Chapter Text
Yan has several books and several messages from several grandchildren asking him questions about logistics.
Success is never far off with a little elbow grease. He offers them quarters sleeping in the cottage or in the town, whatever they prefer. The previous Count owned properties all over, and while Yan has sold most of them off, he does keep a few residences here and there.
(He has tried to sell the great estate several times with no luck. A museum agency, sensing his distress, has offered to turn it into a historical site for him.)
Talks begin. The townhouse closest to the cottage sits between a café and a small grocer, it has enough space inside for the grandchildren if they do not wish to stay in the one-room cottage. Yan offers it and receives confusion in response. Rael creates a chat that allows all to receive the same messages and tries to clear up the confusion.
It doesn’t work.
Obi-Wan says that they will find their own lodgings, it’s no trouble. Anakin says they can bring a portable shelter and bunk down in a field. Obi-Wan agrees.
Rael explains, painstakingly, that the object here isn’t to sleep in a field. Yan has inherited a residence that is not in use by any party, including himself. It is sheltered place to sleep.
Ahsoka asks if she can sleep in the field anyways. As a treat.
No.
Yan will not have it. If they want to sleep on the floor, that’s fine, but it is too wet to sleep in the fields. He will give his bed to two people to share and will take the floor or the shed.
The youngers explode into refusals at the very idea. Yan clutches at his face.
He takes control over the situation (which always seems to be the damn case, doesn’t it?) and informs them that they are all sleeping in the townhouse. It is only a few miles from the cottage. He will accept no objections. No, not even from the littlest one. No one is sleeping on a floor. No one is sleeping in a field. He’s glad they’ve all had this talk—no, no rations need be brought along, there is time, space, and funds to cook and/or purchase foodstuffs—no, he does not need anything. NO, do not tell Master Yoda.
The youths have been organized. The additional materials necessary for the construction of the pig pen have arrived. As has the components of the mushroom shelter and substrate. What Yan needs now are mostly snacks.
No rations. Snacks, only. He goes to town and ends up standing in an aisle in a grocery, squinting at the shelves with a metal basket in hand.
He is realizing now that he never asked for dietary requirements.
Ahsoka is easy. She is a togruta. Meat, jerky, boiled eggs, honey-based sweets, salted dried squid. These are procured and dropped into the metal basket.
Rael is also easy. If left to his own devices, he would eat solely artificial cheese-flavored products and pickles. Yan locates a jar of the spiced, oil-based pickles he used to have to ration in the days of yore, lest certain padawans burn the daylights out of the ever-present canker sores in their mouths. Against his better judgment, he locates a bag of neon-orange corn-based crisps that claim to be cheese-flavored.
That leaves the boys. And Yan cannot, for the life of him, remember which of them is allergic to gluten. He stands in front of the shelf containing specialized food products and types out a message to Rael, who doesn’t know, so passes it off to Feemor, who is still angry about Xanatos being part of this discussion and refuses to answer. Xanatos, however, seizes the opportunity to reveal that he cannot consume or handle nuts of the tree and ground varieties or else his throat swells until he can’t breathe.
Feemor says that he’s taking ‘fucking notes.’
Yan checks over everything in his basket and is relieved to find no nuts present. He asks Feemor as kindly as he can if he is the one with the gluten intolerance.
Feemor grumbles through text that this is Anakin. This is helpful. Yan asks if Obi-Wan has any allergies and receives a list of medication instead of foodstuffs.
This is also helpful. Sort of. Helpful to certain Sith lords.
Yan thanks everyone and deletes the entire chat from the datapad application. It starts up again shortly afterwards, accusing him of being so old, he doesn’t understand that he can just wipe the chatboard. He is not that old. He is simply that paranoid. They don’t need to know this.
Food stuffs have been procured. He calls the townhouse to let those who have dusted the place know that he is coming now to drop off some groceries. More groceries. Yes, he knows he has already filled the drawers of the refrigerator unit with squash.
Sidious calls 20 times in an hour in anticipation of the children’s arrival, to the point that Yan contemplates not answering and feigning death like the possum who has replaced the squirrel and is fearless of Commander Owl. Instead, he lets his master talk on and on and on about how he is to treat Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka. There are many specific details in here which launch clay pigeons in Yan’s mind.
