Chapter Text
A being chosen by the Force will come to lend aid to the Jedi Order when times grow dark. One with the vision to see, the power to bear, and the light to spare the galaxy. This being will choose a twin soul in the Force, and if that being so agrees, a powerful bond will form—a dyad to protect the Chosen One from harm.
~ Ahch-To Mystics (d. Approximately 25,000 years ago)
Obi-Wan Kenobi’s screams shatter glass.
The scary pictures in his head won’t stop. They won’t stop. His eyes throb, and his insides feel weird, and the smell of his earlier sick makes him want to be sick again.
Hurts hurts hurts his head hurts.
He can’t make the scary pictures go away. He can never make them go away. This one has been coming and going and coming and going forever. He doesn’t remember sleeping. Things keep going blurry. He wet himself, and it’s gross, and—
The scary pictures drown him like an inescapable tide, and he can’t see the world anymore. Only the pictures. Blood runs across the ground in those pictures like ... like a spiderweb. Someone screams. He doesn’t know who, but that man in the black cloak with the yellow eyes makes whoever it is bleed again with the squelch of a glinting black knife. The man licks scarlet from his fingers. Another man in green robes comes up. He’s yelling. Obi-Wan can’t … his face swirls.
He is not a creature to be defiled like this! He is the link. Not a sacrifice.
Hush, apprentice. He will live until we no longer need him. Draw his screams unto yourself. Feast on them as I do and let It give you power.
“Be quiet, you wicked thing! You’ve broken the screen of my holocaster!”
The mean lady who stays with him slaps him in the face, and the scary picture goes away again. Sometimes, she sprinkles water on him when he cries too much. That water makes his skin tingle and burn.
It hurts it hurts it hurts.
The door opens, and the sounds of the Stewjoni sea reach him. He’s always liked the water. The water is his only friend aside from the animals he comes across.
Boots crunch on the shards of glass spilled on the floor. One of the guards curses in Stewjoni. Obi-Wan knows the word.
Force-devil.
His Papa follows the guards inside. He’s been here more because Obi-Wan's hasn’t been sleeping. He can’t stop screaming and seeing and crying.
Shut your cursed mouth, his Papa exclaimed last night. What did I do to earn such an unholy son?
Obi-Wan tries to be good. He tries he tries he tries.
“Take him,” his Papa says, low voice booming out. “Then go out the back way that I indicated. No one is to see him. Am I understood? My guards will escort you.”
His Papa is ... he’s telling these strangers to take him? His Papa hates him. He didn’t always. More tears spill down Obi-Wan’s cheeks. He didn’t mean to be bad.
A green-skinned woman with black markings that Obi-Wan doesn’t know says something he can’t hear. There's too much screaming. Too much crying. Too much blood. Where is she from? He’s never seen anyone like her.
Another man comes up to him, and Obi-Wan looks out from between his fingers as the scary pictures fade a little bit more. This man has smooth, warm-dark skin and curly, short black hair.
“Hello, little one,” the man says as he crouches down in front of the chair Obi-Wan's curled up in. “My name is Mace, and I’m a Jedi. Would you mind if I picked you up? We’re going to take you to a new place that I think you’ll like. Does that sound all right?”
A Jedi. Everyone says the Jedi are evil, but the Force shines around Mace. That must mean he can’t be evil. The Force is Obi-Wan’s friend and wouldn’t lie to him.
Part of Obi-Wan is scared. He only knows Stewjon. He likes the sea and playing with the wild dogs that live nearby.
His Papa hates him.
His Mama never comes now. She used to. She had his eyes, and they looked sad. Then his Papa said she couldn’t come anymore. She’s not allowed to.
He heard the mean lady say something about him being dead, except ... well, he’s not. That’s why he’s in this house and not his house. He can’t remember much about that house. He only knows it was nicer. His Papa wore a shiny thing on his head and a velvet cape while he talked to people who knelt in front of him with baskets of fish.
Obi-Wan thinks that he was a prince, once. Not anymore.
“Can you make the scary pictures go away?” he asks.
“We’ll do our very best. I promise.”
He nods at the smiling man, who scoops him up into his arms.
The scary pictures fade a little more, but everything still hurts. He shouldn’t scream, but he can’t help it. The things he sees aren’t always bad. Sometimes he sees a grinning boy—older than him. He has yellow on his face. Brown skin. Black hair. He’s always putting out his hand on a color-blur, busy street.
Come on, Obes. We can disappear for tonight.
Obes. Is that him?
The boy always vanishes, though. Obi-Wan doesn’t know what happened to him. There’s another picture that came once, and he saw a very small boy with sandy hair, a girl with long braids, and a blue alien girl. The girl with the braids called the boy with the sandy hair Ani.
“King Kenobi,” the green-skinned woman says, and Obi-Wan thinks that her eyes are kind, “do you want to say goodbye?”
His Papa, with copper hair like his, freezes in the doorway. He glances back, and ... Obi-Wan feels a little tug like he sometimes does, in the Force. The Force makes the pictures happen. It lets him move things. The mean lady hates that.
“Take him where he’s wanted to your temple of unholy freaks,” his Papa hisses with a strange shimmer in his eyes. “He certainly isn’t wanted here.”
Obi-Wan sobs, he shouts Papa, and Mace rubs a hand up and down his back. Going with Mace is good, but he’s scared.
Stars wink at them from the big sky when they leave the hut. Obi-Wan can read some, already, so he knows the constellation names. Big ships and fishing boats sit in the distant harbor. Away from this hut. Away from him. Salt stings the air. His Papa’s guards, all dressed in light blue, gather around him and the two beings taking him away from here. Moonlight glints off their tridents. Obi-Wan's seen them catch fish with those.
One dark night, they put a man to a platform outside the nice house where Obi-Wan used to live. They cut him with it like they were gutting a fish. He screamed and he bled, and that blood seeped into the spaces between the lime-white cobblestones. The guards gutted the man again and again and let the blood drip drip drip while a crowd chanted cleanse him cleanse him cleanse him. Obi-Wan cried into his Papa’s shoulder, but he wasn’t allowed not to look.
Be good now, his Papa said, and his Mama walked away weeping. You don’t want this to happen to you. Your powers are dangerous. Unholy. You hurt the Force by using it and hurt the galaxy in turn. You make yourself unclean. You embarrass me. Our people cannot know.
That wasn’t very long ago. He came to this hut after. The men in those same light blue uniforms brought him. They slashed his hand and smeared the blood on the white-shell stairs of the old house. They took his tunics, stripped him, and forced him flat on his front. Pinned him. Beat on his back with a piece of driftwood chanting the same thing.
Cleanse him.
A priest came in, an old man that Obi-Wan knew. He closed metal bands around Obi-Wan's thighs that cut into his skin, and it hurt.
“You must be penitent, my child,” the priest said. “These will help you.”
They left him. Naked. Cold. Hungry and bleeding.
That was when the mean lady came.
The smiling man presses his forehead to Obi-Wan's. The woman with green skin puts something against his neck and says this will help you, young one. It won’t hurt.
With the stormy sea roaring in his ears, three-and-a-half-year-old Obi-Wan Kenobi, the pronounced-dead-prince-of-Stewjon, tumbles into darkness.
The Force binds all life together. To use the Force is to damage it and make yourself unclean. If a child is born with the power to wield it, that ability must be driven out of them. Physical harm to achieve this is not an unholy action. It is best for the child, the family, and the community. When a child cannot be cured, death is the only way. If this is not done, we all answer to the Force for it.
The Force will be free.
~ The Holy Book of Stewjon (d. Approx 380 years)
When the Fifth Chosen One of the Jedi Order arrives on Coruscant, the Force screams symphonies.
The electric jolt down his spine tears Jedi Knight Sheev Palpatine out of his evening meditation.
Go. He needs to ... the main hall. That’s the source of things.
Exhaustion nips at him. He only just returned from a diplomatic mission to Raxus this very afternoon. Well, diplomatic is putting too fine a point on it. It was mostly himself and Master Gallia preventing tussles between two feuding villages eager to fist fight one another. Raxus’ young senator, Avi Singh, has done quite the job riling up some citizens against the Republic while throwing around words like secession. That may happen one day, but Singh, with all his corporate connections, is not brave enough yet and hardly less corrupt, in Palpatine’s mind, than most senators who beat their chests in support of the crumbling status quo. War will come, certainly. It will take at least two decades for the spark to light. That’s how things move in the galaxy.
Slow.
Other Jedi, already ahead of him when he emerges from his quarters on the third level, speak in hushed tones. The Force flits frantic between them.
Something has happened.
When he reaches the dim-lit main hall, Sheev realizes that it wasn’t just the Force screaming.
It was a child.
Outside, a rare Coruscant storm rages, all wind-whipped rain and roaring thunder. The weather system must have demanded it or gotten out of sorts. Lightning casts the toddler’s face in clean white light.
Stringy copper hair that hasn’t been washed in some time falls into the boy’s eyes.
