Chapter Text
The first time he sees Qui-Gon again is as unceremonious as it is unexpected; he stalks through the Songbird compound, those walls of polished wood and art nouveau furnishings that to his eyes now seem as alien as war had those months ago, and then, there he is. Former Master, his mind recognizes him as.
Standing on the other side of the nearly-ready conference room, the long jarrawood table between them and seeming so awkward that Obi-Wan for a second doubts his own senses, but then again, he never got quite that much time to get to know the man.
The Jedi Master stares at him back with confusion at first; his eyes narrowed and his brows falling in a deja vu before they widen in shock, and he stops, ceases animation, and Obi-Wan turns his eyes to the floor.
“Hello, Master Jinn,” he greets, monotone and quiet, bowing his head.
He does not want to face him. He intends to turn around and just leave but something— a stray feeling, a remaining sliver of politeness— convinces him to stay, staring at the polished floor of the medium luxury vessel that seems now like an unreal, impossible dream; next to the table full of real, human food and glasses filled with uncontaminated liquid that makes the breath catch in his throat on sight in wonder and yearning.
“Obi-Wan,” his name sounds shaky in the man’s voice, like he’s experiencing a dream of his own; or a nightmare. “I am...so glad to see you.”
The meaning of it trembles. Obi-Wan doesn’t even want to think of why that could be, but he does.
Fifty-nine days ago he’d betrayed Nield; sixty-one days ago Cerasi died during a peacemaking operation he’d warned her of and he’d just said— Screw it, fuck them all, if they don’t want to end the War then we will end them.
He was good at killing people. He wasn’t good at standing up to the Elders in drawn out arguments that mostly spiralled down to killing anyways as how do you explain peace to a people so entrenched in the cycle of revenge that they no longer grasp the idea of forgiveness as a human possibility. The Young wanted to end the War so they joined the War and became exactly the same as the two sides before, only complicating the politics, making ways for shattered territories and increasingly demanding strategies to take place in a one-against-all scenario that split them apart further and further.
He’d given up on the idea of peace the first time he’d heard of the Massacre of the Tower. He’d given up on peace when he’d discovered nobody here even knew why the War started— or even who started it in the first place. He’d given up on peace when Chariot went aflame in a brilliant mushroom cloud visible for hundreds of miles.
He’d warned Cerasi before Operation Daybreak. He’d told her the plan was much more likely to be sabotaged— even by one of their own— than to ever get close to working. The Melida may have been winning against the weakened Daan who nuked themselves on accident on the same day of Red fucking Autumn but that didn’t mean they were interested in negotiation.
She believed in her father. Wanted to.
They yelled at each other before she left. Ugly things. True things, rumors and outright lies but mostly just the filthy facts they’d dug up on one another.
Him calling her naive— Don’t you remember all who died on the 23rd? — her retaliating with sharp stinging points that cut to the bone. Cold and through the teeth, I didn’t know the only fucking thing you’re good for is killing people.
Her eyes, solid and burning— a little shiny with tears— as she hissed: The Jedi were supposed to be peacemakers, you sick bastard, no wonder they threw you out.
Don’t you dare drag the Jedi into this— he’d retaliated but it was too late, the metaphorical knife already formed in her hands and ready to snap the last remaining ties between them both by her own choice as she’d decided, once and for all, the amount of blood on his hands was too much.
You don’t fucking get it ‘cause you’ve never had a father, she snapped at him and he gaped, searching for things to say, before snapping his jaws closed and uttering a simple Fine. Be it. Run to your daddy, I won’t stop you.
He’d removed himself from the Command tent before she roared in some kind of fury and threw a rock she’d been using as a paperweight at him; he’d dodged it and watched it slam to the ground a few feet away.
Without the Force. Just from guesswork. Not even the Force was with him anymore.
She’d yelled inarticulate things at his back but eventually he’d made out a: Fuck off you— you offworlder asshole! And he complied, easily, chuckling at the clumsy curse because whatever in him felt emotion once upon a time had died since they ran out of drugs and the withdrawal became a constant companion weighing down his weary shoulders as if testing how deep they could go.
Then she’d died. Just like that.
His mind went blank of anything that might’ve once made him Obi-Wan and became just the Jaybird, and in the night of the 7th he’d taken his legion and betrayed the already shaken Board with one single proposal; this War won’t end by negotiation.
It will only end in blood.
They followed him. He’d torn off a significant number of people and hadn’t been thinking about the power he held because he wasn’t thinking of anything at all past who to shoot and when, where to lead them to make sure they gain as much ground as they are able. The Young splintered. The Melida splintered. The War was falling apart into smaller and smaller factions declaring murder on one another when the cycle of revenge became more akin to a spider’s net with any given person in command having to learn to sleep knowing they were on the deathlist of at least thirty different people at once.
