Obi-Wan had been sitting as still as a stone for four hours. By now, the young Jedi knew the position of every blade of grass in his immediate area, and the pattern in the rough texture of the bark on the trees nearest him. The light, scudding clouds had obscured the moons a half-hour ago, but his eyes had adjusted, and his other senses had expanded. His perception of everything physical in the area had only sharpened. The only other living thing besides plants that had alerted him during his watch was a pair of rodents scurrying among the windfall of early ripened fruit. The small shelter with its deadly cache remained untouched. Obi-Wan stretched one single muscle in his right calf, increasing circulation and easing its tightness.
He was sitting cross-legged behind a tree trunk, facing the stash. He drifted in and out of a watchful semi-trance. But a growing sense of unease had been with him for the last few minutes. It had nothing to do with what he was watching, it was closer, more personal. Obi-Wan became convinced it was not his imagination. It had to do with Qui-Gon. There was something amiss wherever he was.
The feeling grew. He searched it, trying to gather clues as to what the problem was. No, he wasn't being called. It wasn't that kind of a feeling. It was sorrow. Loss, and helplessness. Had something happened to someone in the house? What could be going on in the middle of the night back there?
The idea of leaving his post abruptly presented itself in his mind. He shifted uncomfortably. He should not leave this place unguarded, but it was possible that the smuggler had gone to the Traxis house after all, and he was needed there. What if a struggle was taking place there right now? Yes, go back to the house. And abandon his post, and possibly earn a questioning and reprimand from Qui-Gon if he was mistaken.
Qui-Gon's reprimands weren't really all that bad. And there had been fewer and fewer of those in the past years. They had crossed over into a relationship that was between two adults now. His master was usually encouraging him to follow his instincts, and had been ever since he had become his Padawan. When Obi-Wan had a feeling about something, he had no qualms telling Qui-Gon about it.
If he did leave the stash and go back to the house, there had to be a way of keeping watch with whatever tools he had at hand.
He made a final check that there was no one approaching, and he slowly stretched his entire body. He took his commlink from his belt. He remembered there were small, detachable remotes in it, a feature he had not used before. He felt in the dark for the small catches that would release the smaller sections of it. He held all three sections in his hands and closed his eyes, remembering, slowly and methodically bringing forward information he had read once before, using the Force to seek the information he needed now. There was a trip sensor that could be activated between the two small remotes. It would send an audible signal to the main section of the commlink. Memories flowed, guiding his hands as he used his fingernails to touch the small keys and toggles. Obi-Wan took a deep breath when the task was finished, and made sure once again that the area was deserted. He passed his hand between the two remotes he had placed on his knees. He was rewarded with a low beeping and a small flickering light from the main body of the commlink. He smiled and silently thanked the technical designers of his commlink for the obscure feature. He crept to his knees, and got to his feet. He placed the remotes in strategic places, in low forks of trees on either side of the stash. Then he edged away carefully, and began running lightly back toward the house. When he had warmed up, he used the Force to put all speed possible into his flying feet.
The kitchen door was unlocked, as usual. Obi-Wan silently let himself in and crept across the dark room. He stopped, listening and focusing. A snuffling snoring was coming from within the dining room. He edged over to the entryway and saw Velk sleeping restlessly on the bench. The mixed scents of alcohol and crushed herbs assaulted his nose. Evidently Velk had found an effective way to push the thoughts of those canisters out of his mind since that afternoon. Obi-Wan left him, and slipped through the kitchen. He followed his ears and a sense of unease through the other hallway and down the hall to where he knew Lia was staying. He paused partway down the hall. His master's voice, and that of Lia's could be heard, muffled by the thick bedroom door. No, thought Obi-Wan. Not again, he thought, his heart sinking as he sensed the emotions radiating from behind the door. They were arguing.
At that moment the door opened and Qui-Gon stepped out. He seemed surprised to see him standing there. Obi-Wan felt an immediate damping down of the stressed feelings he had sensed so sharply before the door had opened. Qui-Gon smoothed his face into a neutral expression and sighed. He studied a point on the opposite wall of the hallway. But Obi-Wan could see there was still a pinched look around his eyes and brows.
"Obi-Wan. Why did you leave the stash?"
