Author's Notes: Sorry this took a lil while – I've been getting my other fanfic sorted, and they both take time as it is. Plus, I've had my websites to update, etc, etc… I wanted to add more to this chapter, but it kinda got long enough, so I've decided to put the rest in Chapter 10. Not much happens here, but it's still worthy of a chapter I guess, and things will start to get a bit darker soon.

Seung Mina: Thanks! I'll try and keep it up! ^_^

Charmisjess: Hi again! Glad you're liking the fic – I've tried to bring a light edge to it (with the darkness I'm currently writing in my other fic, I need to!) and I'm pleased that people feel that it's working. I like writing about Dooku & Qui – I can just see them as a right pair, and I just do my best to portray them as a strong team, though one that still has it's lil flaws. Allyaah's something of a balancing point between them, and she's one of my more successful original characters – I have to say, I don't make characters up very often in my stories! And I love your Dooku-Qui website, btw! ^_^ Keep up the great work!

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A Test of Faith

Chapter 9

It may have been the dead of night, or it may not have been – there was no way to tell – but all activity beyond the locked door of the Jedis' room seemed to have discontinued, giving the three the impression that it was night time. Though whether there was ever much activity down here in the Drykos 'palace' was a debatable thing. With little else to do other than sit round looking at one another, and with conversation seeming very hard to come by, Dooku had suggested that they all took some rest whilst they had the opportunity – 'one never knows when they might next get the chance to rest again' he had said, Jinn mouthing the frequently occurring adage of his mentor behind his back. So, with the room cloaked in darkness, the torches extinguished, and all Jedi allocated to a bed (Jinn adamant on having the far right one), the trio tried to rest under these most uncomfortable circumstances (not that the mattresses were that lumpy or ought, it was just that being locked in an underground cavern didn't leave one with very optimistic thoughts). Qui-Gon seemed to drift off to sleep quite swiftly, managing to shake the very foundations of the room with his loud snoring, his mouth agape and his lanky limbs all over the place, but Serenn was too uneasy to sleep; even though Jinn's snoring was abominably loud, he could usually shut that out and doze off in most cases – it was just that his senses couldn't rest and his mind was filled with disquiet.

Qui snorted, and rolled over, coiling himself up in his flimsy red blanket; Serenn glanced to him with a look of disbelief – how anyone could possibly make so much noise without waking themselves was beyond him.

"A noisy kid, isn't he?" Allyaah suddenly asked quietly from her bed, sitting up and shaking her head.

He turned, having ended up in the middle of the three beds, with Jinn to his right and Jiao to his left; "My dear, 'noisy' is a vast understatement," he replied deprecatingly, sat up and leant back against the wall behind him, his knees drawn up toward his chest.

"Is he like this every night?"

"Most nights…but I usually have a wall between him and me…" He looked fondly onto his Padawan again, chuckling gently to himself, "I shouldn't take that for granted."

Allyaah shook her head, smiling, "If I ever choose a Padawan, then I'll ask about their sleeping patterns beforehand."

"It's no use," Dooku replied casually, turning his eyes back to her, "He only started doing this last year – there were no problems in the first couple of years. You can never tell."

Jinn made another particularly loud snore before tossing over another time and further coiling himself in his scarlet duvet. The two Jedi turned back to him, giving him another stare of ultimate implausibility.

"Can't you sleep?" Serenn asked Allyaah once the regular rhythm of Jinn's snores had ensued.

"No…and Qui isn't really helping me," she replied, smirking; "And you…?"

He scoffed, looking down and stretching out his legs, "Something's wrong," he said quietly, "Something's just…so wrong."

Allyaah pulled her poor excuse for a duvet off of her, and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, "What do you mean?" she asked, leaning toward him, leaning her head on her hands.

He stared down, as though trying to see through his mattress, running lazy circles on the top of the bed, "I don't know," he admitted, shaking his head slightly, "I can just sense something very wrong…like a shadow coming over me…" He smiled, incongruously snuffing at his own words, seeming bitter toward it all, "The Force keeps sending me warnings, hints…" He looked to her again, the whites of his intense eyes brilliant in the dull haze of the rock-strewn chamber, "I can't understand them but I know that it's trying to tell me something, trying to warn me about something…"

Allyaah sighed – what could she say to him exactly? "We're not going to get very far until their Queen emerges to talk to us," she ventured, returning to the obvious subject at hand, "I can't understand why she can't just gives us a few moments of her time immediately."

"Force knows what she's up to," Serenn groaned, looking up at the ceiling, unable to perceive it at all through the darkness, "It's all too weird – and too organised. They knew we were coming a long time before they pounced on us."

