Where we are going always reflects where we came from.
Obi-Wan convinced Qui-Gon to dock with the ship floating some ways in atmo above Dathomir— a ship that Qui-Gon had initially mistaken for a floating garbage scow. But Qui-Gon's little shuttle had a finicky hyperdrive, and the journey back to Coruscant would be difficult with two adults and a droid in residence.
So it was with the pirates that they would go, for now. Ohnaka, Quinlan had told Qui-Gon, with an unworried expression. Sometimes Qui-Gon worried about how invincible everyone saw his padawan as.
"How could I have been so stupid?" Obi-Wan asked, self-deprecating. He led them out of the airlock and through the ship like he had been on a million pirates' vessels before. Artoo beeped along behind them. "I forgot about the Master. What kind of an idiot am I?"
"Not much of one," Qui-Gon said. Truthfully he was near to as worried as his apprentice was. There's always a bigger fish. "Obi-Wan, we all missed it."
"But I'm not supposed to miss these things," Obi-Wan said. "If I can't stop the bad things before they happen, then what is the use of me?"
Qui-Gon reeled. "Obi-Wan—"
Then there were unsteady footsteps on the decking, and a pirate, a Weequay, rounded the corner.
"You are back! And the witches did not kill you!" he said, in a thick Srillian accent. "Oh, and you brought a friend. He's tall for a Nighsister."
"Thank you," Qui-Gon said.
"Hondo Ohnaka, my Master, Qui-Gon Jinn," Obi-Wan introduced, a smile quirking at his mouth.
"A pleasure," Qui-Gon said, with a short bow.
Hondo laughed. "So polite, you are! Where are we going next?"
"Coruscant," Qui-Gon said firmly, even though Obi-Wan gave him a protesting look. "Coruscant," he said. "We can figure this out at home."
Hondo, annoyingly, looked to Obi-Wan for confirmation; when Obi-Wan gave him a reluctant nod, Hondo threw up his hands. "Well, all right! But I don't think it'll be safe for us pirates there for a little while. We will drop you off."
"The whole kidnapping thing," Qui-Gon agreed.
"Oh, you have heard of us!" Hondo said, pleased. "I've been thinking of names for us. What about, 'Hondo's Homies'? Or, oh, 'The Great Hondo And His Amazing Pirate Crew'?"
"What's wrong with 'The Ohnaka Gang'?" Obi-Wan asked, baffled.
"Oh, I like it!" Hondo said. "But does it give that sense of great deeds? We are now conquering heroes, after all!"
"Hondo's Homies gives off a sense of heroism?" Obi-Wan asked skeptically.
"Hold on," Qui-Gon said. "Heroes of what? What did you do while I was gone?"
Hondo and Obi-Wan exchanged looks. "Well, anyway," Hondo said, continuing on down the hallway ahead of them, still talking, mostly to himself. "What if we called ourselves 'Hondo's Heroes'?"
Obi-Wan turned back to Qui-Gon, back to the matter at hand. "I had always thought that because Sidious took an apprentice— Darth Inimic— that that meant his Master was already dead."
"Why?" Qui-Gon said.
"Sith are supposed to move through the ranks by killing their masters," Obi-Wan said.
"Force," Qui-Gon said, and Obi-Wan gave him a grim smile.
"But I don't know why I expected Palpatine would stick to the polite rules," Obi-Wan said. "It's possible he was training Sey into his apprentice so that he could gain the power to overthrow Darth Plagueis."
"Who was this Master?" Qui-Gon asked.
"I don't know," Obi-Wan said. "I never knew."
"If we're going to stop him from coming back, we're going to have to find out more about him," Qui-Gon said. Obi-Wan nodded in agreement.
Qui-Gon was disturbed but somehow not surprised to see that the pirates they passed seemed happy to see Obi-Wan, and greeted him with familiarity. Hondo had gone on ahead, apparently content to let them have free reign of the ship.
"How did you get these pirates to cooperate?" Qui-Gon asked suspiciously.
"You shouldn't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to," Obi-Wan said in a stuffy voice, his Core accent more pronounced than usual.
Qui-Gon decided he was probably right.
Obi-Wan apparently knew where the holotable console was already, and he turned it on easily.
Qui-Gon only kept track of what Xanatos du Crion was up to very loosely, but Obi-Wan always seemed to know what everybody was up to at all times. Qui-Gon's former apprentice was becoming quite an entrepreneur in his own right. He still owned the Offworld business, but it had been very much reworked over the past couple of years.
