Chapter 19
Obi-Wan's statement seemed to ring in everyone's heads and settle the last of the doubts people felt. He was right after all, Dooku and Qui-Gon were the same men they were yesterday and they'd never had any reason to fear them before. Except it made Arl question things, many things. Suddenly she was not so sure of herself, of many things. She'd been thrown one massive curveball that she attempted to puzzle out and she looked at Qui-Gon's force signature. The room had been shielded so that, upon Yoda's request, both Sith had lowered the shielding they used to hide the darkness in their signatures. It was odd for all around the place, they felt dark but there was no hint of true corruption and threw all their beliefs into the air for what had to be the fiftieth time at least now. But for Arl that was all meaningless and she observed him. Realising the futility of it, she closed her eyes and dispersed herself into the force in a way she often did not allow herself too. She got distracted too easily and lost track of time, but now she had a goal in mind. She surrounded herself in Qui-Gon, feeling the way he feels in the force and the way the force feels around him. That was when she found what she was looking for, the coldness of the darkside, watered down through years of lightside using as well, a balance that had blocked it from view. This man was a Sith in that he followed the code, trusted in their beliefs, and considered himself to be one. But he was so much more than he realised, one day, that could save a great many people.
When Arlie came back to herself, Xanatos and Garen were arguing about something stupid with Obi-Wan occasionally chiming in with something to keep it going, Quinlan doing the same except to the other side of what Obi was saying which led to those two arguing as well.
"I am getting too old for this." Arl complains.
"You think you are." Micah says beside her.
"Neither of you should be complaining about age." Dooku says tiredly.
"Quiet all three of you should be. Making me feel old you are." Yoda tells them, Arl chuckles.
"Did you seriously just complain about being old Arlie?" Garen asks incredulously.
"My dear brother-padawan, I turned fifty-two a few weeks ago. I have been dealing with your arguments, some variation of you four, since I was seventeen."
"Well when you put it like that…" Obi-Wan trails off awkwardly.
"I am a fifteen years younger than you." Mace suddenly says.
"Huh, I never realised, you always seem like an old man to me." He hits the back of her head playfully.
"All right so, on Naboo a year ago we learnt how to trap Wrath's consciousness once he is out of Sheev. The last piece of the puzzle is to learn how we pull him out. Supposedly only the creator of the order can do it." Tahl says sounding unsure.
"Yes, believe me I scoured Sidious' library looking for a way while under his tutelage. Tried relying on instinct and many other things. I am not capable of it through the darkside nor the light, and neither is anyone else whose accounts I have read." Obi tells them all.
"It is just that the document we found in the ancestral language said we merely have to tear the soul from the body. The only part that had to be done by the creator was the disintegration of it however we could capture it instead." Tahl continues.
"So perhaps it is less a lack of ability and more a lack of knowledge." Valorum suggests, Arl nods.
"Much of our knowledge has been lost to time. Perhaps when we go to the past we will find answers to more than just one question." Arl says resigning herself to the fact that they are making her go.
"I was thinking about our problem with the timelines continuing in your absence, what if you were to return the same amount of time it had been since you left? You'd merge with the timeline and there would not be the second one without you." Garen suggests, "Just like a car merging back into the correct point on the road, it all continues on as it would have had it never left." Arl ponders it.
"All right, I did agree to do this so long as this meeting happened first and we thought it all through. So, we take the time we need to plan it well and then I'll take my partners and we'll go. That of course adds a certain, for lack of a better term, time constraint. The longer we spend in the past the longer we are gone here."
"We should wait on the training until Lo-Master Dooku returns. I've never trained another to be a Sith before." Qui-Gon admits, no one missed the slip but appreciated the catching of it. None were really prepared enough for that yet.
"You'd once never trained a Jedi before either and Feemor turned out okay." Arl replies, he nods bowing to the point she makes.
"Out of curiosity, who exactly are we training to be Sith?" Dooku asks having been questioning that silently since it was first brought up.
"Has to be people already well versed in the force." Bant says.
"There are not exactly many force-sensitive adults that are not trained Jedi, and if there are it is because they chose not to be Jedi. I doubt they would then chose to be Sith." Terza adds sounding stumped.
"Well, I suppose the obvious answer is to take people from your own ranks but…with the way you've trained them it may not be possible." Valorum tells them.
"If a Jedi knight or Master were to volunteer to be trained, give up the Jedi ways and become a Sith knowing the council were allowing it, would you be able to teach them?" Eeth asks.