Jinn rolled over another time, "It's my Joba juice…" he muttered in his sleep, his hand flailing over the edge of the bed and hanging toward the floor.

Allyaah looked down, grinning at the boy's restless antics. Serenn sharply turned about to him, "One more sound, friend, and a pillow in your mouth," he said to the insensible form of his apprentice in a teasing warning.

"Let him be, Serenn," she said gently.

There was a slightly uptight pause between them.

"We shouldn't have come here," Serenn whispered, breaking the tense moment by making it only tenser, "I feel…'trapped'."

"We'll be okay," she reassured him for the umpteenth time, "We'll be okay."

*            *           *          *

There was something about waking up to darkness that just wasn't right. Jinn opened his eyes, his body telling him that it was time to get up, whilst his visual senses were telling him, in contrast, that it was obviously still night time, so he should just go back to sleep. He grunted, his brow creasing for a moment until his thoughts caught up with him – of course it was still dark! He was underground!

"D'oh, Qui-Gon!" he muttered to himself, rebuking his own ineptitude. It was only then, as he rolled to his left and stared at the legs of his bedstead, that he realised he was on the floor.

"Oh, not again!" he sighed, before then going on to realise that, not only was he on the floor, but his legs were bound tightly in his duvet.

"Argh!" he groaned louder, "Not again!" He struggled in his self-made cocoon like a helpless worm, striving to free himself from the situation he'd somehow got himself into during the night, his blanket tightly twisted about his lanky legs. The thick darkness surrounding him didn't help matters.

"Argh!" he moaned impatiently, giving up his vain struggles and falling back flat onto the stone floor once more, lying still; "Master!!" he called.

There was a silence. Jinn exhaled steadily, counting the seconds impatiently whilst he waited to hear the scuffle of feet from somewhere over the room, in the bed next to his. Nothing happened. Was Master Dooku still asleep…? Well, not for long…

Jinn gathered his bound legs up and swung them at the closest leg of his bed to hand, making a mighty whacking noise as he did, "MASTER!" he yelled in tandem, before making a belated, "Ow…", kicking the bed-leg all of a sudden not seeming like such an ingenious move.

Finally, he heard the signs of movement from his position on the floor, there being a crumpling of bed sheets followed by the unmistakable sigh of his Master, which translated to something like, 'Oh, Qui-Gon Jinn, honestly! Not again!' The harsher the sigh, the more colourful the translation – his tutor was being civil this morning.

"Now, Master, if you don't mind!" Jinn urged his mentor, writhing on the floor helplessly, beginning to understand how those beetles felt that you rolled over onto their backs and laughed at when they couldn't get back up again…

Unhurriedly (purposely unhurriedly, Jinn was certain), Dooku gradually made his way round to the far side of his apprentice's bed, until he stood before him and stared down at him upon the floor. Jinn squinted, barely able to discern his Master's form through the inky blackness that occupied their chamber – he therefore wasn't sure whether he actually saw or just sensed the customary 'shake of the head' of his tutor as he looked down at him.

"I just don't understand you, Qui," he sighed, drawing out the moment and savouring every minute of it – some of this stuff would be invaluable for the necessary sessions of teasing that he occasionally felt it necessary to put his Padawan through (providing they did come out of this mission alive, that was…), "How can one boy make enough noise to cause a 7.2 earthquake, tie himself up so neatly that even he cannot set himself free again, and smoothly roll off his mattress and onto the floor, all whilst he's asleep?"

"I don't know, Master," Jinn replied in a feigned ignorance, "But how can one teacher be so cruel as to just sit back and enjoy the suffering of his poor apprentice?"

"Oh, I take no pleasure in the suffering of anyone, my dear boy," Serenn replied blithely, still seeming to make absolutely no move to help Qui-Gon out of his own little mess, "You know that."

"MASTER!" Qui whined, wriggling up and down like a grumpy child who has just been told that they can absolutely not have a pet Nexu, and that's final. Sighing deliberately unsubtly, he went on to give Dooku his most determined pout, glaring hard to where he guessed his Master's visage was…his eyes just couldn't get accustomed to this level of gloom, so he couldn't be absolutely sure as to exactly where he was looking.

"Where's Qui-Gon?" came Allyaah's groggy 'is it that time already?' tone from across the dull chamber, completely out of Jinn's sight. He turned his head in her direction, but found just the underneath of his bed and more darkness returning his stare.

Serenn steadily turned to Allyaah, "On the floor, tied up," he replied with the utmost normality.