"I felt...I felt something wrong, Master," Obi-Wan explained simply. He held up the remaining part of his commlink. "I left remote sensors until we got back."
Qui-Gon studied his apprentice for a moment. He sensed Obi-Wan waiting for a reprimand or comment, or an explanation. It seemed there was no keeping the ups and downs of his relationship with Lia private. Particularly the downs, which seemed to announce themselves through some perverse amplifier. He sighed again. Perhaps it was futile to try.
"All right, then. I'm on my way out," he said.
"Master...is everything...are you all right?"
From the other side of the door, there came a short, gruff noise, the strained grunt a person makes when winding up and then releasing to pitch something. Half a second later there came the sound of something heavy shattering against the other side of the door. The thunderous crash was centered at a spot exactly level with Qui-Gon's head. Pieces fell to the floor with a dry tinkle.
"She's upset with me," he said laconically. But there was a heaviness to his voice Obi-Wan had seldom heard before.
"What happened?" he blurted out.
"She asked me to marry her," Qui-Gon said, turning away to walk down the hall. "It seems I had the poor grace to turn her down." A mountain of pain seemed to be settling on his shoulders. Obi-Wan was suddenly reminded of the expression on the face of a man he had once seen trying to staunch an open gut wound with his hands.
"Qui-Gon..." Obi-Wan reached out to touch his master's arm. What had she said? And what had he said? What could have happened to bring all this about? Qui-Gon lightly touched Obi-Wan's arm and moved away, wrapping his cloak around himself in a sharply self-protective gesture. The refusal of comfort was almost more searing to him than the tension and sorrow the apprentice had felt a moment before.
"I'll talk to her," he found himself saying.
Qui-Gon turned to regard his apprentice with raised eyebrows. "You're a brave man, Obi-Wan," he said after a pause. "Mind your head for flying objects." With that, he turned and strode down the hall. The Jedi apprentice stared after his master, surprised that his mouth was not hanging open. He heard the kitchen door quietly open and close behind him, echoing in that vaulted room.
What was he thinking of, wanting to go into that bedroom? Why was he getting involved in this personal business? Because...because he loved both of them, and he wanted to help. Maybe to comfort one would be to comfort the other somehow.
The fact was, in spite of how things had first appeared, Valia was good for Qui-Gon. He smiled more. He even laughed. Since he had been seeing her, he seemed to Obi-Wan even more compassionate and patient than he had been before. And he looked happy. Happy men took notice of the good and the incidentally beautiful around them. He recalled a mission that had taken them back to Telos about a year and a half ago, and they had happened to see an unusually spectacular mountain sunset. While his master might have admired it, he was not one to linger over such things. But Qui-Gon had stared at it, drinking it in for an inordinately long time, until the last of the light had nearly faded. Much later, Obi-Wan had overheard him describing it to her down to the last detail. He had been memorizing it so he could take it back to her. And while he was no poet, he had managed to describe it in his low, lilting voice in a way that had Obi-Wan seeing it all over again, too. Until he remembered this was supposed to be for her ears and had moved off.
Another time, after the conclusion of a mission to Kalla, Qui-Gon had casually said 'Let's go home.' Home...something that really did not exist for traveling Knights. Inadvertent slip or not, Obi-Wan had sensed that word held a new meaning for Qui-Gon. He had the closest thing to home there could be in the places Valia was.
With that in mind, the Jedi apprentice squared his shoulders and knocked softly on the heavy wooden door. There was no response, no sound at all from the other side. "Lia?" he called in a low voice. He turned the knob on the door and slowly pushed it open. Shards of the broken vase scraped along the floor as he opened it wide enough to cautiously lean into the room. He scanned it quickly, and sensing nothing dangerous flying toward him, took a step inside. He heard the sounds of soft weeping. There she was, bowed in a chair in front of the window. Her back was to him and her face was in her hands, behind curtains of hair.
It would be all too easy to silently shut the door and slip unseen down to the guesthouse, and get the sleep his body was clamoring for. But no. He approached her and circled around to the front of her so she could see him, or his boots anyway. She lifted her head and jerked, startled to see him. He gently put a hand on her shoulder. She sat upright and sniffled loudly, dabbing at the wetness gathered below her eyes. She made a great effort to straighten herself, pushing her hair back and pulling her robe together tightly.