Offworld provided mining and agriculture jobs on various planets, and it often worked with the Freed when they rescued someone who didn't want to fight, who wanted to settle down someplace. Rumors said that Telos IV was one of the stops in the underground freedom trail, but Qui-Gon was sure Xanatos would deny it if he was asked.
Xanatos answered their holocall after a few moments. He was sitting on some kind of ornate chair, draped lazily over it. He squinted at Obi-Wan.
"I thought you got kidnapped," he said.
"Do you think I would be calling to bother you if I got kidnapped?" Obi-Wan said.
"Yeah," Xanatos said, and Obi-Wan grinned.
"I love how everyone addresses Obi-Wan before me," Qui-Gon said.
"He always has more interesting things going on," Xanatos said. "What's up, kid?"
Obi-Wan gave Qui-Gon a look that was carefully not smug. Qui-Gon did not make a face back at him, because he was a grown Jedi Master.
"We need to know everything about the period of time you spent with the Sith," Qui-Gon said. "It's important."
Xanatos frowned, considering this. "I didn't spend long with them."
Back at the beginning of Obi-Wan's apprenticeship, Xanatos had come into the interest of Darth Sidious and Darth Inimic due to his brush with the Dark side— he had spent a little time with them before changing his mind and ratting out their location to the Jedi. In the end, he had helped them win that day, and had done so a few times since.
"We're trying to locate Sidious' original Master," Obi-Wan said. "Did he say anything about that?"
Xanatos tapped his chin. "Perhaps. I wasn't involved in all their meetings, you know— I overheard some things, or some things they just let slip." He tilted his head, thinking. "I do think they spoke of it. Palpatine was nervous. He didn't think his master would be pleased that he had revealed himself so early."
"He was alive then?" Obi-Wan asked.
"I don't know," Xanatos said. "I think when Palpatine was forced to flee, he was also forced to make a move on his Master. Considering he survived, I'm guessing the Master was dead."
"And you don't know who it was?" Qui-Gon asked, frustrated.
"No," Xanatos said. "Sorry. If he ever said anything about it, I wasn't there." He frowned, deep blue eyes squinting. "Actually— maybe I do remember something. I think he said his master was in the Senate."
Beside Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan's shoulders hunched.
"Well," Obi-Wan said. "That's not good."
"At least it's a clue," Qui-Gon said. The Force roiled uneasily around this new information, though. It was true— but it wasn't good.
"What's going on?" Xanatos asked. "Trouble?"
"Yes," Obi-Wan said.
"Something I can do?" Xanatos asked.
"Not yet," Obi-Wan said. "We'll let you know."
Xanatos exchanged a wary look with Qui-Gon. The two of them still didn't see eye-to-eye, but Qui-Gon believed Xanatos genuinely cared about Obi-Wan. This mission was bothering Obi-Wan, it was clear to see. And it was rare for anything to get under Obi-Wan's skin. Qui-Gon gave him a shrug; a silent assurance. I'll watch out for him.
Xanatos looked away. "Aye-aye," he said, and gave Obi-Wan a lazy salute.
"Talk to you later," Qui-Gon said, and thumbed the holotable off.
Obi-Wan was frowning, looking up at the ceiling as he thought with his chin in his hand. He seemed to have shaken off his bad mood— if there was anything Obi-Wan Kenobi was good at doing, it was compartmentalizing— and now he simply looked like a man deep in strategy.
He exuded authority, even for someone with dimples and a young face even for twenty-one. No wonder people like the pirates and Xanatos and Obi-Wan's friends took orders from him without thinking about it— when Obi-Wan spoke, you listened.
"What now?" Qui-Gon asked.
"Now," Obi-Wan said, "We come up with a plan."
The place the Jedi had chosen to meet was slightly… dingy. But it didn't have the subtle aura of menace and trouble a lot of the other places on the lower levels had; it was well-lit and the service was fast, if not exactly perfectly clean. It had the same kind of feeling a lot of places frequented by the Jedi had, though it was unlikely any of them ever noticed it— loved. Protected, as if their mystical Force itself was keeping it safe.
Bail sat in one of the booths at Dex's diner and tried not to look too nervous.
He had done very little covert work in his life.
Of course, he had taken training with the bodyguards when Breha had accepted his courtship— being married to a Queen invited its own set of dangers, not to mention that he hoped to protect her if need be.
