Ahsoka stepped straight up to Qui-Gon and punched him in the face.
"Ahsoka!" Anakin was too shocked to know what else to say. Qui-Gon was a hero to him, the man who had rescued him from slavery and believed in him when no one else had. How could Ahsoka possibly believe that punching him would be an acceptable thing to do?
He grabbed Ahsoka's arm, pulling her away from Qui-Gon. "Do you even know who that is, Snips?"
Ahsoka stared at him defiantly. "Of course I do! That's Master Jinn."
Anakin started to continue, to ask her why, if she knew who he was, she punched him at all, when Ahsoka continued, "He's the one who renounced Master Obi-Wan in front of the whole Council!"
The obvious outrage in her voice took Anakin aback. What was she talking about? Master Qui-Gon had renounced Obi-Wan? "When?"
She rolled her eyes at him. "Every Initiate knows that story. The older kids used to tell it in the crèche to the babies to scare them. I mean, what could be worse than your master telling the whole council that he's found a new Padawan, and he doesn't want you anymore?"
With a slowly dawning sense of horror, Anakin realised he knew exactly when that had happened. He'd never thought about it like that before, but yes, Qui-Gon had thrown away his Padawan for a new one.
Ahsoka continued to explain, not noticing Anakin's distress. "Not everyone knows that it was Master Jinn, but I looked it up, because I–" She hesitated for a moment, then forged ahead. "I wanted to be sure I never ended up with that Master."
"Ahsoka..."
She must have misinterpreted his tone, because she immediately leant forward, montrals twitching. "Don't worry, Master, I never told anyone. I know Master Obi-Wan wouldn't want anyone to know. I wouldn't if it had happened to me. They might still be able to find it in the archives," she gave him a mischievous smile, "but they'd have to look pretty hard. I sliced in and took it off the main server. Only someone who really wants to know can find it now."
Anakin closed his mouth. There didn't seem to be any point in saying he hadn't even known about it until she'd mentioned it, and it had never occurred to him how Obi-Wan might have felt that day. Instead, he told her, "Good work, Snips."
"Young Knight, if you're done, would you be able to tell me where I am?" A gently amused voice came from behind him.
Anakin startled. Usually he was excellent at keeping his awareness up at all times, but the combination of Ahsoka's surprise punch and the almost forgotten but still familiar sense of Qui-Gon's Force presence had obviously caused his awareness to slip. "That might be a little difficult, Master Jinn. I don't think this is somewhere you're familiar with."
Ignoring his mixed disappointment and pride that Qui-Gon hadn't recognised him, he wondered what an accomplished Jedi Master like Qui-Gon might have managed to overhear from that conversation. If he'd heard anything about 'Master Kenobi', that would might even be enough to give away just how unfamiliar things had become.
Qui-Gon looked at him for a long moment, then suddenly chuckled. "Time travel?"
Anakin's mouth dropped open. "How...?"
"The Living Force feels different here. Dark, in a way I've never felt before, like a sapling wilting under a cloud of ash." Qui-Gon's face took on a thoughtful expression. "It seems I was right about the Sith returning."
"Yeah, and now they're everywhere," Ahsoka muttered bitterly. She was still glaring at Qui-Gon, even if she had looked momentarily impressed when he had figured out the time travel so quickly.
"How far in the future have I come?" Qui-Gon asked, apparently choosing not to comment on Ahsoka's hostile demeanour. "You seem to know my name, so it must not have been too far."
Anakin's comm beeped.
Anakin turned aside to answer it, grateful for the delay. How did you tell a man that he was supposed to be dead? "Anakin here."
"Anakin, we'll be dropping on your position with reinforcements in just under thirty minutes," Obi-Wan's voice came smoothly through, the faint echo of the comm unable to hide his distinctive accent. From the corner of his eye, Anakin saw Qui-Gon frown. "Have your men ready to receive us."
"Yes, O–" Anakin hesitated. "Yes, we'll be ready."
"Anakin?" Obi-Wan's voice lowered. "The Force is unusually unsettled in this area. It might be a sign of something dangerous. Be careful."
"Yes, Master." Anakin shut off the comm connection.
He turned to Ahsoka, ignoring Qui-Gon for the moment. "Tell Rex that reinforcements will be coming in thirty minutes, and to start preparing the injured for transport."
"Yes, Master," Ahsoka nodded and quickly disappearing amongst the lush trees.
Finally, he turned back to Qui-Gon. "You probably have questions, but they'll have to wait. I need to organise my men." Anakin began walking back towards the camp, hoping Qui-Gon would follow. Fortunately, the other Jedi did.