And ....
Oh.
That marking. That pink-red, thin-line marking running from the middle of his nose and arcing across his right cheek. A shorter, paler marking crosses over it at the center. It looks a bit like a scar.
Well, perhaps the boy caused the storm.
The arrival of a Chosen One means events are afoot.
A surprise thunderstorm is the least of it.
Given that it’s dinner hour, quite a few of his fellows, on their way to one of the refectories, are also bearing witness to this unexpected drama.
"Shhh, little one." Master Yoda runs a green hand over the boy's forehead and soothes that scream. "Home, you are. Help you, we will."
Whispering winds its way through the crowd of Jedi. A familiar presence approaches Palpatine from behind—that cold silver shine he’s known since he was twelve.
“Padawan,” Dooku says as a crack of thunder goes off again. “What is all of this? I felt something strange in the Force. Pain.”
Given that Dooku has a new Padawan and has for some years—the strange Qui-Gon Jinn, now twenty-two and soon to be knighted—the term hardly applies. Palpatine delights in and disdains the old word he heard for a decade. He’s never certain if it’s a power play or not. It does mean Dooku is paying attention to him.
"A new youngling," Palpatine replies. "Plagued by a vision, it would seem, and if that marking is any indication—"
"A new chosen one," Dooku finishes with a touch of awe. "I wondered if I would even see one in my lifetime. This is quite close to the last. That was only two-hundred years ago.”
"I expect you won't see him for much of it," Palpatine remarks. "They never live past twenty."
Dooku grimaces. "Your negativity serves you ill, Sheev."
"It's a fact," Palpatine shoots back less smoothly than he likes. "The first committed suicide at eighteen. The second was killed by a Force-user hating cult. The third fell to that horrible Sith Ritual that was enacted upon her, wasn’t it? And we all know what happened to Elzar Mann at twenty. His dyad partners only ever half recovered from it. Not a single one of them has reached twenty-one.”
The boy wails again, and Palpatine can only assume they aren't taking him to the creche to avoid upsetting the other younglings. Two more Jedi join them—Qui-Gon, and Qui-Gon's best friend Tholme, who was knighted a year ago. That happens with Shadows, usually. Getting knighted younger. That, and Dooku quite obviously doesn’t want to let go. He’s always been over-protective of Qui-Gon.
"I'm hearing that the temple received a comm from the child's family on Stewjon to come as soon as possible, because the child hadn't slept in almost three days," Tholme says. "They begged them to take the boy. They’re a superstitious lot there. They must have been desperate.”
Superstitious is putting it lightly. The Stewjoni despise the Jedi. They don’t trust Force-users and are known for beating their children who show signs of being Force-sensitive.
A pang goes off in Palpatine's chest. Feeling sorry for the boy is useless, but part of him does regardless. His own father hadn't wanted him, and at first, that bonded him with his master.
Dooku's father left him as a babe in the woods.
Palpatine's dropped him off at the temple, aged four, with the words take this thing spilling like poison from his lips.
Dooku gives Tholme a look. "How do you know everything all the time?"
Tholme shrugs. "I heard it from Padawan Windu. It was him and his master on the mission.”
Qui-Gon, brows furrowed, says nothing. Drawn, apparently, toward the screeching child, he goes toward the group of Council members and healers gathered around the Chosen One.
"He hates hearing little ones cry," Dooku says softly. "Though, I'm not sure what will stop this other than a sedative. Poor thing. Even Sifo's visions didn't start this early. That child can't be more than three." He glances at Tholme, who has a bag hefted over his shoulder. "Where are you off to? You'll have to wait for the weather."
"Kiffu," Tholme explains. "There's a youngling there, the nephew of the Sheyf, who is Force-sensitive and apparently very prodigious with psychometry. They're having some trouble helping him, but he's also the heir apparent, and they're split on whether to give him to the Jedi. I spent time there in my Padawan years, so I'm going to see if I can assist."
Without warning, the wails, the screams and the cries and the tears, quiet.
Qui-Gon holds the boy close against his chest. Scrawny arms wrap around the senior Padawan’s neck as he supports the child’s bottom with one hand and rubs his back with the other. Of course. Of course, perfect, placid Qui-Gon has managed what no one else can.
Dooku, enamored as ever with his favorite apprentice, steps through the crowd. Tholme follows. Palpatine, in need of knowing more, does the same.
The boy's eyes, one a paler blue than the other, become clearer upon closer inspection, and it is ... unsettling. Palpatine’s comm goes off, set to an infernal ring that Rael selected. His older lineage sibling is, in Palpatine’s experience, always up to nonsense despite being near to his mid-40s.
“What?” Palpatine says in greeting. “You felt that in the Force as much as the rest of us. The least you could do is come look.”
“Sith Hells, Sheev, take it down a notch.”
Sheev hears the curl of Rael’s smile.
“I have a bad headache,” Rael continues. “This whole thing isn’t helping. What is it?”
“A Chosen One has arrived.”
“Shut up.”
Sheev breathes in sharp. He can’t slap Rael from here, unfortunately.
“It’s true.”
“I say it every time. I come back to the temple from a long mission, and something interesting happens.”
Sheev clicks off the comm. Rael will come or he won’t.
Palpatine continues his observations of the now quiet child. He’s thin for his age—too thin—and probably malnourished if the pale skin is any indication. His clothes amount to little more than a sack, but his right arm bears ....
That’s interesting.
“He’s part of the Stewjoni nobility,” Master Plo explains, and Palpatine can only assume that he’s being let in on this because he’s Dooku’s student, and Dooku took a seat on the council last year. “The new junior senator is his uncle. Stewjon does hold elections for the senate, but opponents never do well against the ruling family. That’s not the most of it, however. His father is the king.”
Palpatine studies the blue swirl on the boy’s inner wrist as some of the other council members gently shoo the onlookers away toward the refectories.
“They wouldn’t tell us his first name,” Master Myr says. “We could request access to Stewjoni birth records, but I doubt it will do any good. We only know he’s from the line Kenobi because that’s the king’s name.”
Stewjon joined the republic just under two-hundred years ago. It’s new, in the grand scheme. They have, however, been busy leading a contingent of senators who want to push legislation that will hamstring the Jedi. Treat them as all but slaves to the Republic rather than working hand in hand.
Sheev ought not think about that now. He’ll lose his temper.
He’ll lose his secret.
“They barely looked at us,” Padawan Windu, Myr’s apprentice, adds. “I’ve never seen anything like it on any Seeking mission. They insisted that we never tell anyone outside the order whose son he was. He was their only, as far as I could tell. The heir. You wouldn’t have known it from where they kept him. Just a hut by the sea. No grand manor, even though I saw one off in the distance. I gathered only about ten people on the entire planet knew this little one was Force-sensitive.”
Well. That is even more interesting. Palpatine can picture it. A king on a Force-sensitive-hating planet announcing the birth of a son only to find out, much too late to take it back, that he had abilities.
“I think they faked the child’s death,” Master Myr adds. “Because they were so embarrassed. And yet, they waited all this time to call us in. King Kenobi said he started showing signs at less than a year old. I suppose it just became too much to handle only recently.”
“Little one?” Qui-Gon eases the toddler’s face out from where it’s buried in his neck and puts a hand under his chin. “Can you tell us your name?”
Those big, blue eyes fill with tears. The vision, at least, must have passed. Or maybe it passed earlier, and the child simply couldn’t recover. Or maybe he had more than one. Aftershocks. Sifo Dyas has that, sometimes.
“Obi-Wan,” the boy says softly.
That electric jolt from earlier runs down Sheev’s spine again. The Force demands his attention.
“Obi-Wan, I’m Qui-Gon. My friends here are Master Dooku, Tholme, Sheev, Master Yoda, Master Myr, Mace, who you met, and Master Plo.”
Sheev fights the urge to roll his eyes. He gets billing with Tholme and Mace as far as respect goes. Qui-Gon looks at him as a peer despite the fact that they’re eleven years apart. Dooku, with all his appreciation for Jedi tradition and top-notch manners, has never made sense with Qui-Gon.
And yet.
A healer comes sweeping past them—the Twi’lek Knight Che who was in Sheev’s own youngling clan—with a hypo in hand.
The sedative Dooku spoke of.
The boy goes limp in Qui-Gon's arms, and finally, he hands the toddler over to the crechemaster. Vokara follows them.
Leaving Yoda and Plo to speak to Windu and Myr, the members of Sheev’s lineage and Tholme step aside together.
“He formed a bond with me,” Qui-Gon says without ceremony as he tucks a strand of shoulder-length brown hair behind his ear. “I felt it click into place. I got a flash of a starry sea. That must have been Stewjon.”
“A bond?” Dooku murmurs. “Extraordinary that he would form one with anyone other than his Seeker right now. Did Padawan Windu say he felt one?”
Qui-Gon nods. “A bit different, but yes.”
