Chapter Text
Xanatos’s screams reverberate through walls and corridors faster than Qui-Gon’s steps can take him away from the holding quarters. No master or knight crowding the halls moves to impede his path, although there is a flurry of footsteps in hot pursuit of him.
His créchemates, oh, his créchemates.
Plo, Mace, Shaak, Tahl—
What it is to be a failure with friends.
“Qui.”
“Qui—”
It doesn’t matter. There is a child at home and Qui-Gon told him to stay put when he left.
“Qui-Gon, slow down.”
Obi-Wan is waiting at home. He fits in Qui-Gon’s arms. There is glass in his hair; dark blood is pooling in in the mark across his face. He’s got his arms braced over his head, his knees bumping against his juddering, bleeding lips.
Mace’s hands are suddenly pushing against Qui-Gon’s chest. The movement of all legs has not ceased, however.
“Quiggs, look at me,” Mace says. “We’re going to handle it. It’s going to be fine.”
He is there and yet at the same time he is not. Qui-Gon can hear him talking, but it is a mumble over the excruciating wails back the other direction.
His name.
His name.
Everyone, everywhere is saying his name.
“Qui,” Tahl says and her voice is a bell through the clouds and the dust. “I’ll get him. Let me. Go back. He needs you.”
No.
No. Qui-Gon has to leave here. He made a promise.
“Padawan.”
All motion stops. The legs. The rising clouds. The whispering and rustling in the hall. Even the wails seem to drift off in volume for a moment.
Master Dooku stands in the center of the great hall and the world bends around him as he straightens his back and folds his hands in front of his center, robes engulfing them like the mouths of whales. The knights and masters watching on press themselves into the walls of the Great Hall to pretend that they are not absorbing every second of this high drama.
Qui-Gon wishes, gods, he wishes just for a week, not to be the subject of scrutiny.
What if people could simply forget his name, hm? That would be enough.
“Master,” he says.
Master Dooku inclines his head gravely.
“He calls for you, padawan,” he says.
“The boy is alone,” Qui-Gon says.
“I will see to the boy.”
He cannot. Obi-Wan doesn’t trust other adults. He’ll panic. He’ll try to take cover; he’ll rub the glass in his hair into his eyes—
“Qui-Gon.”
“Master.”
“I will see to the boy,” Master Dooku says again. “You are the only one who Xanatos will hear in his misery. Everyone stands here aware that you are standing torn between an impossible choice. But it is not a choice that need be made alone.”
“I have already made my choice,” Qui-Gon says.
“Is this what the Force tells you to do?”
...no. But that’s why Qui-Gon said it was his choice, isn’t it?
“If you will not hear the Force, then you will hear this as an order,” Master Dooku says. “Return to Xanatos.”
Return to Xanatos.
“He will not be soothed by anyone else.”
Just like Obi-Wan.
“This is an order from your Master.”
Qui-Gon breathes out.
This is an order from his Master.
He stands still as Master Dooku’s fluttering robes overtake him. when he lifts his face, he is staring in to the one that has known him longer than he has known himself.
Master’s eyes soften slightly. He adjusts his cloak.
“It’s grandmaster time for me and the new one,” he says.
It is an attempt to be comical. A kindness for what Master Dooku knows is to come.
“Don’t frighten him,” Qui-Gon says tonelessly.
If nothing else, give this boy that kindness. He’s sorry, Obi-Wan.
Master’s lied again.
The veins in Xana’s neck bulge through the skin and his fingers are balled so tightly that Qui-Gon can see smears of blood on the tops of his nails. He sighs. The healers have broken out the shields. They glow in spinning blue circles, hovering in front of the faces of all who stand around the perimeter of the room.
Xanato’s ankles are bound in thick restraints, both locked to a corner of the cot.
His head falls to one side, then slowly rolls up, up, up and down, down, down to collapse heavily to the other side. His hair is so long now that it pours in slick strings off the edge of the cot and hangs only inches above the floor.
He is moaning, consistently, as his head lolls.
It is just one word, over and over.
“Master.”
He is sure to be able to feel Qui-Gon’s presence in the Force. Qui-Gon knows he does because the lolling slows to a crawl when he forces himself to move close enough to sweep Xana’s dangling hair up onto his arm and to lay it on the cot.
With enormous effort, Xanatos’s dark eyes crack open. They’re bloodshot. Their rims just as badly as the sclera.
“Master?”
Qui-Gon’s chest rises and falls evenly.