They walked together through the forest, leaves crunching under their feet. Anakin stayed silent, not knowing what to say. Qui-Gon had made such a huge impact in his life, but he didn't know if Qui-Gon remembered him at all. Then again, Qui-Gon may have just not recognised him. For all that Qui-Gon still looked the same as he had twelve years ago, Anakin was far from the little boy he had been.
"The Galaxy has become much changed from my time," Qui-Gon commented.
Anakin nodded tersely. "We're at war. The entire galaxy is at war, and the Jedi are the only ones doing anything about it. We're dying more and more every day, but the politicians can't make up their minds to stop it."
"I've lived through war before, though never one as widespread as this. One of my Padawans even left the Order to fight in one." Qui-Gon's face clouded over with what was obviously a troubling memory.
Anakin, contrastly, perked up. Obi-Wan had never told him much about his time as Qui-Gon's Padawan, but he had said enough of Anakin to know that Obi-Wan was his third Padawan, and the one before him had left the Order under unpleasant circumstances. Maybe this was the perfect time to find out.
Striving to be casual, he said, "Sounds like something my Padawan might do, she's reckless enough. That what yours was like?"
Qui-Gon chuckled, shaking his head slowly. "Reckless? Oh, yes. Also foolhardy, hot-tempered, and self-sacrificing to the point of ridiculousness. Before I even took him on as my Padawan, he tried to save my life and hundreds of others by blowing up the slave collar he was wearing." He flicked a quick glance over at Anakin. "Hopefully slavery no longer exists by this time, but in my time, they use to fit slaves with collars to blow them up if they tried to escape. My Padawan was willing to give his life to save the others, and that was when he wasn't even yet thirteen."
Anakin swallowed down his instinctive angry retort to any mention of slavery, reminding himself that Qui-Gon didn't know, that he should save his anger for where it would do more good. Instead, he focused on this Padawan, who was reckless and angry and had been a slave. A voice inside traitorously whispered that maybe that Padawan should have been his master instead.
"So how did he end up in a war?" Anakin asked loudly, trying to dismiss the unworthy thought. He was happy to have had Obi-Wan as his master, he really was. He just wondered sometimes what it would have been like to have someone who understood, instead of always being the perfect Jedi.
"The planet itself was at war, their two peoples fighting each other. There was a group trying to bring peace, reunite the planet. They called themselves the Young." Qui-Gon looked terribly sad. "My Padawan believed in their cause, and their leader. He wanted the Jedi to help them." He bowed his head. "I told him it was not our fight, and that we should go home. My dear friend had been injured and I let my worry for her cloud my better judgement. I told my Padawan to either come with me back to the Temple, or leave the Jedi."
"So he left," Anakin concluded. He had to admit to being slightly disappointed. If the worst thing this Padawan had done was leave the Order for love and the chance to fight for peace, why had Obi-Wan always refused to talk about him? What was so bad about love?
"He did," Qui-Gon confirmed. "But then the leader of the Young was killed, and he saw it happen. After that, the only way for the planet to heal and the fighting to stop was for him to contact the Jedi for help. It was one of the bravest things I've ever seen him do, not that I saw it that way at the time."
Anakin scowled, once again confused by this mysterious Padawan. If leaving the Order for love and to fight a war was not the reason Obi-Wan refused to talk about him, what was? Of course, it could just be Obi-Wan's general unwillingness to discuss Qui-Gon at all, but Anakin wanted it to be more than that. He wanted to hear all the stories that Qui-Gon could tell him, everything Obi-Wan had never discussed, and wonder what it would have been like to have known this Padawan. Already, Anakin was starting to feel a connection to the Padawan and his adventures. He understood what it was like to be a slave, how it felt like to betray everything for someone you love. Obi-Wan could never understand that.
"I didn't trust him for a long time after that." Qui-Gon had continued his reminiscing, regardless of the wandering attention of his audience. Their wearing trudge through the forest continued on, showing no signs of reaching the camp soon. Even Anakin, who knew that their camp was less than thirty minutes away, still felt like they could keep walking forever and never reach it. "If he'd left the Order once, I didn't trust that he wouldn't do it again. I'd already had one Padawan leave the Order, and I refused to let another Fall."
Anakin frowned slightly. He'd always remembered Obi-Wan saying that Qui-Gon had once had a Padawan who had left the Order, not that he'd had two. Of course, he could just be remembering it wrongly – it had been a long time since he and Obi-Wan had talked about Qui-Gon, and even longer since they had managed to do it without an argument.