“He’s probably forming bonds with anyone who is kind to him,” Sheev cuts in. “He’s quite obviously been abused. As soon as they change his clothes, they’ll find bruises. Be sure of that.”
Dooku glances at him. He’s one of the few, other than the council, who knows that Cosinga left bruises. Sheev was too young to stop him, then. Now, he knows how to use his powers. Not enough of the Jedi use them to their full extent, in his view. Force-sensitives are superior beings. He can’t say that aloud in the temple, but it’s true. All his life it’s been Jedi have special gifts, but we are no better than anyone else.
He disagrees.
“That would make him less likely to form bonds so quickly, in my view,” Tholme says. “With anyone other than the Jedi who found him on Stewjon, I mean.”
Heaving a sigh, Dooku gestures at the three of them. “You ought to eat. All of you. I need to go speak to Master Yoda.”
Tholme, who can’t leave during the storm anyway, puts a hand on Qui-Gon's shoulder and gently urges him away. Qui-Gon invites Sheev to come eat with them, and as annoying as he is, your lineage is your lineage.
Sheev intends to remain a part of this one.
Obi-Wan wakes up in a cozy room with Tookas on the wallpaper. He always wanted one, but his Papa said no.
“Obi-Wan?” A kind-looking man with a fluffy ginger beard appears at his side. “You’re in the Jedi Temple. You were asleep for a while. My name’s Reginald, and I’ve got one of our doctors here, Vokara, and your friend Mace who brought you.”
Obi-Wan's breathing eases when he sees Mace. Where is Mister Qui-Gon? He helped Obi-Wan stop screaming. Obi-Wan doesn’t know why. He just knows that the Force said that Qui-Gon was safe. When Qui-Gon touched him, he saw plants in the sun.
Reginald asks him if he feels better. Obi-Wan's body aches, he wants to go back to sleep in this soft bed, but the scary pictures are gone. His head hurts, and he’s very thirsty, but they’re gone. So, Obi-Wan says that he does. He doesn’t tell them about his head hurting. They’re being so nice to him already. Mace sits with him on the bed and asks him if the doctor, a lady with blue skin and long tails on her head, can take a look at him for any injuries.
That scares Obi-Wan, because when people touch him, it hurts, but and maybe this won’t? There was a time, at least he thinks, when his Papa and Mama would cuddle him, and nothing hurt at all. Maybe he made that up, but he clings to it.
He says yes.
Mace helps him out of his brown shift. This leaves him in just his underwear, and Reginald makes a noise. Upset. He’s upset. Did Obi-Wan upset him? He didn’t mean to upset him he keeps doing that.
“It’s all right, little one,” Mace says, and this calms him. “No one is angry at you. Can you tell us what these bands are? On your legs?”
Oh. Obi-Wan looks down at the ... he can’t remember what they’re called. They like bracelets, but they go around his thighs instead. The loops of metal scrape against his skin when he walks. Sometimes they draw blood.
“People on Stewjon wear them when they do something unholy,” he says, and Mace’s eyes go wide, and that means the Jedi don’t do this. “Papa’s guards put them on me when they took me to the hut.”
The doctor undoes the locks on the things on Obi-Wan's legs, and Obi-Wan almost cries—but he doesn’t—when they come off. She cleans off the dried blood there, and there are scars, but that’s okay. It just feels nice to have them off. She puts Bacta on them—they have that on Stewjon too—before getting him into some new underwear. His cheeks get all warm, but his old ones smell, and after, he sits on the the side of the bed so she can take a look at him. He’s supposed to tell her if it hurts.
She looks at his back and his legs. She asks him what he ate on Stewjon, and he tells her—a lot of fish and fruit. He was always hungry, though. A feeling beats in the Force that he doesn’t ... it ... he worries a whole lot, but these nice people seem to be worrying about him. Once she’s done listening for his heartbeat and a bunch of other things, he doesn’t cry at all when she says tiny prick, so that something in a clear bag can get into his ... blood? That sounds right. She gives him something for his headache too without him needing to say anything.
“Would you like a bath tonight, Obi-Wan?” Mace asks. “Or a shower in the morning?”
“Shower, please,” he says. He doesn’t explain why.
One of the first things he remembers—other than his Mama with her eyes like his cuddling him in the nice house—is his Papa lifting him up to a big, tall bowl when he was very small. His Papa handed him to the priest in the blue robes, and that priest dunked Obi-Wan's head beneath cold water. He held him there for a long time until Obi-Wan flailed. He couldn’t breathe. The priest did that again and again, and Obi-Wan’s Papa slapped his bottom until it was sore because he couldn’t stop crying.
That happened to another lady once, at the gathering they had every week—the water. She married someone she wasn’t supposed to. A non-human. Obi-Wan's Papa said that only humans could protect the Force. Obi-Wan only saw non-humans in holos before today.
“Would you rather eat or sleep, little one?”
He’s hungry, but he’s too tired. He wants to sleep so much. He feels like he could sleep forever.
“Sleep.”
With this, Mace doesn’t argue, though he does have Obi-Wan drink something. It’s not water. It tastes nice and is orange and Obi-Wan finishes the whole thing.
Dressed in a set of new tunics, he gets to lay back down again, and that’s good, because his eyes are heavy. Reginald lays a blue blanket over him, and Obi-Wan tries again not to cry, but he does. He says please please please no blue, and they’re so nice to him even though he’s being a baby. They bring him a green blanket instead, and he’s not sure he deserves that, because he’s unclean, but if he’s unclean, these Jedi are unclean. He was told not to like them but ....
“Shhh, little one,” Reginald says, and the feeling of a hand on his forehead calms Obi-Wan again. “Go to sleep, all right? You don’t have to worry anymore. You’re safe with us.”
Obi-Wan's eyes fall closed.
"You missed dinner."
The amused and familiar voice loosens the knot in Dooku’s neck that's been there ever since he heard the little Stewjoni boy's first scream.
"How did you know where I was?"
"Well, when you didn't answer mine or Jo’s comms," Sifo Dyas says as he comes up beside Dooku with his long black hair spilled loose, "I tried Qui-Gon. No answer. I know better than to try Rael—he might as well not have a comm when I need him to. Your middle Padawan was happy enough to answer and explained the hubbub going on."
"Did you have fun without me?" Dooku asks, not quite ready to discuss the matter at hand.
"We didn't let the food get cold." Sifo's hand goes to Dooku's back and traces his spine with the pads of his fingers, lips quirking at the double entendre. He pauses, his voice going lower in concern. "The little one is having visions? I didn't have my first until I was a teenager. Horrible for a youngling that's not even four years old."
Dooku crosses his arms over his chest and stifles the empathy welling there. He has nearly raised three Padawans—Qui-Gon will be a knight in six months at best. He has a seat on the Jedi Council. The last thing he has time for, at fifty-four, is … getting back into this business. Prophecies and mystics and visions have never brought out the best in him. Regardless, this boy broke something open, and not just because he’s the Chosen One. The Force sparkled when Dooku first saw him.
Dark eyes narrowing, Sifo studies Dooku with that look of his.
“What, Si?”
“You’re bothered.”
Dooku heaves a sigh. Being known is ... annoying, sometimes.
“I assume Sheev said that the boy is likely the new Chosen One. He has the marking. The visions at a young age. I don't know what his M-Count is, yet. They won't be able to test the empathy powers until he's calmer."
"That poor child," Sifo mutters. "Qui-Gon helped with him?"
It’s Dooku’s turn to shoot his partner a look.
"Neither of us are here because of our prophecy interests. Do you suppose you are who you are to me because of your visions?"
"No." Sifo, as ever, remains pleasant in the face of his barbs. "I'm just asking a question. Besides, you’ve always been interested in the Chosen One stories. Qui-Gon is too. All that mystic business. It’s not a wild thing to wonder about.”
Dooku shakes his head. “Jedi in the past were not protective enough of their Chosen Ones.”
“You can’t keep a person locked in a tower,” Sifo argues. “That’s not a life.”
“Is being dead better?”
Dooku snaps without meaning to. Sifo, of course, forgives him. Sifo always does whether he deserves it or not.
"Qui-Gon was drawn to him in the Force, interest in all that mystic business, or not," Dooku explains. "The boy stopped crying the minute Qui-Gon held him."
"You might be looking at your future grandpadawan."
"Sifo."
"What? I'm not going to damn a toddler to death and simply assume that he has, at best, a twenty year lifespan. Of all people, I'm not going to predetermine his fate. Some people thought I wouldn't make it to knighthood, let alone becoming a master, because I would lose my mind and do ... something tragic as a result. I'm still here."
With this, Dooku can hardly argue.
“Sheev was strange tonight.”
“Sheev usually is.”
“I think he’s still harboring those the Jedi ought to have more power in the Republic and are superior beings thoughts of his.”
Not that he can say anything. He used to have them, too, when he became all-too-aware of the rot taking root in the Republic senate. The Jedi took on more and more and were criticized despite it. It frustrated him to no end. He and his middle Padawan shared that, and he regrets it to this very day. He didn’t get his head on straight until he used Force lightning on someone threatening Qui-Gon's life when his current student was just a young teenager.
