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Chapter Text

When Obi-Wan searches his room for his datapad (containing his report for Improvised Medical Analytics II, an obscure engineering elective reserved for fanatical mechanics or Senior Padawans running out of class options, scrambling for some semblance of progress), he finds a baby.

On his bed, where his datapad should be, there is a sleeping baby: human, with doughy cheeks and a dusting of golden hair. About four months old, calculates an old instinct. The rest of Obi-Wan’s brain casually spirals into panic.

This isn’t a crecheling. Instead of the standard beige robes of Jedi younglings, they are dressed in a patched-up set of rags held together by visible stitching so untidy, even Obi-Wan could have done it. Their clothes are gray and uniformly plain, but for a couple of mismatched baubles strung on twine around their neck. Their body is strapped into a bulky baby carrier, with what might have once been quite a nice fabric covering, now stained and worn through until the padding shows in several places.

And before Obi-Wan knows it, he’s punched Quinlan’s code into his comm. “I’m not the one who’s been embedding X-Net links in all your Council reports,” he snaps, albeit at a much lower volume than he’d like, “and even if I was, this is completely disproportionate vengeance.”

“What do you mean, there’s X-Net links in my Council reports?”

“... You didn’t know.”

“Who put them there?”

“How would I know?” Obi-Wan retorts. He’s too senior for the Padawans’ prank battles and too junior for the Knights’. Masters, of course, avoid such petty rivalries entirely.

There’s a sigh. “At least tell me no one on the Council noticed.”

Unfortunately, Obi-Wan only heard about the tampered reports when Master Windu was telling Qui-Gon about them over tea, in a conversation Obi-Wan had most certainly not been invited to. Apparently the whole Council had noticed and been thoroughly amused, considering it a lesson in how Quinlan was not the only person who could break a weak passcode.

“... Enjoy your mission,” Obi-Wan says at last. “I hear Saleucami’s moons are gorgeous.”

“Obi-Wan-”

“May the Force be with you!”

Obi-Wan hangs up, declines the immediate callback, and returns to staring at the baby. Despite his attempts not to disturb them, they’re stirring, stretching their feet and scrunching up a little forehead in what might be displeasure. Reflexively, Obi-Wan bends to pick up the carrier and move it … somewhere, this child would be better off anywhere than on his bed. Unfortunately, it takes an inordinate amount of strength to even budge the thing a few inches, and Obi-Wan immediately sets it back down. The carrier is solid metal under the padding, so heavy that no one in their right mind would actually haul it around. Clearly it’s mechanical, meant to hover like all the fashionable baby carriers that upper-level families take promenading, only Obi-Wan can’t see an on-switch. 

He gives up on the carrier and undoes the straps, just as the baby’s eyelids start to flutter open. Their eyes are a startling blue, like Obi-Wan’s saber blade. As they come into focus, they discover Obi-Wan’s face-

And light blooms in the Force.

Despite the child’s youth, their presence in the Force is breathtakingly luminous and vibrant with recognition, though Obi-Wan’s surely never encountered them before. He would have remembered. Whole face brightening, the child beams and coos and reaches up for Obi-Wan, legs kicking joyously. On pure instinct, Obi-Wan sweeps them up into a hug, eliciting another stream of burbling. The thought strikes him, No one’s ever been so happy to see me.

Obi-Wan carries the baby out of his and Qui-Gon’s quarters, newly grateful for the fact that his master disappears from his side every time they reach Coruscant (called away to lower levels by the unrivaled selection of pan-galactic tea shops). Sneaking through the Temple halls presents more of a challenge, but he’s capable of going unnoticed when necessary. When he reaches the Halls of Healing, the desk is empty. For a moment, he thinks of dropping the baby on it and running away before anyone can connect him to this scandal-in-the-making, but a tiny hand bats his nose just then, as if scolding him for even considering it.

The child then leans forward and tries to eat said nose. A Healer finds him in that undignified position. 

“I’m Obi-Wan Kenobi.” He hastily turns his face out of reach in order to introduce himself. “And this youngling appeared on my bed this morning.”

In a testament to her professionalism, she keeps her face blank, though surprise bleeds into the Force. It intensifies as she presses him for more details. He is as helpful as he can be, which is not very helpful at all.

He informs her, “No, I didn’t sense anyone breaking into my room to abandon a baby. Frankly, I don’t know why anyone would bother.”

Even to his less trained senses, the child feels Force-sensitive, so they could have been given to a Seeker in a few years or surrendered directly to the creche before that. The Order has procedures, whole teams of Jedi specifically meant to work with children. There’s no reason for anyone with any sense to leave this baby with Obi-Wan.

Soon after this, the Healer calls in backup, and Vokara Che herself walks out to greet him. At first, she repeats the same questions. Then she dismisses the other Healer and fixes The Expression on Obi-Wan, the one he thought he’d escaped years ago.

“I have a somewhat sensitive question for you,” she says in a kindly tone that spooks him at once.

Though Obi-Wan stays still, the child squirms in his arms and lets out a concerned peep.

“Is there any chance this instance of … unexpected youngling acquisition relates to some kind of substance use?”

“I didn’t get drunk and take up kidnapping, no,” he says with a laugh. It’s a reasonable question, going by past legends of what happens when Jedi (already a strange sort when sober) mix with mind-altering substances.

“Then could this possibly be a memory lapse of another kind?”

The smile falls from his face.

“I’m quite alright,” he replies coolly. “Nothing to report.”

“I see.” The Expression takes on a shade of calculation, before she reorganizes her features into their usual place, all business. “We’ll take the child and run a suite of tests. Genetic, among other things.”

There’s another probing, curious question, folded quietly in those words. 

Obi-Wan presses the child into her arms like a challenge. “I look forward to the results.”

This child is not, in fact, his, though they let out an indignant squeak the moment he passes them over. Now empty-handed, Obi-Wan turns and flees as fast as he can.