“Long I have waited for this day,” he says. “Welcome home, Xana.”
A slow, painful blink.
“You’re not real,” Xanatos creaks.
Qui can find only a sigh left in his lungs. He steps in closer and moves Xana’s hair once more, this time further down the sheets so that Qui-Gon can lower himself to sitting right at Xana’s shoulder.
Tired eyes watch him steadily.
The lost padawan no longer. Found drowning in the dark. An addict.
Qui-Gon knows better than anyone in this lineage what that feels like. He draws the backs of his fingers down the overheated, damp side of Xanatos’s cheek and temple. The eyes close. The forehead creases.
“Real is touching,” Qui-Gon says. “Real is being. Are you real?”
“You came.”
“I came.”
“I’ve been. Calling.”
“I know, Xana.”
“You didn’t come.”
“You didn’t give me the chance, Xana.”
The eyes open to slits.
“Why did I do this?” Xanatos asks piteously.
Qui-Gon’s lips fall together. He leans until his forehead touches the one which has been so lost and distant for so long now.
“Because we are luminous beings,” he says. “And you knew you could find your way home.”
The screaming rings in Qui-Gon’s ears, even now that it has been hours that it has passed. Xanatos has sunken below the sea of consciousness. Finally there, he can rest and be comfortable. No longer does Qui-Gon need to hold his hand and remind him of the world around him.
Now, the next challenge waits behind the door in front of him.
Exhaustion begs him to collapse where he stands. To let the same spell that persuaded the lost student to quietness overtake himself in the doorway.
But alas.
Qui-Gon opens the door.
The sight he is met with is far more tidy than the disaster he left. The wide window has been somehow repaired. There isn’t a shard of glass out of place, not so much as a crystal lost. The blood that dragged itself in scrapes along the floor is no longer, either. The table is cleaned, the sofa has been righted, and in the middle of it all is a great, hunched shadow rocking from one side to the other. Over and over.
“Master,” Qui-Gon says.
“Shhhh.”
He closes the door behind himself and forsakes taking off his boots. The sight that mets him as he circumvents the sofa is not one that he could have expected in two millennia.
There is a pale hand tucked into a fist peeking out from behind Master Dooku’s shoulder. It grows into an arm and then into the periwinkle linen sleep tunic of Qui-Gon’s youngest. Obi-Wan’s fingers twitch in his sleep. His other arm has been consumed by Master Dooku’s own darker tunic.
Master Dooku raises an eyebrow as Qui-Gon peers around him.
“Quite a little thing, isn’t he?” he asks in a hushed voice.
“What did you feed him?” Qui demands.
“Suds and motor oil.”
Qui-Gon rolls his eyes.
“No need to be funny,” he hisses. “Give him here.”
Master Dooku’s expression reads only doubt. He looks down into his arms and smooths a hand across the side of Obi-Wan’s hair.
“He only just fell asleep,” he says.
Qui-Gon doesn’t care. He awkwardly stoops forward and gathers the limp body of his padawan from his master’s hold. Obi-Wan starts to wake only seconds after the touch is initiated. His head twists immediately and his fingers clench into a death-grip on Master’s tunic, but his eyes remain bleary. After a moment, his fingers again soften.
“Master?” he says muzzily as Qui-Gon involves more of his body into lifting him properly.
It is easier than it should be. Obi-Wan squirms at the contact but settles. Qui-Gon shifts him so that both arms can share the weight. He can’t help but go stiff as skinny arms gather around his neck and a heavy skull bumps up against his jaw and cheek.
This is not normal Obi-Wan behavior. There has been no showing of teeth nor a single aggravated knee.
Wickedness is afoot.
“You cursed him,” Qui snaps at Master Dooku.
Master Dooku merely stands and begins straightening out his robes.
“Grandmaster privileges,” he says simply.
Qui-Gon hefts Obi-Wan even close to his body, practically on his hip now. The boy’s hand loses its fight with awareness and slips right off his shoulder to hand loosely over his back.
“What did you give him?” Qui-Gon demands.
“Just a little Calm Down Solution,” Master Dooku says. He pauses. “Anti-histamines,” he adds out of kindness.
“Master.”
“He’s quite susceptible to them. Perhaps should have halved the dose.”
Qui-Gon drags a hand down his face. Obi-Wan starts to slip in his arms; he scrambles to re-apply his hold.
“Stop drugging the children,” he snaps before turning around and trying to fumble his way through the dark to Obi-Wan’s room. The door handle jeers until he’s able to press it down properly.