"Lia, are you all right?" he asked. What did it look like, he thought with a mental roll of his eyes.
"No," she said squeakily. "I don't think so." She stood unsteadily, and Obi-Wan reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her mouth with a fist as she felt a fresh wave of tears coming in response to his hesitant gestures of concern for her. She wished she were alone. She had enough to cry about all by herself for the next thousand years or so.
"You'd better sit back down," Obi-Wan said, guiding her more or less in the direction she had started to walk, and settled her on the edge of the bed. He detected the scent of alcohol around her, too. He felt helpless, useless in the face of her sorrow. Then he told himself to banish such thoughts. Self-doubt was one of the worst enemies for a Jedi, or anyone. If he was here now, then there was a purpose for it. He sat beside her and draped his arm about her again.
"Obi-Wan, look at me," she said with a sudden intensity. She turned to face him and took up handfuls of his tunic. "What do you see?"
The question mentally knocked him off his feet. Now how was he supposed to answer that? Here, sitting against him, was one very distraught woman. And a truly fine specimen of womanhood at that, her hair completely unbound and drifting in soft sheets about her shoulders and back. Her feet were bare, and she was dressed in the most seductively understated confection in clothing he had ever seen on a woman. He swallowed hard and made a nearly microscopic study of the stitching that rimmed an opening in the lacework of the low neckline, and the skin beneath it. Here was the woman his master loved, his master's lover, the skin he touched... He felt warmth creeping into his ears. He took a breath to calm himself, and finally he settled on the most reasonable answer that came to him.
"I see a good friend. I see someone who is very upset, and who could use a friend herself at the moment."
Apparently it was the right answer. "Oh, good," she said sniffing and wiping her face. "I thought you might say you see a little child. Because...because that's what I feel like."
"Is it really as bad as all that?" he asked. He truly was a fountain of brilliantly comforting things to say, he thought.
"I'm afraid so, yes. I...I can't believe what just happened, I was so stupid to try that..." She was crumpling the edge of the silk robe in her hand, turning the pretty fabric into a wrinkled wad. Suddenly she got to her feet, and nearly stumbled to the floor. "I have to go after him, I have to explain, try to talk to him." She nearly ran toward the door. Obi-Wan put both hands around her upper arms and swung her back around. He sat her down on the bed. "Lia, no. He wants to be alone right now. I think it's better if..." He trailed off as she put her hands over her face and began to cry again. He grimaced and put an arm around her until the tears subsided to where she could speak again.
"Of course he wants to be alone, he'll never want to be with me again."
"Come on, Lia. You've had arguments before. You always make up afterwards."
"No, never like this. Those were nothing compared to this. He made me so angry, I 've never seen him so...hard." She fought off another wave of speech-choking tears.
Obi-Wan could feel the sheer waves of pain coming from her, this close to her. Well, of course this hurt. He remembered how it could hurt when you ran face-first into the stone wall he knew Qui-Gon could sometimes be.
"I said awful things, and then he said... and I said things I shouldn't have said, and..." she went on, and then flopped her hands helplessly in her lap. "I...I'm drunk," she finished lamely.
"I think he took that into consideration."
"Oh, Obi-Wan..." she quavered and crumpled miserably against his shoulder. She cried. And cried. Somehow it was far easier to completely lose her composure in front of him than Qui-Gon. She cried over being refused, the look on Qui-Gon's face, the sight of his back as he'd gone out the door, for the last two uncomfortable days. She cried over every rotten thing Prawni had ever said to her. She cried all over again for the wreckage of her womb, something she thought she'd cried her last over, and finally, she cried over long-gone Aunt Myroni's vase shattered all over the floor.
Obi-Wan tucked her head against his neck and wrapped his arms around her as she shook. This reminded him of a time he had held a crying child once, the heat and dampness radiating off the small head. He had not enjoyed that experience in the least either, but he had handled it with grace. This ought to be Qui-Gon dealing with this, he thought. Then he banished the thought, and any bitterness with it. 'Never wish another in your place, Obi-Wan, or yourself in the place of another. Where you are is where your duty lies.' Qui-Gon's own words came to him. He automatically found himself rubbing his hands up and down her back, soothing her through the satiny cloth and her hair. He rocked her and softly shushed to her.