There’s a perfectly sensible explanation for all these oddities.

The Force itself reassures Obi-Wan of this. Or at least, he senses a faraway gleam of satisfaction, not the vague twisting unease he so frequently gets from morning meditation. 

Genetic testing doesn’t take long at all with the Temple’s equipment, so the possibility that he’s truly connected to this child will be ruled out soon enough. An investigation will find that this is a misaimed prank, or the result of someone else’s drunken kidnapping. Qui-Gon leaves his windows open sometimes to give his plants fresh air; it wouldn’t be impossible for someone to maneuver the baby carrier into their quarters that way.

Though if Obi-Wan missed a giant lump of metal floating through his home with a baby strapped to it, it’s no wonder he’s still a Padawan at twenty-four. Qui-Gon could repudiate him for sheer obliviousness.

As he returns to his quarters, he can sense his master inside, back from a particularly quick tea run. Obi-Wan smooths out the instinctual spike of panic. If he can just project a sense of calm, no one will ever know of any odd occurrences, and he can slip past this whole affair without calling attention to himself …

He opens the door to find Master Dooku, who immediately looks up from his tea to inspect Obi-Wan with interest.

Master Dooku, who hasn’t shown any interest in either him or Qui-Gon since … A vague image surfaces of Qui-Gon and a hooded figure in black huddled over teacups just like this, in those distant, fuzzy weeks after Melida-Daan.

“Masters,” Obi-Wan murmurs, bowing briefly to Master Dooku and nodding to Qui-Gon.

“We hear you had an eventful morning,” Qui-Gon says in response, in the especially mild manner that indicates he’s suppressing mirth.

Master Dooku, who must be as familiar with Qui-Gon’s moods as Obi-Wan is, shoots him an unimpressed look, or perhaps that’s just how his face is set. “The Temple is efficient with its gossip, if nothing else.”

Obi-Wan thins his lips. “As you’ve probably heard, I found a Force-Sensitive infant in my room this morning and promptly handed them to the Healers.”

“You claim an infant materialized in your room,” Qui-Gon says blandly.

“He either materialized, or he came from somewhere,” Obi-Wan states, matching his tone perfectly.

“It was obviously the will of the Force,” Master Dooku says, milder and drier than either of them; Obi-Wan abruptly realizes that his sense of humor is three generations old. Master Dooku glances over at Qui-Gon before commenting, “Perhaps this babe is the Chosen One.”

This barb strikes home; Obi-Wan has to stifle a laugh, as Qui-Gon sets down his teacup with a melodramatic clink.  

“We shall have to wait patiently,” Qui-Gon counters, “if we desire answers. It is not as if this mysterious abandoner left a note.”

“... Er,” Obi-Wan replies.

Mumbling his apologies, he hastily shuffles into the room where the carrier awaits, largely unexamined on his bed. He forgot to report it to the Healers, his focus centered entirely on the baby in his care. He tries to make up for the mistake now, inspecting all sides of the carrier and poking at the padding. There’s nothing in sight. Now painfully aware of his master and grandmaster watching (judging) him from the doorway, Obi-Wan flips the heavy thing over, with only a little unauthorized assistance from the Force-

He feels their alarm, even before he sees the cause. 

There’s no holocron awaiting him, no tidy explanation for all of today’s peculiarities. There’s only a gash crusted in blood, burnt right into the underside of the baby carrier.

The Temple Guards themselves arrive to collect the carrier, removing it from Obi-Wan’s room, levitating it like evidence in a criminal investigation. Obi-Wan feels suddenly foolish for getting his fingerprints all over it. He backs away, hands specked with dried blood.

The lineage reunion ends as suddenly as it began. 

Master Dooku whisks back out, set on terrorizing some other wing of the Temple. Qui-Gon drifts out after him. He declares that a session of meditation is in order, given the increasing strangeness of the day. 

Obi-Wan does not push to join him; there would be little point, seeing how he just finished his own meditation and learned next to nothing from it. Instead he rinses the blood off his hands and does his best to resume his usual routine, going down to the training rooms. There he tosses himself into an increasingly complex series of Ataru drills of the sort a Padawan might theoretically be asked to perform in their Trials, even if Obi-Wan has no apparent need for them. 

The most acrobatic saber form, Ataru is Qui-Gon’s favorite, all midair twists and light-footed aggression with only the barest tether to the floor. After a decade of practice under Qui-Gon’s watch, Obi-Wan would like to believe he’s developed a level of competence befitting a Jedi Knight, even if every leap feels like jumping to lightspeed without setting the destination coordinates, much less plotting a path to get there in one piece.

He’d like to believe he’s competent. Then he catches Master Yoda practicing his Ataru in the next room over, and thus die Obi-Wan’s delusions of grandeur.

He falls into bed exhausted that night and then lies awake for hours, wracked by the not unfamiliar notion that he isn’t where he ought to be.

Chapter Text

In the morning, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are summoned before the Council with only an hour’s notice. Oddly, there’s no mention of a new mission assignment.

Obi-Wan trails Qui-Gon, stopping behind him near the center of the chamber and tucking his hands in his sleeves in a perfect imitation of Jedi tranquility. The pose is useful. Without it he might shake apart like a speeder with its control cable snapped, every time he entered this room. 

Though Qui-Gon once assured him, they get less frightening with time, Obi-Wan cannot imagine ever being at ease around the Council.

To his surprise, Master Dooku arrives soon after. 

“Mace was heard boasting that he knows our lineage better than Dooku does,” Qui-Gon murmurs in Obi-Wan’s ear. “You’ll be seeing a great deal more of your grandmaster now.”

Obi-Wan wants to retort that Master Windu is too dignified to boast and surely Master Dooku would be too equanimous to react, but he saves his protests for later. 