He betrayed Nield and they became even worse enemies than Obi-Wan ever had before. He blamed Nield for letting Cerasi keep her naive, stupid hope of her father somehow being good at the inside under layers of years of violence; Nield blamed him for letting the War go so far, for pushing Cerasi over the edge. For tearing her legacy to bits when he’d started waging war against peace not even a day after she’d died.
Nield got to him first, in the end, but the bastard was too soft to shoot when he had the chance and so next thing Obi-Wan knew they tied his hands together with wire and dragged him outside, Theo’s sincerely apologetic: “Sorry, General,” granting him a second of warning before she’d forced his head inside the swampwater lake he’d set his camp near and held him underwater, unable to fight. At someone’s order she’d janked him back out by the hair when he’d accepted that Neild was just enough of an asshole to kill him at someone else’s hands— at his former lieutenant’s hands, no less— and there he was, standing amidst the camp his soldiers were overturning, Bastr staring bloody murder at his back from where he’d been restrained.
So, Jaybird, you’ve committed crimes against the Young, he’d said almost nonchalantly, leaning on that prized shotgun of his that Obi-Wan had only seen him use once. What do you have to say for yourself?
He struggled against the wire cutting into skin and the living agony in his joins from how Theo forced him to kneel— hyperventilating hopelessly, his lungs straining and failing, and choked out: Fuck you— before his breath betrayed him to useless wheezing and wondering if this, after all the shit he’s been though, is going to be the death of him.
A small expression of distaste twisted Nield’s lips like he were an unpleasant pest that didn’t quite act like he’d wanted it to; then he’d said: Again and Obi-Wan knew it wasn’t for him.
He’d still barely been conscious from the lack of oxygen, his lungs most of the way on giving out when Nield made his own lieutenants tangle a thread of barbed wire around his neck as Theo held him as still as she could, hissing in pain when he himself just wasn’t present enough to do it even if it had hurt like living hell.
He’d asked questions. Nearly baffling questions— first moral nonsense that allowed him to brag and relish in how good he was, unlike the Jaybird with a noose of metal at its neck and wire clipping its wings. Then specific information. Plans. His legion. Obi-Wan’s personal history. Most baffling of all, the Jedi.
He’d told him what he remembered of Qui-Gon’s commcodes when he’d so nicely remarked: Your knees aren’t doing so well, are they? before making them hold fire-red rods of iron against the skin until he struggled to scream. In the privacy of his own head as he’d choked his life out against the wire digging into his neck after Nield decided he was satisfied, he’d made a promise, a single dark thread of a thing inside his mind, never to cave to torture again.
Nield was a coward and a sadist but they’d very nicely decided to gloss over that, bury it into the hoard of things never to be talked about once the Jedi come.
Nicely meaning, in Nield’s own words, If you ever tell the Jedi—anyone— about this I will clip this voice of yours for good, he’d tugged at the wire until Obi-Wan let his face twist into a grimace of pain sufficient enough, do you get it, Jay-jay?
He could’ve used the Force that day to free himself. He could’ve simply raised his hand and crushed Nield’s trachea to bits but he didn’t, even if it wouldn’t be that different from trusting a bullet to hit its mark.
It felt wrong. Wrong to his guts, to his bones, to ever use the Force to kill in the same cruelty a gun possessed. The opposite of a gun is everything you point it towards.
The Force wasn’t made to destroy itself.
(It could. It could do much worse than he ever dreamed of.)
He doesn’t know how to reply to the man whose commcodes he choked out number by number on that G-dless night as blood ran down his neck along with water. The Jedi was out of depth— he thought that perhaps Qui-Gon himself was aware of that given his strange behaviour during the initial meetings where half his attention was devoted to his awareness of Nield’s guard watching him as if he’s going to snap and just start shooting at everyone for no reason at all.
Weapons weren’t allowed in the Songbird. Perhaps that gave the Jedi an even farther illusion.
Qui-Gon trails by the table, one hand on the back of a chair when he eventually slows to a stop just a few meters away and for a second between them stands nothing but silence and Obi-Wan looks to the side of him in just the sheer, desperate attempt to not have to face the man whom he’d failed.
Qui-Gon swallows. “Your shields are very tight,” he notes and it takes a nearly hysterical second for Obi-Wan to realize what he means. “Can you lower them for me?”
Can he? The last time he’d done so it was to shriek out terror in yet another battle-gone-wrong; can he even do anything else than scream in the Force anymore?
“I—,” he takes a breath in, never deep enough, “I can’t, I’m— sorry.”
Even a brief glance shows him the way Qui-Gon’s face seems to crumble with something like pain in the warm, orange light.
“That’s alright,” he near-whispers. “ I am sorry.”
That makes him raise his head ever so slightly and Qui-Gon’s eyes almost perk up at it. “For what?”
His question makes the man shortly become the one hypnotizing the floor as he thinks, unhappily, his expression one of mild frustration which Obi-Wan knows betrays so much more.
“I abandoned you.”
“I chose to leave,” he immediately counters.
“I shouldn’t’ve let you.” His Former Master says, his jaw set and his eyes determined but oh, so grieving.