He still remembers the day. The brush where Qui-Gon was about to be a vicious bounty hunter’s victim. The cold rage and calculation in him as he heard her mocking his student.
Save him.
Save the Jedi.
Save him.
The lightning came with ease.
Qui-Gon cried out Master, stop! He was shaking and green around the edges.
And Dooku saw himself as his Padawan did.
Slipping. Slipping into darkness.
It wasn’t a child’s place save his soul.
But he did.
That was when he knew that his thoughts, his mad, god-king thoughts of the Jedi seizing power, would not save the Jedi themselves. It wouldn’t help the current predicament.
He had been headed toward a full-scale fall.
For six months after the incident, he handed Qui-Gon's training to Yoda and set himself to rights.
“Your Padawan?” Sifo says with a half-smile. “Overprotective? I can’t imagine where he gets it from. We only need make sure that he doesn’t take it to extremes. He seems settled, these days.”
Opening his mouth to argue, Dooku isn’t given the chance when Jocasta comes striding in with a to-go container from the refectory.
“Force knows, Yan,” she says, lips pursed as she shoves the covered bowl at him, “you skip half your meals. Sit here and eat this if you’re going to insist on waiting for the Chosen One’s medical updates.”
“How did you—”
“Please.” Jo waves her hand before tucking a strand of Sifo-mussed strawberry blonde hair behind her ear. “Everyone’s talking about it.”
Knowing better than to argue with the decidedly scarier of his two partners, Dooku sits down in one of the ... bean bags in this entry room to the rest of the creche. Just as he’s dug in his spoon to a nice looking stew, however, Knight Che returns.
“Master Dooku,” she says, surprised. “I was about to go report to the council. Have you been waiting? It’s been ... two hours.”
Dooku clears his throat and remains in the bean bag no matter how silly he looks.
“I was concerned. How is the boy? You may share with all of us.”
“His visions didn’t return after an hour of sedation, which is good news, but he was exhausted and finally fell properly asleep. He’s underweight, certainly—that's easy to tell even without weighing him. The Stewjoni diet is fish and fruit heavy, so even if they didn’t give him enough, the nutritional deficiencies I’m sure I’ll find once I can run some blood tests, while concerning, won’t affect cognitive development, though it may take longer for him to grow while we correct all of that. I’m also not certain if he’s had his vaccines, though he was familiar with Bacta. He was a very smart child from what I could tell. He’ll be on a special diet. He’ll need infusions. He did have several fresh bruises.” Vokara bites her lip and pushes forward. “But what worried me most were the scars on his back and legs. They seemed to be from what I assume was a beating with a type of branch. Possibly driftwood. And they used some kind of circular metal objects on his legs that were meant to be left there. Sharp. We had to take them off.”
“Force alive.” Sifo runs a hand over his face. “To a child that young?”
Sheev endured beatings from his father. Dooku knows that well enough. This, however, seems to be quite another level.
“It reads like ritualized religious practices,” Dooku says. “Or am I going too far?”
“We can learn more from Obi-Wan when he’s ready, but from what Master Myr and his Padawan said, what we know of Stewjon, I’d tend to agree,” Vokara says. “The physical issues, we can heal over time. The abuse he suffered so young will be our greater challenge. He’s not the first youngling we’ve seen come in from a family who didn’t take care of them, however, so I trust we can do it.”
Dooku shifts on his feet. He was only six months old when his father left him in the woods. He doesn’t remember anything about it other than a sense of overwhelming sadness that seems to trail behind him some days.
“If you and the crechemaster agree, Vokara,” Sifo says, “I’d like to sit with him through the night in case he does have any vision aftershocks. I’m”—he laughs with a touch of wry exhaustion—“a bit familiar with some things that might help him.”
Vokara says she’ll go speak with Crechemaster Coll. As soon as she goes, Dooku gets a text comm.
A council meeting.
“Go,” Sifo tells him. “You can fill us in.”
“He means you had best fill us in,” Jo adds, but the lift of her lips is fond.
Dooku says that he will and kisses them both goodbye in the deserted hallway outside the creche. It’s not as if people don’t know about them, but he is, after all, a private person. He doesn’t need to run into a group of gossiping Padawans.
The meeting itself is short. They intend to talk more once the child has settled in. In the morning, they will speak with the crechemasters about which clan might be best. They will call Sifo and his master, Lene Kostana, in for practical advice about the visions. Blood tests will be run and the empathy powers at least sized-up. That’s important for making sure the child doesn’t accidentally overuse them, which can be fatal.
“The boy needs to be protected,” Dooku says toward the end. “For both his sake, and the Jedi’s, we cannot let him die as the others have.”
“Careful you must be, Padawan mine,” Yoda warns. “In your desperation to keep him safe, put on him the burden of who he is so soon, we must not. Slowly, we must explain to him. What these visions are. Why they come. What his other powers are and the legacy of those who came before him. Complicated, it will be. Done over years as appropriate, the only way, it is.”
“He will find out who he is soon enough, Master,” Dooku argues. “We have an entire hall dedicated to the lost Chosen Ones. People will talk. Even the younglings in his own clan will recognize the marking.”
“I think we can keep him from the hall for now.” Yaddle fixes him with a concerned gaze. “We’re all worried for his fate. We’re all deeply aware of the history. You’re not alone in your fear for him. We have to manage that to ensure he is well taken care of. When he has questions, we’ll answer them. Giving him too much at this age after what he’s experienced ... we must think it through. You appreciate a strategy, Master Dooku. Let us come up with one together.”
Yaddle, in her way, has always eased Dooku’s anxieties—when he allows anyone to see them. Yoda isn’t wrong, but ....
It was Yoda’s story about Elzar Mann that sparked Dooku’s obsession with the Chosen Ones in the first place. He knew the stories like anyone in the temple, but when he saw his master looking at a photo of a teenage Elzar with his two best friends/romantic interests and eventual dyad partners, Avar Kriss and Stellan Gios, something sparked.
When Elzar died, Yoda said, more vulnerable than Dooku had yet heard him, wondered, I did, why the Force would put such a burden on someone. Realized, I did, that the Force was only trying to help the Jedi. To keep us alive. With those in the galaxy who feared or hated us, the trouble rested. Fate, it was not, for the Chosen Ones to die so young. Burdened, they are, yes. Doomed, they need not be. How to protect them, learning, we still are.
Why do some people despise us so, Master?
Yoda shook his head. Heroes we are, or hated. Mortal beings, we rarely are, to the public. Difficult, that makes things.
Can the Chosen Ones really save us? You’re always telling me that interpreting visions is difficult and must be approached with care. And their other powers are almost … overwhelming for them. Dangerous.
Say that always, I will, about visions. But spare us, I think they can, if we protect them. Alive, we still are. Helped us already, they have, time and again before returning to the Force. Even during the Jedi-Sith war, continued on, we did.
If we were in power ....
Yoda swung around in a way he usually didn’t. Echoes of a past that weren’t his clung to him.
Careful, we must be. Our sabers, we will wield, yes, in defense of ourselves and others. Subjugated, we will not be, let the galaxy fall to darkness, we must not, but craving power and calling it safety, a Sith, it makes us. Smart, we will be, when hard times come. Not brutal.
Dooku didn’t learn that lesson for a long time.
Maybe he’s still learning it.
Dooku makes his way down the hall to his quarters. A trio waits for him in the shape of his Padawans. Two presences twined close. A third slightly apart. When he puts in the code, he finds Rael and Qui-Gon on his dark purple sofa and Sheev sitting at the eating table.
“A break in,” Dooku mutters. “Do the three of you have any respect for my privacy?”
“Qui-Gon does,” Rael says with a laugh. “But he’s easily led.”
“Excuse me,” Qui-Gon protests, his usual good nature gone in the face of this barb—only Tholme can tease him and get away with it.
“Peace, little one.” Rael raises his hands in defeat. “It’s my right as your lineage sibling to tease you.”
“Sheev doesn’t tease me.”
“Sheev doesn’t tease anyone. Middle child syndrome, and all.”
“Shut up, Rael,” Sheev complains. “Pardon me for not having a childish, sense of humor.”
“Is there a reason the three of you are here?” Dooku asks as he goes toward the stove to make tea. “Unionizing against me, are you?”
“We would never do that, Master.” A teasing glint of his own appears in Qui-Gon's eyes. “Though the expensive restaurant workers in the federal district should. I was reading in the news that they were trying.”
“Perfect child.” Rael pinches Qui-Gon's cheek with a grin. “You would never say a word against your master, huh?”
“Qui-Gon has his own sense of stubbornness,” Dooku quips. “He’s simply more respectful than you about it. And get your blessed feet off my furniture, Rael Averross. If you’re all going to stay, we will sit at the table.”