"If they were truly prepared to change their way of thinking and renounce nearly everything they have ever learned. Accepting that once they go down this path, there may be no way back, it may be possible though not easy." Dooku tells them. "But they would need a very open mind and to volunteer, if they do it out of a sense of duty to the Jedi they will have already failed. They must be prepared to be a Sith."
"Finding volunteers would mean telling others in the temple about what we are doing." Depa reminds them.
"Out of curiosity, would you be able to forgo the whole, sacrifice bit? I'd just really prefer we not condemn a bunch of people to death in order to not condemn all people to death." Arl requests.
"Technically the idea of the sacrifice is more of a cultural thing than any necessary part of being a Sith to the force. I would not refuse them the chance should they wish to go through with it but I can't imagine anyone would. Especially given this is likely going to be borne out of a desire to help people." Qui-Gon admits, Dooku, and Obi-Wan nod.
"Qui-Gon, you would have had to make a sacrifice yes?" Micah asks suddenly very much not wanting to know the answer. The man looked very uncomfortable with the topic but nodded all the same. "Who?"
"My sister."
"Dear gods." Terza says suddenly feeling very ill.
"Perverse and twisted but, darkly intelligent I suppose." Tahl says looking surprisingly comforted by Qui-Gon's admission.
"What?" Bant asks her Master looking extremely disturbed.
"His sister was dying a very slow and painful death. A rare and incurable illness." Tahl explains. "The death he provided would have been a kindness, yet he also sacrificed time he could have had with her."
"Still begs the question, where do we find volunteers, and what do we do if we cannot." Kit reminds them.
"Well, if someone in here wants to do it we could use it as a trial run." Quinlan jokes though it was a legitimate suggestion.
"I'm not a Knight but, I'll do it." Garen says confidently, everyone seems quite shocked, including Arlie. "Well Master Qui-Gon has never done this before, so starting him off with someone that doesn't have many many many years of ingrained instinct makes sense. Plus, according to Arlie, I have a habit of falling quite easily even as a Knight."
"I do have to give him that one, he walks a fine line, it may be easier for him to cross it than most who have to find it first." Arl admits.
"It would mean I would no longer be your Master, you'd be Qui-Gon's Pada, no, you'd be his Apprentice. His Sith Apprentice, to a Sith. You would no longer be a Jedi, you understand this?" Micah asks unsure how he feels about it and honestly feeling like a failure as a Jedi Master that his padawan would so quickly join a Sith.
"Yeah but I would still be here, I'd still have all of you, I'd just be here in a different capacity. I've always struggled with the Jedi way of life, I think this might actually suit me better. I can keep helping people without the parts of being here I've always felt suffocated by. I know it won't be easy but I am willing to do it, to learn." Mic had known all of that of course but hearing it made him feel better. He wasn't losing his Padawan, not really, once a Padawan always a Padawan. No longer being his student doesn't mean much in the face of that.
"So long as you are 100% sure." Qui-Gon stresses, Garen nods.
"Walk with me you will." Yoda tells Garen who appears nervous but follows the troll out of the room.
"This is not how I imagined this day would go." Plo admits to them.
"So, while they're gone, the past." Quinlan says.
"Yes, the past." Arl repeats. They all begin working on a plan. Arl insisted they not leave for a few weeks, really think this all through, see how Garen goes, let Anakin know so that it is not a sudden shock to him. She had quite a few reasons, many just sounded like procrastination and avoidance to the table. Eventually Terza had enough and put her foot down stating they would leave in three weeks and no later.
Garen and Yoda return fifteen minutes after they left and see a stand off going on across the table between Arl and Terza.
"Fine." Arl bites sitting back down, Terza follows suit in a huff.
"Your apprentice he will be." Yoda tells Qui-Gon when they have everyone's attention.
This was a pivotal turning point in their history. It changed the direction of everything forever, yet it would quickly be forgotten. Dooku and Qui-Gon remembered as the first of the Jedi to train to be Sith for the bridging. Garen's choice, or in some people's views, his sacrifice, long forgotten. That mattered little for them, all they knew was people needed saving. That was the goal they decided to work for, not to be Jedi, not to be Sith, to be good people. One day, that will be enough, or so they hope.
A few days later it was all sorted, Garen moved in with Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan moving out to live in his own quarters. Really, he just took possession of the quarters still technically assigned to Micah. Arlie was at a loss on what to do, she had a goal in mind and a plan to make, yet she felt as though she were drifting. So much was changing and she realised that for the first time in a long time, she had no real idea what would happen from here. She'd truly given up any pretence of being anything other than a Jedi master, it had a tendency to make interactions with others in the temple awkward so she mainly stuck to her usual group of people.