A hundred battles flash through his mind. The beginning. The shriek of falling bombs that drowned the sun on the Longest Night, the Daan camp he’d aimed the blood mist cannon at in a second of no thought at all but for some animal instinct of revenge as he’d been choking on it along with horror; Red Autumn, and a stranger cradling him in his arms like Qui-Gon had only done once and so briefly at that.
Choking numbers into cold air through the barbed wire around the bird’s throat, one after another, begging that he remembers well enough even as his mind tunnels.
“No,” he says, slowly, quietly, “You shouldn’t have.”
He feels something break in the air as the Jedi Master hangs his head and for a second Obi-Wan fear he’s going to take that lightsaber and sever him in half— memories of Elders were hard to shake— but then he just drags out a chair and crashes down on it, holding his face in his hands.
For a long while Obi-Wan just stands there, waiting on him, waiting on something to happen as his consciousness floats behind himself and unwilling to move as he’d already gotten used to the ache in his knees at this particular position.
Qui-Gon runs a hand through his hair— all the way to the tips hanging over his shoulder, a gesture Obi-Wan has never seen him do, and then folds his hands into one another in his lap.
Raises his head. “You’re right.”
Exhale. Inhale. “The Jedi Order would be willing to let you back, if you wanted to.”
That stills him on the spot. “What?” He whispers; his voice betrays him.
“I wasn’t aware you survived; as soon as I saw you on the establishment of the Songbird Operation, I called the Council.” He sighs right after, shifting.
“It wouldn’t be easy. They’re...not exactly pleased with this whole situation and you’d most certainly end on a period of probation for a time, but there still is a place for you within the Jedi, should you choose to accept it.”
“You’re serious,” Obi-Wan says, narrowing his eyes and taking a step forward and— Oh Force, that was a mistake.
If Qui-Gon notices his brief wavering of expression, he says nothing of it.
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
He straightens; says with a pain in his eyes utterly uncharacteristic to the Jedi: “Come back to me, Obi-Wan. We can...we can do it better this time, can’t we?” It slightly sounds like a prayer. “Together. We’ll do it right this time.”
He’s not sure what The Jedi is referring to; he doesn’t think it’s any one thing, probably an assortment of the hellish mistakes they both committed together and on their own, and even that is a promise too sweet.
But he has nowhere else to go. He could stay on Melida/Daan, yes, he could attempt to, but he’d either be living under Nield’s heel or like a hermit somewhere in the ruined plains while Qui-Gon offered him the stars.
He thinks on it for a long moment. Qui-Gon lets him. The Songbird hums idly around them both, its ventilation shafts and hydraulics and gears and generators coming together in a nearly-pleasant sound that dulled the pain and made his teeth quiver.
“Yes,” he says. “Okay. I—I’ll go.”
Relief visibly slumps the Master’s shoulders and he thinks he sees some kind of realization cross his mind, a resolution, a choice.
“Come here,” the Jedi says, and offers him his arms.
He tries not to think of the hold of strangers and fake supernovas setting the sky alight as he accepts. The Jedi’s hair and coat smell of other things but War and that freezes him before it brings tears to his eyes he’s unable to control.
Qui-Gon holds his trembling body in something like growing fear as he sees he’s failing to breathe, and that hurts. All of it.
His knees. His head. The scars on his neck and around his wrists and the dozen marks from shrapnels and bullets and the inside of his lungs; it all hurts and he’s sick of it.
He hugs Qui-Gon and all of it hurts and nothing is okay. Maybe it never will be.
Maybe that’s just what his life is destined to be.
Infinite sadness— like the Force whispered— afterall.
—
His head fills with an increasingly loud, distracting hum the closer to the Temple they get once it’s all finally over. He distances himself from, well, himself in the dread of it. Of coming home and finding himself not belonging. Not fitting in anymore.
Theo, Dusk and Bastr had in the end managed to convince Nield to give him back Clocktower’s Mary that he’d confiscated during his raid on Obi-Wan’s camp and it’s that case where he’d stuffed all his relevant belongings; a poor, miserable amount crammed next to the gun to hopefully drown its Force echoes. But it’s not only the storage space; it's his memento. It’s his hope, maybe, that no one else uses it again.
It’s a reminder to himself for what he did, and can never do again.
Even early-on in the journey does Qui-Gon start to fuss and worry over Obi-Wan’s state; the journey takes two days and a half and he definitely notices his irregular and too-short sleep but also the general mess of visible scars and wounds that haven’t yet become ones.
He stops him over breakfast on the second day, thumbing over an ugly and jagged shrapnel line on his forehead and everything in Obi-Wan wants to pull away but nothing actually does.
“They can smooth these out at the Temple,” he says. “I could order that for you.”
“Thanks…?” Obi-Wan says in quiet confusion.