He doesn’t like how Sidious wants Anakin to be assigned tasks involving setting up load-bearing walls. He doesn’t like how Sidious would like him to encourage Anakin to utilize tools such as hammers and axes.
This is a young person who is not yet 21 years old. As far as Yan is concerned, his brain is still primordial soup. Jedi training may seek to coax the soup into a singular vessel, it does not change it into something solid. Only time will do this.
He agrees that he will give Anakin important assignments so as to foster a sense of self-importance. He can think of one already that involves catching a pig. He does not speak this aloud to Sidious, however. The man is still talking, which means that Yan is nodding and making as though he is taking notes.
The children arrive in their shabbiest robes, all primed to work and argue. They’d gathered before this at another station so as to ensure that all got on the same transit vehicle and none were lost in the movements, and all that has done is give Rael seventeen more gray hairs than he had mere hours ago.
He has inserted himself between Feemor and Xanatos, both of whom tower over him and glower into each other’s eyes. Obi-Wan (light-brown hair, blue eyes, beard) stands apart from them as if he has never met either of those strangers in his life. He is talking quietly to the youngest, Ahsoka, who’s lekku barely pass her shoulders and who’s montrals are just forming into pointed peaks at the top of her head.
By process of elimination, Yan delineates that the tall, dark-haired youth with the crooked nose is Anakin. He is so gangly that Yan cannot believe for many, stretched out moments, that Sidious thinks that he can pick up a hammer to start with. Surely it would drag him down to the ground with its weight.
This must be what happens when people cannot eat wheat, he decides.
A terrible fate.
Still, there is no sense in allowing the squabbling to continue around him. Yan claps his hands together softly to gain the attention of the whole line.
It comes, more or less, all at once.
“Welcome,” Yan says, “To Sereno. To those of you who I have not met, my name is Yan Dooku. You may address me as Count or Master, unless your name begins with an ‘R’ and ends with an ‘L,’ in which case you are free from addressing me at all. Thank you all for making the journey; I am afraid we have no time to waste. The pig will be here at dawn.”
Yan has only one speeder, so he has, for this occasion rented a wagon and some horses. Xanatos and Feemor feel no strong way about this, but Rael and the younger ones are positively buoyant. They will not ride in the front of the wagon, but insist instead on clambering over each other at the very end of it, so that their legs kick free over the cart’s edge. Ahsoka and Anakin cheer at every jolt on the trail.
Obi-Wan clings to the side of the wagon with immense attention to the wheel beneath it and the grasses that pass by it. He is not nearly as feral as Yan recalls Qui-Gon describing so long ago. Age, it seems, has mellowed him.
A pity. It has only made Yan’s brain and body more agitated.
He decides to go ahead of the cart on the speeder (with the helmet on of course, he is not taking any chances here) to begin pulling the tools out of the shed.
The kids draw the attention of many town dwellers, especially as many begin coming home for the night on the roads. Their intrigue is understandable, it is not often that so many jedi are seen in a group like this outside of the Order, further, while Sereno is not hostile to the jedi, the Confederacy is.
Anakin asks Yan about this as he hops down from the wagon. Yan tells him that he doesn’t care what the Confederacy thinks at the moment. He has work to do.
“But aren’t you like, their leader?” Anakin asks.
A bitter taste floods Yan’s mouth. He scoffs and can’t find the words to convey his contempt, so leaves off grumbling. Feemor comes edging in and sweeps Anakin away, as if he doesn’t trust him and Yan to be alone together for more than a few seconds.
He has grown wise, Fee has. And tall.
Yan remembers him as a wee thing with no front teeth after running head-long into a pole and removing them thusly.
“What do you really want, Grandmaster?” Feemor demands once he has successfully gotten all his youngers securely in his shadow (except Xanatos).
Yan arches a brow.
“Cabbages,” Rael deadpans.
Yan gestures to him generously. Feemor remains stiff, silently warning the others to stay right where they are behind him.
“We are no fools, Grandmaster,” Feemor says.
Oh, he is so wrong on so many levels. It is almost sweet.
“My motives are selfish,” Yan says. “Firstly, you are all bedraggled and pitiful and some country air will do you good, and secondly, I have been thwarted at every turn by the vermin and will not be outmanned or outwitted for so much as another second.”