Dooku pours each of them cups and lays out the milk and sugar in their specified containers. The Force buzzes and snaps. It won’t settle. Dooku, glancing at his middle Padawan, senses that blankness around him again. But then, Sheev has always been good at shielding. In a temple full of people who can gage your feelings to varying degrees depending, wanting to curate what they do is only reasonable.
Nevertheless, his middle Padawan has been ... more like that, of late. Dooku has been less formal, less strict with Qui-Gon than he was with Sheev. He was twenty-six when he took on Rael, who had not gelled with his first master and needed a new one at fifteen. While the Order generally prefers that members take Padawans on at age thirty onward so they can have time on their own as young knights, exceptions are sometimes made, and Dooku likes a challenge. He was young and learning as a teacher. The rules that formed as he taught Rael—in part to reign in a stubborn teenager who was more a younger brother than apprentice, some days—Sheev knew from day one. Their bond was always strong. At least, it had been. Sheev’s apparent jealousy of Qui-Gon is obvious enough, but unless it becomes a real problem, he’s not going to lecture his thirty-three-year-old former student. Sheev cares for Qui-Gon despite it. Dooku knows that.
“Did the council agree?” Qui-Gon asks. “That the child is the chosen one?”
“They’re quite certain.” Dooku takes his first sip of Alderaanian tea and lets the spice sit on his tongue. “They’ll do more tests when he’s less upset.”
“They ought to steal some Beskar from Mandalore and build him a suit,” Sheev remarks as he sweeps his red hair out of his eyes. “That might keep him safe.”
“That’s unkind, Sheev,” Qui-Gon says. “He can’t help what he is.”
“I’m not trying to be unkind,” Sheev replies. “I’m being realistic. There are whispers of war, these days. More conflict. People who think the Jedi aren’t doing enough and hate us for it. People who distrust us. And then this anointed boy appears with powers even we ourselves struggle to understand? People will worship him and hate him all at once. The Order will need to be smart about things. That’s why he appeared, after all. It’s a sign of the times.”
A strange heaviness sits like stone in Dooku’s stomach.
The trouble is, Sheev isn’t wrong.
Once he’s shooed his Padawans out for the night, he comms Jocasta.
“Jo,” he says when she picks up. “I need a favor.”
A Brief History of the Chosen Ones of the Jedi Order (transferred from the archives on Jedha to the temple on Coruscant)
First Chosen One (At the birth of the Jedi Order 25,000 years ago)
Name: Zina Jari
Species: Human Female
Age at Death: 19
Dyad Partner: Thalor Jari (twin brother)
Cause of Death: Took her own life after overusing an apparent power to take on other beings’ negative emotions and relieve their pain. It was later discovered that Chosen Ones and their dyad partners could, when together, but with quite a bit of Force energy, strengthen each other’s positive emotions and their connection with the Force. Both could lead to exhaustion, so discretion was needed. Zina was on a mission with her master on a planet struck by a blight and severe famine. With resources still days away, Zina took on the despair and hunger of these people until help arrived. They survived. She did not. Her twin brother took his own life a decade later. This planet became a safe harbor for Jedi during the Sith Empire centuries later.
Second Chosen One (During the 100-year-darkness when the Sith first came to be)
Name: Kevmo Zink
Species: Male Pantoran
Age at Death: 20
Dyad Partner: Zallah Macri (his master)
Cause of Death: Killed by extremist members of what would one day become the Path of the Open Hand/Path of the Closed Fist, a cult who believed that no one should use the Force because it would cause dark events to happen elsewhere. While there were times on and off when the group was peaceful, violence threaded its way into their beliefs—especially when it came to the Jedi. Kevmo, in protection of younglings at a temple in the Outer Rim, died at the hand of one of the cult members, but prevented them from harming any of the children. Two of these children eventually became members of the Jedi Council that led the Order through the darkest years of the Sith Empire.
Third Chosen One (Toward the end of the Jedi-Sith War and the end of the Old Republic)
Name: Nila Shandis
Species: Female Nautolan
Age at Death: 18
Dyad Partner: Vena Dallis (Best friend)
Cause of Death: She and her dyad partner helped win one of the final, pivotal battles of the Jedi-Sith War that cemented the Republic we know today. Their combined strength muted the powers of the Sith. Unfortunately, Vena was killed by the Sith after the fact, and Nila was captured by Darth Bane and subjected to a Sith Ritual that we know little about to this day. The Jedi only knew she died from the ritual given markings on her body, time spent with Bane, and the abrupt madness that led to her death at her own hand.
Fourth Chosen One (During the Waning Days of the High Republic)
Name: Elzar Mann
Species: Human Male
Age at death: 20 (killed by the Nameless)
Dyad partners: Avar Kriss and Stellan Gios (Romantic Partners)
Cause of death: Padawan Mann was killed by one of the Nameless in pursuit of a home key to destroy the Nihil’s Stormwall technology. Upon discovering that the last home key was etched onto Nihil leader Marchion Ro’s body, Mann snapped a holo and transferred the information to the Republic before encountering one of the Nameless. While Kriss and and Gios were present during the battle in which Mann was killed, they were protecting civilians and were unable to get to Mann in time after he broke off from them to retrieve the home key. Up until then, the dyad bond had prevented the Nameless from harming the Chosen One, Gios, or Kriss. In order to protect the dozens of Jedi with him, Mann sacrificed himself to the Nameless, giving Kriss and Gios the chance to reach him as he died and kill the creature before fainting themselves. After this, the Stormwall was taken down for the final time. It was said that Gios and Kriss both lost consciousness from the power of Elzar’s end of the dyad snapping when the Nameless turned him to dust.
Check Out Record
Reference Only: bypassed
Bypassed by: Deputy Chief Archivist Jocasta Nu
Reason for Bypass: Council Member
Patron: Master Yan Dooku
As hail batters the windows of the creche, Sifo watches little Obi-Wan Kenobi sleep.
Fondness blooms deep within him as he observes the boy’s features. His almost shoulder-length copper hair falling into his eyes. The red-pink marking. The freckles spattered over his nose. Little fingers grasping the mint-green blanket.
“Little prince,” Sifo whispers. “You deserved better than your parents’ hatred. I’m so sorry. But we’ll take care of you here. We will. I know what it’s like to be a little strange. We all do.”
Pop. Pop pop pop clink.
The storm won’t let up, will it? Something tells him that it’s more than just the weather system.
Dooku’s affection for the boy curled up in Sifo’s chest like the Tookas on the walls in here, and it lingers still. Their bond makes it difficult to hide things like that from one another, though, Dooku does try on his grumpier days. Sifo wishes he wasn’t worried about Dooku’s interest in prophecy, and this lore in particular, complicating things. Qui-Gon, he worries less about. He’s a stubborn but good-natured young man whose impulses are far less likely to lead him toward darkness. His determination to live in the present moment despite his love of prophecy and the mystics helps ground him. Sifo wouldn’t like to be the one arguing with him when he’s digging his heels in, but thankfully? He’s never been on that end of things.
But Sifo knows the man he loves. He knows Yan Dooku, and he worries that Dooku’s desire to protect the child—who does need protecting—will turn into obsession. Still, his partner’s intentions felt nothing less than genuine earlier. Jo agreed.
For now, he sets his fears for the future aside. Tonight, tomorrow, next week, they all need to work to make this boy feel safe for the first time in his life.
Sifo draws his thumb down the marking on Obi-Wan's cheek and eases his hitched breathing. His own visions have come less often the past ... well, three years or so, actually. They come vivid when they do, and rather than changing as he’s been used to, only one vision has plagued him these past months. It’s all curl-gray smoke and blaster fire and the stomping of armored feet and lightsabers beating back bolts. Tanks rolls in and destroy crops and trees and landscapes.
Secession, one paint-drip senator says when that vision tilts and changes. We must secede from the Republic.
War.
These visions are of nothing less than war, and they are more distant, further out in time than he’s experienced before. While intra-planetary conflicts certainly occur, a full-scale war involving the entire galaxy? That’s not happened for a thousand years. The council knows about these visions, but the vague nature makes it near impossible to guess at, and guessing wrong would be dangerous.
Even he cannot grasp onto them, and it makes him paranoid and—
An idea occurs.
He wonders if this poor child is taking more of the weight, somehow. While the visions do come, Sifo has them with far less frequency now.
He would take that back if he could. He would spare Obi-Wan something.
“The vision to see, the power to bear, and the light to spare the galaxy,” Sifo murmurs as he rolls back the sleeve of his chocolate-brown robe. “That’s a lot for a little one, isn’t it? But you won’t be alone. We’ll take care of you. And someone ... there will be someone special you’ll choose and you’ll protect each other. A friend. A lover. A teacher. Whoever you like. I know what it’s like to see scary things. I know how overwhelming it can be.”
Thunder roars and rattles the windows.
Unlike any other child Sifo’s seen, Obi-Wan sleeps through the racket. He doesn’t scream or cry or even wake.
Stewjon, a planet of islands surrounded by water, must get storms worse than this.