“There was so much dust around once the glass was repaired. It is an understandable treatment for a strong reaction.”
Obi-Wan’s bed is raised and thank the little gods for that because Qui-Gon’s back is not what it used to be. He lays the kid out and touches his cheek, then holds a hand over his mouth and nose to make sure he’s still breathing.
He is. And more awake now, too.
Qui-Gon pulls back the blanket and duvet. Obi-Wan subconsciously stuffs himself under them, always seeking heat and cover.
He snuffles messily into his pillow, and after a moment, his body goes lax again. Qui-Gon leaves the room, closing the door with care.
Outside, Master Dooku is digging through the spice cabinet.
“How is the terror?” he asks.
“That’s not where we keep bandages,” Qui-Gon snips.
“Well, why not? The state of your arm, boy. The healers must truly have had enough of you to let you leave like that. Is he sleeping, too?”
“Yes,” Qui-Gon says, imagining all of the fleas that were less annoying than this man.
“Good. It’s late.”
“Master.”
“Let me see it.”
As if Qui-Gon has a choice in the matter. He gives over his arm and its crusty gash to be tsked at.
“I imagine that we ought to bring Feemor home for the time being as well?”
Qui-Gon rests his head on the meat of his palm and watches the bacta spray make an appearance from the cutlery drawer, where he apparently left it.
“Why shouldn’t he escape this unscathed?” he asks.
“Because they are his brothers and Xanatos is a fulltime job.”
“So you will take Obi-Wan, and I will handle Xanatos.”
“I can’t take him to sit with me on the council, padawan.”
Qui doesn’t see why not. Clearly, his master has a way with wild children, and after this, he has no doubt that Obi-Wan is just going to want to sleep and hide in places for the next few days until the shape of safety begins to re-materialize in his mind.
“They can’t be together in the same place,” Qui-Gon says.
“Yet.”
No, no ‘yet’s. Only ‘never’s.
“Master,” he pleads. “No one has brought a darksider back from the brink. How am I to be able to? I am no councilmember. I’m barely a teacher. Would it not be best if—”
“No.”
“I didn’t even finish—”
“Xanatos is attached to you, Qui. And he will remain attached to you until he learns how to give up that attachment. He sees Obi-Wan as a threat to the reciprocated attachment, however if he is able to learn to share his master and to understand that relationships are living things, ebbing and flowing, then I don’t see why he would not come to loosen his grip on the attachment in general. And should he be able to do this with you, why should he not come to learn to do it with other things, as we all do?”
Qui-Gon would pinch at his face if he was not in his present condition and likely to fall asleep here at any given second.
“Is that what the council thinks?” he asks. “Give Qui-Gon two padawans and turn on the timer?”
Master Dooku’s smile is not unkind. It is mischievous. The most dangerous expression of all.
“Your lineage is here to help you, my young padawan,” he says. “I’ll call Rael.”
God, no.
“He can watch Obi-Wan. He loves angry children.”
No. Qui-Gon is taking it back. He’s fine. Two? Pft. He could do six.
“Go to sleep. You look like death.”
“Perhaps I will,” Qui-Gon says.
“Yes,” Master Dooku says. “Go on then.”
“I’m going.”
“I’m watching you.”
“Right now.”
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
“Good night.”
“Qui.”
Good night.
“Up. Come. Up, up, up.”
Qui-Gon is thereby escorted to his own bedroom.
He wakes to clear blue eyes staring directly down into his own. Obi-Wan hovers. His shoulders are covered in a lumpy red, yellow, and gray shawl. It’s been wrapped tight around each of his sides, over his sleep tunics, and fastened in the back.
This is not normal.
Qui-Gon bolts up to sitting and topples his apprentice right over in alarm. Obi-Wan braces for battle.
“Who did this to you?” Qui-Gon asks, already knowing exactly who.
Master Dooku is frying things in the kitchen when Qui carries himself and his now-growling padawan out into it.
“He’ll catch his death,” Master Dooku says before Qui-Gon can even start in on the interrogation.
He snaps his mouth shut and drops Obi-Wan before he can sink any more teeth into his wrist. Obi-Wan pops up from the ground and takes cover under the counter. Master Dooku tsks and fishes him out with both hands. His towering height makes Obi-Wan look a good three or four years younger than he is. Qui is struck by the thought that he probably does, too.
He can only wince as Master Dooku seizes Obi-Wan by the back of his collar and sets him in front of the counter. Obi-Wan blinks rapidly.
“Peel.”
