Chapter 17. One Unhappy Jedi Master, Then Two
"You are either a fool or senile, Qui-Gon," a certain Jedi master snapped to himself, setting down a datapad with a thump once he had gleaned everything from it he could. Qui-Gon's latest acquisition was a common street urchin – a former slave – and surprisingly, an already powerful entity in the Force. No doubt taking him under the Jedi wing even if he exceeded the age limit was wise – but the means! Did he truly mean to ruin Kenobi or was the damage merely a byproduct of his obsession with prophecy?
Prophecy was only a tool to fool the gullible or wishful thinking: manipulation with vague hints that could be interpreted in thousands of ways to suit the listener's predisposition.
And a means to hurt the innocent.
Qui-Gon Jinn had been known to irritate plenty of Jedi masters. It was an immutable fact of life to their way of thinking – he would irritate them in the now and he would irritate them in the future. Until recent events he had not utterly baffled nor disgusted any one of them; after all, Jedi prided themselves on tolerant acceptance of even that or who they did not understand.
Mace Windu had been the first.
No longer was Master Windu alone in that distinction.
So, too, was Master Dooku, off-planet. He was not just unhappy, but indignant. The Holonet had carried word of the events on Naboo; discreet inquiry had informed him of the Jedi's unacknowledged role and the breach between master and padawan. He took the latter as a personal affront, for it was Dooku, much to his own surprise, who had long ago urged his former padawan to build a closer relationship with Kenobi. That advice, so strongly rejected when given, had proven correct.
Jinn and Kenobi had become what Dooku had foreseen: a strong team, a credit to the Order. A lineage of which he could be proud, when once he had foreseen only disaster ahead if Qui-Gon continued to keep his padawan at arm's reach. Even Qui-Gon had all but acknowledged – finally – the advice had been sound.
Just before the Naboo mission Dooku had managed to catch up with his former padawan for a long overdue and relatively cordial visit.
Qui-Gon had been feeling his age.
"Obi-Wan," he said ruefully, "soon should face his Trials. I shall miss his companionship, especially since we are too often now separated. I already cherish those times we are not."
"You are fond of the boy." And Qui-Gon had nodded, hearing no condemnation in the words but satisfaction; easily admitting such though there had never been much in the way of open affection in their own relationship.
Dooku had had little patience with affection in those days; such he had believed was a distraction a Jedi could not indulge. His views had only softened over time, not changed, but he had foreseen the need for affection between Jinn and Kenobi for each to achieve what was widely acknowledged to be one of the most successful and creative Jedi teams in decades. He did not see it as a rebuttal of his own earlier views when Dooku and Jinn had been master and padawan but rather that of a master strategist who adapted tactics to fit circumstances.
They had been two different teams, Dooku and Jinn, then Jinn and Kenobi.
Dooku and Jinn had made an effective team. They respected each other, but their relationship had been little more than teacher and student. An indulgent master would have encouraged Qui-Gon to waste even more precious time on things and beings not related to his training. Or to his duty.
An affectionate master, Dooku had believed, was an indulgent one.
His padawan hadn't needed spoiling, but a firm hand: discipline, not affection. He had been far too easily distracted and sidetracked by some need of the moment. Maturity would tame those tendencies; his knighting would see them under his control or eliminated. Knight Jinn might choose occasionally to immerse himself in the Living Force; if so, it would be a conscious choice and not an uncontrollable urge.
Dooku could now admit that a mild affection had crept into their relationship long before Qui-Gon's knighting, an affection he had kept under strict control during their years together. Years later, their relationship remained little changed in practice: it had remained amiable, but emotionally distant.
Dooku had been relegated to the outer fringes of his former padawan's life and thus to both of his grand-padawans' lives and training as well.
And so he had watched helplessly, unable to intervene, as affection had led to indulgence.
That he had been correct did not please Dooku. Qui-Gon had treated Xanatos as a favored child, only to have his heart shattered by betrayal. He had not sown the seeds of his destruction, but he had inadvertently fertilized them with affection.
And suffered.
