A/N: So here we go, more of Obi-Wan's story, told as a flashback in Obi-Wan's point of view so we don't get distracted by Chloe's interruptions (and tangled in a mess of quotation marks!).

Oh, and yes, Matty's still off on assignment, so she won't interrupt Chloe and Obi-Wan, although she is set to meet Obi-Wan later in the fic.

Thanks for continuing to read and review, I really wanted to make this a double chapter post but the next one still isn't edited and I need some sleep, so apologies for the cliffhanger ending (again!).

Chapter Twelve

Gaia

After Obi-Wan had nearly got himself and his master thrown off planet for offending the queen – in a matriarchal society where the women were used to being obeyed, refusing her, of all people, was considered doubly offensive – Qui-Gon stepped in to take his place and that appeared to placate the queen enough to let them stay. He was much closer in age to the queen, and Obi-Wan hadn't really understood why she was more interested in him than his master in the first place.

The two Jedi quickly set out to make contact with the prospectors. Unusually, Obi-Wan thought, they were a wily lot and, as was their right, demanded a written eviction decree from the senate. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan agreed, on the condition that the excavation works halted immediately. Past experience told the Jedi that if the senate took longer than a week or so, the prospectors would start to lose money and in all likelihood start excavating again. Then it would be a simple matter to evict them by force for breach of treaty.

In the mean time, Qui-Gon welcomed the opportunity to spend a few days exploring the planet. Obi-Wan, on the other hand, was impatient to leave. He might have disgraced himself in the eyes of the queen, but that hadn't stopped the advances of the other members of her court, both female and male, and young Padawan Kenobi was still of the opinion that casual sex and Jedi should not mix.

So Obi-Wan took to slipping away after dinner, before the Jamini could get too insistent. In daylight hours the invitations to the "couplings," as they were known - although in fact there was no restriction to two participants - tended to be conservative, and in their own way, Obi-Wan thought, quite charming: hand-written notes, purposefully-dropped handkerchiefs, over-the-shoulder smiles. But once it was dark, once the wine had been flowing for a couple of hours, the whole process degenerated into something more bawdy. Fortunately, everyone was usually too intoxicated by then to notice or care about Obi-Wan's absence.

On one such evening he was walking through the palace gardens, looking for a quiet place to meditate. The air was perfectly still, and scented with a combination of the the light, fresh fragrance of the forest - which lay beyond a rusting gate at the very end of the garden – and the herbs bordering the path on which he was walking. Turning a corner, he noticed a young woman at the opposite side of the garden. She was seated on a bench beneath an arch of white flowers, and Obi-Wan recognised her immediately as Gaia, one of the royal sisters. Although the womenfolk were all of similar appearance, the royal family were all distinguished by a delicate, dark brown web-like pattern extending over the left-hand side of their bodies, or at least the parts of their bodies he had seen.

She was mesmerising.

They were very pale, the Jamini, and Gaia's skin was a translucent, almost greenish white in the moonlight. It was a strange sort of beauty, he thought: delicate, only barely human. The women usually wore their hair tied or twisted into elaborate styles, but that night, Gaia's long curls, as dark as the shadowed forest that rose above the wall behind her, fell loosely to her waist, reminding Obi-Wan of the twisted vines he and his master had hacked through on the trek from the landing site to the city.

Although it was her appearance that first caught Obi-Wan's attention, it was her state of mind that held it. In the palace she had been in the background, and he only noticed her because of the large pendant she wore at her throat. The deep green stone set at its centre was reminiscent of the Adega crystals used in lightsaber construction. Other than that, Obi-Wan remembered she always seemed to be smiling, and often laughing, just like the rest of the Jamini.

But now, alone, she looked forlorn, sad, and fragile.

Obi-Wan felt it too, radiating from her in the Force: a deep, hopeless melancholy. What could be responsible for making her feel that way? He could only assume she must be worried about the damage the prospectors were doing to the forest.

Eventually, she looked up and noticed Obi-Wan staring at her, as he had been doing for at least the past five minutes. Hastily, he apologised, and turned to leave, but she called him back, addressing him by his name, and then speaking, to his great surprise, in Basic.

"Please stay," she said, extending an arm towards him. When he hesitated, still intrigued by her, but ready to deny another invitation, she smiled a little, and reassured him she only wanted to talk.