A knife and pear are handed over. Obi-Wan’s turns his stare onto Qui-Gon. He hasn’t spoken a single word. It’s one of those days.
“Master,” Qui-Gon sighs.
“Look, you,” Master Dooku tells Obi-Wan. “You see the bubbles? That means it’s time to flip.”
The pancake is capsized like a canoe. Obi-Wan lights up at the new sizzling.
“You can do the next one,” Master says. “Peel that.”
Obi-Wan peers into the pan at the hotcake hissing in the pan. Master Dooku pets his head and unceremoniously shoves him back to his station. He drops a cutting board in front of him.
“Do you own caf?” he asks Qui-Gon carelessly.
“You can’t just come in here and steal my padawan,” Qui-Gon tells him.
“I’m not. I’m spoiling him. Am I not spoiling you, wee one?”
Obi-Wan squints directly up at his chin. Master Dooku surveys him with satisfaction. Another head pet is given. It is a reward for co-conspiracy. Qui-Gon clutches at his throbbing temple.
“In the cupboard over the knives,” he says. “Make it double strength.”
“There’s a story about fruit peels they used to tell when I was a child—would you like to hear it?”
No one’s even listening to Qui-Gon anymore. He doesn’t know why he even tried to intervene.
Xanatos is awake when Qui-Gon and his mug of caf make it down to the rooms he’s being contained in. He’s less restrained, much more lucid. Qui lifts his mug to him when he enters. Xanatos watches him like he’s being haunted; like Qui-Gon is a hallucination or a shadow on the wall.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Qui says as he sit heavily in the seat next to Xana’s cot.
Xana leans as far away from him as he can manage to. His hair is tangled into snarls. Qui-Gon watches the lips begin to curl his way.
He leans forward to brace himself on his knees.
“And after the whole show you put on yesterday; now you reject your old master, Xana?” he asks.
He watches. Xana scrunches up his face and begins to come forward. Closer. Closer. Like a dog offered a bone.
An abrupt jab to Qui-Gon’s arm confirms that he is, in fact, a live being. No ghosts here.
The second jab is experimental.
The third, annoying.
Qui grabs the hand.
They hold eye contact.
“Gonna puke,” Xana informs him.
The first apprentice is going through withdrawal. The second apprentice is being corrupted by his grandmaster. The last thing Qui-Gon needs is a third apprentice, but the Force is cackling today, so Feemor arrives in a bluster and asks where the threat is.
Qui-Gon has to talk him down for half an hour to convince him not to go into Xana’s sickroom and divest him of 50% of his limbs. They are better than that. And they are trying to be welcoming. Xanatos has come home. He is back where he needs to be, and where he is apparently willing to be. He’s just overflowing with dark energy and in need of 50 years of rehabilitation.
“Why’s that our problem?” Fee asks. “Didn’t we just get another one?”
He is not wrong, per se. Fee has not yet had a padawan-brother who has not lashed out at him from under a couch. Qui feels a little bad about that. He did not mean to continue Master Dooku’s grand tradition of selecting the most traumatized strays from the flock. It just happened.
Still. Xana cannot be abandoned now, it could turn him into a full sith. Who knows what he knows? Who knows what he’s seen?
And Qui-Gon was the one who begged him to come back to the light. Maybe he hadn’t meant quite like this, but alas. This is the way with apprentices. You can never quite shake them, even when you’ve detached them, sanitized, sanded yourself, and taken a bath in a vat of oil.
Case in point: Feemor.
The face Qui’s oldest apprentice makes is one of nigh-comical anguish.
“You’ll die if someone doesn’t check your pulse monthly,” he says unnecessarily loudly.
Qui shushes him and pats at him tenderly.
“You are wonderful and appreciated,” he soothes.
Feemor just stares at him with flattened eyebrows. He trusts nothing. He points aggressively in the direction of Xanatos’s room.
“We’re done with him,” he says. “You said so.”
Qui lifts an appealing hand. Feemor slaps it down.
“You promised—”
“Fee—”
“No Fees. Only promises. This is the fourth time he’s tried to off the little one.”
“I understand that, and—”
“People usually stop after the first time, Master.”
“Fee—”
“I just said no Fees. I’m broke. YOU SAID—”
Alright, alright. There’s nothing else to do now. Back upstairs they go.
Obi-Wan should be doing classwork. He’s not able to sit in lectures with the other children quite yet, but he should at least be watching and listening to the recorded discussions and doing his homework.
And yet.