The Jedi so attuned to life became cut off from life; a shell of a man, rigid in his duty, unbending. Cold. He became – a Jedi and lost – the man he had once been, aloof from emotion, dispassionate, nearly severed from the Living Force that had once so dismayed Dooku and which had proven to be his very sustenance.
Until another boy had somehow snuck undetected through the cracks of the Jedi master's stubborn determination to live a life alone and refused to be dislodged. Qui-Gon had met his match – and simply stopped fighting.
Or as he had explained his change of heart to Yoda, "To save an entire planet, he offered me his life; I would be churlish to refuse it." Qui-Gon had not seen the boy's startled glance at his new master; the sweep of the boy's lashes against his cheek as the words registered, or the biting of the lips that said his joy had fled, replaced by uncertainty and doubt.
Yoda had, and knew the boy now wondered if his apprenticeship was nothing more than repayment of a debt.
The spirited, eager young soul turned himself into a dutiful, self-effacing padawan as Qui-Gon turned into a dutiful, proper Jedi master – but the joy that had once bubbled deep within each soul no longer sparkled in the Force.
Yoda had shared his unease with Dooku not long after. "A good team Qui-Gon and young Kenobi make but – share a harmony of spirit they do not." The little master's hands had tightened on his gimer stick as sorrow glinted within his ancient eyes. "The shadow of Xanatos it is."
Dooku understood what Yoda alluded to – and upon reflection, surprised himself with the realization that this bond needed something few Jedi needed.
Affection.
Not only would this boy thrive on affection if given, but so too would Qui-Gon, and as both thrived, so, too, would the Order and the Force. Affection led only to indulgence if one only took and one only gave.
Unlike Xanatos, affection for this one would not spoil; it would goad to new heights of striving – perhaps too much so, but better to strive to excel than to strive to be spoilt. The Kenobi boy would take affection as a spur to do more, be more, achieve more and Qui-Gon – ah, his padawan would raise a Jedi worthy of the master – and at last live rather than wither away.
The seeds of affection had already been sown yet lay unharvested. Kenobi was more than a debt yet unacknowledged as such.
Yet Dooku had watched the distance widen, not narrow, as Qui-Gon fought to keep the Kenobi boy at arm's length. This boy, this padawan, refused to relinquish his grasp, never abusing his position and giving all that he had for each scrap of attention he was meagerly doled out.
Dooku, like Yoda, had been one of the few to have seen that this otherwise unremarkable boy might someday grow into a remarkable Jedi – with the right master to guide him.
Qui-Gon Jinn had always stood out as one that would make knight with no difficulty; he had radiated strength and potential even as a youngling. Obi-Wan Kenobi at first merely charmed with his innocence and good nature, a boy all but overlooked except by those receptive to the barely imperceptible. Careful scrutiny by those who choose to look deeper revealed unplumbed depths beneath the cloak of ordinariness, small moments that tingled through the Force.
Dooku had dearly wished to claim the boy himself, but the Force had said not yours is he to train, as it had to Yoda. He was to be Jinn's apprentice and Jinn's alone - only Qui-Gon had been deaf to its will, unreceptive to its nudges and blind to the rightness of that pairing intended by the Force.
Because of Xanatos.
With his padawan's obstinate insistence on ignoring first the Force and now his master, Dooku knew not what to do. What to even say or refrain from saying. He knew no longer how to connect to Qui-Gon; that strand had never been much than a bond of convenience, of necessity. His padawan had always been closer to Dooku's own master, Yoda, but even that old troll had been unable to reach past the shuttered heart and mind. No one had, in part or whole.
Except Kenobi.
Rejuvenation for Qui-Gon's wounded mind and spirit had arrived in the form of this curious and intelligent initiate – too talented to be discarded to the Service Corps yet doomed to such. A waste indeed, Dooku had thought, dismayed as much at the Force's occasional revelations regarding this one as of the Force's tantalizing with no intention of delivering upon that promise.
He should have had more faith in the Force and a young boy who did not accept defeat easily.
