A/N: You're all going to hate this chapter.

Chapter 22: Cut Off

The few days remaining of their stay on Bandomeer passed in a blurry haze, as least to Qui-Gon. He made his usual rounds among the city folk, saying farewell to those he had made connections with, impressing any unique sights on the eyes of his mind with his usual collector's curiosity, making sure he would never forget this planet and the lessons he had learned here. It was a familiar ritual, worn and comfortable with long practice, but this time it was not the same. It didn't bring the sense of closure and release it usually did, not because he still felt attached to Bandomeer, but because the rite seemed somehow redundant. He had already said goodbye to the only person or sight that mattered to him here, and the parting was still bitter indeed. He rather doubted that he would ever find closure for that particular wound.

And when it came down to it, he didn't want to. He didn't want to let go of the child he still held cradled in the depths of his heart, didn't want to let the pain fade, if that meant also losing the clarity of these sweet memories. That once-bright corner of his mind remained dim and empty, a whisper of chill wind that had once been a warm, caressing breeze, and he made no attempt to fill it.

He did not visit any of the Enrichment Zones.

Qui-Gon was aware that Julune was suffering, too. But the mutual pain that should have drawn them together instead seemed only to isolate them. She vanished into her work, as usual right before a move, attending to the myriad details that had to be perfect before they could go on. When they were together they spoke little, only the necessary words to address what needed done as they prepared to leave.

Sometimes Qui-Gon had the faint, tingling sense that Julune was hiding something from him, but somehow he could not muster the energy to pursue it. She was a complex box of mysteries, this feisty, endearingly clumsy woman of science, and he didn't have the heart to pry into her just now. When they got back to Thyferra, perhaps she would relax and open of her own accord. For now they simply struggled to deal, each in their own way, letting the wounds scab over a bit before they examined them.

With the finality of a door slamming shut, the day of departure came. Qui-Gon and Julune took a last walk through the empty rooms they had lived in for two months, making sure they hadn't forgotten anything. Nothing tangible remained, not even dust on the floor or cobwebs in the corners—Julune had made sure of that, as she always did, cleaning as they packed. It wasn't strictly necessary, not required by their lease, but this woman had a strong sense of propriety and right, and made it a point to leave everything and everyone she came across a little better for having met her. Even the light fixtures had been washed, slightly brightening up the cramped space that now seemed almost generous in its emptiness. No, they had forgotten nothing.

But everywhere Qui-Gon looked, he saw intangible things being left behind. Obi-Wan standing in the garden with his eyes closed and face lifted to the sunlight, peaceful and relaxed. Obi-Wan sitting at the kitchen table, peeling jili root with eyes intense and focused, making a face at the yughor that dripped off his spoon, laughing at some old story the Jinns told over dinner. Obi-Wan on the couch in the common room, sleeping, reading, weeping, clutching Qui-Gon's tunic with shaking fingers. Obi-Wan in the hall, hesitantly, timidly explaining how he had felt alone and unwanted for a very long time, but in this place he felt safe, at home. Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan.

And then they stood on the stoop, having set the door to lock from the inside and left the keycards on the kitchen counter for the owner to collect later. The small snick sound of the door closing for the last time resounded in Qui-Gon's ears far too loudly for such an ordinary, inconsequential little noise. And here, on this innocuous gray duracrete stoop, with its cracks and gouges and worn dips in the middle of the steps where too many feet had trodden, he was met with one last memory. The bright image faded too quickly, and he was left standing there with one hand raised as if to prevent it from going, entirely powerless to do so.

Beside him, Julune breathed a shuddering sigh. "They should be nearly to Coruscant by now," she said, her voice low and subdued.

Qui-Gon nodded. "Perhaps Obi-Wan will comm us when they drop out of hyperspace, let us know that they made it safely." Over the past few days he had often found himself wishing that Bandomeer was not so far away from the bright center of the galaxy, so the Jedi's journey could finish more quickly, so he could hear his lost boy's voice.

Julune made a choked little sound. "I doubt it."

It took a few moments for the despairing words to penetrate Qui-Gon's haze. He looked over sharply, looked fully at his wife for the first time in days, and felt his heart twist in his chest even more painfully than it had already been doing. She was crying, and her eyes were red and shadowed, revealing how frequently this had been happening. How could he not have noticed?

"Oh, darling . . ." He drew Julune into his embrace, holding her gently, and she grabbed him with all the ferocious strength of her burdened heart. There was something more to this, he understood, something more than what he had been struggling with on his own. He had been lazy, self-absorbed—he should have tried to help her earlier. It was just cruel, leaving her to bear more weight than he did, when their partnership was equal in all other matters.

