suspicion. "I can't feel your presence in the Force. It's like you're not Force sensitive at all."
"I promised Chen not to be a Jedi."
"Hiding like that," Obi-Wan looked down, vertical line between his eyebrows, head slanted away from Qui-Gon, so he didn't have to look up and show the mistrust. "It's a Sith trick...isn't it?"
"But, Master, isn't that a Sith technique?" Qui-Gon's own question came back to him on a flood of empathic memory - so like this scene that it seemed to defy time.
He saw himself, slender and over-tall, sitting on the windowledge, big feet wedged into the jamb, a datapad in his lap, a spaceship - all chrome lines - rising out of the smog by his shoulder and floating into the pale sky.
"Is a lightsabre blade good or evil?" His master had been making tea at the time, and the question rolled out quiet and subtle as the steam. Quellingly elegant, Master Dooku blended herbs with the delicacy of a sorcerer. When Qui-Gon received the fine porcelain cup he always felt - with boyish reverence - that he'd been handed something magical.
"Neither, Master. Its use determines its morality."
A laugh, and the gesture of one white hand. "So."
Obi-Wan had stepped back a pace, his nondescript jacket and cut-down cargo-pusher's trousers incongruous against his Jedi dignity. He looked closed and unhappy, as he had done since meeting Amarah's family. The gesture Qui-Gon had intended to make him feel included, he seemed to have taken as a threat.
'The kid doesn't do subtle,' he remembered. On this question it would be best to be obvious. "There's nothing intrinsically evil in the technique, Padawan, no matter who has used it before. Sometimes it can save your life being hidden, being overlooked. I intend to teach you this as soon as we get on our ship."
Obi-Wan looked uncomfortable, but accepted the idea with a small nod. "I can't get this fixed on." He held out the telepathic dampener Qui-Gon had given him. A small cylinder of indigo metal with the shape of a hunting bird incised on the top, the dampener would prevent natural telepaths from sensing either Obi-Wan's thoughts or his obvious Jedi-trained shielding.
Qui-Gon pressed the device to his Padawan's earlobe, "Relax," activated it - tiny claws opened and dug into the flesh. Obi-Wan breathed in, and out. "There."
With his braid unravelled and brushed back into his ponytail, the earring glinting blue at the angle of his jaw Obi-Wan looked harder, older. There was something in his air of self-possession, in the bold glance which reminded Qui-Gon painfully of Xan - the last person to have worn those clothes. He didn't feel it would be helpful to say so.
Tucking his lightsabre into one of the pouches at his belt, he watched as Obi-Wan zipped his into a trouser pocket. "Let's go."
A neon sign oozed strident colour over the mold-black passage. Through the thin walls of a tower where sunlight had not penetrated for a millennium, Qui-Gon could hear voices shrieking, feel a hundred repeated patterns of misery. The rest of this block was immigrant housing, and the very stones seemed drip hopelessness. It had been a long time since it was wise to come to the Capital to make one's fortune, but the legends persisted, misleading the foolish and desperate of the whole galaxy into traps like this.
He sighed, letting the sadness flow out of him on a steaming breath. I can do nothing now. And later is in the hands of the Force. Pushing open the malfunctioning door he noticed that Obi-Wan was unusually close, his eyes only half aware, pondering something. He took the boy's arm and gave him a little shake. "Attention to the moment..."
"Gives knowledge." A quick bob of his head, the frown lines eased. Qui-Gon understood the reaction of relief at hearing a familiar Jedi phrase - this play acting was clearly against Obi-Wan's nature. He was too...straightforward...to enjoy the element of 'lets pretend'. "Sorry, Master."
"Ben..." he cautioned.
"Damn," the flinch of distaste was obvious, as pink and yellow light made an art deco statue of the boy's fine features, his eyes clouded hazel in the play of tones, "Sorry, Kai."
Something was on Obi-Wan's mind. Qui-Gon plunged into the smoke and steam of the 'Pillow Book' less than optimally aware himself. This time he would deal with it at once.
The bar was packed - in the smoggy half-light faces drifted into focus mirage-like: the snaking muscularity of a young Hutt, curved over a sabacc table; the sharp muzzle and eyes of a Bothan alone with her datapad; a Zabrak and a Codru-Ji in an arm-wrestling contest, surrounded by quiet, intent spectators.
Burnt sweetblossom was the smell - even the used smoke still carrying faint chemical reassurance, an easing of responsibility, the molecular compulsion to relax.
"What can I get you?" The barkeep was a bleached blonde with pale, assessing eyes.
"Jegleth."
"The kid too?" She gave Obi-Wan a look of faint condemnation, and set down the shots of blue liquid on the scratched counter with a click which spoke volumes. Twilight in many things, he thought, warming to her. He had been in few other smuggler's dens where the patron disapproved of underage drinking. This seemed to be a nice place.