They all wait. Obi-Wan doesn’t know why until Healer Che strides in a few minutes late, briskly unapologetic like the Council’s wasting her time. At last, Master Windu initiates the meeting, announcing that the topic of discussion is the youngling Obi-Wan discovered yesterday.

“I apologize for the delays in test results,” Master Che announces, after Master Windu invites her to speak. “Ordinarily we would have completed our examination of the child quite quickly, but parts of his genetic code are stubbornly resisting sequencing.”

“Is this a healer’s way of saying the laboratory requires another upgrade?” Master Rancisis grumbles.

“It is a healer’s way,” Master Che counters, “of saying this child is a scientific anomaly. He is not strictly human, yet we cannot connect him to any other known species. His midichlorian count is, conservatively, 36,000 per cell.” Master Rancisis opens his mouth again, along with several other Councilmembers, but Master Che speaks over them, decisively: “The Grand Republic Medical Facility has replicated our findings.”

A murmur circles the room. Obi-Wan gets stuck blinking, mind boggled by the midichlorian count. The child must be …

“A vergence in the Force,” Qui-Gon declares.

“I was just telling Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan yesterday,” Master Dooku inserts, “this child could be the chosen one, in the prophecy of old.”

Master Windu looks back and forth between Master Dooku and Qui-Gon, who has donned the serene smile which means he’s contemplating violence.

“Does this at least establish,” Obi-Wan ventures, “that I am not the parent?”

It does, even if the rest of them are too polite to say it. Midichlorian counts are, after all, at least a little hereditary.

Master Che glances his way. “No Jedi in our records is a biological relative of the child. However …”

Relief ought to come, but Obi-Wan finds himself holding his breath instead as Master Che’s lekku twitches with a rare case of nerves. 

“However, you are a perfect match for the blood on the carrier.”

No murmuring comes this time. The Council is dead silent.

“The placement of the wound,” she continues, voice dropping into the gentle tone Healers use only for grievous news, “suggests a direct blow through the abdomen. There was sustained charring, and a lack of splatter, less suggestive of a blaster bolt than a clean strike with a … a high-heat, short-range weapon.”

Obi-Wan frowns. “That’s not possible. I’ve never been impaled by a …” Lightsaber. “High-heat, short-range weapon.”

“Not yet,” Master Sifo-Dyas rumbles. He has stayed silent until now, eyes closed, at a remove from the Council’s goings on. Now his voice resounds, echoing unnaturally in the chamber walls.

Master Yoda’s ears angle with interest. “Something to add, have you?”

“It is obvious,” Master Sifo-Dyas replies. “This child is an omen of certain death.”

The Council shifts, clearly discomfited by this dark turn. Obi-Wan scowls outright, though fortunately no one seems to notice.

“It is clear this mystery requires further investigation,” Master Windu at last says, steepling his fingers, brow furrowed in concern. He directs Master Che to continue her examination of the child, collaborating with the Archives where necessary, and then dismisses all four of them. Obi-Wan flees the room first, biting back the impulse to question the most famous Seer in the Temple.

Children are signs of life, whispers Obi-Wan’s traitorous gut. Maybe Master Sifo-Dyas doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“The Council has temporarily removed us from the mission roster,” Qui-Gon informs him that night. “They’d like us to be available during their investigation.”

So Knighthood slips even further out of Obi-Wan’s grasp. 

He accepts this news with a nod and a smile. “A chance to review my fundamentals.”

He hopes Qui-Gon might approve. That he might even point him towards the particular deficiencies that have kept Obi-Wan a Padawan for so long.

But Qui-Gon moves on. “What do you make of today’s portents?”

“There are Masters who are far better-suited to interpreting the ways of the Force than I am,” Obi-Wan replies. He is the last person who could explain hard evidence of a stab wound he never got. 

But Qui-Gon hums thoughtfully, like he disagrees. “When you were small, you would report the most peculiar things, after meditating. I don’t know if you remember, but you used to imagine a whole cast of phantom shadows, trailing you everywhere.”

“With your guidance, I’ve learned to focus more on what is clear and bright in the Force.” 

He has long since learned to focus his answers on the positive when Qui-Gon asks about his meditation, even if this leaves him with nothing to say at all. He picked up that skill at fourteen, just as he learned to smile and deflect and dodge diagnoses like blasterfire whenever the healers asked their most pointed questions. 

“But in light of this possible ill omen,” Qui-Gon muses, “I wonder if you’ve noticed any shadows creeping back in lately.”

Obi-Wan could deflect. He could admit nothing at all.

“Master,” he sighs instead, in spite of himself. “The shadows never actually left.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t recognize the comm code at first. After a few seconds, the numbers strike a memory. It’s Bant, once a fellow Initiate, now a full-fledged Knight of three- no, four years. She works in the Halls of Healing, set firmly on a separate path. 

Her message is polite (she always was, he reminds himself, the cautious words don’t have to mean distance), requesting that he come to a particular room in the Temple to assist with a medical matter. He doesn’t recognize the room number either. It’s not in the Halls of Healing, instead tucked into a wing of the Temple that, come to think of it, he doesn’t recall at all.

He knows it instantly, the moment he reaches it. Rows of cribs. Pastel walls. Star maps embedded in the ceiling, flecking the room with gentle light.

This nursery is empty, except for one crib nestled in a corner, surrounded by Healers and crechemasters. Bant looks up the second Obi-Wan appears in the doorway. 

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” she breathes. “We’re at a loss here.”

He makes his way over. “What’s wrong?”

“We’re not quite certain,” a different healer replies, audibly perplexed.

Obi-Wan stops at the edge of the crib and peers in. The child he found lies inside, apparently unharmed. He’s awake, Obi-Wan thinks at first, only his eyes are open too wide. When Bant reaches out and wiggles a webbed hand in front of his face, he doesn’t blink or even seem to notice it. Instead his expression remains vacant, his stare fixed somewhere terribly far away.