Cautiously, he joined her on the bench, and asked how she had learned the language of the Core Worlds. The two Jedi had relied on a protocol droid to communicate with the Jamini up until that point, assuming the planet's population had no reason to know – no exposure at all – to Basic. But Gaia told Obi-Wan she had found some data pads in their library, left behind by Dalion Rea, and she had taken every opportunity to study the information they contained, learning about the languages, customs and society of systems at the centre of the Republic. She would be fascinated, she said, to learn more from the Jedi while they were on Jamin.

Seating beneath the arch of flowers, they spoke for a long time about Coruscant, and about the Jedi. Gaia had many questions, although she struggled a little when her grasp of the language faltered. She told Obi-Wan how occasionally, she stole away from the evening activities, to study or lose herself in thought, or just in dreams of places beyond her planet. It was only when she eventually fell silent that Obi-Wan remembered her earlier sadness; the Force sensation of melancholy had almost entirely disappeared during their conversation. He told her of his and Qui-Gon's experience with similar matters on other systems, and reassured her that the prospectors would be gone in a few days.

"There is much you do not know about us," she said, quietly, placing her hand over Obi-Wan's. Her skin was cold, he noticed, much colder than the air, colder than the stone bench they were seated on. Obi-Wan asked what, what was it that he did not now, but Gaia removed her hand and remained silent. He sensed the conversation was over, so he wished her a good night, and left.

The following evening he visited the garden again, hoping she would be there, hoping she would tell him more. And he found her, seated in the same place, waiting for him. Again she asked him to stay, and this time encouraged him to tell her about some of the other worlds he had visited. But first Obi-Wan persuaded her to tell him a little about Jamin, for it was as fascinating to him as the rest of the galaxy was to her. So Gaia told him about her upbringing in the palace, about the beliefs and customs of the Jamini, and she told him the names of the plants in the palace gardens, and of the forest vines that curled just like her hair. Obi-Wan commented on the colourful patches amidst the trees he had noticed on the flight in, asking why none of the coloured vegetation was visible from the forest floor.

"The colours are the forest," Gaia said. He waited for her to continue, but she remained silent for a long time. Eventually, just as she had the previous night, she reached for his hand. "The knowledge is sacred. I could be punished for telling you."

But she looked at him with a sort of desperation, as if she wanted to tell him more, and so he closed his hand over hers, and urged her to continue, promising he would keep the information to himself.

"The forest is flowering," she said. "It happens once in several lifetimes. When the flowers fade, the forest dies."

"All of it?"

"All of it," she repeated, quietly, and Obi-Wan felt a shiver run through her body. "Then it will grow again, stronger than before."

He asked what caused the flowering, whether the prospectors could have triggered it.

"Perhaps. It is a sign of other changes that are not expected yet."

Obi-Wan didn't understand what she meant, but she would say no more, and she quickly changed the subject back to his previous missions. But Obi-Wan sensed there was something much deeper and more mysterious about the forest of Jamin, and that the blossoming was somehow linked to whatever was causing Gaia such distress.

Time passed, and still there was no word from the senate. Every few days, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan would travel by speeder to the edge of the excavation site, and carry out covert surveillance of the prospectors, hoping to find evidence that they had started digging again. But they found none.

Then, rumours of strange happenings began circulating the forest city.

A group of Jamini, gathering berries in the forest, were cornered and attached by wild dog-like creatures usually considered docile and almost tame. A man went missing on the way back from a late night tryst with his lover, and no one was able to find any trace of him. Then there was a murder: almost unheard of among the Jamini. Another man – a nobleman, a member of the court - had flown into a rage and killed his neighbour. He was held captive in the palace basement, while the Royal Council debated how he should be punished. Two days later he was discovered dead in his cell. No cause of death could be found.

Every night, Obi-Wan continued to meet Gaia in the gardens, and they would talk until just before dawn. Obi-Wan began to regret that his knowledge of great art, literature and poetry was poor; he felt there was relatively little he could teach her. Nor could he tell her much about the day-to-day life of families in the Core worlds; in many ways his upbringing in the temple had been as strange as hers. When distracted from whatever was troubling her, Gaia was lively and talkative. She laughed with him at the embarrassment he had caused by refusing the queen, and she teased him about his principles, and the passionless life he envisioned for himself as a Jedi. To the Jamini, love and lust, and sexual liasons were a social activity, as entertaining and pleasurable as eating or drinking or playing games. Gaia could not understand why he would want to abstain from them entirely.