He’d been...uncharacteristically soft in general. The Jedi Master seemed like he was walking on eggshells for no particular reason and Obi-Wan didn’t feel about it any particular way— he generally didn’t feel anyhow about anything— but it did bring an unwelcome edge into their limited conversation and made the ship feel more like limbo than a travelling vessel.
He’d tried worrying over the not-yet-scars on Obi-Wan’s neck; he brushed him off. Tried to ask about if there was something wrong with his knees; Obi-Wan stared blankly at him like he was trying to figure out if it was a joke or not. He’d asked about his difficulties with breathing and Obi-Wan told him, sharply even if it was polite, that he didn’t want to talk about it.
“I’m going to go with you to medical first, if that’s fine with you,” he says over dinner, a few hours before they’re set to arrive, as Obi-Wan hypnotizes his kitchen utensils instead of meeting his eyes.
He’s still not been able to get used to the food; the disease in his guts hasn’t let go either, spreading with a dull ache and making the joy of it rather dull. He hadn’t let Qui-Gon know, though. Had pretended it was alright.
He was tired, and it hurt, and he had no energy in him for explanations.
True to his word, Qui-Gon begins leading him towards the Halls of Healing as soon as the ship lands on a Coruscant Obi-Wan almost doesn’t recognize.
His arm on Obi-Wan’s back; he walks briskly and Obi-Wan tries his damned best to follow.
The Temple feels empty and eerie. His steps seem too loud, the halls too silent, too calm and void of the hum that he’d grown used to and should’ve picked up on and it takes him a while to realize the shields he’s built are blocking all of the Force, hence the Temple’s liveliness as well, and he fears, quietly, whether he’ll ever be able to let it in anymore.
It is incredibly lonely to walk through its halls like this. Horribly alienating.
The way people stare as they pass doesn’t help at all; some with disdain, some with clear worry or outright fear, most with surprise. Their eyes dig into his back; the feeling stings even without the Force.
He aims his own to the ground, determining it’s the safest.
He sticks to the strategy even as the light changes from dim orange to the gentle white-cyan of the Halls of Healing; he only hears the reception medic flinch in her seat and immediately demand Qui-Gon’s explanation, who gives vague answers increasing in desperation by the minute.
They are instructed to sit in the reception/waiting area of the Halls and sit they do; Qui-Gon still holding onto his side, unknowingly putting pressure on a bruise Obi-Wan forgot existed until he had to bear the ache of an overlarge hand pressing down on it.
He watches the starry pattern on the floor with unfocused eyes and observes the way it swims, like an illusion, just on the very corner of what he can see.
The receptionist returns after a few minutes with a tablet with a document Obi-Wan immediately recognizes as some sort of medical flimsiwork checklist and gives it off to Qui-Gon before stopping in front of him.
A young twi-lek, probably in her mid-twenties, her skin a dark blue and her eyes sharp and demanding his attention even as she tries to be gentle.
“Hi, Obi-Wan,” she says, and it sounds more rushed for the sake of habit than soft, “My name’s Vocara Che, and I’m a healer.”
He already knows; the name rings a bell. He doesn’t betray it, however, just stares blankly— over her shoulder— and doesn’t even nod. Waits for her to continue, to get to her point so that he can maybe decide how to react.
She does so fairly quickly but not before she spies both his eyes with her own, undoubtedly tugging and knocking at his fortress of a Force shielding which he’d lost the ability to feel.
“We’re going to have to perform a few tests, fairly complex ones, so we need you and your Master—“ he doesn’t correct her, “to fill in this form. You need to help him, okay?”
He nods, and that is all he gives her; it seems to be all she requires as well.
“And you, Master Jinn?”
There’s almost laughably less gentleness in the way she addresses Qui-Gon; entirely serious and cutting to the point without any unnecessary emotions clouding it. He wishes she used it for him too; he knew bruff professionality much better than kindness. “Do you need any medical assistance?”
“Not that I’m aware of, no. Not right now.”
“If you’re lying, Ni Hiella’s going to kill you herself; I hope you know that.”
Qui-Gon, unfortunately and intimately aware of the interpersonal dynamics in the Halls of Healing, sighs; ever so suffering: “Yes.”
“Good,” Vocara Che finishes with a nod and then gives Obi-Wan one last smile; more of a grin than that; and returns back to the reception. He glances towards her face partially obstructed by holographic displays a few times as Qui-Gon reads through the flimsiwork.
“There’s...a checklist,” he starts and Obi-Wan doesn’t say: Yes, I noticed because so far he’d somehow managed to keep himself in good graces and also just doesn't have the energy to waste on pointless and irrelevant proofs. He listens to Qui-Gon as he reads each item one by one and doesn’t react (Qui-Gon marking them as a no, muttering to himself) until he gets to: “Exposure to radiation— well, that’s just…”
“Yes.”
He hears the sharp turn of his former Master’s head. His realization. The near-breathless: “No.”
Chooses not to move at all as he repeats his previous answer and just as firm. “Yes.”
Qui-Gon goes silent, filling it in.