"What happened?" Jiao asked, her tone becoming more alert as though she had the preconception that someone had been in to tie Jinn up and leave him on the floor.

"A restless night," Dooku returned ever the more dryly, so dry, infact, that Qui-Gon had no doubts that, if his Master were a planet, he'd be covered in deserts and all those weird animals that stored water in strange places for special occasions…

A pause followed in which Jinn knew that Allyaah was now smirking, silently laughing to herself and finding it all quite amusing; "Okay, would some kind person help the unfortunate, helpless boy off the floor, please!" he appealed, beginning to get irritable, "I feel like I'm being asphyxiated by a very fat serpent…"

Dooku heaved his 'well, perhaps I ought to' sigh, and knelt down to aid his protégé; "Well, I'd better get you out of this fine predicament," he said, "I'd never live it down if my Padawan's life was ended by something that was 100% cotton and 0% sentient…"

Jinn pouted even fiercer at his mentor, "Shame on you, Master! What would Master Yoda think if he knew you were tormenting me so?"

"Well he would say to you, young Padawan, that 'Ironic it is that restless you are most at the time and in the place where most expected rest is. Standing up you will sleep tonight until learn to rest your body does'."

Qui snuffed, folding his arms as Serenn rolled him onto his side and began to pry the blanket from his back, "You're winding me up! Master Yoda would never be so cruel!" he rejoined certainly.

Serenn chuckled, "Oh yes he would, my young Padawan learner!" ('Stop calling me that…' Jinn groused silently – his Master always did it when he a) wanted to tease him, or b) felt that he needed reminding of what rank he was. He was sure there was a c), too, but he couldn't think of it right now…) "I lost count of the number of nights I spent on my feet…" Serenn continued, "And even on my head at one time…"

Jinn thought it best to leave this subject before Dooku decided that it might be worth trying out the Yoda doctrine on him. He remained silent now until he was eventually wrought free from his reluctantly yielding, 100% cotton bindings. By then, Allyaah had a torch in the cavernous room lit, and beheld Qui with a certain joviality, both amazed and amused by his nocturnal behavioural patterns.

"Do you ever sleepwalk, Qui?" she asked him once they had all settled a bit and taken seats up back on their beds, their eyes becoming gradually re-accustomed to something other than absolute pitch blackness, "You seem to do almost everything else when you're snoozing."

Jinn shuddered whilst Serenn laughed sharply, before doing his best to conceal his mirth by putting a hand to his mouth. Jinn suddenly noticed that a patch of his cropped hair was sticking completely the wrong way, and began to try and tame it whilst he replied, "Yeah…ask Master Zteuq…she'll never forget to lock her apartment doors again…"

Allyaah frowned, glancing to Serenn; he just shook his head, an obvious grin half hidden beneath his hand.

"And Master won't forget to lock ours, either," Jinn added, giving his mentor a meaningful glare.

Dooku gave him the most innocent of returning glances, "How was I supposed to know my apprentice had the capacity to operate certain doors in his sleep?"

"You should have foreseen it!"

"I bet Master Zteuq wished she had…"

Allyaah laughed, shaking her head at them again – it was impossible not to be amused by their two-man comedy act. Fortunately (or otherwise, depending on how one viewed it), the door to their room could suddenly be heard unlocking before it shot open. The three swiftly all darted their heads toward the door, staring at it as their 'captain' of yesterday trundled in; their faces fell sombre, their backs straightened and they became immediately vigilant.

"Morning, humansch…" it warbled, peering across each of them (Serenn had the urge to retort 'Morning insolent Crustacean', fed up of being seen as merely a faceless human and not as an individual being…), "Join usch for breakfascht, will you not?"

Dooku turned briefly to Allyaah with the 'May I answer?' look; she gave him the 'Definitely not' glare in return, knowing as well as he did that the Colicoid's offer was rhetoric. Jinn just continued to fiddle with his unruly hair, letting his Master and Allyaah do the conversing.

"Certainly," Dooku nodded in the end with as much civility as he could rally.

The creature nodded back, "You will be collected shortly…" it said, before it again closed and locked the door, before rolling away down the outer passage.

Serenn growled, flopping back onto his mattress, "Oh, joy! Breakfast with beetles!" he mused disdainfully.

"Can't be worse than the canteens back home…" Jinn muttered, beginning to get very annoyed with his disobedient hair, "GET DOWN!" he yelled at it, smacking it down hard and, subsequently, smacking his own head. "Ow…" he groused belatedly once more, rubbing his cranium, that not seeming to have been such a great idea now, either…

TBC…