He left out certain truths in the Senate about his work with the Freed, occasionally kept royal secrets or Republic ones. But he had never been specifically requested by the Jedi for this kind of help.
Bail would learn how to do this. This was important. Bail could do anything if it was the right thing.
Two of the Jedi were already there.
They had appeared, on freakishly quiet feet, when Bail had looked down at his menu. He had at first just seen a single cloaked figure holding a baby. As soon as his mind had registered father with baby, no threat, the hood had been thrown back and Bail had met Mace Windu for the first time. Then Mace Windu had dumped out his bundle into the booth and slid in beside Bail.
"I hate the Jedi baby trick," Windu had grumbled. "It's demeaning." And the bundle had turned out to be not a baby but some kind of fully grown green creature that just happened to be very small. Bail was pretty sure the Jedi— Yoda— had sensed his confusion and slight horror, because he had chuckled.
They were just waiting for the rest of the party to arrive now. A four-armed Besalisk had come to take their orders, not blinking twice at any of the creatures assembled at the table, then disappeared almost as silently as the Jedi had come.
Bail sipped at his drink and watched the green one take a live worm off his plate and put it in his mouth. Bail decided he was probably not hungry.
Both Jedi looked up at the same time, towards the door, so Bail did as well. He saw a shorter figure and a taller one, and thought it was Obi-Wan and his master, but then realized it couldn't be— the smaller one was wrapped in a cloak and a mask, and the taller in a helmet of some kind. Neither moved at all like a Jedi, who tended to swish around with unnatural grace, and neither had a visible lightsaber.
Bail was about to look away when he realized that the figures were, indeed, coming towards them.
They both slid into the same side of the booth as Yoda, and Bail realized with astonishment that his first guess had been correct. The Besalisk, who had been polishing glasses at the counter, gave them a casual look and then pressed a button under the counter— a privacy shield went up around the booth.
The taller figure took their helmet off— hair cascaded freely down his back. It was Qui-Gon Jinn. "That thing was squeezing my head," he said.
"Why do you think I made you wear it?" Obi-Wan asked, pulling back the cloth over his own mouth and pushing back his hood. He shook his braid out to lie neatly on his shoulder. He rolled his shoulders and sat like a Jedi once more, though Bail couldn't have expressed what that meant. He smiled at those assembled. "Masters. Senator Organa."
There was a thwap under the table, and Obi-Wan winced and held his knee. Yoda withdrew a walking stick.
"Trouble, you got into, Padawan," Yoda said. "Leave your Master here alone to worry, you did."
"I didn't mean to—" Obi-Wan protested.
"See the future, you can," Yoda said. "Think through the consequences of your actions, you apparently cannot."
Bail stifled a smile.
Obi-Wan ducked his head. Rarely did Bail's young friend seem his actual age. Always older. He looked like a youngling now, and it was surprisingly heartening. "Sorry, Master Yoda."
Yoda harrumphed.
"If we could get back to business," said Qui-Gon, sounding quite amused.
"Senator Organa, what have you found out?" Windu asked, and Bail straightened.
"I've been looking into the Senate's new mandate as Obi-Wan requested," Bail said. "And I have raised some questions about our ability to dictate to the Jedi where to go— but each time I try to get further in the investigation, I'm always stonewalled." Bail frowned, disturbed with his own findings. "I hate to say it, but I think you might be right. I think the Senate may still be compromised."
"Either Palpatine left behind some of his associates, or Darth Plagueis did," Windu said. "Either way, this is grave news. It may mean some part of the Senate is not to be trusted."
"We don't even know who Plagueis was," Qui-Gon said. "With Palpatine, at least we could look closely at the people he associated with, but with his Master… we have no place to start."
"We'll need to get one," Obi-Wan said. "We can't find where he's expected to return if we don't know who he was at all."
"With your permission, I'd like to begin sending quiet questions about this through some Senators that I trust," Bail said.
Yoda and Windu exchanged glances, then Windu gave a short nod. "Go ahead," he said. "But be careful, will you? This is uncharted territory, for both us and the Senate."
For a moment, Obi-Wan's eyes darkened, and he looked sad. Bail didn't like to think about what that meant.
Bail knew it was a somewhat contentious topic in the Senate, but he had always held with the idea that the Jedi were essentially balance-keepers— should the Senate ever slip from its duty to protect the citizens of the Republic, it was the Jedi's job to put them back on track. Like how they mediated on foreign planets, they would keep the peace within their home as well. But that hadn't been necessary for so many years— or had it, and Bail and everyone else had missed it?
