Chapter Text
Obi-Wan is sleeping that night, all on his own, no nightmares, no whimpers, when Xanatos knocks on Qui-Gon’s bedroom door.
Qui calls him in and sets his pad aside as his padawan comes and settles in next to him on the edge of the mattress.
“Can’t sleep?” Qui asks him.
Arms wrap around his neck. He leans back and lets his shoulders fall. Xanatos is still too thin and his robes seem to compress into nothingness when Qui returns the squeeze.
“Did you think I’d forgotten you, my young apprentice?” he asks.
Xanatos’s hair is so heavy, so much thicker than Qui’s own. It slips out of its braid and over his shoulders.
“Hey,” Qui murmurs into the trembling and hitching. “Shhhh. I never wanted to leave you, Xana.”
“I know.”
Does he now?
Xanatos pushes light against Qui-Gon’s arms to ease up on the hold. He smears a hand across his eyes and tries to settle his distress with measured breaths. Qui-Gon lets him. He waits and watches as the emotion recedes. The force absorbs it.
Xana comes back in to lean his cheek against Qui-Gon’s shoulder. The scar under his eye is slightly shinier than the skin around it.
Qui picks hair out of his eyelashes.
“What possessed you to grow all this, I don’t know,” he says.
Xana huffs.
“You know what,” he says.
“You used to braid it for me.”
“It’s harder to do on yourself,” Xana admits.
“It suits you,” Qui-Gon says. “We should have let you grow it out earlier.”
His apprentice grows heavier with the weight of exhaustion.
“You are a better teacher than me,” Xanatos says at length.
“I have much more practice,” Qui-Gon points out, and as an afterthought adds, “And three victims to practice upon.”
“We aren’t your victims.”
“Tell that to O’Ben.”
“That’s you projecting, not him.”
“Full of wisdom, you are.”
“Luminous beings, every one,” Xanatos says quietly. He loops a lock of sleek hair around his finger and runs a thumb over it.
“Do you feel as though you have returned? Or do you still feel like a stranger?” Qui-Gon asks.
“Your sister is falling.”
Ah.
“I don’t know what to do. I can feel her slipping down the same ravine,” Xanatos murmurs. “She wants something but can’t have it. She can’t let it go.”
Yes, well. Unfortunately, Qui-Gon knows exactly what it is that she wants. And no, she can’t have it.
Xanatos looks up to him, waiting and absently playing with his hair. Qui-Gon adjusts his arms so that they are rounder.
“She wants our master,” he says.
“Wants him?”
“Wants him.”
“Girl, what?”
Qui-Gon cannot stifle this laugh. Xana clenches his teeth in secondhand embarrassment.
“That’s a kink,” he says.
“Attention is a powerful thing. Loyalty, too, can go too far.”
“Gods. Does Master Dooku even know?”
“I suspect that he suspects,” Qui-Gon says. “They’ve been awkward lately. He wants to spend more time with O’Ben than her. I’m sure it does nothing but stoke the flames.”
“Obi-Wan has that effect on people.”
Qui-Gon softens his smile.
“He has you wrapped around his fingers now, too,” he points out.
“He believes what I said. All those things I said. That he’s useless and stupid and so on.”
“Are you surprised?” Qui-Gon asks. “He may think that the world rests upon his shoulders, but he is still a child. He is looking to the world around him to tell him what he is.”
Xana sighs.
“Guilt is a good look on you,” Qui-Gon notes.
“It’s turned you grey.”
Hey, now. No need for mudslinging.
“We should tell Master Dooku. He shouldn’t avoid her; it’ll set her resolve.”
There is a knock at the door. Both of them turn in alarm.
Obi-Wan doesn’t enter rooms. Qui-Gon starts to sit up; his heart beating. But then only a blue eye meets him through the crack in the door.
“Xana,” He says sleepily. “Something’s smoking in your room.”
There is a pause and then a flurry of robes and covers.
Clearly Komari knows what’s up. Xanatos’s whole bed is charred.
“What. The FUCK?” he says, shaking his hands at it.
Obi-Wan’s fingers dig into Qui’s robes. His eyes are huge.
“Well,” Qui-Gon says. “That’s confirmation that this process won’t be easy.”
“WHY.”
Qui occupies himself with shooing Obi-Wan into his room and back to bed. He’s met with little resistance.
“You stay here,” Qui-Gon says.
“Someone came in. I thought it was Xanatos.”
Yes, Qui knows, little one.
“I’ll stand guard.”
No, Qui thinks not, little one.
“There’s no reason to guard,” Qui-Gon says, imagining all of the ways Komari has probably dreamt up to eliminate Obi-Wan from the playing field.