Obi-Wan frowns. “He was fine when I found him.”

He was happy, or so Obi-Wan had thought. 

“His condition started deteriorating as soon as we took him into the Halls,” Bant explains urgently. “We thought the needles and the overall medical environment were upsetting him, so we handed him to the crechemasters as soon as we could. But they just called us in again. They think it’s a head injury, but the brain scans are clear. None of us know what to make of it.”

Obi-Wan gazes down at him. “He hasn’t cried, has he.”

“Not once,” Bant confirms. She’s visibly exhausted in her own right, with twitching eyes and a creeping pallor in her scales. “I know the genetic test was negative and you’re not a relative, but I just didn’t know who else to call. The last time he seemed alright was when you brought him in.”

The genetic test was negative, she says, like she only knows about one test. The Guards might be keeping the carrier’s existence confidential.

Obi-Wan looks at the crowd around him. All Healers and experienced crechemasters, they’re properly trained in caring for younglings in distress. If they cannot solve the problem, Obi-Wan should have no hope.

Yet he looks down at the child’s expression (dazed and fragile, shellshocked) and knows it intimately.

The crowd parts, letting Obi-Wan step closer. 

“Hello, there.” He bends over the crib and strokes one warm cheek, as softly as he can. “It’s safe to come out now, I promise.”

Slowly, the baby’s eyes start to focus, blinking groggily. Then he arranges his face in an ominous scrunch.

Obi-Wan scoops him up in time, just as he lets out the first cry. Perhaps he should have asked permission, but the crechemasters don’t seize the child from his arms, and so Obi-Wan keeps him. From memory, he settles the child easily in his arms, small head tucked against his cheek. He starts to walk around the nursery with the weight warm against his chest, murmuring his gentlest nonsense as the child wails into his shirt.

Master Che finds him like that, when the weeping has subsided to the occasional sniffle. He paces the nursery under her increasingly concerned stare, until she approaches him outright.

“Is this wise?” she murmurs, too low for them to hear. “You, holding him?”

“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan answers. He ignores her intended point, that perhaps one shouldn’t comfort a child found, impossibly, wrapped in one’s own blood. “But perhaps being unhappy for a time is better than being utterly numb.”

She considers this for a long while, eyes flicking between Obi-Wan and the now-drowsy child yawning in his arms.

“I do believe you are helping him heal,” she finally decides. “What hurt him in the first place, I cannot begin to guess.”

The baby has visitors. Every Seeker who’s currently on Coruscant comes by the nursery, attempting to coax him into their arms. They coo at him lovingly, telling him how very luminous his soul is, how full of warmth. Tentatively, he examines them, only to bury his head in Obi-Wan’s robes the moment they extend a hand. Only Master Koon, considered the gentlest soul in the Order, has any luck. To Obi-Wan’s chagrin, the child reaches out readily to pull on his ears and drum on his mask, clearly fascinated by the device. Master Koon offers a rumbling laugh and tolerates this treatment graciously, reaching back out to cup the child’s cheeks and brush his sunny hair.

“Would you like to hold him?” Obi-Wan shifts to pass him over.

“No. It is obvious that he is attached to you.” He must note Obi-Wan’s unease, flickering across his face. “Which is no mark against either of you. A child’s devotion is to be treasured.”

Unconvinced, Obi-Wan sets the child down on a playmat between them. The child watches in fascination as Master Koon levitates a series of blocks to build intricate towers in midair. 

It’s an entertaining and truly impressive show of dexterity in the Force, but Obi-Wan is distracted from it by a comm buzzing. He pulls it out and finds a message from Quinlan. 

hey, fun question

Without waiting for an answer, Quinlan sends the next message. so do you regularly get crushed by sadness

Obi-Wan blinks, before simply replying, ?

oh, you know, Quinlan writes. a generalized hollow sense of endless grief punctuated by stabs of acute anguish, possibly sprinkled liberally with self-loathing and regret?

Obi-Wan reads through this list several times.

Nope, he lies.

Chapter Text

The next Council summons includes the baby. Dutifully, Obi-Wan brings him up from the crèche to outside the Council doors. He falls into step alongside Quinlan, who’s heading in the same general direction.

“I always told you you’d find a cute boy,” Quinlan says by way of greeting.

“Yes, Quinlan, you’re a master of prophecy.” Obi-Wan rolls his eyes. “Congratulations on completing another solo mission. This one was particularly fast, wasn’t it?”

“Eh, the Council pulled me off halfway through.”

Obi-Wan suddenly realizes they’re walking in the same exact direction, towards the Council chambers. Before he can ask about the mysterious texts, Quinlan speeds ahead towards a senior Shadow in a gray veil, also converging on the Council.

When Obi-Wan arrives, Qui-Gon and Master Dooku are already waiting. They turn towards him at once to inspect the child, who inspects them right back with huge, curious eyes.

“So,” Master Dooku remarks, “you’ve embraced the death omen.”

And played with him, and rocked him to sleep, Obi-Wan refrains from saying. He can’t gauge whether his grandmaster would appreciate the levity.

Qui-Gon observes without comment for several seconds. “He truly could be the Chosen One. I sense he has the makings of a great Jedi.”

Obi-Wan looks down to find a little hand batting at his Padawan braid. After a few attempts, the child grasps it firmly and pulls it directly into his mouth.

“Maybe,” Obi-Wan says, fighting a smile. “I like him well enough as he is.”

The crowd outside the Council chambers swells with Temple Guards and Healers and Archivists, most of whom Obi-Wan has never talked with. They steal looks at the baby, regarding him with varying levels of concern. Obi-Wan meets their stares evenly, heart twisting with an urge to shield him. For his part, the baby remains oblivious, sucking blissfully on the tip of Obi-Wan’s Padawan braid.