"If you'll excuse me asking," Bail said. "Why did you trust me?" He was honored, of course, but confused. Bail had done some good work in the Senate but nothing galaxy-changing, nothing for the history books.
"Obi-Wan said you were beyond reproach," said Qui-Gon, as if it were that simple.
Bail gave Obi-Wan a confused look, and Obi-Wan gave him a dimpled smile in return. Bail shook his head, unable to keep himself from smiling back. The boy was crazy, but he was at least entertaining to be around.
"Unfortunately, the Jedi who have the most freedom to investigate at the moment are… Jinn and Kenobi," Windu said.
"Being kidnapped gives pretty good plausible deniability," Obi-Wan said cheerfully. "As it turns out."
"So you were kidnapped," Bail said.
"From a certain point of view."
Windu rolled his eyes.
"Permission, you have, to investigate," Yoda said. "Careful, you will be."
"Aren't we always?" Qui-Gon asked, which even Bail knew was a lie.
"We may actually need some help," Obi-Wan said. "There's one person who has the best shot of knowing what we need."
"Force, Obi-Wan," said Windu, rubbing at the space between his eyebrows. "You give me a headache."
Bail was pretty sure Obi-Wan looked kind of proud.
The Temple holding cells were not a very pleasant place, but Obi-Wan had spent plenty of time in them— not as a guest, thankfully, just a visitor— and the guardians of the prison were fairly familiar with him by now.
Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon took a back way into the Temple where no one would see them enter.
"How did you know about this?" Qui-Gon asked, as Obi-Wan kicked out the air vent and led them into the hallway.
"It pays to know the quick exits," Obi-Wan said vaguely. Obi-Wan did not have nightmares about being unable to escape the Temple as the Jedi were slaughtered, and he did not occasionally teach the youngling classes some of the secret ways out. Obi-Wan had spent a few stressful days when he first came back to the past finding all the best escape routes and shoring up some of the security.
Qui-Gon gave him a sidelong glance, but asked no questions.
The guards came to attention when they saw them approaching, but relaxed when Obi-Wan tugged off his hood.
"Padawan Kenobi," said one of the guardians. "I thought you got kidnapped or something."
"If I was abducted, this would be a pretty stupid place to come, wouldn't it?" Obi-Wan asked, as Qui-Gon pulled his own cloak down. The guards chuckled.
"Well, she's pretty agitated today," one of them said. "But you're welcome to a visit."
"Thanks," Obi-Wan said, with a smile. They waved them through.
"Sometimes I worry about how easily you get people to like you," Qui-Gon said, and Obi-Wan shot him a wounded look.
"I'm just being friendly," Obi-Wan said.
"Some friends," Qui-Gon said, as they reached the cell at the end of the hallway.
"Well, that might not be the case here," Obi-Wan admitted. They reached the orange forcefield, and the woman within it.
Master Kadrian Sey, A.K.A. Darth Inimic, sat cross-legged in the middle of the cell, her eyes closed. Her hands sat upright on her lap— one hand was made completely out of metal. It had been fitted from the Healers a few years before.
She opened her eyes, revealing dull, sinister yellow.
"Hello there," Obi-Wan said.
"Kenobi," Inimic said coolly. "Come to play dejarik?"
"Not today," Obi-Wan said.
Obi-Wan had never been able to break through to Master Sey in the same way as he had Xanatos. Xanatos was easy to draw into debate, about philosophy or the choices he'd made. He liked the sound of his own voice. But Inimic just watched everything and listened carefully. She had been a fully-trained Jedi Master when she had turned, not an impetuous teenager as Xanatos had been. She was cool and clever.
But Obi-Wan did not give up on annoying the past into compliance with him. One thing that prisons eternally were was boring— she was starved for something to do. So Obi-Wan sometimes brought in a holo-dejarik board and they would play together.
So far, she had never been able to win.
But in the long run, neither had he.
"What are you two here for, then?" Inimic said, and finally stood, waiting patiently in front of the forcefield as if they were a group of colleagues having a consultation.
Master Sey had been a good Jedi, which was part of what made her so unnerving.
"Senator Palpatine," Qui-Gon said. "We need to know about him. "
"You mean Lord Sidious," Inimic said. "Why should I tell you anything?"
"You were a Jedi once," Qui-Gon said.