If it’s not one person in this lineage, it’s another.
“Can I stay with Fee, then?”
...that’s actually a much better plan. Xanatos’s swearing is getting louder next door. Qui-Gon doesn’t really want to know what else Komari is doing to his belongings through multiple walls.
“Yes, that’s fine,” he says. “Shall we go to Fee’s?”
“I can go by myself,” Obi-Wan says.
Yes, he can. But to do that, he will have to pass a certain door. Qui-Gon would rather not take any chances here.
“It makes me feel useful,” he says.
Obi-Wan gazes upon him with pitying indulgence.
Qui lets Xana know that he’ll be right back. A cursory glance over the room reveals the very wood holding up the mattress to be smoldering. Xanatos has flung open the window and cleared the books and baubles on his desk and walls into boxes safe from the glowing embers.
“I’m taking my ass over there in twenty minutes regardless of whether or not you’re back,” he snaps.
“We best hurry,” Qui-Gon tells Obi-Wan.
Fee is lopsided and barely awake. There’s another shadow sleeping in his bed.
“What?” he says.
“Apartment’s burning,” Obi-Wan says again. “Just Xana’s room.”
“Master, this is more than a tantrum.”
“He did not set this fire,” Qui-Gon says. “Mind him until the smoke is gone.”
Fee looks down at Obi-Wan and then back over his shoulder at his guest.
“Yeeeah. Okay,” he says. “Come on in? Don’t mind the mess. We...nearly died.”
“Cool,” Obi-Wan chirps.
Qui-Gon gives Feemor the duvet from Obi-Wan’s bed and whispers, “Guard, shadow.”
Feemor’s eyes erupt into alertness.
“What’s happened?” he asks almost without speaking.
“I’ll tell you in the morning.”
“Master—”
“Watch the boy. He’s tired. He’ll sleep.”
“Master—”
Qui-Gon has to go now. He waves at Obi-Wan where he’s flopped down next to Feemor’s sofa. Obi-Wan rubs at his eyes and waves back.
Qui-Gon hasn’t been home-home in years-years. Opening Master Dooku’s door with the code is like walking right into the past—with some modifications.
The old stove has been replaced and the kitchen cabinets all restained to finally match the others in the apartment. Master’s boots are set neatly by the door and all the dishes in the rack by the sink are freshly washed, still dripping with water.
Qui-Gon’s entry is greeted by the opening of Master Dooku’s door. He emerged putting on a purple robe that Qui has known since he was eight years old.
“Padawan?”
“My apologies for waking you, Master.”
“Where is the boy? Is he—”
“Totally fine,” Qui soothes in a soft voice.
“Xana?”
“Xana. I must speak with you, Master. Come outside?”
Rael’s old room—Qui-Gon’s old room—Komari’s room now has not a trace of light under the door.
Master Dooku knocks on it and lets her know that he will be outside for just a moment and not to get up. Qui-Gon tries not to wince as he goes back the way he came. He doesn’t wait for Master to close the door. He’s already started down the corridor.
“Qui-Gon, slow down. What is the hurry?”
Distance is necessary. There is a room on the 36th level that contains a collection of theatre props. He, Tahl, and Mace used to hide in it to smoke up against the vent. The smell of stale sweat and dust greets him when he opens the door.
Master Dooku gives him a strong look.
Qui-Gon closes the door behind him.
“Is this a kidnapping?” Master Dooku deadpans.
“Komari is upsetting Xanatos,” Qui-Gon says.
“Most things are upsetting Xanatos,” Master Dooku replies.
“Yes, but see, for most things, Xanatos will willingly burn his bed. In this case, the roles are reversed. It is upsetting.”
“What are you talking about, padawan?” Master Dooku asks in a pleading sort of way.
This is awkward. This is so awkward.
“Wait here,” Qui-Gon says.
He leaves his master in a room full of masks and clowns and scurries back upstairs as fast as he can.
Rael hasn’t left yet. Thank stars and gods. Qui-Gon badgers him into the elevator and tries to explain at mach-speed what’s going on. Rael stops him with a finger.
“I’m not hearing this,” he says. “This isn’t happening to us.”
Wishful thinking, big brother.
“Why.”
“It doesn’t matter, what matters is that someone has to tell him so that he can deal with it and she stops trying to undo the progress Xana has made.”
“She’s not going to undo it, she’s going to make him sink his heels in,” Rael says.
“Yes, but she doesn’t know that, so instead she’s just going to tear through my apartment until she feels like the double-threat has been eliminated.”
Rael crosses his arms over his chest.