Two of the most experienced crechemasters join the group, followed closely by Cin Drallig, head of Temple Security. It’s a motley collection of Jedi, possibly the most diverse assembly Obi-Wan’s ever seen outside the Temple dining hall. The Council doors at last open, and Master Windu ushers them all in.

“The Council has called you together,” he explains, “because you each have an unique perspective on a recent vergence in the Force, centered on this child. And because the Council has read several of your reports in isolation and … we found they merit further discussion.”

On that ominously vague note, he calls on the crechemasters to present their observations. As they step forth and smile, the whole room calms, their soothing powers not limited to younglings.

“We have carefully observed the child,” one crechemaster reports, “and we find that, in addition to being highly Force-Sensitive, he is naturally bright, affectionate, and quite curious about the world around him. His disposition suggests that he was raised with care and affection. Unfortunately, he also shows signs of distress with no physical cause, consistent with some form of recent psychological trauma.”

Obi-Wan tightens his hold on the child without quite meaning to.

The crechemaster throws a sympathetic glance their way. “He is starting to find comfort in the Temple, particularly when cared for by Padawan Kenobi. So long as he remains supported and stable, we are optimistic that he will prove resilient and recover from this shock in time.”

They step back, finished with their report, and Master Windu thanks them. 

And then the strangeness starts.

The Council calls on the Temple Guards next, to report on how a mysterious child could be delivered into the heart of the Temple without triggering any security measures. Obi-Wan’s stomach drops, as the failure is his as much as anybody else’s. The child starts to squirm, and Obi-Wan adjusts his grasp and calms him down by bouncing him, re-focusing his thoughts on the present moment.

“We must inform the Council,” Master Drallig announces, flanked by masked Temple Guards, “that even after our investigation, we have no additional insight into how this child traveled into the Temple.”

Another Guard speaks up, claiming that no trace of the child’s arrival was captured by any of the Temple’s extensive monitors. There is no holo footage, no motion detectors, no witnesses who saw or sensed anything out of place. They have no factual explanation to give.

“We asked several Shadows to recreate a similar feat,” they remark, nodding in Quinlan’s direction, “and they uniformly failed.” Some muttered protests bubble from that corner. “We are either facing an intruder with stealth capabilities surpassing our own Shadows’, or else the child did not arrive by ordinary physical means.”

For a second, Obi-Wan has a vision of that baby carrier making a hyperspace jump directly into his room, but then the implication actually hits. A wave of chatter sweeps the room, and Qui-Gon straightens up beside him, subtle vindication leaking through their bond.

A vergence in the Force, indeed.

“If I may, Masters?” Healer Che cuts the noise. “The medical findings are even more striking.”

This efficiently seizes the room’s attention. Master Yoda gestures for her to continue. 

“He is- approximately- a human baby, mixed-variant, aged four or five months,” she begins, rattling off facts in rapid-fire fashion. “By those standards, he is unusually short for his age, due potentially to a history of deprivation, though some infants are just naturally small, as seen with premature or multiple births. Complete genetic sequencing remains impossible due to oddities in his genetic code, though we have shared partial results with the Archive. His bloodwork shows by far the highest midichlorian count on record. It has also revealed minor nutrient deficiencies, typical of food shortages, when children are fed off-label formulas that aren’t quite tailored for their species. Fortunately, these are issues that we can correct. We find that he is overall in good health.”

The rest of the room reacts primarily to the midichlorian count, but Obi-Wan cares more about the next bit. The nutrition deficiencies.

Healer Che raises her voice, capturing their attention once more. “Prior to entering our care, he was not vaccinated, so it is unsurprising that he contracted anoat pox, approximately one month ago. What is surprising is that he was treated not with the standard antibiotics available at any well-resourced medical facility, but with fresh reeksa root.” 

For the first time, she pauses. Most of the room looks at her in confused silence, but a gasp goes up from the handful of Archivists. Qui-Gon, too, straightens up in surprise.

“Best known as the sole cure for the Blue Shadow Virus,” she elaborates, “fresh reeksa root is perhaps the most precious antipathogenic medication in the galaxy. Reeksa plants are equally famous for eating sentients who approach them. They are widely considered to be extinct and have not been available through regular or illegitimate channels in the past twenty years. This child was, I repeat, treated within the past month.”

Obi-Wan drops his gaze to gawk at this child, whose mere existence grows more extraordinary by the minute. The child looks back up at him, gurgles, and then starts chewing his own hand.

At the Council’s invitation, Master Nu herself comes forward to announce the results of the Archivists’ research.

“I would like to comment on the child’s remarkable jewelry,” she begins, and Obi-Wan looks down in surprise before remembering that, yes, the child has two little pendants tucked under his collar. One is a dull gray-brown, striated with a pattern like wood grain and marked with a carved circle. The other is a shiny dark rock, studded with tiny yellow beads.

“He wears one amulet made from an inexpensive snippet of japor wood. Japor carving is, of course, a traditional artform on many Outer Rim desert planets.” When only Qui-Gon hums in recognition, she casts a stern glare around the room, clearly judging the rest of them for the gaps in their cultural knowledge. “While japor is often used in slave resistance movements to pass secret messages, this amulet seems rather plain, without the detailed engravings I would expect of that tradition. Threaded on the same necklace is an exceptionally high-quality black veda pearl, one of the largest documented specimens. It was adorned by hand with the most delicate of orichalc finework, in accordance with a closed artistic practice reserved solely for patrons from the highest classes of Naboo's political elite.”

Master Dooku immediately twists around to look at the child, likely appraising the pearl himself. The rest of the room reacts with only a half-hearted round of murmuring. Perhaps, like Obi-Wan, they’ve been overwhelmed by the sheer number of contradictions. The messages of the Force are known for balancing clarity with poeticism, but surely this is excessive.