Three days after the meeting, Garen came to have lunch with Mace, Micah, and Arlie in their quarters. Qui-Gon had been invited but had elected to leave them to catch up. It had only been three days but the four had always been extremely close and as it turns out, very co-dependent. Especially Arlie and Garen, both of which could often be found standing in a room in their respective quarters during their limited free time, just having no idea what to do with themselves.
"Sooooo, how goes being a Sith?" Arlie asks awkwardly when they sat down to eat.
"Tactful as always Arl, it's…different. Not a bad different just, different. Turns out, very frustrating and difficult to be learning stuff that goes against everything you've done your entire life. Or since I was three anyways. Obi-Wan shielded one of the private training salles that Yoda allowed us to permanently book out for lessons so that we don't get the entire temple coming to kill us." He tells them.
"I'm curious, it's been annoying me actually how little I know, but what do Sith even do?" Mace asks, Garen sniggers.
"Yeah that's another thing I've learnt, there is so much that Jedi don't know. Did you know that the Sith believe meditation to be a crutch? Apparently, if you are to be close with the force, one must be able to commune with it on a whim, in the middle of a battle and without losing awareness of what is around them."
"That's…radical." Micah says surprised, Mace looks fascinated.
"Yes, also very complicated. Master has started me off with what Master Dooku calls 'micro-meditating'. It's the process of entering a meditation trance and exiting it again as quickly as possible. It is sort of a stepping stone, teaching me to open the connection and close it as soon as I desire to." He tells them.
"You know, I've just realised I know nothing about your life before you came to the temple." Arlie says after everyone is quiet for a moment. It was not awkward though, just a comfortable silence.
"Not much to tell really, I was in an orphanage. Then the Jedi came for me, here I am." Garen says, "I do not really remember much apart from that, I was three after all."
"Fair enough." Arl says laughing slightly.
"How goes the trip planning?" Arl groans.
"You know when you spend too much time with people and you start wanting to punch them in the face for every little thing?" They nod, "Try being like that with Dooku."
"I heard you two had been at each other's throats." Mace tells her.
"Quinlan, Dooku, and I have been cooped up in the meeting room planning it all out every minute of every day for three days. I really did not think we'd ever have this problem. But I suppose in the other timeline the only extended period of time we spent together was in the library researching."
"We all thought you and Vos or Vos and Dooku would be the point of contention." Micah says with a laugh, Arl tenses almost imperceptibly at his words.
"Funny how things turn out." She responds completely naturally, so much so that Micah thought he may have imagined her discomfort.
Four days later Qui-Gon and Mace were in the commissary watching Dooku leave with food for three, apparently the trio were working through lunch again.
"They're fighting." Mace says turning his attention back to his food.
"Again? I thought they got over that days ago?" Qui responds as he eats, he was surprised but very happy that his friendships had been a bit strained but not at all broken after his admission of Sithness, well, apart from Mic. He wasn't sure Mic would ever forgive him, but at least he was professional, even though it hurt Qui-Gon to be rejected by one of his best friends.
"Not Arl and Dooku, all three of them. They are fighting with each other and pretending to be fine. I think the tiffs between Dooku and Arl escalated to the point where they are acting fine in front of others."
"So why think Quin is involved? Beside it being Quinlan Vos we are talking about."
"How would you feel being stuck in a room with two people who are arguing constantly?"
"Pretty pissed off and sick of their shit long before now to be honest." Mace points his fork at him.
"Exactly, yet, he's fine. Seems peacefully happy even." Qui considers the point.
"Well, if you are right, they are doing one hell of a job at hiding it." He thinks about how willing he is to piss off his Master for a moment.
"Okay, that is your scheming face, what are we doing?" Mace asks, Qui-Gon grins.
"There's dinner at your place tonight, right?" Mace nods now uncertain he still wants to host it. "Here's the plan."
Hours later, Depa, Adi, Mace, Micah, Obi, Arlie, Qui, Dooku, Garen, Terza, Tahl, Bellan, Bant, Shmi, Anakin, Quinlan, and Xanatos are in their quarters around the foldable table they've gotten as their group got bigger. They push the furniture in the loungeroom onto the balcony to make room for the large table.
"So, how's your project going?" Mace asks Dooku, Quinlan and Arlie, they all exchange looks. All had been perfectly peaceful so far, so Qui-Gon and Mace began to implement their plan. The basis? Push until they snap.
"Good, we're on our way to working out all the kinks in the plan." Arlie replies diplomatically, the other two say nothing to the contrary.
"How long are you going to be gone again?" Anakin asks.
