4. A Jedi's Test
The Ebon Hawk sailed smoothly through the velvety blackness towards Onderon. Some people could stare in the star-studded space for hours, mesmerized, but it made Atton restless. So restless, in fact, that he decided to stretch his legs. He walked the length of the ship, once, twice. T3-M4 buzzed through the walkways, but that was it. "Sleeping or something," Atton thought, and decided to grab a bit from the mess-hall. It was not that he was hungry; it was that he was, well, restless. A soldier eats and sleeps when he can. Yet, despite his intentions, his legs carried him through the galley, and to the door of the medical bay. There he stopped and lean his back against the doorframe. Mesmerized, like some of those stargazers. Disciple and Quinly were at it. Again. What was that about meditation that the Jedi enjoyed it so much? He tried a few times, when the Master trained him, and he liked sleeping far better.
"Having a case of meditation envy?" that Mira woman's cheerful voice spooked Atton enough for him to bump his head against the steel frame.
"No, why? It's excruciatingly boring." Then the words popped out before he thought it through: "He's boring too, isn't he?"
Mira cocked her head to one shoulder and gave the oblivious young man a good one-over. "Lovely hair, bright eyes, artistic hands, and eager to know loads of things that are of no use to anyone."
"That's what I've thought. Boring," Atton concluded.
Mira chuckled: "Better than you, bully-boy. What did you do that's so special? I was only here for a bit, but all I've seen out of you is whining and griping and—"
"Alright, enough. Enough, already!" Atton put his hand up to stay the woman's verbal onslaught. Her explosive personality was a stark contrast with Quinly's serene ways, yet the intensity was the same if it made any sense. Serenity, such a tease.
"-and sulking!" Mira wasn't finished with him. "And what's with this… this gleaning? What's wrong with you anyway?"
Atton stared at her completely bedazzled: "What's with what?" Mira exhaled angrily: "Look, don't you play me," she stuck her thumb at Quinly, "This woman already wears a sack, and doesn't even bother to belt it. Can she be any more obvious save for breathing ice every time she opens her mouth? And yet you, all of you, can't bother to clue in?"
Atton felt Quinly stir, and started to back away from Mira. The last thing he needed was Quinly hearing any of this nonsense.
"You're every kind of crazy, girl. Have it your way, I am leaving. I am going to go and check the navicomp, and grab a bite—"
"You do that," Mira chuckled, with a change of mood as sudden as a cryoblast. Change of a mood or not, she apparently couldn't resist taking a parting shot: "And take a shower while you are at it!"
"Maybe I will," Atton muttered through his teeth and charged toward the cockpit.
"Make it a very cold one!" Mira said in a sing-song voice behind him.
That wasn't such a bad idea, really. Mira did not get it, did not know it, despite her street smarts. The thing was the war made away with your notions of what comes first. The drummer's beat becomes deafening, and food, shelter and all the other niceties don't matter no more. Nothing's left to a man that matters but survival and victory.
Yet, he had time, and the body needed its lessons to fight on, to resist.
So Atton stood under the running water, and turned the dials to the coldest extreme. As the water poured down his head and shoulders, he braced himself for the chill, but none came. He shifted, letting the relentless jet pour down the back of his neck. Still nothing. Oh, blazes. He reached inwards, fumbled and found the switch in his mind that he had locked, unknowingly. Atton took a deep breath in, relaxed… and felt the cold as acutely as ever. The Jedi tricks, curse it! Atton waited till the shivering grew uncontrollable, and shut the water down. He stepped out to rub the chill off with a stiff towel. A few dozen of push-ups while the blood pumped high through his veins, and he would be done. Unless…
Reluctantly, Atton extended hand for his lightsaber. The sword came, eagerly. He fell into a form that Quinly worked with him another day. Pure Pazaak. The Force that bound them, the man and the sword, was flowing unrestricted without the barrier of the armor. It was worth considering, he supposed. He tried the drill again. Same thing. And the lightsaber reminded him of Quinly's eyes; same color, same cold light. That benighted Mira with her innuendo! He was fastening his armor defiantly, when the communicator beeped. It was time to return to the cockpit.