Master Nu continues. “We also analyzed the baby carrier in which the child was found, and we can confirm that it protected him from what would otherwise have been a fatal lightsaber strike.”

“What baby carrier,” Master Mundi asks, quite reasonably, “blocks lightsabers?”

“One made of equal parts dolovite and cortosis,” she answers promptly, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “This alloy would not occur naturally, and the Archives indicate that no laboratory can yet produce such a large amount. The techniques needed simply do not exist.”

“They don’t exist because they’re not in the Archives?” Master Dooku drawls.

She sniffs and proceeds like he hadn’t spoken. “Under its rather sloppily stitched cover, the metal shows signs of carbon scoring and blaster residue. We conclude that it was repurposed from a larger piece of machinery that was not meant for the care and comfort of younglings.”

“I helped examine the carrier. Decided to lend a hand,” Quinlan interjects, striding up to join her. Obi-Wan rolls his eyes at this, perhaps Quinlan’s worst description yet for his touch-based visions. “I also checked the necklace and the baby clothes. I saw Obi-Wan there, picking the kid up for the first time. Otherwise, there’s a complete lack of flashbacks in the Force. Nothing interesting happened near any of these things, any time in the past couple years.”

“I see stabbings are uninteresting now,” Qui-Gon murmurs under his breath. Obi-Wan and Master Dooku both snort.

“I did get some general impressions,” Quinlan says. “Impressions aren’t about specific moments, they’re not anchored in time like visions are. The impressions from the clothes and the inside of the carrier all feel like a happy youngling used them a lot, probably for his whole life.” He waves one hand towards the baby. “And the metal and the outside of the carrier feel like Obi-Wan used them for just as long, if Obi-Wan were the saddest bastard you’ve ever met.”

Obi-Wan makes an undignified noise in the back of his throat, and the baby squawks outright.

“I can’t see what happened,” Quinlan announces, throwing up his hands, “but that thing radiates cosmic levels of pain.”

And suddenly the entire room’s attention is focused not on the child but on Obi-Wan, as if they’re all really noticing him for the first time. Obi-Wan stares down stubbornly at the little, sunny swirl of hair at the crown of the child’s head, willing them to look anywhere else.

“It’s not Dark.” Quinlan offers a preemptive declaration, with vehemence directed especially at the Council and Qui-Gon. “I doubt Obi-Wan hated anyone except himself,” he adds, casually. “Every last inch of that carrier is drenched in devotion, and Light.”

“In addition to the pain?” Master Yaddle asks, voice creaking with curiosity.

Quinlan shrugs. “‘In addition to’ is the wrong way to look at it. The love is the grief and the grief is the love.”

Quinlan shrugs, and Obi-Wan glows hot, as shame and embarrassment and excruciating self-consciousness swirl together to burn his cheeks and turn the tips of his ears poker-red. He forces himself to stand still, exposed, like a droid stripped of shields with all its innermost parts showing.

“A fascinating observation,” Master Mundi coolly responds, “but the fact remains that this child is under a year old, and that Padawan Kenobi cannot possibly have encountered this baby and its belongings before. I’m afraid, Knight Vos, that your skills may require some further refinement.”

“Actually.” Obi-Wan braces for impact as Quinlan gears up to talk back to a Council member. “I’m afraid Obi-Wan raised that kid in the future, and we’re dealing with time travel.”

Chaos erupts. Quinlan watches smugly as the Jedi immediately burst into arguments over the physical and philosophical dilemmas of time travel. Within seconds, Master Nu and Master Dooku come nearly to blows over an ardent disagreement about the wall paintings at the Temple of Lothal and whether they imply the possibility of divine intervention by the Cosmic Force. Obi-Wan sidles closer to Qui-Gon, suddenly grateful for how his master remains quiet, a beacon of calm amidst the turmoil.

“Padawan Kenobi!” Master Windu’s voice booms out, somehow dragging the meeting back to order. “Whatever the nature of this vergence may be, it is clear you are deeply involved. What are your thoughts?”

“It’s all very strange,” Obi-Wan offers, “but given the evidence, time travel does seem like the simplest explanation.”

As soon as he falls silent, he knows that wasn’t what they wanted. Everyone stays quiet, waits for some profound solution to the mystery.

“I don’t have more facts than any of you,” Obi-Wan ventures further, apologetic. “But if we pursue the time-travel theory, it seems that … my future self fails- failed? Fails in the duties of a Jedi and parts ways with the Order. He becomes attached to a single being and decides to keep this child for himself, despite being patently incapable of caring for him.”

Nutrition deficiencies, a complete neglect of standard medical protocol, exposure to lethal combat? It hardly makes for a positive picture of his capabilities.

“I then end up receiving a fatal stab wound from someone who likely had no training in using lightsabers, or.” He stops and centers himself with a deep breath, forcing himself to assess the situation objectively. “Or else it is possible that I somehow come to merit elimination by the Jedi. Though I would hope not.”

The child’s burbling takes on a note of distress. Obi-Wan adjusts the child, trying to hold him properly, but it doesn’t seem to be enough.

“To an outside observer, it must seem like a string of unfathomably poor decisions.” Obi-Wan’s voice gains strength, because this, at least, he can speak to with confidence. “But it’s also well-known that I am rash enough to choose a poor course of action in the first place, and foolish enough to stay committed to it, even when it doesn’t make sense anymore.”

He falls silent and waits for another swell of noise, but the chamber stays worryingly silent. The Council is exchanging a rapid series of looks among itself, which is never good. Obi-Wan glances over at Qui-Gon, only to find him with his arms crossed and his head bowed, brow shadowed by concern.

“If I might offer another interpretation?” Master Billaba, newest member of the Council, breaks the silence. “There is another scenario that I find more sympathetic, and consistent with what I know of your character now. Perhaps there was a very good reason for this other Obi-Wan Kenobi to keep the child apart from the crèche. The Order itself may have charged him with his care, in recognition of some serious threat ...”