"I'm looking for Spes Kuckunniwi."
Her surge of fear was an adrenaline spike through the pleasant mist. "I don't know him." Holding Qui-Gon's gaze with dishonest bravado, she tried to distract him as her left hand dipped unobtrusively below the counter.
"We're not trouble. We're his fare."
"Yeah, right," the words were unconvinced, but the hand returned to the tabletop, jewelled nails shivering with light, "Like I say, I don't know him. Take a seat and if he comes asking for you, I'll send him over."
Obi-Wan gazed at the tumbler of Jegleth with something of the same horrified awe he had shown in front of the Prowlers, but he remembered to invoke the privacy screen before saying. "I don't really have to drink this do I?"
"Sip sometimes, and we'll hope he arrives soon."
Some tension or propriety eased between them - and suddenly Obi-Wan was grinning. "You know M...Kai, I think you're a bad influence on me."
It was like the first breath after cryo-sleep; a disproportionate relief. He sipped his own drink around an answering smile. "I certainly hope so."
Qui-Gon pushed the table away with a foot, so that he would not be trapped behind it if it came to a fight. Evidently their pilot was in some sort of difficulty, and it was best to be prepared. Leaning back against the wall - it was unpleasantly moist against his bared shoulders - he put his feet up and scanned the crowd. "Are you going to tell me what I've done to worry you this time?"
Obi-Wan sipped. His eyes widened and his face froze. Qui-Gon watched the learned breathing patterns come into play as the boy dissipated the alcohol, forced himself not to cough. He nodded with approval. That had been well handled.
"It's..." Obi-Wan cleared his throat, "Chen's family."
Oh.
"You seem so...attached." Testing the stickiness of the stains on the tabletop, Obi-Wan managed to look embarrassed, as if he had said something obscene.
"'A Jedi shall not know love'?"
"Yes."
Around one of the back rooms a sense of furtive movement caught his attention. Someone's gaze was touching the side of his face like distant heat. That would be Spes, checking them out. Drinking a little, relishing the smooth wormwood tartness and honey aftertaste, Qui-Gon smiled, a little sad.
"Yet we must love something if the sacrifice of our lives is to be endured. After all, why do we do it? Why do you, do it, Obi-Wan? Why do you want to be a Jedi at all?"
"Um," Obi-Wan's floored expression told him that he had asked something as nonsensical as 'why do you want to be human?' It was not an issue for the boy. He simply was Jedi, without thinking. "To serve the Republic?"
"And what is the Republic?"
"It's a political system based on..."
"You'd willingly dedicate your life to the service of a political system?"
Qui-Gon had seen that expression on his own face frequently in those terrible years under Yoda's tutelage - before his Master had rescued him. The utter, abased cluelessness of it moved him to pity.
"Obi-Wan, to me the Republic is nothing more than the state of peace which allows families like Amarah's to exist. Sometimes, if I have an argument with the Council, and I wonder why I don't just hand in my sabre and leave, they provide my inspiration to stay. It is for them, and all the millions of people like them - not for some political structure - that the Jedi exist. If we don't know what we're fighting for, how are we to know when we've won?"
Obi-Wan looked up uncertainly, "They're your inspiration?"
"Yes."
"Your friends strengthen your dedication to the Jedi life. They don't weaken it."
The translation lacked the nuances of the original, but Obi-Wan had years ahead of him in which to develop depth. Touched by the amount of effort Obi-Wan seemed to have made trying to understand him, Qui-Gon leaned over and ruffled the boy's hair. "They could be your friends too."
As he placed his hand back on the grubby table a wave of Force-warning seemed to hit the fingertips - travel like an arcing current through his body, imprinting the moment on him - everything in the room stark as if lit by lightning.
A door opening behind the bar; the tentative footsteps of a slender Duros pilot - heading towards them.
Stir of small movements at scattered tables: A man putting down his cards, the bunch and tension of the Hutt's tail as she prepared to surge forward - each little warning a mark like blood on snow.
Obi-Wan's face cleared as if his puzzlement had been a mask over some essential purity, but the expression furrowed slightly as his hand found the vibroblade in the place of his sabre. He started to rise and Qui-Gon took his wrist to hold him down. "Patience. Let them come to us."
He left unsaid the implications of blaster fire in this place - stray shots, escalation, carnage. Better to encourage a more personal risk.
Nonchalance became an exercise in self restraint. The Hutt was closer. Two humans were casually threading between betting circles, hands inside their jackets. The Codru-Ji had palmed small weapons in each of his four hands. The urge to get away from the wall was irrational, but strong.
Obeying it, nodding to Obi-Wan to follow, Qui-Gon rose and strode forward to meet the Duros. Like a fawn greeting a lion - enormous eyes skittish, slender limbs poised for flight - the pilot said "Are you Chen's friend?"