"I don't know Ani, hopefully not too long." He seems sad, Shmi squeezes his shoulder supportively. It was the first planned long mission she had been on since he and Shmi arrived.
"You guys must be going stir crazy stuck in that room with each other for a whole week." Qui adds.
"We had a few issues but we got over it, we have a job to do after all." Dooku tells his former Apprentice who pretends to be happy with the answer. When no one is looking, he and Mace exchange looks silently agreeing to continue. It went like this for a while, Mace could feel Mic's suspicious look but refused to acknowledge it. None of the three cracked, Mace began to think he had been wrong when it happened.
"It's nice having a friend I tell everything to." Anakin says after Obi-Wan asks him how he and Owen are doing, they had stayed in contact after getting along so well.
"Yes, that's a lovely thing to have." Arl tells him, it seemed perfectly innocent enough but Quinlan tensed and Dooku sighed quietly.
"Really? Now?" Dooku says, she shrugs innocently.
"I didn't say anything, just having a conversation with my brother. It is not my fault you over analyse everything." She replies calmly.
"Do you two ever stop?" Quin hisses, Mace and Qui can't help but smile victoriously, then things spiral more than they meant it to.
"I was just trying to have a damn conversation, because talking is something people do Quinlan, they tell people things."
"I was going to tell you!" Quin says loudly.
"Oh you were? When? Before or after it gets used against us?" Dooku asks sarcastically.
"Yeah coz you have a solid standing to judge on, seeing as you're such an open book." Quin snaps.
"That is his life, we are talking about our lives, stuff that affects all of us, stuff you hide." Arl tells him.
"Arlie, I'm pissed to but he had his reasons, if you ever thought to look passed your annoyance instead of deciding it is the most important thing…" Dooku begins to tell her.
"At least I have feelings!" Arlie defends harshly.
"Yes and they serve you oh so well." He drawls.
"Because being a cold-hearted asshole serves you so well." Quin says sarcastically.
"As it happens, it does." Dooku replies at the same time Arlie says, "He's not cold-hearted Quinlan he's just a grown up, you should try it sometime."
Things just descended to the three of them yelling at the same time and no one really catching anything. It was when 'Maul' and 'Plagueis' came out that Mace began to regret their actions. Then Sidious and Wrath were mentioned. Soon enough Quinlan was yelling about Tyranus and Arl was yelling something about memories to which Dooku yelled "CONSIDERING YOU ARE A RETICENT ASSHOLE TOO FOCUSED ON THE FUTURE TO EVEN CARE ABOUT THE PRESENT, ARE YOU REALLY IN A PLACE TO JUDGE HIM?"
"HEY! THE LAST THING I NEED IS YOUR HELP!" Quin yells.
"QUIET!" Shmi yells over the three, they all shut up panting slightly from the screaming match. Micah just looks accusingly at Qui-Gon and Mace who both mouth sorry to him, Micah looks pointedly to the three across the table from them.
"That was actually our fault." Mace admits gesturing to Qui-Gon and himself.
"We had a theory that you guys were fighting and hiding it." Qui says.
"So you thought, hey there's a hornet's nest, let's poke it with a fucking stick?" Arl cries.
"Let me guess, Qui-Gon's idea?" Dooku asks, looking unsurprised but glaring daggers at his former Apprentice who shrinks down into his chair.
"How'd you know?" Mace asks, Dooku continues glaring.
"Let's just say I am well aware of my former…Padawan's…love of sewing chaos and creating mayhem and…Anarchy." He says practically hissing the last word to the man who is sliding so far down his seat Arl thinks he may slip off entirely, Obi-Wan and Adi snicker as they realise where the name 'Darth Anarch' came from.
"What is a Hornet?" Anakin asks innocently, unconcerned by the shouting though a little surprised at Arlie doing it.
"A creature from another planet. Annoying little insects that sting you when they feel threatened. Poking their nest brings out hundreds of them and they all attack." Arl explains.
"That sounds unpleasant, and accurate to the situation." Micah says glaring at Mace and Qui again.
"We only wanted to help." Mace defends, Mic rolls his eyes.
"No, you wanted to be proven right."
"I can do both." Mic glares again, Mace wisely shuts his mouth. He was so in trouble later.
"So, how long?" Bellan asks them curiously, Arl shrugs.
"More or less since the night before the meeting with the Chancellor."
"What are you actually fighting about?" Tahl asks unable to help herself, her insatiable curiosity helped her in her research, less so in social situations. It was one of the things her friends loved about her though.
"One at a time. Quinlan you start." Terza says when they all go to speak at once.