Obi-Wan still didn't know that Anakin knew that Obi-Wan hadn't wanted to train him. It was only because it was Qui-Gon's dying wish that he had ever agreed. Anakin wasn't supposed to know that, but having once overheard it when eavesdropping on Obi-Wan talking with his friends a few years into his apprenticeship, he'd never forgotten it. At first he'd felt betrayed, then angry. That was when he'd started telling Obi-Wan that Qui-Gon would have been a better teacher, thinking to himself that Qui-Gon was the one who had actually chosen him, and Obi-Wan's already infrequent mentions of Qui-Gon became vanishingly rare. Even though Anakin was now a Knight in his own right, with a Padawan of his own, it was still a sore spot between them.
Fleetingly, Anakin wondered if having the man himself appear from the dead would make that better, or draw the divide still deeper.
"Master!" Ahsoka bounced out of the trees with a eager smile, coming to a stop in front of them. She fixed Qui-Gon with a cool nod and an even cooler, "Master Jinn," before turning to Anakin. "Master, the reinforcements have just deployed, and the injured are ready for transport. Rex wants to know what to tell Master O–"
"Tell Rex not to worry, I'll tell my Master myself," Anakin interrupted her. Qui-Gon didn't need to know just yet exactly who his former Master was. Yes, Qui-Gon had been his hero when he was nine, but that was a very different time. This was war, and a word in the wrong ears could spell disaster.
Ahsoka was very obviously sceptical, but with another chilling look towards Qui-Gon, she did disappear back into the jungle to go tell Rex.
"Your Padawan is clearly holding a grudge," Qui-Gon commented.
Anakin picked up on the implied question, but didn't know how to explain without having to explain who he was, and that maybe it wasn't as much past his time as Qui-Gon thought. Besides, the part of him that still saw Qui-Gon as the hero who had saved him and believed he could win even without any proof still wanted Qui-Gon to recognise him without being told. If he explained things now, that would never happen.
"When we get to camp I can introduce you to Rex," Anakin said instead. "He's my second in command, and you can stay with him while I talk to my Master."
Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow, but did not comment.
Finally, they could hear the sounds of the camp up ahead. Without further talk, they pushed ahead, coming past the last layer of trees into the clear area of the campsite. Anakin saw Qui-Gon falter for a moment at the sheer scale of men, ships, and equipment, but it wasn't until he reached Rex that he understood why Qui-Gon might have been unsettled. After nearly two years of war, Anakin was used to the uncanny similarities of the clones to the point that he didn't even think about it. They all felt different in the Force, after all, and there were enough differences in styling and grooming choices that he never mixed them up. For Qui-Gon, though, who had never heard of the Clone Wars, it would have been a shock.
"Anakin!"
Anakin immediately winced. Whatever he had been hoping would happen next, this was the exact opposite. Obi-Wan had already arrived, and Ahsoka was bringing him straight towards them.
Obi-Wan came a few steps closer, then stopped, saying something quietly to Ahsoka before cautiously continuing forward.
"You seem to have brought an unusual friend with you, Anakin!" he called as soon as he was close enough.
Anakin barely stopped himself from facepalming. He knew that teasing tone in Obi-Wan's voice, the one that always meant he was spoiling for a fight. No matter how well Obi-Wan hid it, Anakin knew that his old master loved a fight nearly as much as he did, and having found what he probably thought to be a Jedi imposter would be enough reason to start one.
"He's not an imposter, Master." He tried to think of an explanation, something that would convince Obi-Wan that this was the real Qui-Gon Jinn, but nothing seemed like enough. Anakin couldn't even really explain why he believed it. Qui-Gon just felt right in the Force, exactly as he had over a decade ago on Tatooine. His voice, his stance, his Force presence, all of it matched what it was then, and Anakin couldn't help but believe it. Still, he knew that wouldn't be enough to convince Obi-Wan. He'd have to find something else to convince Obi-Wan that this was the real Qui-Gon Jinn.
"Padawan?" Qui-Gon breathed, sounding absolutely shocked.
Then again, maybe Qui-Gon could convince Obi-Wan himself. "Qui-Gon Jinn, this is my Master." Anakin smirked. "Master Obi-Wan Kenobi."
Obi-Wan's brows drew together sharply. The teasing sparkle in his eyes had disappeared, replaced with an equally familiar look of reproof and hidden pain. "Anakin, I don't know how you managed this, but this isn't funny."