“You’re sure?” he says more than asks.
“I trust my apprentices, Rael.”
“Xana has a history of saying whatever it takes to spur you to action.”
Qui-Gon cradles his head in a hand and tries to think of a way of explaining that Xanatos is a terrible liar and came to converse in a moment of emotional vulnerability.
“Xana has fallen. He knows what falling feels like. He is still hunted by the dark side. He thinks Komari is falling. The force has told him so,” he says.
Rael holds up a finger. Then lowers it.
“Can we not catch a singular break?” he asks.
Nope.
“Where’s Master?”
“I locked him in the prop room.”
Rael becomes thoughtful.
“With the clowns?” he asks.
“With the clowns,” Qui-Gon says sadly.
Rael has the words that Qui-Gon struggles to make happen. He makes Master sit on the floor with him and Qui and lays a hand on his shoulder. Master Dooku senses a disturbance in the force. His hand lands on top of Rael’s.
“Bad news first,” he says.
Rael smiles.
“Our sister has developed her first love,” he says.
Master Dooku is already grimacing.
“And the worse news?” he asks.
“It’s you.”
The result is immediate and sighing. Master Dooku’s broad, knobbly hand passes over his face and forehead time and time again.
“She doesn’t like the kids occupying your time,” Rael says. “Takes you away from her, you know.”
“Komari, you are a child—”
“Some people just never learned how to share.”
“Thank you, Rael. Qui-Gon, you did not say that she was threatening Xanatos.”
“I said that she burned his bed,” Qui says. “What more do you need?”
Master Dooku resumes head-rubbing and face scrunching.
“And you are sure that it is her?” he asks.
“Xana is,” Qui-Gon says. “He says he can feel her jealousy in the force. He’s about to go return the favor. I hope you locked the door.”
“Wonderful. And the boy?”
“With Feemor,” Qui-Gon says. “She hasn’t targeted him yet.”
“Can we not—”
“Catch a break?” Rael finishes for Master oh-so kindly. “No, I think we fucked up in a past life, all of us.”
Master Dooku unfolds his legs and sets his hands upon them. He leans his head back against a wall, and never has he looked older and more tired.
“I suppose I’ll have to confront her,” he says.
“Yeah, so are you going to need help with that or is that going to be an us-problem, too?” Rael asks.
Master cracks open an eye to stare him into submission. He begins to stand.
“Komari is sensitive at heart,” he says. “She will need help coping with the rejection.”
“Not it,” Rael says.
Qui-Gon takes a moment to pray.
Master Dooku clears his throat.
“Ugh, fine,” Rael groans.
“Yes, Master, of course,” Qui echoes.
They never asked for a sister. Qui-Gon would like this to be known.
Komari is so...intense. He knows that he was a problem child with substance abuse tendencies, but at least he wasn’t violent. Rael, either. Rael has always been just as lackadaisical as he is at this very moment.
“I could kill him.”
Rael looks at Qui as if he holds the magic key to stop the furious pacing.
“I could kill him. I could kill him. I could kill him.”
“He is my apprentice, Komari,” Qui-Gon points out.
“Fine, I’ll kill you both,” Komari flings at him.
Qui-Gon feels his patience leaving him as a heron takes flight over a pond at sunrise. Rael puts a warning hand on his shoulder.
“Now, now. You don’t mean that,” he says.
She does, though.
“You, too. I'll kill all of you.”
See?
“Koko, is this any way for a future knight to behave?” Rael says, this time trying to appeal to a future of peace that may or may not exist anywhere outside of his mind.
“It’s going to go away,” Komari snaps at him. “It’s just a—it’s a fucked up thing, okay? I get it. I’m a fucked up thing. But I can do this. I can be more than that.”
Qui would like to see it.
Komari freezes and then lunges at him. He doesn’t move and lets her try to tear at his cross arms and robes. She’s not very large, Komari. And Qui-Gon is not afraid of a child throwing a tantrum.
“I HATE YOU ALL.”
Uh-huh. Yeah, he’s been there.
“I HATE THIS LINEAGE.”
Been there, too.
“Hon,” Rael says. “Who are you really mad at? Is it us or yourself?”
“YOU.”
Come to think of it, Rael hadn’t been super helpful when Qui-Gon had been 17 and in this position either. He’s much better in the clean-up of emotional breakdowns than he is in the throws of them.
Qui-Gon waits until Komari turns onto Rael and puts up a force wall that she crashes into when she tries to go for him. Rael grimaces hard when she crashes right into it.
“Qui,” he pleads.
Komari rips around and lunges again for Qui-Gon.
