Audreidi Thank you so much! I'm so flattered.
Fudge It's interesting, that in the canon universe, Qui-Gon wanted to train Anakin for that same reason, to achieve greatness, but with less than a great result. Well, at first, anyway!
Athena That flashback was brewing in my head for a long time, which was why it was put in so early in the story. Thank you.
CYN Only part Sadist. I don't know how to feel right now…Hee. I do like posting here because it's easier to read that way, but it takes longer to get a chapter up, because my posts over there are much shorter. Well, not that these are long…Thanks for reading. I'm always so surprised and flattered to see a review from you. Thank you so much.
Pug Thank you!
Kynstar You're so amazing. Thanks.
)(
When he closed his eyes, it was like whipping down the lanes in his podracer, twirling breathlessly on a clip.
Only, when he was at the controls, and darting across the sands, there wasn't a rebuking voice in his cockpit, softly chiding and distinctly feminine.
"Don't go too fast on that, little one."
Anakin sighed and opened his eyes, simultaneously kicking out his leg to stop the chair from spinning.
"My goodness." Padme Amidala remarked, walking towards the desk. "If I had just done that, I'd be re-tasting my breakfast about now."
Anakin laughed, as his admiring eyes drank in her presence. "Yeah, but I'm used to it." He shrugged. "Besides, it's fun!"
The Naboo monarch smiled. "I'm sure it is."
Anakin's gaze went to Bruck for a fleeting moment, then to Padme again. "And you know what?"
"What?"
His lips were quivering with glee at divulging his own secret. "Sometimes, if I just think really hard, I can make the chair go faster on its own."
Padme noticed Bruck's hands go to his hips.
"That's great, Ani." She replied.
Bruck sighed and looked back at the lift. "I don't know why I wasn't permitted to stay." He grumbled. "I doubt a sedated ex-Padawan that's been out of commission for ten years is going to be much of a threat to me."
Padme glanced at him. "Master Jinn seems to think so."
It was meant plainly as an observation, but it imbedded itself as an insult in Bruck's psyche. And he reacted as such. "Yeah, well, Master Jinn just wants to be in control of the situation. He wants to handle it without anyone's help."
"And keep everyone safe." She added with confidence.
"Maybe that's part of it." He conceded grudgingly, "But mostly, he thinks this whole situation belongs to him."
Padme watched his face. It was obvious to her that, in fact, the situation belonged to everyone. Bruck himself could claim considerable ownership. "Because Obi-Wan was his student once?"
Bruck nodded. "He never let it go. He could never just let it go."
Anakin was already impatient with the boorish direction of conversation, and with a small smile, smacked down two candy sticks on the desk counter. "Here you go."
Padme grinned, unwrapping the striped convection and popping it in her mouth. "Thank you, Ani." Her lips gleamed with a new purple sheen. "I think we could all use one of these right about now."
Bruck realized two sets of eyes were zeroed in on him, and with a heavy gust of a sigh, accepted the gift.
Still, it wasn't enough. The Queen and the boy were staring expectantly at him.
"Oh fine." He murmured, and took a massive bite from the colorful stick, eliciting a loud crack. "Happy?"
)(
"Not on Naboo much longer?" Palpatine crooked a bleached brow. "Do you mean he will be taken to the Jedi Temple?"
Qui-Gon's eyes strayed to the sealed room which contained his former apprentice. "That I cannot say. But Coruscant seems a possibility."
"Hmm." The Senator trailed a finger along his chin. He watched Qui-Gon carefully. "It must be terribly difficult for you."
Slowly, the Master turned, and waited in silence for the other to continue.
"To see the child you once knew, reemerge as a tool of evil. To attempt to take your life."
He already has.
It was a morose certainty ringing in Qui-Gon's thoughts. He was intensely shielded in the Force, but not against the subtle slither of the Dark.
Palpatine didn't indulge the smile twitching at him, maintaining the sympathetic arrangement of his features. It was a monumental weakness of the Jedi Order, as he often reminded those closest to him. How can one guard against something known to be extinct?
Very early in his life, his village was terrorized by the reprise of a felled species of arachnid. There was no stockpile of the cure nor the ancient venom. A quarter of the population was lost as result.