“The galactic war,” finishes Master Sifo-Dyas, eyes closed, voice thrumming with unshakeable certainty. 

No one seems to know what to say to that, either.

“I remain curious about the lack of vaccinations,” Qui-Gon remarks, pensive. “Obi-Wan is perfectly familiar with the principles of immunization. To skip it seems a bizarre oversight.”

It’s a fair point, yet one of the crechemasters counters it like an attack.

“This child was well-loved,” she retorts, harsher than any crechemaster Obi-Wan’s ever heard before.

Qui-Gon nods, apparently chastened, yet Master Dooku only straightens up beside him. 

“What difference does love make,” he scoffs, “in the face of a failure to provide basic necessities?”

And Master Yoda smacks his gimer stick on the ground. “A great deal of difference, Padawan!”

Master Dooku falls into a dignified silence, though here’s a definite snicker from the direction of the Shadows. Obi-Wan suspects they’ve just stumbled on a Master-Padawan divide reaching back decades.

“Anyway,” Quinlan interjects, breaking the awkward silence, “the kid is fine. Look at him, he’s got his cortosis armor and his extinct plants; he’s beaten death at least twice. I’d bet this other Obi-Wan did an excellent job raising him, all on his own-”

“But he should never have been alone,” Healer Che interrupts, even more impassioned. “As long as this Temple stands, no matter Obi-Wan’s status with the Order, we would not deny basic healthcare to a Force-Sensitive infant!”

“Then the Temple was not standing,” Master Sifo-Dyas concludes.

Master Windu presses one hand to his forehead. Obi-Wan wonders how many shatterpoints they’ve crashed through in the past half hour.

“The Jedi Order is the strongest it has ever been,” he says, somehow keeping his tone even and serene. “I cannot envision a future that would bring us down within Padawan Kenobi’s lifetime.”

And Master Dooku bursts out laughing.

“As I have told you before, Mace, you lack imagination.”

Chapter Text

Perhaps it’s lucky that the child starts crying just at that moment, and that despite Obi-Wan’s best attempts, he refuses to settle. The Council dismisses him, then thinks better of it and sends the whole lot of them out at once.

Obi-Wan plods wordlessly back to the crèche. The baby calms a little once he’s out of the crowd, with Obi-Wan’s attention back on him, but he stays restless, letting out little squawks of protest at the world.

Obi-Wan can sympathize. He can’t shake the feeling he’s just been publicly vivisected.

Returning to the crèche, he sets the child down on a crib and goes to warm a bottle. All the child’s bottles are specially prepared by the Healers, and now Obi-Wan knows why: they must need to be enriched with all the nutrients he’s been deprived of thus far.

“There you are.” Qui-Gon enters and sits down on a fluffy blanket dotted with cartoon tooka faces, somehow as graceful in this as anything else.

“Here I am.” Obi-Wan enunciates just enough to avoid accusations of mumbling.

He says nothing more for several seconds. Only the beep of the nanowave breaks the silence.

“Dooku and Mace are engaged in a surprisingly productive discussion on the future of the Order,” Qui-Gon remarks. “Specifically, my master is currently running through a detailed scheme for how he’d bring down the Order in under a decade.” 

Obi-Wan frowns. “Strictly hypothetical?”

Qui-Gon chuckles, which isn’t actually an answer. “Knight Vos has joined him in arguing that the Order is at risk.” He pauses before adding, “The depth of your future suffering has made an impression.”

Assembling the bottle, Obi-Wan fumbles with the cap and nearly drops it on the ground, catching it only with the Force.

“So I’m melodramatic sometimes,” he intones. “Hardly a meaningful sign of catastrophe.”

Either Obi-Wan’s life fell apart, or the entire galaxy did. One of those possibilities seems slightly likelier than the other.

“I doubt we have fully unraveled the Force’s message just yet,” Qui-Gon acknowledges. “There is more to learn. I will say, however, ‘melodramatic’ is not a word I would use to describe you. On the whole, I would say your responses to difficult situations are quite measured.”

“I’m glad you think so.” Mentally, Obi-Wan congratulates himself on a con well-run.

He picks the child up and settles into a rocking swing for soothing jangled nerves: more for his own benefit than the baby’s. He offers the bottle. The baby, as always, latches onto it at once and starts nursing at a rapid, perhaps desperate pace. A few stray drops escape and dribble down his chin, wasted. 

Spillage is a perfectly common occurrence, yet as he dabs at the milk with a cloth, Obi-Wan ducks his head, horrified to feel his eyes prickling at his own carelessness. 

He’s more aware than ever, that the child in his hands is terribly, terribly small.

“You are so good with him,” Qui-Gon observes, as kind as he can be. Obi-Wan can’t stand it.

In time, the bottle falls properly into place, and the child’s sucking slows. Soon he’s bobbing on the edge of a nap, eyelids fluttering shut for seconds at a time. As he falls asleep, he seems to grow heavier, settling into a warm, still lump.

“I cannot imagine a world where you are not good with him.”

Obi-Wan snorts, quietly, careful not to disturb him. “You said it yourself. I was ‘bizarrely’ irresponsible with his health.”

“Did I say that?” Qui-Gon considers this. “I am not certain of any such thing. In some situations, medical care is beyond one’s reach. Perhaps another Obi-Wan could be irresponsible with a child, but it seems far more likely that he would do his very best, even in impossible circumstances.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan says, with withering sarcasm. “I’m sure he did do his best.”

And ended up as a bloodstain.

“You assumed rather quickly that he would not be part of the Order,” Qui-Gon says. 

“Well, what kind of Jedi gets stabbed through the stomach with a lightsaber?”

Qui-Gon does not smile at the quip. “An unlucky one.” 

“The fact remains that I’m not a crechemaster. I’m not even a Seeker.” He hasn’t got enough of a connection to the Living Force to ever be considered for the position. 