At last the sobs faded and she leaned quietly against him. She raised her head. She had left darkened, soaked spots in the sand-colored cloth of his tunic and even dampened his Padawan braid. She picked up the limp hair and dropped it back on his shoulder with a sniffly little laugh.
"Look at you," she said, straightening the capped shoulders of his tunic. "Look at the mess I've made of you." This was more like the Lia he knew, straightening and fussing, brushing at his clothes and rearranging the disheveled layers of his shirt. He smiled and held up his hands to calm hers. "It's all right," he reassured her. "So...love can get a little messy."
She pulled a face. "You've got that right," she said shakily. The question was, did it still have a chance? "If this is over, I'll never love anyone else again." That idea nearly made her lose it all over again.
"Oh, come on now, Lia," he scoffed. He slid an arm back around her. "That's just not possible for you." He pulled her against him as she wiped her face. They both watched the vine leaves flutter around the edge of the window. "It's almost as if you haven't even begun to love yet. There is so much ahead for you. There is something infinite in you that...waits," he said in a soft, almost dreamlike voice.
Valia raised her head to look at the young man in bleary surprise. "And as for being over," he continued in his normal tone of voice, "I doubt it. There were times I thought I had lost him, too."
But he hadn't, thought Valia. In that moment, as they thought about those words, they both saw with terrible clarity what this situation could possibly become. A rivalry over him, huge and ugly. One wanting and needing his complete devotion as master and teacher, the other as husband. They backed away from the idea, neither of them wanting to go there. They thought too much of each other now. If only this were anyone else, thought Valia helplessly. What had she been thinking, falling in love with a Jedi with his codes and traditions, and one in the middle of a master-apprentice relationship at that? For all that she thought of herself as bad girl made good, she suddenly felt like a bumpkin, a simple farm girl, the girl she had been at three years old, thinking she could climb to the top of a freela tree and pluck stars from the night sky.
"I think...I think maybe we ought to be looking at this as a decision that doesn't belong to either one of us," Valia hesitantly said.
"Maybe looking at it at all is a bit premature," said Obi-Wan. She nodded. Now she wished things could go back to the way they had been before, where she had not asked for anything more of her relationship with Qui-Gon. But could they?
"He loves you, Lia," he reassured her. "He loves few, but once he does, it seems to be a permanent thing."
"I don't mean to come between you." He waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. The passing thought that it might be himself coming between the two of them made him feel uncomfortable and odd. "And I didn't mean marry right now, today," she said. "How often do Jedi leave the order for love?" she asked after a thoughtful pause.
"Not very often, but it does happen," he said slowly, not wanting to say anything either way. He'd keep his apprehensions about Qui-Gon leaving to himself. "The system seems to have worked for most Jedi for the last couple thousand years or so."
Valia nodded and started scrunching up the edge of her robe again.
"Listen, it's late. I think this is one of those things where you say, 'let's sleep on it'," Obi-Wan said.
She sighed. "Why is it that he feels free to defy one rule, but stubbornly sticks like glue to another?"
Obi-Wan shook his head. "That would be our Qui-Gon."
"I totally agree with you about what you said about sleep, but..." Valia wiped at her eyes again, which were starting to feel like they were full of gravel. "I don't have much hope of a good night's sleep."
Obi-Wan reached into a belt pouch and searched inside. "Here." He offered her a small white capsule.
"What is it?"
"Something we have to prevent dehydration if we have to go without water. It might not help you sleep, but it sure will help you feel a lot better in the morning. Stop the hangover."
Valia was actually able to smile. "And what would a Jedi apprentice know about hangovers?"
Obi-Wan smiled back, with the merest hint of mischief in his eyes that would have done his master justice. " I'll tell you later, sometime," he said gently.
"There's a story here I haven't heard. Tell me." Now Valia welcomed his company.
"There really isn't much of a story." Obi-Wan smiled and shrugged.
"Come on, let's have it."
Obi-Wan sighed. "When I was thirteen, a couple fellow students and I became very curious about alcohol, and uhh, it's effects. One of them smuggled a bottle into the Temple. I didn't ask how. We tried it, and watched each other very closely. We looked at it as our own physical challenge, to see if we could resist it. The whole thing was a foolish dare. We thought we were resisting it with no effects at all. Until the next morning. In what I now think was no coincidence, our physical education instructors put us all through the most challenging routines they could devise that day."