And now, here stood Qui-Gon Jinn, a mass of unsuspecting flesh, encircled by the stingers.
Not yet, though. Not yet. There needed to be a last refinement, a final touch of acid. It needed to take the entire village.
)(
Think, one would, that after eight hundred years of one's lifetime, there would be no worlds left unvisited.
Warm cores of washed olive watched the planet of Naboo expand, as the one-man ship hurdled downward, into the atmosphere.
In the near-eternity he had roamed the Universe, Master Yoda had only heard faint whisperings of Naboo, met a few representatives, but nothing as stirring as the transmission that came from Qui-Gon Jinn, mere hours before.
Well, perhaps he was exaggerating slightly. For one as weathered as he, a year passed more as a second, and a decade wore as a breath. So to receive two communications from the peaceful little planet, in the span of five years, wasn't so unusual.
Of course, only he knew of the first.
He intended it to remain that way.
The withered Jedi leaned back in his seat, clawed hands resting on the chewed, mottled top of his gimer stick. There was no question he was in good health. To survive the double-fisted blow of yesterday, he had to be in excellent physical condition.
And still, his heart had trembled, to hear the pained utterance of worst fears, manifested.
An adept of the Dark arts, facing off against the Jedi.
That in itself was astounding. The majority of the Council demanded it was impossible. Even if a member of the Order, trained well, were to be dismissed, their skills would blunt and dwindle in the absence of their peers and the Force-drenched environment of the Temple.
Yoda knew better. For a select few, the Force glistened everywhere, and it was as natural as a step, for them to detect the shine. After all, how did the Sith shatter into creation?
Despite that conviction, even he had to admit a child would not stand the same chance of success. Especially one with but a few months of apprenticeship, and hardly a wealth of experience.
But constant schooling was not required, for those eyes to grasp onto the Force, onto that gossamer blanket that could wrap around a spirit, and cradle it in cold times.
Or smother it in darkness.
His loose eyelids lowered, under the current of fresh outrage. Had he been naïve? It seemed a laughable inquiry, considering his age and the content of his career. But in the forever-sharpening perspective of tomorrow, he had never seen the silhouette of that boy, thought lost.
Now determined lost.
And he shouldered a cape of shadows, whipped over Yoda's prescience, blocking what might result from this awful event.
The Dark Side clouds everything. Takes whatever it can reach. Takes…whatever it desires.
Yes, he had known the Dark lusted for the Light, to convert and mutate and corrupt the good, to strengthen the hand of Evil. He knew, too, that it came to the Jedi in forms of temptation. For Obi-Wan Kenobi, it spread as anger, and was always difficult for the boy to combat. But it didn't stop there. The Dark knew how to mutate itself, and was a tender voice of compassion, when the child sat alone in the aftermath of his severance with the Jedi.
And the Jedi--they had known he was alone. Qui-Gon Jinn knew. Yoda knew. They all knew, but sat on their thrones, elevated above the gutters where betrayal and hasty error traveled, pristine and unbending.
Years later, both Masters were wading through the polluted waters. They were tasting the sour, soiled flavor of what they averted for so long. Where was Obi-Wan? Above them all, it would appear, for he exceeded the dirt-low expectations.
But, if anything, Yoda knew that Obi-Wan Kenobi never thirsted for the ultimate win, to tear down his opponent, for the sake of his own victory.
Once again, the Council (and Qui-Gon Jinn) would heatedly argue that.
It would be a heavy labor, this time around, to convince them otherwise.
)(
"You assume much, if I may, Senator." Qui-Gon crossed his arms, but looked entirely without defiance. "I knew Obi-Wan all of a few months. I didn't raise him." He shook his head. "Who knows who was responsible for that."
A little twinge irritated his thoughts, but he shook them off.
"That's quite a shame." Palpatine remarked, in a sorrowed drawl, "That the boy made such a small impression on you. It's obvious he possessed substantial…talent."
"Talent is nothing without focus." Qui-Gon countered, slightly enflamed by the offhand comments. "And his focus was wanting."
Wanting for guidance. Palpatine murmured, behind the walls of both Senator and Sidious. Waiting for true fulfillment.
)(