With the tenacity and determination of a seasoned knight and the naiveté and pure faith of a young boy, Kenobi had managed to breach the outer walls of the master's defenses. Qui-Gon now no longer stood alone. He stood with Kenobi at his side yet an arm's length apart. He had taken the boy as his learner, of his own free will.
His apprentice, his padawan in title, but granted the position of learner, only learner to the master. The inner walls still held the pain of betrayal in – and away at the same time.
Kenobi had found his place at Qui-Gon's side, but not in his heart.
If Kenobi did not succeed – did not break through those shields - two would suffer. Yoda counseled patience.
Their last true argument had been over the boy.
"You accepted the boy as your apprentice, now treat him with the respect any being deserves, the respect you give all other beings," Dooku scolded, having held his tongue for weeks. He would speak for the Force, since the Force was not getting through to Qui-Gon. "He deserves more than cool indifference; he deserves at least kindness. Even I extended you that courtesy, if not the warmth you felt lacking between us."
Cool eyes had risen to his. No shrug, not even a quirk of his lips – no, not even an acceptance or denial of the words, only a mere acknowledgment that the words had been heard, considered, and duly dismissed. Dooku had long ago let go the admittedly perverse idea this sight was fascinating – much as watching a multi-speeder wreck occur before one's eyes was fascinating and horrible both - to see Qui-Gon show such a pure lack of emotion.
By now he found it disturbing.
No emotion, as if merely discussing the latest vagaries of climate control. This went far beyond Jedi calmness, the "Jedi ideal." Not serenity, no, just pure detachment.
This was not the Qui-Gon he had raised, nor really, the Jedi he had once meant to raise him to be.
The silence, brittle as frozen ice, had finally shattered with calm, quiet words. An explanation, of sorts. Dooku supposed he should count himself lucky for that, at least.
"I do not raise my voice to him; I do not censure and rebuke him for what he does not yet know. I teach him, Master; I do not wish nor need to befriend him."
The voice was just as cool, as impersonal as – as a Jedi maintaining neutrality amongst bickering opponents. Taking no sides, causing no offense…all business and no pleasure. Not the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn…the non-conformist Jedi who had once delighted in much – and now in little.
"What lessons do you teach him, he who is your apprentice but a boy as well? Will you teach him to be a man – or let him learn on his own? What kind of Jedi will you teach him to be? One as you thought me or one as you once were not so long ago?"
"Am I not now the Jedi you tried to mold me into?" The rebuke in the words stung. It held some truth, however minor. Calmly, too calmly, Qui-Gon added, "Xanatos did what you never could – he burnt out all of me that was not 'Jedi.' You should approve of the Jedi I am now."
"I do not," Dooku snapped bluntly. "I took a boy and made a Jedi of him. I was proud that you found a way to be that Jedi and still be Qui-Gon Jinn, my once Living Force-attuned now Force-blind apprentice!"
"I shall train him, Master; I shall not befriend him."
Age had only made Qui-Gon more obstinate. Dooku's lips thinned.
"You shall then be a fool and the ruination of your legacy. You will ruin the both of you – or you will find self-redemption and reward beyond imagination if you do. Can't you see how much of himself he gives to you – gives up for you –and you give him what – silence, faint words of praise? This one will exceed all expectations when he has your support and approval – great Force, Qui-Gon, can you not see for all your penchant for pathetic life forms, you now all but ignore the most pathetic, this boy you seem to barely tolerate?"
With a final sigh, Dooku said softly the last word he would say on the subject, "Give him up, my padawan; he deserves better of you than you seem willing to give."
Yet it had not been until Qui-Gon nearly lost the boy by indifference had he realized what Yoda and Dooku had long seen: the hand of the Force at work. By then all but banished from his padawan's life, Dooku had watched from afar as coldness turned to reserve to warmth. Teacher and student, still, yet finally companions. Friends. And he had been pleased.
Dooku and Jinn, a good team, had led to Jinn and Kenobi, a great team. The lineage of Yoda – Dooku – Jinn – Kenobi – was a proud lineage, a good lineage, a lineage worthy of the Force.
What now of the future – that future the Force had told him each would affect?