The rest turns out to either be minor or less relevant, not requiring that much of Obi-Wan’s input, and once the whole business is done he almost regrets it, as it gave him something to do at least.
It’s at least ten minutes of silence before they’re finally called to a Healer. Obi-Wan pretends he can’t see Qui-Gon’s comm go off no less than twenty times.
Getting off the chair, he almost falls. It’s a near thing. It’s a painful course of action where he curses his bad knees over and over and thinks if maybe this falls under something the Healers could fix; only then does he realize he could, maybe, be healed. Feel okay again.
It feels so distant and strange he can’t even imagine it that well. The thought hits him and all he can manage is an Oh that makes him look more like a moron than anything else.
Qui-Gon grabs his elbow when he sees Obi-Wan’s struggle and it has him panicking; briefly but also long enough to jank out of the grip. The Jedi hadn’t expected it. His arm falls to his side.
He doesn’t reach out for Obi-Wan again, who tries to pretend he doesn’t miss it.
He recognizes the name on the door of the healer they are led to by the numerical holographic displays; it’s the same healer in whose care he’d cried half a year before Bandomeer about not being worthy of the Jedi instead of worrying about the broken leg he’d came there to treat. He thinks it might’ve been the painkillers; he’s still not quite sure.
It feels incredibly silly now, regardless.
They still for a second when they finally walk in; he notices even if his gaze immediately pins to the floor.
“Master Jinn,” they greet his Master first as is customary, “Initiate Kenobi?”
“Padawan,” Qui-Gon corrects and Obi-Wan inclines his head to him instead of fully disagreeing, but even that prompts the man to walk back on the title. “Not currently, however.”
They wave it off. “Come here.”
He doesn’t pay much attention as Qui-Gon and them discuss the different tests; he wishes he could, but something in his ear caves into a constant and hollow ringing that shatters his already fragile concentration. Qui-Gon has to call his name twice before he responds.
The scanner looks too much like a gun for a brief second as they aim it at him. He recoils from it, but he thinks he saves it in the end.
They frown at the results as they plug it into the interface and go through what it spits out; he could read it on the holographic screen but (unlike Qui-Gon, who leans forward in his chair) he has no interest in a record of all that is wrong with him.
“I suppose you know what an Atomic scan is,” the medic asks him then.
He nods.
“Then let's get on with it.” They try to infuse it with a certain playfulness. It comes off insincere; it wouldn’t have worked either way.
“Is it necessary?” Qui-Gon inquires, worried.
“Some of the results are inconclusive and that worries me,” they answer and oh, isn’t that just a great thing to hear about one’s own state of flesh. “I need to get a detailed scan to pick the data apart. It confuses the scanner.”
“What confuses the scanner?”
A brief pause as they instruct Obi-Wan to lay on the examination table and start setting up the device.
“The sheer amount.”
He’d been scanned with an Atomic Scanner before; the mark V that they made all Initiates go through by the time they reached ten so that they’d know how it felt, that the giant humming machine that could make younglings cry wasn’t quite as scary as it appeared.
He remembers it being loud— incredibly so, to the point where ear coverings could be requested— and slow, humming as he tried not to move, as instructed, even if every part of his body suffered with discomfort.
It’s not that different now; it still gives him the feeling of his bones quivering and makes breathing even harder when it passes over his lungs but pain cancels a lot of the sensations. Getting up is worse than the test; at least he could lie down to have it taken.
“It’ll take a while to comb through the results, but as of now I am positive hospitalization is required,” the medic tells Qui-Gon as they finish and Obi-Wan sits on the edge of the Atomic Scanner’s stretcher so he doesn’t have to put weight on his knees for the time being.
If they are shaken by the results— or even surprised— they do not show it.
“What...is the diagnosis?” Qui-Gon asks. His voice comes unclear, as if through water. The ringing starts again. His bones still feel like they’re humming. He shakes his head as if to get it out, and only causes himself a headache.
“So far, I know it’ll definitely be multiple. I saw several healed and semi-healed wounds but what I am currently concerned about is how legitimate is the result of J’Rar-Tossen’s disease, as that’d require immediate attention.”
So that was the name.
“J’Rar-Tossen’s—?”
“It’s a waterborne disease fairly common in places without sufficient cleaning capabilities; it attacks the cartilage of the body, particularly the lower limbs. It’s especially known to cause premature arthritis,” they explain nicely, calmly, typing something into the interface while he tries to breathe through the bizarre feeling rising in his chest. A strange realization; This is happening to me. It has a name. It is real.
It doesn’t leave; only gets stronger as they affix a medical bracelet around his wrist with his name and date of birth. The plastic is green; like a mixture of too much white, diluting the color into a faded pastel.
They lead him to the bed; this time, the medic has their hand around his elbow. It’s the Padawan Ward. The other two beds in it are empty.