"I told you, Master, this is the real Qui-Gon!" Anakin protested. His temper started to flare at Obi-Wan's disbelief. Sure, it seemed impossible, but this was far from the first time they'd encountered seemingly impossible things! If Obi-Wan could just trust him for once, this would be much smoother.
"Have I not taught you, Obi-Wan, that all things are possible in the Force?" Qui-Gon unexpectedly added his support. "Search your feelings, my young apprentice."
Obi-Wan closed his eyes for a moment, and Anakin could feel him pushing at Qui-Gon's Force presence, testing it to see if he was who he said he was. Finally, Obi-Wan opened his eyes, letting his hand finally fall from the lightsaber at his belt. "Master," he whispered, eyes soft.
Anakin's discomfort at his former master's obvious grief was enough to dissuade him from teasing Obi-Wan about being wrong. Time travel was hardly easy to believe, after all, even if it was barely less surprising than some other things they'd seen by this point.
"You've grown up, Padawan," Qui-Gon said warmly. He sidestepped Anakin to move closer to Obi-Wan. "In my time, you're still my Padawan, the little imp who will argue with me over everything." He glanced back to Anakin. "Though I can see you've got an imp of your own now. And one remarkably good at secret-keeping, too – even when I was telling him all about your adventures, he never let on that he was your Padawan."
Anakin blinked. When had Qui-Gon said anything about Obi-Wan? He'd only talked about his Padawan, one that had left the Order, fought in a war, fallen in love...
Anakin let the conversation pass him by, too dazed by the revelation that had just struck him to concentrate on anything else. That had been Obi-Wan?!
Surely not. The Padawan that Qui-Gon had described was reckless, brave, hot-tempered and stubborn. And even if Obi-Wan did fit a few of those, that Padawan had left the Order, and Obi-Wan would never do that! He loved being a Jedi too much to ever leave, especially not for something like love. Obi-Wan always said that Jedi had to release their emotions, and leaving the Order to fight a war was the exact opposite of that! It couldn't be true.
"That wasn't you, was it, Master?" Anakin asked, utterly ignoring whatever conversation Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon had been having. "You never left the Order, did you?"
He barely noticed Ahsoka's gasp. She had arrived at some point while he wasn't paying attention, but that didn't matter right now. She wasn't the one he needed answers from.
Obi-Wan flinched and looked down. "That was a long time ago," he said lowly. "I felt sure it was the will of the Force at the time. In hindsight, though..."
Qui-Gon brushed his fingers against Obi-Wan's shoulder. "Because of you, they had peace, Padawan." He looked affectionately down at Obi-Wan.
Anakin's gaze stayed focused in on Obi-Wan, the first flames of anger starting to ignite in his stomach. Anger always came to him faster than it should, but there was always so much to be angry about. How could Obi-Wan keep something like this from him? "And being a slave?" he spat. "Was that the will of the Force too? Was it the will of the Force that you not tell me anything?"
Obi-Wan's gaze came up sharply. "Anakin!"
"You never told me you knew what it's like to have your freedom in someone else's hands! Or have an explosive tied to you, so that if you escape, you die," he snarled, the heat of his anger flushing his cheeks. His fists clenched, keeping his power all bottled up inside. "At least yours was a collar, not implanted inside you!"
Obi-Wan's mouth dropped slightly open.
Anakin was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the way Ahsoka and Qui-Gon were staring at him. He'd never really told Ahsoka about his childhood as a slave, and though he'd assumed she picked up some of it from Temple gossip, he'd never confirmed that assumption. And Qui-Gon, or at least this Qui-Gon, hadn't known he'd been a slave at all.
"It wasn't the same," Obi-Wan finally said. 'Yes, I was a slave, but only for a few weeks, and the whole time I knew where I had come from and what I could do. How could I try and compare that with having lived and grown up in slavery for years? My experience was so much less, to compare them would be to belittle everything you'd survived through."
Anakin hadn't considered that. He'd felt so betrayed at the idea that Obi-Wan had been hiding things from him, something so important as having been a slave, that he hadn't stopped to consider why Obi-Wan might have been hiding it.
Obi-Wan must have seen the realisation in his face, and his voice softened as a result. "What would you have thought if I had tried to tell you that I understood what it was like to be a slave? If I had compared your lifetime of experience with my few weeks? Would you really have seen that as a connection, or just me trying to talk to you about something I couldn't really understand?"