"I'm Djinn Kai. This is my son, Ben," the words caught in his throat. Warning crested - it was a torment not to reach for his lightsabre. "You're in danger, we must go now."
"You're not going anywhere Kuk."
Between them and the wall, the Hutt whiplashed, her small hands cupped around an assassin's laser. Stupid to expose your back, Qui-Gon told himself fiercely, Now we're surrounded. What were you thinking? Trained though they were, sometimes his instincts led him astray. But they'd rarely been so suicidal before.
Time for self-doubt when they had survived this. Qui-Gon could feel the mouths of the Codru-Ji's four blasters like small spots of cold, two on Spes, one on Obi-Wan, one on himself.
It was a human who had spoken, scarred and armoured from a lifetime of streetfighting, his hands were busy with a monofilament wire - twisting it, making the unfeelable sharpness slice the light in menacing beauty. A gloater, Qui-Gon thought, feeling the sharp rankness of the other man's mind like an odour, He won't listen, whatever I say.
"I haven't done anything wrong." Spes protested - the claim itself establishing him as genuinely naive, "I don't understand what you want from me."
"Way I heard it you'd been smuggling seeds to Bakura."
With a touch on the arm Qui-Gon turned his apprentice to face him. //Can you take the Codru-Ji?//
"Wild seeds. Non patented seeds."
//He has four blasters Master!//
"Undercutting LifeCorps profits. Depriving them of their rightful royalties."
//A good kick to the head and he won't be able to use any of them.//
It was a lot to ask, he knew. Whatever Obi-Wan did would have to be both instant and final, because the minute it happened Qui-Gon would have to find some way to disable the other three without allowing Spes to come to harm. Yet Obi-Wan had fought a flock of draigons - he was capable of this.
"LifeCorps were starving those people - making them pay a fortune for the seed of basic food crops, over and over."
"Sounds like our confession, boys." Scar tissue parodied the man's hard smile - mocking echoes on his cheeks. His teeth were very yellow. Wire swung glimmering from his hand, and Spes cried out - his sleeve and the skin of his forearm falling in a slice like a red leaf of autumn. "Stinking do-gooder. You gonna get paid now."
Watching the little pilot clutch his arm, Qui-Gon's patience ran out. Perhaps because he had stood so passively til now the bounty hunter was taken by surprise as he lunged forward, clamped his hand around the gloved wrist - stilling the wire - and slammed his elbow into the pressure point beneath the jaw.
As the body sagged against him he was already turning, - a moment of bliss as the perfect movement took him - limp form of his enemy held like a shield against him. He could see the shape of the battle now - the necessary places to be - and the energy of it buoyed him.
Distantly aware of shouts, upturning chairs, drinks sliding to shatter on the floor as fleeing forms crowded away he threw the body at the second human, fouling the man's shot. Behind him the focused point of white light which was Obi-Wan's presence in his mind had blossomed. Determination and joy coloured the bond between them.
By the time his opponent's blaster came up for a second shot, Qui-Gon had covered the distance between them. A feinted punch to the face disguised the sweep as he hooked the man's legs out from under him. Yellow fire seared Qui-Gon's shoulder as - falling - the man squeezed off a stray shot.
Pain turned the euphoria into something darker. A flash of panic sounded in his mind, and then silence fell from Obi-Wan. Padawan!
Kicking the fallen man in the throat with carefully judged brutality, Qui-Gon bent briefly to make sure he was really unconscious. As he did so something slid beneath his hair. Round, cold, making his hackles rise.
He straightened, turned. The blaster's muzzle did not leave his skin.
"I'm sure you're fast enough to break this wrist before I fire." The Codru-Ji was bleeding from a gash only micrometers from his jugular. *Just* off. Qui-Gon noted with some asperity, Why is it always the smallest mistakes that get us killed? "But not all three of the others."
"That's true." He looked for Obi-Wan, found him pinned under the Hutt's tail - only an open hand and hedgehog brush of ginger hair visible beneath the flesh. Not dead, Qui-Gon relaxed a little, Yet.
He swallowed, Adam's apple grazing against the push of deadly metal. However, I have been in better situations. And then he felt it - the other presence he'd been expecting. Outside. Too far away to get here before a blaster bolt. He had to keep the man talking long enough for her to arrive. He had to exercise some Jedi confidence.
"I suggest that you and your associates let us go at once, or I will not be held responsible for the consequences."
The narrowness of its face around its fanged smile showed its Wyrwolf heritage briefly - the animal of its childhood. Its laugh was the snarl of a beast about to pounce, and Qui-Gon knew with beautiful clarity, that time had run out.
"Nice last words," said the Codru-Ji, "Very ironic."
It pulled the trigger.
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