"Oh, Obi-Wan." Valia smiled and shook her head. "Hung over thirteen year-olds are almost more pathetic than this situation."
"Don't worry so much about it. I'm sure things will look better in the morning."
Valia shook her head in doubt and looked off into space, lost in her thoughts. Obi-Wan gave her shoulder a squeeze and stood.
"Try to get some sleep."
Qui-Gon felt the night air whistling past his ears and through his hair as he ran down the arrow-straight row of trees toward the chemical stash. He mechanically reminded himself about Obi-Wan's alarm left there, and remembered to search for it and avoid it when he approached the shelter.
He slowed to a rapid walk when he knew he was getting closer. He recognized a peculiar twisted branch on a tree. He slowed still more, his boots soundlessly moving. He stopped and listened carefully. No one was near, and it looked as though no one had been here since Obi-Wan had left. He approached the stash and saw the commlink parts where Obi-Wan had left them. He carefully disabled them and tucked the parts into pockets in his tunic. He made a final check to make sure everything else in the area was untouched. He stood near the trunk of a tree and leaned tiredly against it. He looked up and saw a moon between a break in the clouds. The notion to bellow angrily at it occurred to him, but he clenched his teeth and kept silent. He turned and pressed his forehead against the tree, feeling the rough bark digging into his forehead, hard enough to leave marks. Two tree branches flanked him, rising in a mockery of an embrace. After what had just happened, those were most likely the only limbs that would be going around him for quite some time. Well, that was perfectly fine with him.
He allowed his thoughts to return to Valia and permitted a good long look at his feelings. No, it wasn't fine with him. Not at all. The pain was like a long, thin knife, sliding deeper. He breathed and let it go in, all the way through him, and imagined it passing out the other side of him, until it reached a level where if it wasn't gone, it was bearable.
It had been the alcohol talking, one part of him insisted. No it hadn't been, another part steadfastly said. She had been serious, and she had been thinking about this for some time. The alcohol just helped turn it into a disaster. He thought of the things she had said, and nothing had ever cut him quite so badly. Any day he could take being verbally abused by angry kings, belligerent senators and governors or even her father, but not her. And what was nearly as excruciating to him was her pain.
Well, he had feelings too, he thought defiantly. Not showing them didn't mean they weren't there. Puppet and tool indeed, he snorted inwardly. He had choices, he had control. There, that's it, said that annoyingly insistent truthful voice in his heart. Control, that 's what you want. You wanted to be able to be the one to decide the path of your relationship with her, and take it to the next level if you so desired. The fact that she took the matter in hand is what is getting under your skin, isn't it? Qui-Gon shifted and grudgingly acknowledged this aggravating insight.
He had been so unprepared for this, he thought. But no, you didn't have to be, the insistent little voice spoke up again. He knew there had always been a peculiar sort of blindness when it came to his relationship with Valia. A blindness he had been comfortable with. He had not given much thought to the future, content to take each moment with her as it came and the joy it brought. But as a Jedi, he was set apart. He was not automatically entitled to the joys life might bring others.
Anything he might have said sounded lame to his own ears: Lia, I already feel married to you. Or, why ruin a perfectly good relationship by changing it?
A new flash of insight burst upon him suddenly. Yoda. Yoda had sent them here. Yes, the mission and capture of the escaped gun smuggler was important. But there had been another purpose to achieve in sending him to this particular place. It would be natural to predict Qui-Gon would recruit the Nymean-born Valia to help. Here, on her homeworld with her, surrounded by her close-knit family... If the notion to consider a permanent union didn't occur to one of them, it could to the other. Surely the wise little master had predicted something like this would happen, given the opportunity, perhaps not quite as spectacularly and quickly as it had, but it would push things to a critical point. Qui-Gon could almost hear his slow measured words: "Choose, you must." Or at least he ought to think long and hard about what he was doing. As it was, those words or any other words on the matter had never been spoken. Qui-Gon had consistently and firmly deflected every attempt on Yoda's part to inquire into his deepening relationship with this non-Jedi. He had sensed the master's deep frustration, but he strongly felt this was no one's business but his own and had refused to talk about it.