He puts up another wall. A nice smooth one that goes from one wall to the other with him safe on one side and Rael safe on the far side of the other one. Komari quickly works out that she’s been boxed in. She slams a hand on each wall and draws upon the force to crack them.
She is extremely powerful for someone of her age. She is also still a padawan. Qui-Gon has three of them; one of which has dedicated ten years to trying to kill him.
Nice try. He charges the walls with enough force energy that she rips her hands back from the burn.
“Qui,” Rael pleads again.
“You are falling, Komari,” Qui-Gon says over her roaring frustration.
“I’m not.”
“You are attacking your lineage, burning the resting place of your brother’s apprentices, gazing upon a traumatized child with contempt for taking the comfort your master has offered.”
“I’m NOT. I’m NOT.”
Qui-Gon has no patience for this.
“Then what are you doing?” he asks.
“I’m—I’m—”
Yes? He’s listening?
“I’m trying. I just want to be a knight. I just want him to.”
To?
“See me.”
Ah. Now, here they are. Finally at a grain of honesty.
“Komari, you are smarter than this,” Qui-Gon says. “You knew he would not return these feelings.”
Komari will not look at him. She pushes against the force walls for lack of anything else to do.
“Master loves you,” Qui-Gon tries to get her to see. “But he cannot love you the way you want him to. The way that you deserve, sister.”
Rael’s anxiety peaks over the precipice of his panic and finally seems to see where Qui-Gon is going with this. His head rises from the safety of his shoulders.
“You deserve someone who looks upon you and sees a woman, not a child,” Qui-Gon continues. “Someone who laughs at your jokes. Who feels emotions the way that you do.”
Komari will not raise her head but she does glance up once and then away just as quickly. Qui-Gon sighs.
“As long as this lineage is growing, Master Dooku will always being picking up and putting away new and old affection,” he says. “Obi-Wan and Xanatos are just the latest of an endless line of projects. Vessels to be filled with knowledge. Is that what you want for the rest of your life?”
“No,” Komari chokes out.
“Then why fight for it?” Qui-Gon asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Is not knowing worth the fall?”
His sister is crying. Biting her lips. Trembling.
“I don’t know,” she chokes out again. “I did everything right.”
“You did,” Rael says. “But it doesn’t feel enough.”
“I just want to be a knight.”
“I know, honey,” Rael sighs. “We’ve all been there. But let me let you in on a secret: masters are taught that, the moment you start to get desperate like this, to keep you through it. They keep you through it until you give up the desperation and realize that knighthood isn’t going to happen when you want it to happen.”
“It will be when it will be,” Qui-Gon agrees. “This is the moment when you shake. This is when everyone is looking to see what you do. If you can stand the strain.”
Komari’s hands start slipping. They drop away from the sides of the box to burying the hitching of her voice and breath.
“I’m not ready,” she sobs.
No, she isn’t.
Qui-Gon drops the shields; Rael rushes forward and catches their sister, already shushing. Hands rubbing up and down the sides of her arms. He’ll say all the right things again. Qui has done what needed doing here. He leaves them to their talking; he’s sure that Xanatos has found lighter fluid by now.
Feemor opens the door of his apartment and wrinkles his nose at his Master. He moves, though, and lets Qui-Gon come inside. Obi-Wan’s duvet is laying on the sofa. It looks unusually puffy and the cause of this reveals itself to be the two duvets that Feemor has stuffed under it so that Obi-Wan is sleeping like a ring in a pillowed box.
Qui-Gon reached down and touches a finger against the back of his hand.
Obi-Wan stirs. He tries to wrap himself around the touch, searching blindly for its source. Qui-Gon doesn’t want to wake him but carrying him back to the apartment will almost certainly result in an argument. So he resists the urge. He tucks his fingers under Obi-Wan’s shoulder and shakes him a little.
Bleary eyes peek open.
Obi-Wan reaches a hand up to messily scrub at his face.
“S’timeta go?” he asks.
“It’s time,” Qui-Gon tells him.
“Smoke’s gone?”
More or less.
“Whattabou’ Fee?”
Feemor does a tight turn and lays his forehead against his towelholder to contain his emotion.
“Fee’s had enough of us,” Qui-Gon says. “Come.” He beckons.
Obi-Wan sits up and, with disgust, shoves away his many covers. He gathers the top one to his chest muzzily.
“Kay. Bye, Fee,” he says, arms too full to wave. Feemor waves for him. Qui-Gon shuts the door.
“Tired,” Obi-Wan tells him in the hall.
“Would you like me to carry you?”
“No,” Obi-Wan sniffs.