A sea of blue blinks at him like twinkling stars. It is remarkable, now that he thinks about it, just how blue-eyed the lineage has managed to become over the years.
An observation for another time.
“You said there was a pig?” Anakin asks.
Obi-Wan shushes him.
“How do we know we can trust you?” Feemor asks.
“You don’t,” Yan says. “And I don’t ask you to. I am doing this as a memorial to Qui-Gon, who, as you may know, will have been with the Force for 11 years now. May the Force be with him. A gathering in his memory.”
There is a confused, disorganized repetition of the prayer back to Yan. Feemor squints with irritation that he cannot sus out a sufficiently evil motive here. Even he must submit to the ordeal of honoring his long-passed master. Yan waits and is pleased as the others fan out from behind him.
“A pig?” Anakin asks again.
“A pig,” Yan agrees with due solemnity.
It is not unusual for jedi to be brought into a situation to perform manual labor, although it is slightly less common for knights to be the ones called for the occasion. Regardless, they are all educated, more or less, in the construction of dwellings, both permanent and temporary, and in agricultural field work.
They all get right to work on their assignments.
Ahsoka is set to finding that godforsaken possum by any and all costs. Xanatos assigns himself weed and snail plucking so as to avoid any form of work associated with swine. That leaves Anakin, Obi-Wan, Feemor, and Yan with the task of enlarging the pig pen.
It is currently large enough to house one portly (porkly, yes, yes very funny boys) resident, but needs to be adjusted to at least double that size, ideally without encroaching on the poppy bed. Yan has worked too hard on raising their fuzzy heads and quivering petals for an errant pig to chomp them right off. They must enlarge things in the western direction.
No, Anakin. That is not west.
No, that is not west, either.
Good, yes. That is west.
Obi-Wan hides his face from Feemor who’s judgment may be silent, but who’s expression is loud enough to fill a room.
“You didn’t teach him cardinal directions?” Feemor hisses.
“He knows them,” Obi-Wan insists.
“You didn’t teach him—”
“He gets there eventually.”
“Why so big?” Anakin asks Yan over the bickering.
“Because she is a sow,” Yan says.
“Sow?”
“She has produced a litter.”
“Babies?”
“Babies, indeed,” Yan sighs. “There are eight.”
Anakin gets it now. He sets his sights on to the west.
Anakin is reassigned to go hunt vermin and scare crows with Ahsoka two hours into their ordeal. He has hammered every thumb within 12 feet, fallen from the center beam onto his shoulder, and managed to step on a pitchfork. He is not careful or stimulated enough by housing construction or thatching and requires something that utilizes more of that whirring brain of his, or they will all be forced to witness his untimely demise in the next hour.
Poor boy. His long limbs are still new to him; it will be some years yet before the clumsiness is replaced by lethal accuracy. The opportunity to climb trees is a good muscular and intellectual exercise in the meantime.
In his wake, Yan returns to passing thatch up to his youngest grandpadwan. Obi-Wan takes the crackly, dry reeds and stares down at Yan, unmoving.
“Did you forget something?” Yan asks him.
“He listened to you,” Obi-Wan says.
“Is this unusual?” Yan asks.
“Highly.”
“I see. Having an experimental padawan does teach you some tricks over time, as does having a tall one.”
“A what?”
“An experimental padawan,” Yan says.
Feemor snorts.
“I don’t understand,” Obi-Wan says.
“That’s because you are the specimen,” Feemor says.
Obi-Wan reaches across the lattice of woodwork Feemor has so helpfully hammered together to try to work his boot free of his leg. Feemor yanks it out of reach and smirks at the grimace such gall inspires.
“Baby’s still stealing shoes,” he croons.
Obi-Wan checks over his shoulder before throwing down the thatch and lunging at him. Feemor jerks back, but not quite far enough not to get caught around the knees. Both of them go cursing and crashing through the lattice down into the empty space below, leaving Yan standing on a ladder, handing thatch up to an empty roof.
Incongruously, it reminds him of the time Rael hung several bells from the ceiling in Yan’s Temple apartment and rang them every hour on the hour in no apparent order until Qui, driven to uncharacteristic fury, camped out behind the kitchen counter all night long to catch the culprit. Yan had tripped over him in the morning and, for a good twenty seconds, thought that his padawan had died right there under the taps.