“We are busy,” Master Dooku says with Obi-Wan at his hip, gazing owlishly.
“You had one job,” Qui-Gon tells him.
“This place is filthy.”
“A singular task.”
“One cannot study in such chaos.”
Feemor waves brightly at Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan's brow darkens; he take one step back to fall in behind Master Dooku. This is officially Too Many Adults for him. Feemor’s mask threatens to shatter in his disappointment.
“Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon sighs. “Come here, padawan.”
Dilated blue eyes peak out at him from behind Master Dooku’s home-style robes. Qui-Gon beckons him and, in a rush, Obi-Wan sprints over to take cover from Feemor behind him instead.
He’s still wearing that damn shawl. What is this, a natural history museum?
Qui-Gon picks at it while he tells Master Dooku to stop digging around. There’s nothing to find. The place is clean enough as it is.
Master Dooku huffs about it and sets himself to tugging at Feemor’s hair and telling him to purchase a comb.
“Grandmaster says we’re moving,” Obi-Wan nearly whispers to Qui-Gon as he tries to find somewhere to stow the shawl.
Qui freezes.
“Moving?” he asks Master Dooku’s way.
The old man gives blasé notice.
“Oh? You did not review your messages?” he asks.
Qui-Gon blinks one time.
“You, go to your lessons. Go on, now,” he says, hustling Obi-Wan towards his room and closing the door after him. He whips around.
“Moving?” he demands this time.
The missive tells him that, given the circumstances and the pending agreement, larger quarters will be needed to comfortably house three people at various stages of their lives. Three bedrooms has been deemed sufficient.
Qui holds his face. Master Dooku sets a cup of tea at his elbow.
They’ve left Feemor to establish friendly relationships with the youngest member of the lineage through a crack in Obi-Wan’s bedroom door.
“It’s closer to my rooms,” Master Dooku points out.
“I noticed,” Qui-Gon groans.
“Rael is around the corner, if he’s ever home.”
Master is trying to soften the blow. He’s also taking things out of the kitchen cupboards and putting them into organized collections on the counter.
“It will be good. Someone will be able to staunch the bleeding should you find yourself indisposed by illness, injury, possible violent dismemberment.”
Feemor takes the slip of paper he and Obi-Wan are passing back and forth under the door and begins hastily drawing on it. He slides it back. There is a squeak—the start of a giggle. Feemor hurriedly shuts the door with his foot as if he’s horrified and the giggle blooms into a laugh. Feemor smirks in triumph.
Qui-Gon realizes that Master Dooku, too, is smirking.
“No,” Qui-Gon says.
“It seems to me—”
“I’ve had of enough of you.”
“—that at least one of us here might benefit from additional lineage involvement.”
The bedroom door creaks open. Feemor hides behind it and keeps moving to stay behind it as it opens wider and wider. He stands up and flattens himself against the wall when it’s almost all the way swung.
Obi-Wan looks all around for him. A frown directs itself at Qui-Gon accusatorily, as if to say that he does not approve of this cruel joke.
“BOO.”
A jolt.
Qui-Gon is nearly already standing to prevent the incoming bloodbath, but to his surprise, Obi-Wan hurls himself around the door and points right at Feemor.
Feemor takes off in a sprint and leaps up onto the table by Qui-Gon with Obi-Wan in hot pursuit. Obi-Wan goes to climb onto the table and is immediately removed by Master Dooku as Fee hops over to the kitchen counter. Obi-Wan scrambles away from Master Dooku to cut him off and Fee feints like he’s been caught before bouncing back to the table, then the sofa, and going for the balcony.
Obi-Wan guns it after him and gets stuck in the tunics hang-drying there. In his moment of blindness, Fee snags him up around the middle and flings him over his shoulder.
“A scoundrel,” he calls. “Master, I’ve caught him. This house has been protected, have no fear.”
Obi-Wan is nearly shrieking with laughter.
It is the happiest that Qui-Gon has ever seen him. He, himself, has not been able to draw happy tears from his padawan like this. He’s coaxed out the rare smile and finally has been added to the shortlist of people allowed to give and receive hugs, but all that has taken literal months of trust-building.
He cannot pretend that he’s not a smidge bitter that Feemor has managed to surpass him in this in a single afternoon of trouble-making.
Master Dooku hums and sets the spices that Feemor has disturbed back to rights.
“Xana was a mischievous little devil once,” he says loftily. “Perhaps he could be again, in a productive sort of way.”
Don’t hold your breath, Master.
Qui-Gon stands up.