Well, it was worth a shot.
The apartment is cold from all the windows being flung open. Xana has turned on all the lights and set up a makeshift bed on the couch. He looks up from his pad, radiating irritation, when Qui-Gon leads Obi-Wan in.
Obi-Wan makes a beeline for his room and seems to fall in through the door. Qui goes after him to make sure he actually makes it to the bed.
“S’cold,” Obi-Wan mumbles at his empty mattress.
Qui-Gon takes the duvet out of his arms and wraps it around him.
“Warm now,” he says. He gestures to the mattress.
Obi-Wan stands there frowning at him; he knows he is being put away so the old people can converse. In his half-awake state, he is mulishly stubborn. Instead of going to the mattress he comes forward and bonks his head right into Qui-Gon’s solar plexus.
Qui fights the laugh that bubbles up his throat.
“Do you want me to carry you?” he asks again.
“NO.”
Abandoned, he is. Obi-Wan throws himself on the bed. He scrambles around for a bit and huffs, then knocks right back out in barely ten seconds.
“What happened?” Xanatos asks when Qui-Gon emerges from Obi-Wan’s room childless.
“Your grandmaster broke the news to Komari as gently as he could,” he says.
“And?”
“And she torched half of the living room.”
“I’m starting to sense a pattern.”
“Rael and I intervened so that Master could put out the fire. She is in a better place now.”
Xanatos blinks slowly and then flicks his eyes back to his pad.
“We will acquire a new bed for you tomorrow,” Qui-Gon says.
“You can’t shit in this Temple without someone crawling up your ass,” Xanatos says.
“Xana. Language.”
“She’s still on the edge.”
“Yes, we know. But now, so does she. What she does next is her choice. Here, get comfortable. It’s been a long day and an even longer night. Go to sleep.”
“Master?”
Qui-Gon pauses in arranging blankets.
“Why do your siblings fear you?” Xanatos asks.
There is always a breath trapped in Qui-Gon’s lungs these days. He resumes rucking up the spare covers.
“Rael doesn’t fear me,” he says. “He fears for me. And Komari fears me because our master’s fondness for me has not died away the way his fondness for many others has.”
“Why?” Xanatos asks.
“You want the whole of my padawanship? Now? When dawn is upon us?” Qui-Gon asks, sweeping a hand out at the pink line on the horizon through the window.
Xanatos looks between that line and Qui’s face. He sets his pad down and tucks his legs underneath himself, patient.
Qui-Gon shakes his head and snatches the edge of one of the covers out from right beneath Xana’s behind. His calm demeanor vanishes in favor of surprise.
“That’s cheating,” he says. “I’m being serene.”
“Good morning, padawan.”
“You can’t avoid this forever.”
No, but Qui-Gon has earned his rest tonight.
In the decent hours of the morning, Mace and Shaak are at the door, both observing the soot left on the handle. Qui-Gon knows they’re there, but he’d rather not deal with their questions. He makes breakfast.
Bread with farmer cheese and sprouts. Xana hates this breakfast, so Qui-Gon leaves him to fend for himself. Obi-Wan will eat it. Qui puts a pile of pickled carrots on it to ensure success.
Nothing can go wrong now.
Xanatos, who has been stirring and shifting around on the sofa bed for nearly an hour, finally lifts his head and announces onlookers at the door. Qui-Gon puts the caf on and tells him to go back to sleep.
There are zero complaints from the sofa then.
Qui-Gon is sipping his second cup of tea when Obi-Wan emerges from his room and comes stumbling over to open the front door. Mace and Shaak flinch back in surprise. Obi-Wan does not acknowledge them; he sleep-walks back into his room.
Qui-Gon thinks fondly that the force must have woken him. Mace notices Xana being the opposite of a morning-person before Shaak does. He bounces his brows and tips his head.
“He’s between states of consciousness,” Qui-Gon says. “Won’t remember anything said until caf.”
“Helpful,” Mace says. He crosses the threshold. Shaak has to duck; this doorway is lower than the old one.
“I take it you heard about the attempted arson,” Qui says casually. “It’s been handled.”
“Is Master Dooku alright?” Shaak asks.
“I’ll let you know in three hours when he comes to destroy the tranquility of this home,” Qui-Gon says. “Padawan Vosa is similarly unknowable. You best ask Rael before he leaves to join a new order.”
Mace looks down the hallway.
“And your little one?” he asks.
“Trauma levels are holding steady. Did I tell you he hates Rael?”
Mace grins.
“You did not,” he says. “The force tells me you may require furniture.”
What a bountiful and kind energy it is. Qui-Gon does require furniture.