It was a logical thought, that he was being tested, asked to examine himself. It would be like Yoda to arrange something like this. But rather than looking at it as manipulative or intrusive, Qui-Gon simply accepted the situation for how it was without bitterness. It would have happened sooner or later.
Qui-Gon moved away from the tree and back to a position from which he could watch over the stash. He settled himself on his knees and wrapped himself in his cloak and hood, becoming nearly invisible.
This was not exactly something to get roaring mad over, he thought, reflecting on Valia's words. It was rather something more worth weeping over. He hadn't given in to that urge since he was a little child, and he was close to doing it now. He thought of the way he had left her, the things he had said to her, the hurt look on her face. She was fiercely proud and independent, but was she enough that she might actually want to end the relationship, never want to see him again? While it would end this need for a choice, the idea of actually losing her pushed him to the edge. He squeezed his eyes closed to stop the flood. The muscles in his forehead tightened until they ached. He drew in a hasty breath and held it, suspended until he gained shaky control and expelled it. One tear leaked from the corner of his eye and ran down the side of his nose.
The moon disappeared behind clouds again and a light rain began to fall. He pulled his hood all the way over his head. If he kept still, the cloak would keep him dry. A light breeze whispered, fluttering the edges of his hood. The breath of nature reminded him to breathe himself. He got control of himself, exhaling and inhaling deeply. The heavy vegetation around him helped amplify the Force and instinctively he reached out to it. He let it envelop him, calm him.
Torn in two. That's what he felt like. If there had ever been anyone he would leave life as a Jedi Knight for, a life he loved, it was her. Part of him had so wanted to say 'yes' to her, take the life path she stood at the head of, right now. He had never felt like that before. For just an instant he had felt the same elation, the same joy as he had felt the first time she had kissed him, the first time she had told him she loved him. Then he had felt an immovable rock standing in his way, a wall that seemed to block him. The Force, that which guided him was telling him not to go that way. The more he questioned it, the harder the rock became, the higher the wall. Somehow he had to talk to her, he had to explain himself.
He felt the presence of someone familiar behind him. He resisted the urge to turn around, and simply waited there on his knees. Time passed, and the ache in his chest faded to something manageable. Still there was no sound or movement from the presence, so he spoke softly.
"This is not a matter worth a visit," he said.
A raspy laugh sounded behind him. "Oh, I think it is. I need not receive an official summons to pay you a visit." An apparition strode past Qui-Gon into his field of view. "The state of being At One is not such an all-consuming thing that I do not have time to check up on my last living former apprentice," it said. Flickering bluish light outlined a hulking, muscular form clad in Jedi robes. The figure pushed back its hood. A scaly, vaguely reptilian head shook itself free of the cloth. A line of short spines along the crest of it caught at it as it fell about the shoulders.
"A personal crossroads, is it? That's something that is difficult to let anyone else see."
Qui-Gon made a gruff noise. "Exactly. I wish to deal with this my own way."
The shape chuckled again. "And so you will, Maffi. You will do what you must, as you always do."
Qui-Gon's master's fond old nickname for him carried all the warmth it had decades before, the last time he had been called that. It was shortened from a very long word that was loosely translated as 'one who will grow into his feet and tail' in Rasig's native tongue.
"Such conflict I feel in you. Be calm and listen. What is the Force telling you?"
Qui-Gon sighed. "Not to leave the life as a Knight. To not veer from the path I have been set on," he said. Whatever that appointed path should be. It was a close as he could come to describing the feeling.
"And now comes before you a choice, to leave or stay."
"It has never involved others before. It has never been because of another..." Qui-Gon struggled to describe it. The idea to leave had only happened once, and that was when Obi-Wan had still been thirteen. He would not be crushed now as he would have been then, but their bond was too strong now for him to pull away now. He still needed so much more training, the real-life practical experience only far-flung missions could give. He could not break that relationship, that trust. Not now. Even if Qui-Gon did leave, would Obi-Wan be strong enough to accept a change in partners, and would another master be strong enough to give him what Qui-Gon knew he needed, and was confident enough to give him?
Then of course there was Valia. What would she do?
"If it only involved me, there would only be my life, my strength to think about."
Rasig's bluish form paced slowly back and forth. "That is not an 'if' that is possible. Nothing in the universe ever involves only yourself. You know this."
"Yes, my master."