But occasionally, Obi-Wan would catch, her lost in thought, staring into the distance, and the feeling of melancholy would deepen. He secretly wondered if she would ask to go with him and Qui-Gon when they left. Fearing that she would, he worried about how he would let her down; the queen seemed unlikely to approve of Gaia leaving, and as a Jedi he could not take her against the queen's will if Gaia's safety was not threatened. He tried to probe gently, to get her to reveal the reason for her sadness, but she seemed unwilling, or too scared, to say any more.

Then, one day, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon had just finished their regular weekly session with the queen, reporting on their latest surveillance mission, which had still failed to find any breach of treaty by the prospectors. Exiting the throne room, they were making their way back to their quarters, when they were passed by a girl being hurried along the corridor by a group of palace servants. Both Jedi could both sense the girl was in pain, and Qui-Gon stopped the group of women, offering to help. The servants tried to hide her from view, but the Obi-Wan saw her belly before it was covered. Looking up, he saw the shock on Qui-Gon's face, and knew his master must have noticed the same thing. It was something on the one hand so natural, and yet, for the Jamini, completely alien: the girl was quite clearly pregnant.

The baby was born that night, far too early, and he did not survive. The next day Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were ordered by the queen's secretary to keep their knowledge a secret; the people were already fearful, and the queen did not want to aggravate them further. Qui-Gon was suspicious that the forest and the Jamini themselves were linked in some way, and he was worried that the damage the prospectors had done might somehow be affecting the Jamini. Obi-Wan agreed, but kept Gaia's confidence and did not reveal what she had said about the blossoming of the forest. Qui-Gon was convinced the prospectors were managing to continue to excavate in secrecy, and decided it was too dangerous to wait for the senate any longer; they could go in and remove the prospectors, by force if necessary.

Over the next few days there were more deaths – all men - and rumours started circulating the palace of more women showing signs of pregnancy. The Jedi travelled again to the prospectors' site to carry out the eviction, but to their surprise found the prospectors had already left. The transmitters attached to their transports showed signals from beyond planetary orbit. The Jedi even carried out an aerial survey of the planet's surface, but found no trace of them. What Obi-Wan couldn't help but notice, though, was that almost all the forest was in now blossom.

On their return, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan went directly to the queen to inform her of their imminent departure. With the prospectors gone, their mission was formally complete. For a planet left in ecological distress the normal procedure would be for the Jedi to request follow-up aid from one of Coruscant's specialist agencies.

Obi-Wan was already saddened at the thought of leaving Gaia; they had grown close through their evening conversations, closer than he should probably have allowed, and now the idea of abandoning her without ever knowing the true cause of her sadness seemed like a betrayal of this new friendship. She always felt so delicate, and so cold when she held his hand, as if she needed his warmth to comfort her. As if she needed his protection.

So the Jedi made their report to the Jedi Council, and were continuing with preparations for departure when the queen summoned them again. As they made their way through the long, high-ceilinged passage to the throne room, Qui-Gon joked that perhaps the queen wanted to give Obi-Wan a chance to redeem himself by accepting her invitation. He laughed about it, but still secretly hoped Qui-Gon was not right. It would be difficult to refuse a second invitation. The queen could be considered beautiful, as Jamini women were, but she was so much older than Obi-Wan, and rather intimidating. To be completely honest he wasn't physically attracted to her at all. He was attracted to someone else of course, to the girl who he had been spending all his evenings with, but at that point he had no intention of acting upon it.

Obi-Wan's brief but unusually self-centered thoughts were interrupted when he and Qui-Gon entered the throne room and found the entire Jamini Royal Council – all ten female elders of the royal family - waiting for them. Seated to one side, and slightly behind, was Gaia. Immediately, Obi-Wan was worried that she was in trouble, that somehow the queen or the council had learned Gaia had revealed sacred information. He tried to make eye contact with her but she would not look at him.

Meanwhile, all the servants had shuffled out of the throne room. One council member checked the windows were shut and another locked the doors from the inside. There was a distinct tension in the room, and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were both wary. The two Jedi both had their hands on their lightsaber hilts when the queen stepped down from the dais on which her throne was positioned, and walked towards them.

Via the Jedi's translation droid, the queen informed them that the Jamini still needed their help. Then she asked Qui-Gon to promise that what she was about to say would be held secret while the Jedi remained on Jamin.