Whatever happens next, Sifo intends, along with Dooku and Qui-Gon, to be a part of this boy’s life. So, through the night, he stays, and when the little one wakes from dreams, he introduces himself, gets Obi-Wan some water, takes him to the fresher, and eases him back to sleep with a lullaby that his crechemaster used to sing to his clan.
When the sun rises and Obi-Wan has slept through the rest of the night, Sifo Dyas is still there.
When senior Padawan Qui-Gon Jinn wakes the next morning, he goes to the creche first thing with his clothes more rumpled than Master Dooku would probably approve of. But he has to get there. He must see Obi-Wan. Sleep did not come easy last night when he was tossing and turning and fretting over the little boy. Qui-Gon is not a worrier by nature, but when there is something to worry about? He can rather get lost in it.
He finds Crechemaster Coll already awake and encouraging a Mon Calamari girl to eat her cereal in the refectory for younglings aged two to five.
“Good morning, Padawan Jinn,” he says with a smile. “Here to check on little Obi-Wan?”
“I am. Is that all right?”
“I’ve been expecting you. Obi-Wan is awake in his sick room. My Padawan is sitting with him while he drinks a smoothie for his breakfast. We’ve got him showered and have time before a healer comes by, if you’d like to see him.”
Qui-Gon says that he would. He doesn’t speak the word need, but it feels like a need. His connection with the Force feels like it won’t quite catch until he sees Obi-Wan with his own eyes.
“I’m thinking of putting Obi-Wan in Kybuck clan with Bant here,” Master Coll tells him. She’s just his age, and terribly sweet. And there’s another girl in that clan, Siri Tachi, who would also be a good friend. I think she’ll make quite certain that no one gives Obi-Wan too much trouble about being the chosen one.” He jiggles his leg and makes the little girl laugh. “Would you like a new friend, Bant? The one I introduced you to this morning?”
“Obi-Wan!” she exclaims with great enthusiasm. “He likes holobooks. I said I’d bring him some for Crechemaster Coll to read to him.”
Qui-Gon bops the little girl on the nose before Master Coll sits her next to some of the other young ones before they take their leave.
Qui-Gon chuckles as they walk along the pale green painted hallways. They pass by the nursery for the smallest children who are younger than two, and a Jedi inside sings them a song that Qui-Gon recognizes. Giggling comes from the refectory for initiates aged six to eight. Sun streams in through the window of the library filled with bean bag seats and toys and holobooks. The weather, at least, has stabilized, and Tholme left before sunup to tend to his own youngling business.
An affectionate peace swirls through the air of the creche. Whatever conspiracies some might like to spread, the Jedi treasure their children. Qui-Gon, during his entire childhood, never felt anything but.
“Just from speaking with him,” Master Coll adds, “it seems that Obi-Wan has very early memory recall. Most Jedi have it from two onward, but he seems to have it from twelve months. Not all clear, but decidedly present.”
“You worry that means it will affect him more emotionally,” Qui-Gon surmises.
“I do. He’s a sweet child, very intelligent, but afraid to upset anyone. I think he might be more candid and comfortable with you since the bond formed so quickly. Knight Che also believes, as does your master, that Obi-Wan has been subjected to some type of religious, ritualistic abuse. It’s nothing I’ve ever heard of before in any Force faith, but the galaxy is vast.”
With a rush of anxiety, Qui-Gon wishes Tholme were here instead of heading toward Kiffu. He’s worked a great deal more with hurting children as a Shadow than Qui-Gon has. Still, Obi-Wan did bond with him, so perhaps Master Coll is correct in his confidence.
“Knight Che also came by this morning and took some blood for tests. The M Count came back fast—25,000 per cell.”
Force alive. That is high.
They find Obi-Wan diligently drinking his smoothie with Master Coll’s Padawan, Saria, a Togrutan girl about three years younger than Qui-Gon, at his side. Blue and green and white and brown Tookas run merry across the wallpaper. A mint green blanket, soft and new, covers the toddler-sized bed with rose-pink sheets. The light from the overhead shines soft and unobtrusive. These little sick rooms are a far cry from the hut Mace described. Mace, three years behind Qui-Gon and his friend for quite some time now, sat with him for a long while last night when neither of them could settle.
Obi-Wan's blue eyes brighten at the sight of him, and that starry sea melts into Qui-Gon's mind again.
The bond.
He wasn’t making it up. He didn’t think he was, but Sheev did make him doubt. Sheev didn’t mean anything by it, of course. He’s just skeptical generally. Regardless, he’s spent as much time showing Qui-Gon the best ways to research in the archives and helping him with his history assignments as Rael has sparring with him in the salles. Sheev studied Makashi like Dooku while Qui-Gon and Rael both selected Ataru. They’re all different, but they are a close lineage.
“Hello, little one,” Qui-Gon says in greeting. “Do you mind if I sit with you for a little while?”
Obi-Wan shakes his head. “There was another nice man here when I woke up. He had long black hair. Is he your friend?”
Sifo Dyas must have been here.
“He’s my”—Qui-Gon hesitates from saying master because Obi-Wan might not know what that means, yet—“teacher’s best friend.” Well, that’s not wrong, and enough for a toddler, for certain. “He has scary pictures in his head sometimes like you do.”
Shy, suddenly, or perhaps embarrassed about his screaming and crying last evening, Obi-Wan averts his gaze.
“Thank you for drinking so much of your smoothie, Obi-Wan,” Saria says. “Do you want me to leave it here for you?”
Obi-Wan says yes. The smoothie is, indeed, almost gone. The boy must be hungry, because toddlers are often not eager for their breakfast if it’s not exactly to their standards.
Once they’re alone together, Qui-Gon, not wanting to crowd Obi-Wan, sits in the rocking chair next to the bed. In the space between as he sorts out what to say, he considers the holocron of prophecy that he used to look at with his master. It included what is now known as the chosen one prophecy that struck him from the start.
The vision to see, the power to bear, and the light to spare the galaxy.
Their shared love of prophecy and the mystics leaves Qui-Gon's master anxious, most days. Afraid of himself and his shadows. Yoda says that Qui-Gon, for all his emphasis on the present moment, sometimes gets lost in the future. Except, Qui-Gon doesn’t feel darkness when he tangles with the old mystics. He doesn’t want to control outcomes—at least not usually. He wants to swim with the tide of these maybes.
He does worry about Dooku even though Dooku hates that. His master has changed in the last almost-decade. He’s less strict, less tense, less distant than in those first two years of Qui-Gon’s apprenticeship. That day, the one with the lightning, remains vivid anyway. It makes Qui-Gon on the lookout for any signs that Dooku might be slipping, because that’s the last thing in the galaxy Qui-Gon wants. Dooku is, of course, dear to him. He’s made Qui-Gon the Jedi knight he’s about to be. Jedi throughout the Order look up to him, and for good reason.
It's just that sometimes he is … hard to know, but then he’ll laugh and make tea with extra sugar and dig up a book in the archives that Qui-Gon loves, and he seems within easier reach.
The prophecy that he and Dooku used to discuss back when rings in Qui-Gon’s head.
The light to spare the galaxy.
Qui-Gon finds that he wants to spare this child from pain. He can’t take away the burdens, no, but he can protect him. Of course, he’s getting ahead of himself. Obi-Wan is only three and wouldn’t be a Padawan until twelve at the youngest. Qui-Gon might not be the best for him.
Except, he feels like he might be.
“My Papa says the Jedi are bad.” Obi-Wan is the one who breaks the silence. Who figures out what to say first. “But Mace and his teacher were nice to me. Everyone here has been nice to me. Does that make me bad? Papa said that ... that I’m dirty. Unclean. Unholy.”
Resisting the urge to lunge forward and bring the child into a hug, Qui-Gon breathes in deep and manages his anger. A child. Someone said these things to a little boy. That anger crackles and cuts, and Obi-Wan, going pale, jolts like a split-open livewire.
All the Jedi have varying levels of being able to parse out people’s feelings through the Force, and some struggle with the weight of hyper-empathy and need help sorting their own feelings’ from others’. The Chosen Ones, according to the lore, can actively take another being’s negative emotions into their own body. Sometimes, they can even take on physical pain. So, it goes that others’ feelings reverberate quite strongly on even a normal day. Qui-Gon's skills lay more in being able to tell truth from lies rather than directly naming another being’s emotions without paying attention to body language and tone. Obi-Wan is too young to understand where the emotions are directed. He only knows what he feels coming from the other person, Qui-Gon expects.
“I’m sorry.” Obi-Wan shakes from head to toe and twists a strand of damp copper hair around his finger. “I didn’t mean to make you mad. I didn’t mean to, Mister Qui-Gon.”
“I’m not angry at you, little one,” Qui-Gon reassures him, and he puts one hand on the boy’s knee. “I’m just”—how to say this without insulting the boy’s father and family—“upset that anyone would say those things to you. You are not unholy. You are a sweet child. Some people don’t understand the Jedi, but we are born with these special powers, gifted to us by the Force, and we want to use them to help others. I know you must be scared to be somewhere so new, but you are right where you belong. I promise.”