Perhaps he wasn’t lying as strongly as he’d thought he was when he said that this endeavor was an honor to his youngest.
“Grandmaster.”
Xanatos is holding a bucket of weeds in one hand and a bucket of slime-creatures in the other. Rael, behind him, has somehow filled his left bucket with fur.
Why fur? Why fur.
“You have rabbits,” Xanatos informs him. “Or kittens. Rael calls them kittens. I think they’re rabbits, though.”
Where.
Yan has to leave his team of young men in order to find his great-great-granddaughter. No one else will do. Her talents are irreplaceable here. He has to go out into the wild wheat field behind the plot of land and call her name with hands cupped around his mouth.He’s not sure that she hears him. Her montrals are still developing.
Anakin comes crashing out of the field before she does. His grin is wide. His hands are full.
He is not the great-great-granddaughter, but he has caught the possum, which is, in fact, extremely impressive given the lack of tools and knowledge of what a possum even is.
Yan is dumbfounded for several beats.
“A rat,” Anakin tells him, holding up the snarling beast.
“Possum,” Yan corrects.
“Oh?”
“Good job.”
“I got it?”
“You did.”
Anakin turns the thing around to face him with round, glittering eyes.
“I got you,” he tells it.
“Go show your master,” Yan says. “Where is your padawan?”
“She’s hunting the horse.”
The.
Horse?
“Yeah, with the horns.”
Oh no.
Yan returns home with a growling Togruta trying to vault herself up and over his shoulder so that she may resume stalking the elk up on the hill. It’s taken every skill in his set to locate and snatch her up before the elk does with its antlers. He is thankful now for the time he was volun-told to take the kids (then Qui-Gon and his crèchemates) out to the desert with him for a fairly benign mission and ended up chasing after Shaak Ti for two miles as she attempted to stalk a bantha.
Ahsoka is bigger now than Ti was then, but besides this, the difference is negligible.
Anakin is a help here when he arrives with the possum stuffed under an arm to receive Ahsoka into the other. Yan asks him if he’s been holding that monster the whole time.
“Where else am I going to put her?” Anakin asks.
Oh, Yan has some ideas. A wood chipper. Under a pile of stones.
“Master, no.”
Soft-hearted. All of these people.
Obi-Wan takes possession of the possum. She likes him. She crawls up onto his shoulders and gets comfortable while he straightens the steel beams that reinforce the roof in the pig pen. All that is left to do now is to re-build the fence, but that is going to require lumber and the sun is starting to set. They’ll need to be going soon or it will be dark before these hellions get back to town.
Yan says as much and is met with protesting.
Apparently, the youth are having fun on the plot. It has been some time since they have been assigned non-aggressive or defensive tasks. Anakin even claims that it would be no trouble for him and Ahsoka to fetch the lumber tonight so that all attention may be paid to the pigs in the morning.
It is a foolish suggestion. This is a boy whose skills with a hammer are exactly as advertised by his person. It is well-intentioned, however, and Anakin does have a point about there needing to be an at least rudimentary containment measure in place for the sow in the next 12 hours.
No matter, he’ll work through the night with the materials that he has.
Rael decides that he’ll stay behind to help, and he and Yan see the others off back into the wagon they love so much.
The crickets are out in good form tonight. Their scratching fills the quiet around the cottage. The light from the lantern that illuminates the saw and its bench flickers as moths and other small creatures try their luck against its heart.
“This is an unusual tactic to take,” Rael says, setting his saw down to wipe at his brow. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d go for trust-building.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Yan says.
“You do. The kids love you already. Seems cruel, no? You tucking them so close in arms, making them want to please you, and then walking them right to the man who will eat them alive. They’ve already forgotten that you are the one who’s ordering the attempts on their lives,” Rael says in a flat tone.
“That is their problem, not mine,” Yan says.
“Using Qui like this,” Rael muses. “Even Xana is falling for your tricks, Master.”
“It is not my fault they are so desperate for approval,” Yan says.
“No, it isn’t,” Rael says.
He resets the saw’s teeth into the line it has torn through a plank.
“If you really honored him, you would leave his children out of all this.”