"What does being a Jedi mean?" Inimic spat, although she had clearly not meant to lose her temper. To cover, she started to pace slowly from one end of the cell to another. "Giving and giving for a galaxy that does not give back. Fighting for an Order of outdated monks who are destined to fail."
"No one is destined to fall," Obi-Wan said. "We can all change. The future can always change."
Qui-Gon had his hands folded inside his robe, standing up to his full height, which he rarely did— people found it intimidating. "A Jedi does not give with the expectation of getting something back," he said.
"The Sith don't give at all," Inimic said. "We only take. Power, influence, whatever. We take it all, without your silly little hang-ups."
"And yet," Obi-Wan said, "You ended up in here." She scowled at him, and he went back to business, away from philosophical matters. "And since I know you Sith are so unsentimental, you won't feel too bad about giving us information on Sidious."
She stopped pacing and crossed her arms. "I have nothing to give you."
"He's dead," Qui-Gon said. "You owe him no loyalty."
"I owe the Jedi nothing either," Inimic said. "I feel nothing for you but pity at your weakness."
Obi-Wan, suddenly, couldn't help feeling sad for her. "Nothing?" he said. "Nothing for the masters who soothed your hurt knees in the creche? Nothing for the ones who taught you to use a blade and to respect it as they respected you? Nothing for the very children you used to teach?"
Inimic sneered. "As you said. I'm not sentimental."
But Obi-Wan had seen a crack in her armor, and he was shoving his metaphorical fingers into it. For a moment, she had hesitated. Obi-Wan was The Negotiator, and the nickname had not come from nothing.
Obi-Wan knew the value of well-chosen words. But he also knew the value of a good, long pause. He settled with his hands behind his back, a kind of loose approximation of a parade rest, and gave her a mysterious little smile, tilted his head.
She glowered. But only a moment later, she said, "I don't care! I don't care about the Jedi. Besides, you have the very last Sith in your cells right now. This is beside the point."
"That's just the thing," Obi-Wan said. "It isn't. We need all the information you have on Darth Plagueis. The Sith are trying to rise again."
"Good," Inimic said. "Finally they will destroy you all."
"If your master's master returns, you think he will greet you as part of his lineage?" Obi-Wan said. "You were an illicit apprentice— not allowed. A threat. Sith kill each other all the time."
"Not me," Inimic said, lifting her chin proudly. "I will win."
"He'll kill you, and then he'll kill the Jedi, too, and the Republic. Anyone who gets in his way." Obi-Wan said. "Kadrian, you Fell because you feared that if you did not, you would fall alongside the rest of us. That the Jedi would die. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. But you cannot fear so deeply of losing something if you didn't love it in the first place."
A scowl creased her face. She didn't protest the use of her real name. She folded her arms tightly against her chest, metal glinting against the light. "Lord Sidious hardly spoke of his Master," she said, not acknowledging Obi-Wan's win. "Just that he was weak and he would soon be destroyed."
A brief uncertainly flashed over her features. "He said that at first, at least. About the time things really started to heat up— thanks for that, by the way—" she gave Obi-Wan a nasty look and he gave her a cherubically innocent one back— "His Master started to get angry with him. He was not supposed to be discovered so early in their plans. Timetables were moved up when we were forced to flee."
"Sidious had to kill his master earlier than he planned," Qui-Gon surmised.
"He went off to do it on his own while I took care of things at the Temple." Here she glared at Obi-Wan. He was one of the things she was supposed to take care of.
"But did he say who it was?" Obi-Wan asked.
"No," Sey said, and looked unsure. "But he was kind of beat up after the fight. And…"
"What?"
"I'm not actually sure he ended up killing him."
The room itself actually seemed to get colder at the words. Obi-Wan fought the urge to clasp his arms around himself for warmth.
"He was… Sidious reached some kind of victory, I'm sure of that. When he came back Palpatine told me we wouldn't have to worry about his Master following us. But he still looked a little frightened. And he didn't say the problem was solved forever. I think he may have just badly wounded him."
They had been searching for dead acquaintances of Palpatine in the Senate since they had first found out about him, but Obi-Wan had never even considered that the Sith could still be alive. Some things were too horrific for him to imagine, he supposed.
"Well," Qui-Gon said, sounding disturbed. "Thank you for your cooperation."
"It's not cooperation. It's self-preservation," Sey said. "If Darth Plagueis is really on the rise again— well, I'm not sure any of us will be safe."
It was a cheery note to end the conversation on.
Chapter header from TCW - 4X11 Kidnapped