Last time they had been to Dxun it was a far more exciting arrival. Running away under fire, crashing into the softness of the jungle world, and coming face to face with a bunch of savage Mandalorian warriors. This time the Mandalorians called them in, and lined up to meet them. Peaceful-like. A very strange landing, indeed.
Quinly was the first of the ship and surveyed everyone. Her eyes stopped on him, and she said in her General voice: "Atton, you will take Bao-Dur and Disciple, and head for the Sith tomb to put a stop to their search. The rest of us will need to infiltrate Onderon and bail out Talia."
The huge warlord, styling himself as the Mandalore guffawed: "Three, Quinly. I have a Basilisk droid fixed up for the drop, but it will only take three." She squinted, against the sun, taking no more than a split-second to change the plans: "Visas and Kreia then. This is Jedi business."
She swept round, getting ready to get back to the Hawk. Then she's changed her mind, turned towards him. "Walk with me," she mouthed under her breath and led the way to the edge of what served as their landing pad. The Mandalorians roughly hacked away the jungle greenery, and everything, every cut blade of grass; every spongy trunk now seeped, oozed and rotted in the moist heat. It was overbearing and overwhelming.
"Atton," Quinly said when she was satisfied that they were out of the earshot, "Atton Rand, when you feel the need to talk about me, you will talk to me. Not Bao-Dur, not Disciple, not Mira. Me."
Atton gasped. The last thing he has expected was this. "What, Kreia's digging through my head is not enough?! Now you are listening in onto my private conversations?"
Quinly moved her head a fraction, indicating a denial. "I do not need to hear, Atton. This is a very small ship, and I can see. I see when someone looks at you, looks at me, and back at you again."
He balled his fists. The worst thing of all was that she didn't even sound angry. "Is that why you are sending me sightseeing while you are preparing to take on an army single-handedly? Have I offended?"
Quinly waited, and waited in silence for him to reach the calm. There is no passion, there is serenity. A prompt was barely noticeable, but it helped.
"Atton, I have meditated on the Jedi woman's reasons. I know now why she died and kept you hidden from the Sith."
"What?" Atton asked, not seeing why it had to be dragged to the light just now.
"She did so because you would have made a powerful Sith. Your raw emotions would make you strong in their ways, if you were schooled. Those that feel like you shoot upward like the signal rockets, and there seem to be no stopping them. She shielded you with her life to keep you from it. I do not wish to."
"You want me to add Darth in front of my name?" Atton asked incredulously.
"No," said Quinly, "She tested you, Atton, and you turned away as she has intended and ran," Quinly sighed. "It was a harsh test, but if you were trained properly, you would have been tested again and again and again, to see if you would break. But we are caught in this storm, and I must take a risk. The Sith in that tomb can render anything we do on Onderon useless."
"Trust me," was all Atton could say, his throat going dry. The woman had given him a command, not tried to humiliate him. Quinly fixed him with a calm look. Why did she have to have eyes like this, yellow and green, and slanted?
"With you I send my most beloved student," she said gravely, "you know what it means for a Master to lose a pawdwan. You said so yourself."
Atton winced. He wished he didn't tell her that.
"Where I go," Quinly continued with the same gravity, "I cannot afford a smallest distraction, let alone a tearing of bonds. So you shall wield a power over me, Atton, a power to hurt or kill me, the same you knew of old."
Atton shivered at the memories of pain and the sheer misery of his past. Why could not he fall in with the women that did not twist the world into something bewildering with every word?
"Someone like you would rise very fast and very high with the Sith, yet will fall even quicker and harder than they rise. The staying power rests with the Sith whose emotions are locked away, who could deal pain without feeling it. If the Jedi said a word, she would have avenged herself upon you, a hundred-fold."
Atton shivered, and tried to shake off his unease: "Well that settles it then. I won't join the Sith in that temple, but cut through them noble-like."
Quinly sighed: "Atton, all warnings, no matter how dire, fade in the face of passion and desire. Against all that will feel natural to you in that tomb I have only one thing to offer. There is love without pain, Atton, and you've felt it, though you haven't known. That's the only thing the Jedi way can give you that the Sith's cannot."
And she walked away, unperturbed.