Hm.
Rael spends the night in the cottage. Yan watches him breathe in his sleep for nearly an hour, nostalgic. Clinging to a past that can no longer exist. Memory is treacherous. It warps the mind and emotions.
Qui-Gon, the experimental padawan. Yan can still feel his tiny fingers wrapped around the last two of his own hand. Gone now. Gone forever. Never to call with troublesome padawan questions or to spread his hair out across the floor like a river, just to inconvenience his brother’s hungover stumble to the ‘fresher.
Yan once loved children. His and others’. Master Yoda never had to push too hard for him to take on a new apprentice. He’s not sure why he stopped. He still has years left in this aging body. Ten at the least.
He could have seen a fourth all the way through to the end. But then again. If he’d done that, he’d have just added another of his own lineage to the gallows.
And he is the hangman.
Rael is asleep, but Yan can hear the transceiver outside hidden under some stones chirping, demanding an update.
Yan wakes up to the smell of caf that he did not prepare himself and rises to find Rael banging around the cottage kitchen, upset about a lack of running water.
Yan observes for a while, until Rael notices him and holds up an egg beater. He asks if this device is not intended to pulverize fruit and, if so, what is he doing that makes it refuse to work on the berries and greens he has stuffed into a tall cup.
Yan takes his cup of caf outside to inspect the garden in his bathrobe while Rael takes another stab at the fruit with the egg beater. It is cold enough outside that the caf lets off streams of steam. The heads of the dahlias are fat and heavy, desperate to bloom, but too still too frightened of the lingering cool nights. It will be time soon.
The cabbages and lettuce are no longer overrun with slime creatures. The tomatoes continue to grow fat, absorbing sunlight and water and churning it into sugar and sour juices.
The youths have done a good job on this part of the garden, even if they have trampled the grass here and there.
Yan takes himself around to the other side of the cottage where the small orchard stands, still untamed. This is today’s project, along with the pig. He is surprised that the trees are fruiting with all of the weeds trying to choke them from above and below. There are a few stragglers—delicate white and pink flowers here and there.
There are more trees than he knows what to do with bearing fruit of all sorts of shapes and quality. He will be forced to can most of it. Or perhaps ferment it? He’s not sure yet. The first order of business is to clear a path between the trees.
He sips the caf. Rael sticks his head out the door and announces that he has researched his egg beater on the holonet and determined that it is an inappropriate tool for the job he is attempting to accomplish. Yan takes another sip.
The youths arrive in the wagon, this time, Feemor is showing Anakin how to steer the horses. Obi-Wan and Ahsoka have been thrown around the back of the cart like melons. They clamber out before the cart even comes to a stop and drop into the wet grass.
Yan offers them the burnt caf that Rael has graced him with. Obi-Wan accepts. Feemor accepts.
Anakin and Ahsoka ask where the pig is.
She has not yet arrived. They must be quick now. There’s still a bit of the fence to install.
Tulip arrives in her full glory. She snorts and tromps around the back of the farmer’s trailer, unhappy with the last hour of her journey. Her piglets squeal around her.
The children are totally fixated on them; they peer between the gaps in the trailer.
“Didn’t realize you were having a reunion, Count,” the farmer says.
Yan keeps his arms tucked into the sleeves of his bathrobe.
“I’m not,” he says.
“You got some young ones.”
“They are hired labor.”
“Grandkids?”
“...great-grandchildren, actually.”
The farmer grins and looks back at the trailor, where Feemor and Obi-wan have finally taken themselves to have a peek at the new permanent resident. Tulip thrashes inside and shrieks. Obi-Wan reels back right into Feemor’s chest.
“It’s a nice family,” the farmer says. “You got somewhere we can situate her?”
Tulip is the most noncompliant party Yan has had the pleasure of cohabitating with. She must be chased and piglets dodged around the back of the trailer, and even then, she refuses to take step off it. She is too heavy for anyone to lift, and reaching too close has revealed itself to be perilous.
She snaps her teeth at them all.
Xanatos takes it upon himself to begin whistling. This makes her ears prick up and she turns around in a furious circle until she finds the source of the noise.
She charges.
Never has Yan seen Feemor and Obi-Wan come to the aid of their errant brother. He barely lands on the other side of the ramp down from the trailer before she’s slammed into it, right where he was.
