Scfilover – Definitely an Anakin parallel here. I actually have another story in process where Xanatos is the one who trains Anakin because I liked exploring the similarities in the characters.
gurnius – One of the most fun things in writing this has been sitting down and planning out the ghosts. Marley and Christmas yet-to-come were the easiest. Past was actually the most difficult, but I think Xanatos' mother worked well.
Chapter 3
Xanatos awoke once again, fully expecting to have another apparition hovering over him. Instead, the house was empty and silent. His home felt like a tomb, the cold settling into his bones.
Perhaps the Force had given up on him being teachable; especially given that final memory of the last time he had seen his old master. A part of him wondered where Qui-Gon was now – probably off training a better and brighter pupil, his old apprentice long forgotten.
Xanatos burrowed back down under his blankets, pulling them closer against a chill that permeated straight into his soul. He wondered if he would ever find warmth again.
That was when he heard it.
It started as a slight tapping in the distance. There was a stirring in the Force, tremors of a shielded presence. This ghost didn't want to be sensed. The tapping echoed, reminding him of the ghostly echo of chains and his father's sickly form. That was something he didn't want to face again.
A shadow loomed in his doorway, its large misshapen head cast over the room. Feeling quite childish, Xanatos closed his eyes and pulled his covers over his head.
"Behaving like a youngling are you?"
The gravelly voice caused Xanatos' eyes to snap open. He peeked out from under the covers, looking down over the side of his sleep couch at the small gnome-like creature standing before him, gimer stick – hence the infernal tapping - clenched firmly in a fisted claw.
"Y… Yoda?" Xanatos ventured.
"Expecting someone else were you?" the creature asked, regarding him with obvious amusement.
"No … I …" Xanatos untangled himself from his covers and sat up. "So … so you finally passed into the Force?" Force knew the Jedi master had been old enough.
"Hmph…" Instinctively, Xanatos pulled his legs away from the vicinity of that damned gimer stick at the Jedi master's disapproving grunt. "Dead I am not. As guardian of the present, chosen this form I have."
Xanatos laughed. He wasn't quite sure why. Perhaps it was the stress of the night getting to him. After all, this was the third ghost, or guardian, or whatever it was he had seen in one evening.
"Find this funny do you?" the Jedi master grumbled. "Funny it is not."
"No, it is more the irony of the situation. I never imagined the guardian of the present being the one who had always admonished me to be mindful of my future."
"Live in the moment - Qui-Gon Jinn's motto that was. Would you rather the Force sent him?"
"No," Xanatos said hurriedly, quickly sobering and looking around like his old mentor would jump from the walls at any moment. "No, no, no - that is not necessary."
"Flow from the present the future does … connected … seamless … what happens now affects what will come … never said I that unimportant was the present."
"So I suppose we are going somewhere, seeing as not much is happening here in the present?" Xanatos ventured.
"Not far our first stop is … in Thani."
Xanatos stood and straightened his robes, smoothing his hair in some attempt to look dignified. They were going into the city after all. "Please tell me we aren't walking," he said as he retrieved his lightsaber from his nightstand and dropped it into the pocket on his robe.
Xanatos could have sworn he saw a smile curve the Jedi master's lips as the room began to fade only to coalesce again on a side balcony somewhere on a cramped but cozy street.
"Where is this? I have never been here," Xanatos began.
"Belongs to your employee, Soren, this home does," Yoda replied as he wrapped a claw around Xanatos' fingers and dragged him right through the wall.
They were upstairs in a quiet hallway. Xanatos, still not over the shock of passing through a wall, was just about to lecture Yoda on trespassing when he caught sight of an open door where a young boy was sound asleep. "Tohras … I believe that is his son's name," Xanatos murmured as he approached the door and looked in on the sleeping child. The boy looked just like his father except that his hair burned a fiery red.
Two heated voices drifted from downstairs. Xanatos recognized that belonging to Soren. The other was feminine and filled with unmistakable ire.
"Tessa, be rational about this."
"Rational." A cabinet slammed before words began to bubble out without the angry woman even taking a breath. Xanatos now realized where the red hair came from. "I bite my tongue day after day … and for one day … this one day … I ask you to be home early and you couldn't even do that … and now you ask this of me?"
"I have to go on this trip with Xanatos."
"Festival begins tomorrow … Tohras is looking forward to you being here."
"You think I don't know that?" Soren spat back.
"I gave him the week off," Xanatos posed defensively as Yoda directed a disproving glance toward him from further down the staircase. "Really, I did."
"You said you had the week off," Tessa stated.
"See," Xanatos said with a shrug.
"It was all in his tone of voice," Soren defended. "He gave me the time off but he expects me to be there."
"He asks too much of you," the woman belted out, slamming her hands to the countertop.
"This is where domestication leads. I warned you Soren," the fallen Jedi breathed out.
Xanatos let out a sharp yelp as a gimer stick found its way across his leg.
"The things he has asked you to do," Tessa continued.
"Tess, you seem to forget that I am little more than an over-glorified body guard for a man who really doesn't need anyone to protect him. I was nothing but a common, barely educated thug before I joined ranks with Xanatos. The only thing of value to him that I possess is my loyalty."
Soren's hand went up to caress his wife's face.
