1. As an initiate, Qui-Gon always liked Padawan Dooku, and he knows the feeling is mutual. They share meals together whenever the older of the two is at the temple, and talk about the nature of the Force, although Qui-Gon is still too young to appreciate its true subtleties. Eventually he asks him to call him by his first name instead of Initiate Jinn, but Padawan Dooku never asks him to call him Yan. When he asks him instead to be his apprentice, only a week after passing his trials, Qui-Gon understands why.
2. When Qui-Gon is thirteen, picks up the habit of roaming Coruscant's lower levels between missions. Master Dooku, always of more sophisticated tastes, doesn't understand this so much but encourages it nonetheless. He thinks it's important to have a thorough grounding of all cultures, even the less desirable aspects.
3. It's because of this habit that he meets a girl named Rue Jinn. She is sixteen years old, has the same thick Coruscanti accent, and grew up in an orphanage. They hit it off right away, and he may or may not accidentally run into her at the same time in the same place the next week.
4. And every week following for the next forty years.
5. He passes the trials at the age of twenty-one, and the moment his padawan braid falls into his hand, he's quite unsure what to do with himself. He doesn't remember a period of his life when Master Dooku wasn't there. He should have known it was a pointless worry. Dooku wasn't going to just fade away.
6. From then on, he keeps his focus centered on the present, instead of worrying about the uncertainties of the future.
7. Qui-Gon hates very few things. It's not the Jedi way. But he hates – hates – Tal spices beyond even the foulest the galaxy has to offer. Master Dooku knows this, and accidentally lets it slip to Xanatos several days after his apprenticeship begins. Qui-Gon spends years checking his food for the traces before eating, while Xanatos looks innocently on.
8. Obi-Wan never discovers this little piece of knowledge, but Qui-Gon suspects that, even if he had, he wouldn't have put it to use.
9. Rue tells him that she's at her wit's end with her elder son. He's a punk, a nobody, wasting his life on deathsticks and stolen cars, but oh, how he makes her laugh. His younger brother is honest, straight-laced, studying to be a doctor. He'll make her proud, her friends say, he's the good one. Qui-Gon squeezes her shoulder and tries to not see the parallels.
10. He hadn't planned on taking on another padawan. Obi-Wan is more than ready for the trials, and he himself is getting old. He had planned on passing the rest of his days on solo missions, or finally cracking out of Master Dooku his full history with Madam Nu. But then Qui-Gon remembers his own advice, remembers the futility of plans for a future that is always in motion. He centers himself on the present, on the living Force, and knows that this was meant to be. Anakin must be trained.