“Well,” Xana says, tossing his long hair out of his face. “I think we should sacrifice Obi-Wan next.”
All eyes turn to Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan, notorious animal lover, so much like his late master, is more petrified of the pig than he is of an entire droid battalion. He climbs into the trailer, and as soon as Tulip notices him, flings himself out of it. Feemor convinces him to sit on his shoulders and talk to her. Just talk.
This rapidly devolves into six jedi trying to mindtrick a swine. Yan hangs back and observes. Xanatos tells Feemor to shut up, he’s not putting enough effort into this, and shoves him back to draw upon the dark side. To mindtrick the pig. As is the only appropriate use of the darkside, truly.
It doesn’t work.
Anakin decides that what they’ve got to do is to coax all the babies into the pen first. Surely the mother will follow the babies.
This has a success rate of 100% for the piglets and a 0% success rate for Tulip.
And that is when Ahsoka remembers that she didn’t get to hunt the elk yesterday. Her pupils dilate. Tulip rounds on her. A trigger goes off in the child’s skull and she begins to sink low. She lays her hands on the trailer’s latch with tenderness that Tulip reads as a threat.
“Soka,” Anakin says. “Let’s not get mauled, yeah?”
Ahsoka lets loose a quiet, but audible rumble from her chest and throat.
Tulip begins to back away.
“Here, piggy, piggy,” Ahsoka murmurs through the shudder of her voice.
Tulip is terrorized into the pen. Anakin and Obi-Wan have to restrain Ahsoka from chasing her clear into her new sheltered home and trampling any of the piglets in her fear.
The farmer cackles as Rael and Xanatos latch the pen’s gate like their very lives depend on it. He tells Yan again that he’s a lucky man to have all these grandkids.
“The one with the curly hair is my son,” Yan says lightly.
The farmer still laughs. He closes up his trailer and asks Yan if he’ll be wanting any sheep next.
The answer is no.
“I’ll ask for two and you’ll bring me forty-seven,” he says.
“Well, you let me know if you change your mind.”
“I shan’t.”
“Pleasure doing business with you, Count.”
“I wish I could say the same. Have a safe journey back.”
Needless to say, the children do not want to do anything but watch the pigs now, but thankfully, the rest of the troop is traumatized and desperate to do anything else. Yan introduces them to the orchard and the birdfeeders in the same round of assignments. He brings out two scythes from the shed, which snatch Anakin and Ahsoka’s interest away from the pigs.
This is too bad for them because there is no way in seven hells Yan allowing them to handle them. Growing limbs are not scythe compatible, he tells them. Go back to the swine. They will not, they must hang around and be in the way instead.
They are then assigned bird-feeder filling duties with Rael. Between the three of them, surely at least three quarters of the task will be completed. In the meantime, Yan introduces the three brothers to the instruments before them. Xanatos straightens up and starts to wind his hair into a thick rope that he twists firmly into a knot against the back of his head.
It is a gesture that is so familiar that it knocks the wind right out of Yan’s lungs.
“There’re only two?” Feemor asks. “We’ll trade off, then?”
Yes. That is. Yes.
“Alright, Kenobi. Age before beauty. Legs up or hold your peace.”
Right.
Yan clears his throat to recover. He has a basket and another task if Obi-Wan would like to do something besides climb trees to avoid his older brothers. There is a wide-mouthed basket in the shed. Yan trips himself with a nail was he fetches it and warns the line of them to mind their manners.
Obi-Wan takes the basket and already knows his job for the next hour or so. He looks up at the trees and then back to Yan’s face.
“How many?” he asks.
“As many as are ripe,” Yan says. “This is just the first batch of summer.”
Lunch comes around and there are three full baskets of fuzzy peaches in the cottage kitchen. There is also an old quilt that Yan found here when he moved in. He’s shaken it out and beaten it since, and it is large enough to seat seven people provided a few persons sit half-on, half-off.
Cold water is drawn from the well and sweat is wiped from brows with the backs of hands and the sleeves of robes. Obi-Wan keeps sneezing, to the point that he trades places with Anakin so that he is the one who sits next to Feemor and all the grass he has accumulated on his legs and chest. Feemor beseeches his littlest brother to come back to him.