"Men like me don't usually get lives like this. We don't marry beautiful, honorable women." His hand fell to her abdomen, which Xanatos realized was noticeably swollen. Soren hadn't told him Tessa was expecting again. "Nor do we raise families or live in comfortable homes. I will do whatever is expected of me so that you don't have to worry another day in your life."
Tessa's shoulders slumped. She was still obviously cross with her husband. Soren ventured his arm around her stiffened spine.
"Come to bed with me. You need your rest and our son needs to not find his father sleeping on the sofa the morning of festival."
"You're still going tomorrow?" she asked, finally leaning in to his embrace.
"Yes," he whispered as he pressed a kiss to her head. "I promise I will make it up to you and Tohras later."
"Finished here we are."
Xanatos tore his gaze away from his employee as Yoda led him back through the wall onto a side street.
Why was it his fault if Soren chose to come on this trip? He couldn't be held accountable for every decision his employees made. Yes, Soren was the most trusted. He had been there from the beginning as Offworld was built from the bottom up and his loyalty had never wavered. Yes, a promotion or at least a title that more reflected his status and loyalty was probably overdue, which was something he could rectify later.
"More to show you, have I."
Xanatos let out a sigh. Hadn't he seen enough? "Where are we going now?" he huffed.
The city streets faded, the moonlit night disappearing and leaving them into the middle of the Jedi Temple of all places. Xanatos drew in a harsh breath, half waiting for something horrible to happen.
"Fall in on you the Temple will not."
"Very funny," Xanatos grumbled. "What are we doing here? I have no connections here anymore."
"Too important a matter … and connected to you it is."
They made their way through the Temple corridors in the direction of the crèche, coming to a stop in front of one of the many small dormitory rooms. Again, they passed through the wall to find two younglings speaking with each other.
One was a young Mon Calamari girl with large eyes and a beautiful, gentle spirit. The other was a boy with soft russet hair and stormy jeweled eyes. He was a powerful pinpoint of light in the Force.
"You weren't going to say goodbye?" the girl asked. Her large silver eyes were filled with tears. "You were just going to leave?"
"I've been assigned to the Agricultural Corps," the boy replied. The pain at that simple admission was thick and tangible. The boy wore despair and humiliation like the clothes on his back, as though he felt something different should be happening but was a slave to circumstances. In fact, it wasn't right. Xanatos could sense the utter wrongness of it through the Force. "I wanted to say good-bye, but . . . "
Xanatos looked away from the two friends until he heard the young girl say. "I heard you were going to a planet called Bandomeer." The girl lunged forward and wrapped her arms around her friend as though her embrace could turn the tides of that which was to come.
"Yes, that's where I'm going," the boy said numbly, as though repeating the words would make that simple, awful fact sink in finally.
Bandomeer.
Xanatos glanced toward his guide, slightly nervous. The arrangement was for Jinn to come to Bandomeer alone.
"It will be dangerous. Did they tell you it would be dangerous?" the girl asked in a hushed, concerned whisper.
Xanatos calmed his breathing. Dangerous did not begin to explain his plans for Bandomeer. No one was supposed to know.
"It's just the Agricultural Corps. How dangerous could it get?" the boy scoffed, shaking his head.
"We are not to know," the girl said.
"We are to do," the boy added softly, completing a phrase Xanatos remembered from his earliest days as a Jedi.
"Miss you, I will," the girl said, struggling to hold back her tears.
"So sorry, I am," the boy answered with an attempted smile. The girl offered one last hug before hurrying from the room.
Xanatos found himself pulled from the boy's room, his thoughts still on Bandomeer. Why should one boy change his plans for that Force-forsaken planet?
"Why bring me here?" he asked. "I don't know this boy."
"Trained by Qui-Gon Jinn this boy should be …"
"Well then why tell me and not the esteemed Master Jinn?" Xanatos snapped.
"Not listening to the Force is he."
Xanatos let out a chuckle despite finding no humor in the situation. The last thing he ever thought he would hear was Yoda criticizing Jinn for not listening to the Force. Usually that was his old master's failing.
"I fail to see how this is my concern." Xanatos continued.
"Wounded greatly over your betrayal Qui-Gon still is … hard is his heart … listening to the Force he is not."
The ancient master nodded wearily, ears drooping as he was overcome by what appeared to be great sadness.
"This boy is special to you?" Xanatos posed.
"Special to all he is." The master sadly shook his head. "If change this path does not, a dim light I see in the Force where hope once stood."
Xanatos pondered the ancient master's strange words. Hope – it wasn't the first time he had heard that word tonight.
They left the Jedi temple, slipping into the streets of Coruscant which were strangely empty. Darkness in the form of a thick fog fell around them, more darkness than Xanatos had ever remembered in his lifetime on the city planet. It fell like a shroud before them and with it came an intense chill he had never even thought possible.
Yoda paused and Xanatos turned back, directing a question to him. "Why are you stopping?"
"From here, go with you I cannot," the ancient master said solemnly.
"What's in the darkness?"
"Only that which is possible … that which is shrouded still … that which is yet to come."
Xanatos reached into the fog with his senses only feeling a further chill run down his spine.
"Go," Yoda urged. "Another will guide you."
Xanatos took a deep breath and reached down to retrieve his saber from his pocket.
"Need that you will not."
"I will be the judge of that," Xanatos said, inclining his head in a slight bow before taking a step into the darkness.