"Do you remember the year you were fourteen?" Rasig shook his head and chuckled at the memories of his first years as Qui-Gon's master. Now, after all this time, he could laugh at one of the most trying times of his four hundred years as a Jedi. "All the lessons you learned, and re-learned that year seemed to have a common theme. Do you remember?"
Qui-Gon sighed. "I automatically thought that among my year-mates, and everyone else for that matter, I was the biggest and strongest."
"And you were big, and you were strong. But strength takes different forms."
"I know this now."
"Then think on it, while you wait and watch," Rasig said. "And do not be overly worried about your lady-love."
"How can I not? I hurt her. I never meant to hurt her." He nearly said he should never have loved her. But he couldn't. The impossibility, the falsehood, and the regret that statement would have been stuck in his throat.
"The pain she feels over you, while it is distressing, will turn out to be inconsequential in the long view," Rasig gestured with a clawed hand. "Though you may not believe me at the moment." Qui-Gon nodded, hoping he was right, and indeed finding it hard to believe. "She is made of stronger stuff than you imagine," Rasig reassured him. Then he chuckled again, flashing a sharp-toothed smile. His old master was in a downright jovial mood, thought Qui-Gon, shifting on his knees. Instead of chastising him for what seemed to be a distracting, draining, and yes, even forbidden relationship, as others had done, and his romantic woes, he seemed to be viewing this whole thing a heartily amusing story.
"Keep her close to you, that one. She suits you." How he was going to work out that thorny problem, Qui-Gon didn't want to think about at the moment.
"I know you never were one to quickly embrace others closely into your life, especially after Xanatos..." Rasig need not elaborate on the betrayal and turning of Qui-Gon's Padawan. "But he was only one. You need her. You need others in your life. Look at them as the precious gifts they are, whether they bring hard lessons or joy."
Qui-Gon squeezed his eyes shut. His master could end this visit any time now. He had plenty of old and new lessons to think about now.
"As for Obi-Wan," Rasig continued on a more stern note. "His path will be long and hard. He will require all that you can teach him, every skill you can pass on to him. And more." Rasig stopped pacing and turned to face him. "And your own work is long from finished. You have much to do yet as a knight of the Order."
"And if I leave, and defer these tasks to others? Will not the will of the Force still be carried out?" Qui-Gon felt free to voice the rhetorical question only to Rasig.
"You know as well as I do that it will be done. But at what cost?" he asked. "At what cost of life or time? It may take a different course of events to bring it about, but who are any of us to decide what that should be? No, heed your feelings in this, Maffi. There are events coming, a great shifting of balance; events that even I cannot see. You will be needed to take your part in them. There is at least one great thing you will do before your work is done."
Qui-Gon did not ask what that was, or when that would be. Likely Rasig could not begin to see it himself, and even if he could, it was not for him to tell of it or interfere in any way. It could be something so small and unrecognizable at the time it was done. It was a Jedi's duty to serve without question according to his capacities, and for whatever time was given him in the physical plane. But the question still rose from Qui-Gon's heart. It was simply human to think it, to want it to be answered. It was the question of a novice, not worthy of a Jedi Master. It shamed him slightly to have thought it.
The vertical slits in Rasig's gold-brown eyes were wide and dark within the scaly ring around them. Eyes that could hold a surprising amount of warmth softened still further when they rested on the kneeling form of his former apprentice. Qui-Gon's head was still bowed within his hood, so he did not see the affection in them at the moment, or the flicker of premonition.
"You will know when your work is done," Rasig answered him softly. "You will know."
The blue ghost passed a scaly hand through the low-hanging branches of a freela tree, as though caressing it. "This is a peaceful place, with peace-loving people. Let it bring your heart ease." And then Rasig was gone, as abruptly as the delivery of his mixed advice, his presence seemingly becoming part of the trees, the grass and the rain-cooled night air.
Qui-Gon remained stone still where he was, resuming his watch. While the situation had not changed, his heart was somewhat lighter now. And while the future was uncertain, especially where it concerned his relationship with Valia, at least he could think of her now without feeling a strangling hopelessness. His thoughts wandered to the past hour.
"The woman threw a vase at me," he grumbled under his breath.
There was a sound he swore was raspy laughter, but it surely was only the stirring of the breeze through the trees.