"I kept something from them that they did have a right to know, but I had perfectly legitimate reasons to not tell them. They keep attacking me about it." He says breaking it down to the root of the problem.
"Dooku?" Shmi asks when neither of the other two speak.
"That was how it started, it just kind of spiralled, especially when we couldn't get a break or really have a chance to talk about it. Nor have we had a chance to talk about Arlie and I not telling him about that other thing. I mentioned that Arlie was being overly emotional about Quinlan not telling us. She did not take kindly to that."
"Arl?" Mic asks, they'd started now, no use in going back.
"I don't care that you didn't tell us Quin, I mean I was rightfully pissed but I got over it." Arl says surprising everyone.
"Then what the hell have we been arguing for?" Quin asks incredulously, Arl gives him the most condescending, disbelieving look anyone had ever seen.
"Are you joking right now? Do you seriously have no idea why I am pissed?" Arl asks, Qui-Gon holds up a hand before Quin can answer.
"Not arguing right now Arl, explaining." He tells her, she sighs as the anger drains away. It was then everyone could see she seemed hurt and confused more than anything, just, lost.
"You still haven't told us." She says quietly. Everyone seems to understand then, including it seems Quinlan.
"I can't Arl, I can't think about it." Quin says his voice cracking with…grief? No, fear.
"I can understand that, and in other circumstances I might agree with Dooku and accept you have reasons and leave it alone. But this is a day and a half of my life that I know nothing about, a day and a half that left me permanently scarred in more ways than one. I still can't go to the healer without panicking, why do you think I haven't done the frigging evaluation? I need to know what happened Quin." Several things made sense after that.
"What use is him telling us if it breaks him entirely Arlie? He already can't get any sleep except when we've resorted to drugging him." Dooku tells her.
"I knew that was you."
"Someone drugged you and you didn't say anything?" Terza asks.
"Well if it wasn't them it was Master Tholme so…" Quin says, Terza just sighs.
"Okay, Dooku what is your take on the situation? You seem to be going back and forth." Shmi asks wanting to get this sorted out.
"I want to know, I do. I am sick of not knowing, of walking around on a prosthetic leg and not knowing why. But we nearly lost Quin twice over what happened. I don't actually want my partner to end up…not here." Dooku says awkwardly looking over at Anakin at the end.
"Well why don't you guys go into his head, see his memories so that he doesn't have to relive it?" Anakin asks, "We are learning about it in classes, I mean you aren't allowed to do it but you also aren't allowed to be Sith and there are three in this room so I figured you guys wouldn't care about that." Anakin says when people look at him surprised, that didn't really help much.
"Anakin how did you know that?" Mace asks thinking it now safe to speak again, by Mic's glare, he was wrong.
"You look different. I mean everyone does so it comes out in different ways but it's there." The boy says.
"What do you mean?" Arl asks curiously.
"Well, Master Qui-Gon glows a warm ambery colour, but he's got a streak of silver that kind of flickers in the middle like a flame. Master Dooku is mostly that silvery colour but it's ringed with red and then a bright white encompasses it all like a blanket. Garen was green, and yellow like the suns on Tatooine, it swirled together and moved faster the more excited he got. But now the swirls have the silvery colour in the ripples and seem calmer, he seems to keep it calm even when excited now. It hasn't been like that long."
"How did you know that meant Sith?" Dooku asks curiously, surprisingly he senses no fear from the child.
"I dunno, instinct I guess."
"What do I look like?" Obi-Wan asks curiously and a tad nervously.
"You're weird. It's like the same colour of your hair but sometimes black or white swims through it." Obi-Wan isn't sure if he's comforted by that or the exact opposite.
"What about me?" Arl asks finding this interesting, he had never mentioned seeing people this way before in either timeline, Obi seemed just as surprised which means he had not even told him.
"You're kind of hard to look at like that. You just kind of, it's hard to explain. It's just bright. When you use the force you either have amber, black, purple, or silver go through it, but it's swallowed up by the brightness. In fact, that's the only way to explain it, you just are brightness. It kind of gives me a headache actually. I have to look away when I meditate or feel especially close to the force, even then I can feel you, always."
"You've mentioned that on Tatooine, you said you could feel Arlie." Shmi says sounding puzzled.
"I could. Except when she disappeared for a minute or two when I was really little. That was really scary, I thought she must've died. But then she showed up again and everything seemed right, brighter and happier like something had snapped into place. It was better than even before she left."
"I remember that, you were three and inconsolable. Middle of the night and you woke screaming and sobbing." Shmi tells him worried as she thinks of one of the scariest moments of her life.
"Yeah but it's okay now. Everything is almost as it should be."