"Oh, darling, I'm so sorry. Why do you say that? What makes you think he wouldn't call? We gave him all of our contact information on duraplast, two or three copies, if I recall, because we kept forgetting we'd already given it to him. He was so grateful for it, to know that there would always be two people in the galaxy who would want to talk to him, want to know how he was doing. Why wouldn't he want to comm us?"

"I'm sure he does," Julune choked out. "It's Knight Martin . . . while you were going to fetch Obi-Wan in the garden, he mentioned, so very casually," she spat the word like acid, "that Obi-Wan would need a few months to adjust, and he would need that time to concentrate on his new duties, his new role. And that it was very important that nothing distract him, at least until he settled in. I thought that that was terrible enough, and I wanted to fight him, but then you came back, and he started in on the bond . . ."

She raised her head to look his eyes, and saw that he was too stricken to speak. "I couldn't bring myself to tell you. You were already staggering under the loss you already suffered. But this . . . they're depriving us even from hearing his voice, from knowing anything about what's going on . . . ."

"And we have no way of contacting the boy on our own," Qui-Gon murmured, fully comprehending the horror of this news. "We have to wait until they let him . . ."

Julune sobbed and pressed herself deeper into his embrace, and Qui-Gon's arms tightened about her convulsively. The grief and loss was very near to overwhelming him at that moment. Only this woman, and the tiny child she bore, anchored him to cold reality. He could not abandon them.

And he saw, with bleak foresight, the months and years ahead. They would return to Thyferra, and settle down to new, less all-consuming jobs, and Julune would give birth, and they would form a family. They would be happy. They would grow exotic plants and tell fantastic tales to the neighbor children and invite their friends and relations over for delicious meals. Their child would grow free and joyful, playing and leaping, learning, going to school, returning home to leap into Qui-Gon's arms with a delighted squeal, demanding bedtime melodies from Julune until she grew heartily sick of every folk song she knew. Perhaps there would be another child, or two, or three.

They would be happy. But there would always be something missing. Qui-Gon would look across the dinner table, surveying his family, and no matter how many places were set, he would feel in his heart that there ought to be another. At night he would wake in the early morning hours for no reason and go to check on his sleeping little ones, and he would stand in an empty doorway and look at an empty bed, knowing there ought to be a bright, gentle presence there, peaceful and at rest. At odd moments throughout the day he would find himself probing at that dim corner of his mind, and every time, it would be empty and silent. And every time, it would hurt.

He hoped the pain never faded. He didn't want to forget.

At last Julune cried herself out, but he made no move to release her. "Come, dearheart," he whispered. "We need to get to the transport."

But his feet refused to move. Somehow they could not. Julune stood still in the circle of his arms, accepting. They did not move for a long time.

X

Obi-Wan sat in the small observation lounge in the transport and stared dazedly at the portal, watching the blurry streaks of hyperspace blaze by, white and achingly beautiful. His fingers moved gently over the piece of the duraplast he held in his lap, smoothing the edges, feeling how thick and durable it was. Duraplast was advertised never to fade or tear, a permanent record as flexible and portable as any flimsiplast. Obi-Wan wished it was heavier, more substantial. He needed something with weight to hold on to.

He found himself wishing that the letters and numbers etched into the material were engraved, tangible, so he could trace the shape with his fingers, feel the meaning through his skin. Not that he could do much more to memorize these two comlink frequencies, the address of a home on a planet far away. He had read the words so many times that sometimes the characters lost meaning, blurring before his eyes. Then he would blink, and the blurriness went away, sometimes. Sometimes it didn't.

He wanted to comm them as soon as the ship dropped out of hyperspace, but he didn't have his own communicator, and he was somehow afraid to ask Knight Martin for one. The man had turned oddly silent and stern the moment they stepped on board the small ship, and spent very little time where Obi-Wan could run across him. Perhaps he was meditating in his cabin, or doing katas, or some other Jedi thing. Obi-Wan didn't really care, except that he wished he felt comfortable enough with the strange Knight to ask for a comlink.

It would have to wait until they got back to the Temple. They would be there soon, Obi-Wan knew. Already he could feel the slight shift in the engines as they prepared to leave this reality of whizzing time and swirling space. Soon, he reminded himself again. Soon.

The intercom on the wall crackled. "Obi-Wan." It was Knight Martin's voice, as calm and implacable as always, a voice that was not meant to be defied. "Come to the cockpit. We're going to drop into realspace soon, and you'll enjoy the sight more from up here."