Obi-Wan keeps shaking. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t scream. He doesn’t turn away. Grounding himself in their new bond and summoning that starry sea, Qui-Gon searches for what the little one wants. What he won’t ask for.
Hug. The boy wants the hug Qui-Gon was afraid to give. How starved he must have been in that terrible place. So, Qui-Gon gets into the little bed, slips an arm around Obi-Wan’s shoulders shoulders, and tucks him close. The bond warms, and that warmth gilds Qui-Gon’s veins with tenderness.
And something occurs to him.
The tattoo.
The blue tattoo on Obi-Wan's arm. He and Sheev read about similar markings one day in the archives when Qui-Gon was writing about other Force faiths and dug deep into research on the Guardians of the Whills. On the page just after was information about faiths-turned-cults. He can’t believe he didn’t think of it last night!
“Obi-Wan,” he asks as the little boy curls into him, “did they teach you about anything called The Path of the Open Hand or The Path of the Closed Fist on Stewjon?”
The members of those cults, one of whom killed the second Chosen One in their early days, used blue face paint.
Obi-Wan nods against Qui-Gon's shoulder. “Our holy book comes from them. The were our ... our—” Obi-Wan bites his lip. “I can’t ‘member the word.”
Holy book? Sith hells.
“Ancestors?”
“Yes. Only the human ones, though. There’s no aliens on Stewjon.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about what happened to you? We can stop anytime.”
Obi-Wan nods again. He wants to be brave. Qui-Gon can tell.
“They hurt you because you could use the Force?”
“They said I was unclean. Not just me.”
“Not just you?”
“No.” Obi-Wan trembles, and Qui-Gon tugs the blanket up around the boy’s legs. “They strapped a man to ... wood? Outside my house. My first one. They used their tridents to make him bleed. He stopped—” Obi-Wan gulps and holds back tears. “He stopped breathing.”
Red-hot rage tempts Qui-Gon, but he tamps it down in order not to frighten Obi-Wan again.
They’re not only abusing Force-sensitive children on Stewjon.
They’re killing Force-sensitive adults.
And that? Makes the likelihood of them murdering children even higher.
“And they did other things to hurt you because you can use the Force?”
Obi-Wan explains a few things. The beatings. The things clasped around his thighs. Being dunked into cold water until he couldn’t breathe. Once the little one can’t hold back from crying, Qui-Gon stops asking questions immediately.
“Thank you for telling me all of this,” Qui-Gon whispers. “Do you want to go back to sleep a while? I can sit with you.”
Obi-Wan pulls back, he glances down at his hands, and anxiety bubbles up between them.
“I don’t want to bother you.”
“You’re not bothering me, Obi-Wan. I promise.”
“I’ll be good,” Obi-Wan says, and his lip quivers. “I will. I—”
“Shhh.” Qui-Gon smooths the child’s hair back out of his face and presses his thumb against a pressure point on the too-obvious spine. “You haven’t done anything wrong. You can use the Force here, and there’s nothing wrong with it. We’re going to help you with the scary pictures too. I promise.”
Promise. He has no right to be promising exactly that. Plenty of Jedi get visions now and again, but from what Qui-Gon understands, it took a long time to even manage Sifo’s, and he’s the closest person any of them other than Master Yoda have to compare this to.
He promises anyway, because they will treat him better than anyone on Stewjon. How dare those people do this to anyone, but a child?
Much like his rumpled robes, his master probably wouldn’t like the rashness, but Qui-Gon is no fool.
He saw that soft look in Dooku’s eye.
Dooku cares as much about Obi-Wan as Qui-Gon does even if he doesn’t want to admit it yet.
Qui-Gon Jinn, almost a knight, settles his back against the wall, rests the toddler’s head in his lap, and cards his fingers through the clean copper strands. Once the lad falls asleep again, Qui-Gon takes out his comm.
He knows exactly who to talk to.
“Dex,” he says, when his old friend picks up. “What can you tell me about Stewjon?”
The Works District. Coruscant
The evening after the Chosen One’s arrival, Jedi Knight Sheev Palpatine makes his way toward the beaten, burned-out sector of the city. A few factories remain, but only a few. Most, refusing to adapt to new environmentally friendly technology, shut down.
Just past the front doors of one of these abandoned factories, his new teacher waits.
“Master Damask,” Sheev says. “Are we alone?”
“Quite,” Hego Damask says. “So, it’s true, then? A new Chosen One has arrived?”
The Muun tosses back his coal-black hood and reveals his long, thin face with those yellow eyes.
With an exhale, Sheev drops the intense shields he keeps from day to day. That gray-black darkness slithers into his veins, and he hates and loves it in equal measure. He has been taught, all his life, to defend against the dark. To acknowledge it and let it go. All Jedi are tempted. They glance off the shadows.
This is different.
What was it that Plagueis, his true name, as he calls it, said to him when he finally agreed to their partnership?
The Jedi and the Sith have historically abhorred the in-between. They have called it impossible. There is only light and dark. I believe them to be wrong. The discipline of the Jedi and the wild power of the Sith would make quite a combination, don’t you think?
“Yes,” Sheev replies. “He’s from Stewjon, of all places. That Force-sensitive-hating backwater trash compactor of a planet.”
His anger burns past embers, and oh, yes. That feels good.
“I’m sure he’ll die like the others,” Sheev adds. “But—”
“Do not count him out,” Plagueis interrupts. “Remember the prophecy.”
Sheev thinks back to the holocron he keeps—the one Plagueis gave him a decade ago. When he falters, it reminds him of his goal.
As the galaxy slides slowly toward the specter of war, the only beings who can save them from themselves will face hatred. Sith and Jedi, ending their feud, will come together to take power. A Chosen One will appear, and if they survive past their 20th birthday, will serve as a bridge and a weapon.
That’s how the prophecy goes, but it’s not a prophecy that the Jedi, in their hallowed halls, know anything about. They wouldn’t give it a moment’s thought, regardless. They wouldn’t bother. They hate the Sith too much to see how much the galaxy hates them.
Sheev has clarity. He will see where they cannot.
“You’re here on Coruscant for your usual senate lobbying?” Palpatine asks. “I expected to have to wait to meet.”
Plagueis waves his hand. “Damask Holdings business called me away to Scipio to meet with the IBC and then here. Appearances must be kept, after all. I must seem to be the opposite of what I truly am.”
That, of course, is a reminder to Palpatine.
Keep your temper. Keep your face. Keep your reputation.
He searches his new teacher for lies and finds none. He doesn’t find truths, either, in that Plagueis is old enough to have secrets he could spend the rest of his life telling. Sheev doesn’t ... like the man, exactly, but he does respect him. He needs him even more, as much as he resents that. He can’t learn about the dark side from the Jedi. Learning about the dark side will help him spare the Jedi from their own foolish hubris.
If not power, then death.
The Jedi that don’t choose power will die, at his hand or Plagueis’, but the rest will see. He will make them see.
“My youngest lineage sibling already has his eye on taking the Chosen One as his Padawan when the time comes,” Sheev adds. “I can tell. Dooku’s interest is piqued, and he’s eager to put the child under lock and key. Do you suppose I ought to get in the way of that? Should I set it up to have you take him?”
Plagueis shakes his head. “Put aside your jealousy and rash impulses, apprentice. Taking the boy now will alert the Jedi and ruin everything. Let it be. Encourage it, where the opportunity arises. Agree that the boy must be coddled in private and then ingratiate yourself into his life as a friendly face who understands him. The boy will be frustrated at being kept on a leash and therefore ripe for our control. That way, if he survives past his twentieth year, we can ... set up whatever necessary crisis to get Qui-Gon out of the way and put the Chosen One under your tutelage. Then, he can fulfill his purpose.” Plagueis pauses. “Do you still believe that your old master will help us, when the time comes?”
Palpatine swallows. “He forgets himself, of late. He forgets his true nature. When the time comes? Yes. I do. He wants to protect the Jedi. He’s dabbled in the dark to do it before.”
Plagueis nods at this. “Keep an eye out for the boy’s eventual dyad partner. We could use them, when the time is right. The power of that bond is key to it all. Watch who the Chosen One befriends and grows close to.”
A bright and blazing image soars into Palpatine’s mind. Ten thousand Jedi, sabers ignited, surrounding the senate building. Running down the halls. Cutting down anyone who tries to stop them. What has the senate done but ground the Jedi down down down?
“Are you free of responsibilities this evening?” Plagueis asks.
“And tomorrow,” Sheev replies.
Teach me.
“To my apartments, then. Wait five minutes. Don’t follow too closely.”
Sheev Palpatine obeys. Dooku would be astonished at just how well. When those minutes have passed, he gets into his speeder and drives through the dark of the city.
One day, it will belong to him. To the Jedi.
To those who deserve it.