Xanatos pours half a cup of water directly onto his head.
Yan sits to the side and observes the aggressive proceedings while handing Ahsoka deviled egg after deviled egg. She is a new convert. Obi-Wan urges that along by informing her that the mayonnaise the yolks have been mixed with are also made out of egg, so she is, in effect, eating egg on egg on egg.
Surely a child has never been more pleased and content with their place in the world.
It is a slightly chaotic picnic.
And quietly, back towards the house, Yan can hear the faint chirp of the transceiver once more.
He isn’t avoiding his master, per se. Rather, he is trying to carry out his master’s orders to immerse the lineage into a sense of wellbeing and trust. They are certainly softening—at least towards Yan.
It is a different feeling to be sought out for new tasks around the cottage as opposed to being hunted down in the government building in the city or commed at all hours by members of the Confederacy, asking for counsel and permission to do such-and-such or to assassinate so-and-so. Now, Yan leads his grandchildren out to a new place so that he might introduce them to a tool they’ve never seen in their short lives, and which they struggle to use for a while until he settles them enough to teach.
He has missed teaching, he begins to realize.
It is not only the bureaucracy that wears on his soul these days. It is the solitude. The stagnation. There is little to watch grow in the council room at the Order and in the government halls in the city. The Confederacy is not intended to grow, but to expand and in that, it does fine on its own. But the changes are not interesting.
The grandchildren are interesting. Beastly. Smart-talking. Bashful.
They bloom like the poppies as they begin to trust Yan over a few days of work. Days where they do not have to be in charge of their own destinies.
Qui guarded Obi-Wan as a child from their lineage, aware of the tensions and tumult that it then contained in droves. Yan cannot blame him for trying to cup the last flame of hope he had between his hands, to spare its wavering light from the brutality of the wind. But Yan is thankful, in a morbid sort of way, that his padawan is no longer here to keep everyone at arms-length from each other in a well-intentioned attempt to keep a fragile peace.
Sometimes, it is helpful to take every element and cram them all together until they’ve worn down each other’s edges and emerge more polished for all the grinding.
Sidious does not understand that the dark is not a place where someone like Yan can stay for a prolonged period. It becomes boring. Same-y. It will kill the things that occupy his mind, the imperfect things, the struggling ones.
The thin climbing vines that Obi-Wan is coaxing up the very same trellis his own muscles once scrambled to cling to.
Eventually, the tasks on the little farm dwindle to a manageable number that Yan can keep track of on his own. All that is left is to bundle everyone up and send them on their way, back into space with cans upon cans of fruit stacked in crates.
Unexpected embraces are exchanged. Rael stays behind for a few extra minutes and waits until the wagon is out of sight down the road before turning around and crushing Yan’s ribs with the strength of his hug.
“You are kind, Master,” he says.
Yan tells him to go off after the others.
“Don’t leave us like this,” Rael says.
“I am not leaving anyone,” Yan says. “Now, be off with you. I have neglected so many messages. I must submit to the inevitable.”
Rael does leave, and in his absence, Yan settles in at the table in a lone cottage on a quiet hill with a cold cup of caf in front of him on a little coaster woven of reeds that Ahsoka made for him. She made two, as if she expected him to have company here.
Yan’s fingers trail across their bumps.
And he wonders. Just wonders.
What would happen if he called his own master—not Sidious, right here. Right now.
It is a privilege to be reaching the end of one’s mortal life and to still have the company of one’s aged, annoying parent. He himself is proof that aged, annoying parents can make mistakes and hasty decisions and still remain loved, however begrudgingly, by their children. By even their grandchildren.
What if he called?
What would Yoda say? What would he do?
He already knows now that Yan is the one who commissioned the army. He will know soon that Yan is fallen.
What is there to lose now, besides half a galaxy and a war that Yan was dissatisfied with before it even began? Well. It’s not his half of a galaxy. Not really. Nor is it his war.
All that belongs to Sidious. So, if Yan’s calculations are correct, then the sum of all of these parts appears to be zero. Nothing.
Nothing to lose.
The comm chirps insistently. Yan picks it up and answers with a smile.
“Everything is going just as planned, my master,” he says. “Thank you for putting your trust in me.”