Obi-Wan sighed and hauled himself heavily to his feet. It didn't really matter to him, but he had no wish to get on Knight Martin's bad side, even with the smallest rebellion. Though his sense of the Force had been chaotic and discordant for days, somehow he knew that that was a bad idea. It made no sense, for surely as soon as Xanatos claimed him, Andros Martin would no longer be a factor in his life. But he didn't have the energy to question it.

He made his way slowly up the gangway to the forward cabin, and entered just in time to see the blurs and streaks of hyperspace freeze for a moment, then snap into the clear image of a planet dead ahead. For a moment he stared listlessly, unimpressed by the sight. It wasn't Bandomeer, and it wasn't Thyferra, and right now that was all that mattered to him. But after a moment he blinked in surprise, and stared harder, sudden alarm stirring in his chest. This planet was not bright with metal and lights, covered with manmade structures. It was dark red with streaks of green that was almost black, and the sunside seemed to glow with heat.

It wasn't Coruscant.

"I don't understand." Obi-Wan turned toward the man who stood behind the co-pilot's seat, and recoiled in shock. Andros Martin wasn't wearing Jedi garments, no brown robe and cream tunic, no lightsaber on his belt. His trousers were sleek and black, his tunic an open-necked ripple of a hundred shades of blue in decadent swirls, and his face was shaven, revealing the sharp angles and planes. He looked more comfortable in this attire. And he was smiling.

Obi-Wan stared at him with wide eyes, trembling a little in confusion and sudden, surging fright. Something was wrong, but his sluggish mind could not make sense of it.

"Do you recognize me, boy?" Martin's voice was smooth, strong, amused, completely unlike the calm Jedi who had come to visit the Jinns. "You were practically out of your head the last time we met, but I thought you might remember me. We had quite a memorable little chat, didn't we?"

Obi-Wan stumbled back a step, his hand automatically raising to cover his jaw as phantom pain blazed there. Those long, slender fingers that hung so comfortably at Martin's waist . . . they had held his face, wrenched him around, hurt him, made him listen to words he didn't understand through the fever rushing in his head and under his skin. "I . . . I . . ."

Martin smiled, slowly and lazily, the content grin of a felinoid with a squealing, struggling rodent trapped under her paw. "You fought me very hard, boy. It was entirely instinct, of course, but you somehow managed to Force-shove me away and jump out of the speeder. I watched you roll in the dirt and rocks, then stumble to your feet and try to run. I was very displeased, little one."

"Why . . ." Obi-Wan could not form the words.

"Why didn't I catch you then? We lost track of you, clever little Jedi. You hid yourself in trailings that obscured your infrared signature, and I had no bond to track you with. We wouldn't have given up so easily, but then another speeder roared into the area, and that meddler Jinn jumped out and started calling your name. I knew another opportunity would arise, and chose the better part of valor in departing for a time."

The blood roared in Obi-Wan's ears, and his knees felt watery. He leaned back against the console behind him, then pushed himself upright. He called on the Force, which rushed to his aid like a wave of light, pushing back the terror, enveloping him in peace. He should have meditated, he understood now. He should have found his center and made sure this was right path before he made his choice. It was too late now, but the Force did not abandon him for his foolishness.

He faced the man calmly, his hands at his sides. "What now? Why go to so much trouble for one worthless initiate?" Why do you want me when no one at the Temple did?

"Why, my dear boy, don't you know the price a Force-sensitive slave will bring?" Martin stepped forward, still grinning, and Obi-Wan was trapped in the corner. How he wished for his lightsaber, left in the Enrichment Zone. But he held himself steady, though he could not prevent a flinch when the man's hand flashed forward.

But there was no blow, no surging pain. Obi-Wan heard a distinct click, felt it vibrate through his entire body. And then the Force did abandon him, and he sank to his knees, struggling to breathe. Martin—was that even his name?—stood over him, waiting patiently, while Obi-Wan raised a trembling hand to feel the cold metal that encircled his neck.

"Don't fight it," the man said in a kind, cool voice that made the boy squirm, crouching down to lift his chin with one finger, forcing him to look into eyes that sparkled with glee. "You're young. Thirteen. You'll learn. It would be harder if you were older, but you're small and weak enough that your new master won't have a great deal of difficulty breaking you. Consider it a blessing."

Obi-Wan shuddered and opened his lips to protest the age he was given, as usual, but had to close them again, swallowing a sob. Martin was right. He'd forgotten.

Today was his birthday.