He lies down on the bed; comfortable and just firm enough, and if after sleeping on the ground or in the trenches the beds on a ship seemed heavenly, this is ecstasy. The medic and Qui-Gon discuss the matter of his belongings and he doesn’t weigh in.
Once Qui-Gon leaves to get them for him— they left them on the ship, Qui-Gon convincing him that this was more important, that they could get them later— Obi-Wan only half-listens to the medic explaining the rules and facts of his stay and thinks about how if Qui-Gon opens the case, the only meagre thing Obi-Wan kept, he will fight the gun, and he will know; and at his core, Obi-Wan hopes he will understand how important it is.
When his former Master comes back later just as he’s promised, he looks worse for wear, weighted down and exhausted in all the little lines of age on his face that makes Obi-Wan’s brain fire off in paranoia. He brings clothes. He brings books from his quarters; not many of them, but some. Obi-Wan has already forgotten he ever had them.
He also, unexpectedly, brings a model of the Sphingi 72-300 fighter that he’d constructed at eleven years old, a little droid-like thing he vaguely remembers being proud of for the way he’d successfully managed to get it to fly.
He holds it in his arms like an offering, a priceless gem, long after Qui-Gon hands it to him so gently with the simplest explanations of: “I thought something familiar would help,” which turns out to hurt with that fact how nothing makes Obi-Wan feel more alien from himself than a flashing metal toy he made less than three years ago.
A silly little thing. He hates it; it’s useless. He loves it. He holds it in his scarred hands and runs his trembling thumb over the edge of the left wing and thinks how different he’d been when he made things instead of destroying them.
He recalled the Daan used Theta 100 Sevens; it’s a dizzying thought to know one of those hangs in his room, and to know that the tiny replica he’d carefully, delicately put together; while under the moving hunter’s shadow of the real one he’d ran towards the smoking turret nest and yelled at those two poor girls than the fuel tank is the weakest point.
“The case you brought…” Qui-Gon starts, and Obi-Wan turns the fighter miniature in his hands to peer into its empty cockpit, “I saw what you— I saw what you kept in it.”
Obi-Wan is silent.
“It is... difficult, to reconcile…” he starts, and it has to be something about Obi-Wan or in Qui-Gon himself that makes him trail off and drop the sentence altogether with a sigh, one hand sliding into his hair again. A gesture incredibly expressive and that more human, un-Jedi like. Weary of the world.
“Yes, Master?” He asks; his voice slightly hoarse, but then again, it always is nowadays.
“The gun.” He announces.
“Yes.”
“As Jedi, we cannot…the Jedi do not permit the use of violent weaponry, much less these ancient— “ he closes his eyes and exhales, calming himself.
“I should...as a Master, as a Jedi, it is my duty to take that weapon from you, move it to a place where it can either be scrapped and repurposed or safely stored.”
The grief that hits him comes as a surprise. The horror of losing Clocktower’s Mary; of it forever lying dormant and unused or scrapped for the iron, when he’d spent so many endless hours holding on to its metal and nothing more as there weren’t hands to hold on Melida/Daan but his own.
It’s attachment of the worst kind but then he’s not really a Jedi now, so why let it stop him from caring.
“I shouldn’t let you keep it, yet…” the man inhales through his teeth, a sharp, quick noise, “I feel it is important to you.”
A pause.
“Is it?”
Obi-Wan nods. Shakily at first; then firmer, surer.
“Alright.”
He keeps it at that. He doesn’t go further, just deflates and doesn’t entirely finish the thought and it marks the last spoken words between them for the day until the “Goodnight,” at the closure of visiting hours that Obi-Wan almost forgets to return.
C’chachri has always been sharp; both in their assessment and in words; and so it’s not a surprise that they seek him out once he’s finished with the Council meeting where people would’ve been screaming were they not Jedi. He gets why they’re furious with him; he is with himself. What he can’t abide is the disdain they showed for Obi-Wan, the sheer lack of empathy for the boy who went to a war he never should’ve even seen and returned obviously broken.
C’chachri catches up with him as he walks through the Temple canteen on level 8 (used most often as a shortcut), and no matter how much he wants to refuse their offer to talk, he still slows down. They might have news about Obi-Wan.
Not your Padawan anymore, he is. Not one at all.
He takes a deep breath and closing his eyes at the memory of the Grandmaster’s voice he thinks, Thanks for nothing, Yoda.
Obi-Wan may not be his Padawan by the rule of the Council but he’s not leaving him to deal with the consequences of Qui-Gon’s mistake alone.
“Jinn,” they greet, as a Kachi native tall enough for their eyes to be level, and Qui-Gon allows them to come to a stop a little past the canteen.
“C’chachri.”
“Come with me to the gardens, will you?” They ask with a tilt of their insectoid head, those multifaceted eyes staring into his own. He follows. The short walk is awkward and quiet.
“Do you have any…” he starts as they get to a hopefully somewhat private spot in the gardens, a little nook between the Myrkr forest and the mountains of Teth, and settle down on a hexagonal rock of pastel purple color that looked more maroon in the shade of the trees overhead.