From the Journals of Elzar Mann (Fourth Chosen One of the Jedi Order)
These words are meant to be read only by the Jedi Council and the Chosen One who comes after me—assuming there is one—so, I’m always hoping to be honest. I’m a weird one even among weird ones, and I ended up with two dyad partners instead of one. Do I call that a triad? A double dyad? I don’t know. Something. Most days, I can’t even believe that I’m the Chosen One. I don’t know why the Force would pick someone like me. Messy. Unsure. Working around the edges of things. What I do know is that Avar and Stellan ground me. They make me feel more certain of myself. Without them I’d be ... lost. I think the thing about this whole dyad situation that makes it work is that it isn’t forged by fate. I couldn’t decide whether or not I wanted to be the Chosen One, but I could pick who I wanted at my side. I chose them, and they chose me. They put themselves willingly in harm’s way to help protect me. Our bond supercharges our Force-sensitivity, but it doesn’t mean we’re unkillable. Sometimes, I wonder if I shouldn’t have agreed to forging the dyad at all. Sometimes, I worry that it makes them targets. Marchion Ro and the Nihil want me dead. I know that. And now, because of me, they want Avar and Stellan dead too. They’re targets as much as me. They would be anyway, I know, because they’re both brilliant, and they shine so bright, and they don’t need to be associated with whatever mythic thing I am to have that, they’d have it on their own, but still, I ... I feel badly about it.
I shouldn’t say this, really. Those guys want every Jedi dead. I guess I am saying it because I want whoever comes after me not to feel alone with these big emotions and questions. You should find your dyad partner, but if you fear for them, if you hesitate, I get it. No one knows exactly what this is like except for us—to be a savior and a saint more than a person, some days. That’s the thing about Stellan and Avar, though, despite this mythical bond we have. They always see me as me. That’s who you should look for. That person.
(d. Approx 200 years ago)
Lightning slices white-gold through Kiffu’s ebony sky shortly after Tholme arrives.
The weather really doesn’t want him to get where he’s going, does it?
The orbital insistence of Kiffu and Kiffex won’t be denied. When the two sister planets tip closer together, storm season arrives and interrupts the arid climate. While the lightning might frighten others, the people here are, of all things, immune to the deadly effects of being struck by it, and the season allows them to harness electrical energy that they use year-round. Needless to say, it also replenishes their water supplies enough that they don’t need moisture farmers.
Two members of the clan escort him inside Sheyf Kurlin’s home. The Clan Vos compound, a sprawling collection of circular buildings stretching at least two klicks, sits slightly elevated to help prevent flooding. The houses, built of a particular Kiffu stone, helps manage the extreme hot and cold temperatures.
Rain pours from the sky like the tears of an ancient and vengeful god. Thank the Force for the duracrete walkway, because otherwise, Tholme would probably be sinking into sodden sand right about now. The slick material of his black rain cloak keeps him dry, at least. The hearty Yellow Star Flowers that Clan Vos uses for their tattoo ink grow wild off in the distance. The Kiffar have, Tholme learned when he was here for a year as a senior Padawan, a sophisticated drainage system that protects their plants and crops from root rot and the like when this kind of intense precipitation occurs. Dry desert ground does not absorb moisture well on its own.
That year, spent assisting the Kiffu Guardians with an infiltration of Anzati on both planets, made Tholme, in many respects, who he is today.
A high-pitched sound cuts through the clap of thunder that goes off right as Tholme steps through the front door.
A child screaming and crying.
A child screaming such that Tholme worries the boy will tear his throat open.
Despite the chaos in the Jedi Temple right now, he is where he needs to be—helping this boy. He’ll comm Qui-Gon later when he has a moment to check-in.
In the entrance hall lined with light green tile that keeps things cool during the sweltering desert days, Tholme takes off his sopping cloak, hangs it up, and removes his boots as well. The two family members lead him into a sitting room.
That scream comes again, and it could draw blood. Urgency quickens Tholme’s steps. The familiar five pointed star—the symbol of both Clan Vos and the Kiffu Guardians they currently oversee—glints at him from its place above the turned-off holocaster.
That boy comes into focus. Tied-up black locs. Warm-brown skin. Yellow tattoos that mark him as a member of Clan Vos. The atmosphere zings and zips with anxiety. The lights flicker from the storm, but Tholme knows a generator will kick on if they go out. Given their expertise with them, about a hundred years ago the Kiffar opened a factory for building generators, which are a sought-after export now. Pale yellow paint adorns the walls, and a fire crackles in the hearth
“Quinlan, my sweetheart,” a woman says to child boy writhing in her arms. “It’s all right. You’re safe. You’re safe.”
Quinlan. The name etches yellow across Tholme’s heart.
Tholme knows the woman—Quian Vos, who he met during his year here. The man at her side, his eyes sparkling with tears, he does not. He must be her husband. Sheyf Kurlin, also of his acquaintance, shouts at an older woman Tholme knows in passing.
“Tinte, what in the blessed Force were you thinking wearing that?”
“I was thinking it was passed down to me from a relative!”
“Quinlan doesn’t have control of his psychometry yet! It’s stronger than the rest of seem to understand with how high is M count is. We must be careful. We of all people know how powerfully memory echoes.”
Whatever Tinte was wearing must have been imbued with some terrible remembrance, Tholme can only assume. The Force contracts with the child’s agony, and Tholme’s empathy stretches out to soothe him.
The screaming dies down, and the little is left only sobbing. Tholme wouldn’t say only about such a thing, except it is better than the screaming.
“May I, Quian?” Tholme asks as he holds out his arms. “I think I can help. You have a fine looking little lad here.”
“Knight Tholme,” Quian breathes, and the tension-tight Force eases a touch. “Please help him if you can. Nothing is working. It’s been an hour like this.”
If nothing is working, then this boy truly is as unique as Sheyf Kurlin said. The Kiffar know how to handle psychometric children.
Tholme takes the boy into his arms, and the Force swirls golden fire in his mind’s eye. A flash-bang of thunder that would normally draw his attention does nothing of the sort. Everything draws down to the boy. To his hitched breaths against Tholme’s neck. To the fast-paced beat of his heart. Tholme holds Quinlan close against his chest with one arm supporting his bottom, and the child’s arms slide around his neck. This little ruler-to-be of Kiffu clings to him. If he gets snot on him, so be it. He certainly had worse doing Padawan duty in the creche. Besides, he has a high tolerance for ... excretions. Mucus is the least of it.
It’s only then that he realizes that the sobbing has stopped.
The Force echoes maybes into Tholme’s head. Visions have never come to him like they have to Qui-Gon—or let alone someone like Sifo Dyas—but now they ... he can’t quite tell if this is a vision or simply a sudden wish of his own. Quinlan, this child in his arms, races around the Room of a Thousand fountains, and his laughter makes Tholme’s heart soar. The image draws away as quick as it came, but it imprints upon his memory like a favorite painting. Finding Force-sensitive children has grown more difficult since Tholme’s childhood. The Force itself feels more out of balance. Families don’t trust them as often for no reason that Tholme can understand. It is, of course, their choice to give their children to the Order or not. To be a Jedi, most days, is to be adored or despised by those who see them as more or less than any other being. He considers Obi-Wan, that poor child, who will be both hunted and worshipped.
Quinlan pulls back, and bright brown eyes, tear-streaked and tired, study Tholme with a gleam of curiosity.
“I know you,” Quinlan says as he touches Tholme’s long black hair.
“Perhaps you do, little one,” Tholme replies, and his raw emotion floods freely into the Force. Let the child know that he’s a safe person. Let the child know he can help.
“Thank you so much,” Quian’s husband says. “We were so afraid we wouldn’t be able to—" He steps closer to put a hand on Tholme’s shoulder, and his smile glows. “I’m Pethros Vos. I ought to have said before.” He turns to his son, who laughs when his father taps the edge of his nose. “Do you feel better Quin?”
Quin nods, and he glances at his mother, who smirks like she knows what he’s about to ask.
“What is it, my darling?”
Quin sniffs, and he’s shaking a bit, still. “Can I have a milkshake for dinner? Cousin Qualvin—”
“Says it helps after a bad episode,” Quian finishes with a fond shake of her head. “So I've heard.”
At this, a booming laugh escapes Sheyf Kurlin, and Tinte, whatever her irritation earlier, smiles at his side.
Tholme finds he doesn’t trust her.
“Despite your cousin’s falsehoods,” Quian says, but she doesn’t take Quinlan from Tholme’s arms. She seems to sense he wants to be there. “Tonight, you may have a milkshake for dinner, but you have to drink your electrolyte drink, after, all right?” She sticks out her pinky toward her son. “Swear? That actually will make you feel better.”
Quin giggles and pinky swears his mother.
Tholme, still carrying him, follows the family into the dining room where other members of the clan are likely waiting.
Outside, the storm rages.
Tholme, with a tired toddler warm against his chest, leaves the future behind for the first time since last night.
For now, he breathes easy.
The future will come on its own terms.