Anakin could admit to himself that in the long run, he probably would have resented Obi-Wan for it, trying to compare two very different experiences, but that didn't mean Obi-Wan should have hidden it. "You still could have told me," he protested, hearing the whine that crept into his tone but unable to stop it. "Even if it wasn't the same, it would have been something."
"It's not something I like to talk about, Anakin. Especially then." Obi-Wan didn't glance over at Qui-Gon, but his meaning was still clear. In the wake of Qui-Gon's death, any memories associated with him had been painful. Anakin had felt the same about his mother, and still did.
Ahsoka, who had been very quiet up to that point as she watched her Master and Grandmaster argue, finally spoke up. "Masters, the troops would have boarded the transports by now. Should I tell Captain Rex we're ready to go?"
"Go for it, Snips." Anakin gestured her off. "We'll be right behind you."
With a jaunty wave at them, and another cool glare for Qui-Gon, Ahsoka headed over to the troop transports. The other three followed more slowly, Anakin and Obi-Wan pulling ahead as they talked over what would need to happen next.
"Did something... happen, between Qui-Gon and Ahsoka?" Obi-Wan asked carefully. "She seems to have taken a distinct dislike to him."
"Yeah." Anakin had nearly managed to forget about that one, after everything else that he had learnt since then. Today had been a day of far too many revelations. "That one's your fault, Master."
"My fault?" Somehow Obi-Wan managed to sound both confused and offended, with a slight touch of 'you obviously have no idea what you are talking about'. "I thought Qui-Gon was dead until about twenty minutes ago."
Anakin brushed the dark humour aside. "Not something now, from back when Qui-Gon told the council he was going to train me. Ahsoka saw it as him renouncing you, and she wasn't happy about it." He tried for a smile, but didn't think he really pulled it off. "For some reason, she actually likes you, Obi-Wan."
"Probably the novelty of having a Jedi Master who actually knows what they're doing around," Obi-Wan snarked in return, but he looked distracted. "Really, though, that was such a long time ago."
Anakin desperately hoped that maybe Obi-Wan would just leave it at that. After all the revelations he'd had today, it would be so much easier if he could lay one of them quietly aside to think about later, or even better, never. Whatever Ahsoka had said, surely it wasn't such a big deal? Nobody had mentioned it since. Maybe she'd just misinterpreted. It's not like she'd been there.
In the next moment, Obi-Wan crushed those hopes. "I'm not sure Qui-Gon even noticed that's what he was doing. He was so eager to start training you."
Somehow, that didn't quite mesh with Anakin's memories of Qui-Gon. Even as a nine-year-old he'd noticed that Qui-Gon did reckless or ill-advised things not because he didn't notice they were reckless or ill-advised, but that he knew exactly what they were and did them anyway. The few stories Obi-Wan or his friends had shared with him after Qui-Gon's death only made that opinion more firm.
Anakin realised that Obi-Wan was looking at him with a measure of concern, and frantically thought back to what part of the conversation he must have just missed. There didn't seem to be anything–
"I never blamed you, Anakin, really. I was angry, but not at you. You were a child who had been taken far from home, away from everyone you knew. It wasn't your fault that Qui-Gon didn't want to keep training me after he'd met you."
Anakin's mouth dropped open. He stopped walking.
"Anakin?" Obi-Wan's expression of concern morphed into exasperation. "Really, there's no need to be so dramatic. We do still have a war to be winning."
Anakin hadn't yet overcome enough of his shock to be able to move.
"I suppose I'll just have to let Rex know that his General couldn't come yet, he was too busy standing in the middle of a war-zone with his mouth gaping wide enough to fit a gundark. I'm sure he and Ahsoka will be very understanding."
The subtle threat of merciless teasing at the hands of his Padawan and commander was enough to get Anakin moving again, though he still couldn't quite manage actual words.
Finally he managed to splutter, "Why didn't you tell me!"
Obi-Wan's brow rose quizzically. "Tell you what?"
"Tell me that Qui-Gon renounced you? That he threw you aside so he could train me, the Chosen One?" Anakin spat the title bitterly, anger rising with each new word. Why wouldn't Obi-Wan ever just tell him things? Palpatine would say it was almost like Obi-Wan wanted to keep him in the dark, and right now, Anakin agreed with that.
Obi-Wan turned quickly to look behind them, scowling at what he saw. "Anakin. This is not the time. We seem to have lost Qui-Gon somewhere, and a missing Jedi Master from the past is slightly more important right now." He turned to hurry back to where Qui-Gon should have been, tossing over his shoulder, "And Anakin? I didn't think I had to tell you about an event where you were present the entire time."