“Oh Force, do I,” they say and the sarcasm, albeit familiar, worries him.
“First off, he’s sick with two different strands of the same disease, the one I mentioned. That’s why the results came inconclusive as I swear that’s never happened to me before,” they lift one of their fingers, the forked claw muted gold like hay.
“And it’s not the first time I’ve seen this disease, believe me, I get young Knights returning from Outer Rim missions complaining of their knees hurting like thrice a damn year,” they give a breathless chuckle, “but that’s always early cases. J’Rar’s not filed as deadly because it pretty much always gets treated right away. This is...not it. Force. He’s had to have been sick with it for months . His age doesn’t help either.”
“How does it…”
“Manifest?” They guess; it wasn’t the word he was going for but he doesn’t correct them as he knows it’s not a good idea to do so when they get on a tangent, and he also wants to know.
“His knees are...I don’t even know how he’s walking anymore, and that’s not even addressing the burns, but basically we’re talking about severe arthritis here. His cartilage is just gone; the bones are grinding one another to dust.”
He pushes his emotions to the Force. “How do you...treat it?”
“We’ve already given him the meds for the disease itself, but with the consequences? I have no idea. I talked with Ni Hiella and most probably he’s going to have to get his joints replaced. Worst case is amputation but we’re not quite there yet.”
In the brief pause as they take a sip of a bottle they've brought with them, he silently processes the information; they don’t give him enough time, though. Not at all.
“But that’s just one thing.”
He turns to see their profile and thinks, Oh dear.
“It’s kind of...hard, honestly, to summarize it as it’s just... Man , war is ugly.” They shake their head. “But...his lungs are fucked, which worries me but hopefully we’ll be able to fix it without needing an organ transplant, his vocal chords have taken a beating and if we don’t do anything about that he’s gonna lose his voice at like, I don’t know, fifteen, and also the scans have picked up some leftover radiation which is a fucking wildcard I don’t really know what to even do with.” They throw one of their hands into the air. “The boy’s starved and sick and carries no less than a dozen not-quite-ideally-healed battle wounds and I’m pretty sure someone tried to choke him with barbed wire at some point and he’s...he’s fucking fourteen . He’s fourteen, Qui. It’d still be a shitshow if it was a Knight, yes, but he’s not even that .”
They turn to him and he can’t quite conceive the emotion he’s getting from them, something strong and violent and ugly. “Qui, what the hell happened to him. Where the fuck did they send you.”
Tried to choke him with barbed wire. He closes his eyes and wills for peace; he finds none.
“Have you not heard the gossip?”
Force, was there gossip to be found even if it was less than a day after they arrived at the Temple; all it took was seeing a Master lead a visibly unwell Padawan straight to the healers and the Temple’s rumor-machine had a brand new treat to process. It didn’t take that long to spread the story of Melida/Daan. The boy who was a General, isn’t that ridiculous? He’d been close to creating a list of people to specifically embarrass in the next Tournament even before he went to the Council after hours of ignoring their messages.
The Jedi did not practice revenge but apparently spreading ugly rumors and quite disgusting ridicule about a broken boy who’d been through hell was just fine.
“Jinn, you know me,” they say, their voice dropping. “I keep clear of that.”
He does; they’re clan-mates after all, even if very few people know at this point.
He starts explaining. Slow, at first, trying to lay all the context at the table as he gets it in order in his own head as well. They listen patiently but only until he gets to the choice-- the moment when Obi-Wan almost drew his weapon on him, a moment that lives in Qui-Gon’s nightmares.
“And you let him? ” They ask, incredulous and angry, and isn’t that just the problem.
He hangs his head. “Yes.”
“You left a...a thirteen-year-old in a fucking warzone — Jinn, with respect, what the hell were you thinking?”
“It was his choice—“
“Bullshit,” they cut him off with genuine fury. “You can’t be serious.”
“Do you think it was easy? He almost pulled his weapon on me, C’chri.”
They still. The hoarse whisper of No, you shouldn’t have echoes through his mind and he gets close to cradling his face in his hands again like he’s a coward unable to face what he’s done. He said they could do it right this time. He meant it. It was hope.
“That changes nothing about your responsibility, Qui.” They respond, cooly, letting him stew in his guilt. “That kid never should’ve gotten near that.”
“I know.”
“Well? What are you going to do about it?”
And isn’t that the question of the year.
He sighs. Folds his hands together and runs the thumb of his right over his left’s.
“When he...left...Obi-Wan’s Padawanship got rescinded, I think you can find it in the files.”
“And?”
“As the Council sees it, I am not, and cannot, be responsible for him anymore.”
They lean forward; their chelicerae click. “So he’s…Masterless.”
“He’s currently not even a Jedi.”
“That’s...not a good situation to be in.”
He knows what they mean. Intimately.