He agreed, and she returned to her throne, then nodded for Gaia to come forward. Qui-Gon was aware of her language skills - he knew Obi-Wan had spoken with her, although not the full extent of their conversations - so he wasn't surprised when she addressed them in Basic.

"They want me to speak to you," she said, her delicate voice barely audible in the large room, "because the information is sacred." She glanced, pointedly, to the droid. Obi-Wan exchanged a glance with Qui-Gon. He understood. The Jamini were afraid the conversation might be recorded. Obi-Wan nodded to Gaia, and deactivated the droid.

Then the queen spoke again. Gaia watched nervously, fiddling with the silver chain of her pendant, before taking her turn to speak.

"I am to tell you exactly what she says," she explained. "Not a word more."

Obi-Wan wished he could smile, or send her some sign of encouragement. But all eyes were focused on him and Qui-Gon. He couldn't risk the Jamini Council's distrust at this delicate moment.

The queen began speaking again, and Gaia translated. "You know something of our normal process of reproduction," she said. "But every two hundred seasons, our womenfolk undergo Yan Mekar." She turned her eyes to Obi-Wan's. "It means The Blossoming."

As the pieces of the puzzle started to fit together, and Obi-Wan remembered the story of the blossoming forest, his mouth went dry. But he tried to clear his mind and pay close attention, because the queen was continuing to speak, and Gaia to translate.

"Those women who are fertile, and who have had the opportunity to be fertilised, become pregnant. It happens in synchrony. The girl you saw a few days ago was the first, but soon there will be many more. The affected women need to travel to the refuge to bear their children safely. It is in the mountains, three days' travel from here. The route is sacred, held in the temple records and passed down through the royal line. Our records show the journey should be simple. Unfortunately, this time, we have a problem. The forest is unsafe."

"The prospectors," Qui-Gon interrupted. "Did their intrusion trigger this?"

Gaia translated his question. The queen nodded and replied. "We fear so," said Gaia. "The blossoming is not expected for another five or six seasons. Our lives are coupled with the forest. Never before in our history has it been considered a dangerous place, but now it appears to have turned against us. Perhaps our bodies are attempting the blossoming now, before the danger increases. In any case, Master Jinn, we need your help to escort the fertilised women to the refuge at the beginning of the next moon cycle."

That was in eleven days' time. Qui-Gon bowed his head. "Then, of course, your Majesty, we will escort them, and do whatever we can to protect them."

His words were relayed back, and the tension in the room eased a little. But as Gaia translated the queen's reminder that this should be kept secret, Obi-Wan was worried. He was certain there was more to this, more than they were telling us. He had one very strong suspicion of what the truth might be, but he could not reveal it to Qui-Gon without breaching Gaia's confidence. There was only one person he could ask.

But, that night, Gaia was not in her usual place beneath the flower arch. Obi-Wan waited for an hour. Then he walked around the gardens for another hour, hoping she would appear. Finally, he returned to his room, shutting his windows against the warm night air, against the usual sounds of revelry coming from the banqueting hall, and against the rather more intimate sounds coming from his master's room next door. The queen no longer seemed interested in Qui-Gon, but another royal sister, another elder considered by many to be the most beautiful woman in court, had been his night-time companion for the past week.

Later that night, Obi-Wan awoke in the process of drawing my lightsaber, alert and ready to attack the intruder he had sensed in his sleep. But he recognised Gaia's little cry of shock immediately, and there she was by the door, her pale face illuminated by the blue glow from my saber blade.

"Are your windows and doors locked?" she whispered, crossing the room.

"Yes," Obi-Wan said, sitting up and placing his saber hilt back on the bedside table. "I waited for you."

Gaia drew the curtains, and the room was thrown into complete darkness. After a moment, the bed sagged as she sat down next to him. "It was too dangerous to meet there. I should not even be here."

"Is it inconceivable that I might have invited you for something other than conversation?" Obi-Wan kept his voice light, trying to lift both his own mood and hers.

Gaia laughed weakly. "Probably. I think you might have finally convinced everyone you are not available. No-one would believe us."

Obi-Wan shivered when she touched his hand. Unthinking, he reached for her in the dark, and pulled her cold body against his, drawing the blankets up around them both. She relaxed against him, and rested her head against his cheek.

"You want to know the truth," she said.

"Yes," he replied.

So she told him. She told him everything.