It created an argument within the Council; which wasn’t exactly unique but neither did he see them truly go for it either; as some wished to deny Obi-Wan even the ability to reside in the Temple at all and to receive treatment from the Order he forsook. It’d gotten heated. Unpredictably and quite suddenly the room went from something quiet yet seething to an outright shocked rage awakening the air to make it dully buzz in his ears and against his skin. Koon and Mace took immediate offense; Mundi argued against.
He hadn’t weighed in. He’d just observed, and crumbled on the inside.
“No, it is not.”
Deflating, elbows on his knees, he turns to catch the changing light on their complex eyes. “I hope they’ll allow me to take him back.”
“Depending on his state, yes.”
“Depending?”
“There’s...something called the Apprentice Level of Ability,” they start, slowly, their now-lowered hands fiddling with one another and the claws curling and catching on each other’s spikes, “it describes, in short, the Padawan’s eligibility for missions and assignments, based on physical and mental state.”
Qui-Gon’s eyes widen. “You think he might not…”
“You get some of the most dangerous and demanding missions there are and here we’re not even sure if he’ll walk again. I’m not saying it’s not doable; Force, I hate how they implement ALA most of the time, but...you need to consider this, Qui.”
“I could just not take them anymore,” he says, firmly. He would. He would do it for Obi-Wan.
“Are you certain? And what would the Council say to that?”
“C’chri, you know the Council means nothing to me,” he retorts, raising his voice with the ridicule-offense. “Besides, is it relevant right now? You said you don’t know.”
They don’t say anything.
“Right now, here, in the present,” he jabs one of his fingers in the direction of the ground to emphasize, “I’m not giving up on him, and I’ll leave the details for later.”
They throw up their hands, but only slightly enough to get a slight exasperation across. “Yeah, I get you, I was just saying it’s worth considering—“
“And I’m saying that I hear you, but right now, it means nothing to me. I trust him. I will take him as a Padawan again.”
“Even if the Council doesn’t allow you; because of the ALA?”
“Yes.”
“Even if he won’t want you?”
He hesitates. A cold chill sneaks up over his back.
“Then...I won’t. Yes,” he says slowly, “then I’ll wish him the best.”
They tilt their head. “You really hope you won’t have to, don’t you.”
“I made a promise.”
“Is this attachment?”
“It’s a promise and I’m going to damn well keep it as— as you’re right, the Council is right, I left him for a year in a warzone and there’s no one else I can blame than me,” it comes out too fast and too heated and too sincere and he can’t stop the: “are you happy?” he throws at the end.
They lean back. Their Force signature, lounging with his own and bonding and brushing against one another, retreats.
“Yes. Sure. I get you.”
“I...apologize.”
“Don’t.” They say. “I’m glad you’re finally growing some self-awareness.”
He glares at them and gets only a laugh, an unhappy one, one that grates on his senses.
“As far as I’m concerned, I hope you both get through this,” they say then, utterly seriously. “I really do. I wish you’d tell me you had a Padawan before I had to find out this way, you know, Qui?”
“I...yes, I’m sorry,” he responds with some awkwardness.
“You damn well should be. I would’ve congratulated you and made him a patient file under you and also very gently smothered the child, but now I can’t.”
“It was...busy. I didn’t accept him at the Temple.”
“Oh dear.” They say with humor.
“Long story. You can imagine,” he doesn't laugh, because it haunts him. Twelve years old and Obi-Wan had been ready to die. Thirteen and he’d joined a war for the same reason. He didn’t know where this was going; he only knew he didn’t like it at all.
“Well...some other time,” they say and stand back up, balancing their weight on the cane they’ve been using for walking since they’d been wounded in a mission eighteen years ago. He doesn’t stand up; might as well stay and meditate some in the calm this little part of the gardens provided away from voices and those who could judge.
“Some other time,” he agrees and smiles as their meet eyes again. It’s not entirely fake.
“It was good to talk with you, Jinn.”
“Likewise.”
“Expect me to seek you out with a...higher frequency, now, given how...I think it would do you well to know of your not-Padawan’s health, and that’s not even considering the boy,” they add. “Feel free to visit him anytime during the appropriate hours, yadda yadda, you know the drill.”
He nods. “Thank you, C’chri.”
“And if they let you keep him, do invite me to your quarters, please? I didn’t get a chance to properly greet my clanmate’s Padawan and I take offense with that.”
“I— of course—“
“See? This is why I always liked Roharr more. You need to learn some manners with your friends, Qui-Gon.”
“That’s a low blow.”
“No, it isn’t.” They smile with their chelicerae, which most people tend to consider highly threatening. In truth, it never stopped being that; he just got used to it.
“But! I have results to go through, so...see you, Qui.”
He nods a polite acknowledgment. “See you as well, C’chri.”
They leave.
The trees above him sway; the air in this part of the Garden simulates a moist moderate area; sometimes, if the botanists feel like it, they simulate outright rain. The birds chirp. The rocky pillars from Teth are cool to the touch.
He lets himself get lost in its Living Force, and meditates.