Once the child has settled properly into his nap, Obi-Wan rises to set him down in a crib. 

“I don’t take care of younglings, that’s not the kind of Jedi I am,” he continues. His role is to fight, at the negotiating table or on the battlefield. Historically, he’s proven himself most adept at marshaling younglings and sending them to more tactically efficient deaths. “Why would I ever end up raising one, unless the Order had kicked me out?”

As he speaks, Obi-Wan fiddles with the dials beside the crib, raising a set of shields to block out sound and light, preserving high-quality sleep. When he turns back around, he finds Qui-Gon staring at him, stricken.

“If this Obi-Wan was physically apart from the Temple,” Qui-Gon theorizes, “he might have simply been on a long mission, or he might have stepped away from the Order of his own free will. Why do you assume he would be asked to leave?”

“Precedent?”

Qui-Gon takes a breath: long, and just a little too mindful. With surprise, Obi-Wan attends to their bond and finds the sadness is not entirely his own.

“I suppose we won’t know for sure,” Obi-Wan mutters. 

He can’t give anyone the answers they want about who he’d be in this other world. His other life story is a corrupted holocron with missing data, whole swaths lost to the Force. It must be strange for them, to ask him the simplest questions about his future (wouldn’t you still be a Jedi?) and get nothing but grasping speculation.

Obi-Wan doesn’t remember Melida-Daan.

His hands remember how to unjam a faulty blaster. His feet remember how to fall soundlessly, even when crossing rubble or jagged glass. But from a whole year of his past, his mind recalls embarrassingly little: snatches of red and gray and the barest silhouette of a broken cityscape, cliches he could have easily pilfered from a second-rate holodrama. What little he knows of the war’s timeline, he pieced together from sober academic articles published in the aftermath.

He remembers coming to, afterwards. One moment he was drifting ghostlike across a battlefield in what would later be deemed “battle meditation,” even if he never quite believed the name. The next he was too-present in the creche, rocking back and forth with an infant in his lap, choking on an urge to cry. He came to, and found that Qui-Gon had let him spend his days in the creche for months, hoarding volunteer shifts even though he had fallen hopelessly behind everywhere else, requiring remedial lessons in every class. When asked why he permitted it for so long, Qui-Gon had transfixed him with an uncharacteristically raw look and said he was simply glad Obi-Wan had found a place to feel safe again. 

And Obi-Wan stared back vacantly, uncomprehending, because blasters worked just as well in the creche as anywhere else and younglings bled out faster. He hadn’t corrected Qui-Gon. He simply clung to the younglings and wondered why no one could see all the light spilling out shamefully between his ribs, pooling like blood between his fingers.

A decade later, he stays all night in the creche beside an infant who shouldn’t possibly be alive. The gap between the child's every breath rattles too deep in Obi-Wan’s heart, and he wonders if that old wound never scarred over.

To offer stability and comfort, the crechemasters decide that Obi-Wan may keep the child.

Just for now, he reminds himself, as he bundles a happy youngling into his arms.

He is still suspended from missions, but there are lessons to catch up on. He straps the child against the front of his chest (with cloth, not cortosis) and brings him to a cafeteria, where he is immediately adored. Junior Padawans run up left and right, gravitating towards the child’s light in the Force. They say hello, and the child does his best to wave back, flailing all his limbs, thumping merrily against Obi-Wan’s chest. 

Though Obi-Wan usually spends his meals alone or with the ever-dwindling handful of similarly-aged Padawans who happen to be in-Temple, he now finds himself surrounded by Jedi of all ages, taking it upon themselves to entertain the child with every kind of Force manipulation Obi-Wan knows and a few he doesn’t. At first it’s the Padawans playing around, but then Knights and Masters join in. For his part, the baby watches attentively with massive eyes, and squeaks in delight at just the right moments, and regularly reaches out to try and grab things as they float by (demonstrating rather sharp reflexes, given his age). 

Obi-Wan attempts to maintain control of the whole affair. Within ten minutes, they’ve upturned one tray, disassembled multiple roasted giblins, and covered the table in mickelnut shells. It’s a miracle the cleaning droids wait that long before shooing them all away. 

As a last hurrah, Master Fy-Tor-Ana (whom Obi-Wan had always considered to be a serious, no-nonsense sort) Force-flings a Jogan pie in her own face like she’s in a vintage holocomedy. As a Jedi Master, she has impeccable aim, and it smacks her exquisitely on the nose.

“Jedi are ordinarily much more sensible and refined than this,” Obi-Wan informs the child, while dabbing at the green milk on his nose.

A bark of laughter surprises him, and he finds Master Piell of the Council standing behind him, shaking his head. “I truly cannot imagine where you got that impression.”

Befuddled, Obi-Wan heads towards the training salles. Qui-Gon has reserved a room for the afternoon, with a standing invitation for anyone in the Temple to join him for a spar, which will inevitably turn into a masterclass on the finer points of Ataru. Obi-Wan goes down, the child bouncing with each step.

When he opens the door, Qui-Gon is mid-drill, and Obi-Wan glances down, ready to bolt at the first sign of a deep-seated aversion to saber combat. He thus spots the precise moment when the capacity for intelligent thought abandons the child’s brain. His jaw falls slack, and his eyes glaze over, head bobbing to track the light of the blade as Qui-Gon twirls it. 

There’s no hint of fear at all, only starry-eyed wonder. 

Serenely, Qui-Gon finishes the exercise, holding the final pose for several thoughtful moments before turning to greet them.

“I see we have a visitor.”

“So he’s not categorically afraid of sabers. I hadn’t dared hope for that.” Obi-Wan unties the baby and sets him down on the wood floor surrounding the training mat before pulling his own saber from his belt.

“He strikes me as stubbornly rooted in the light. I wonder where he could have learned that.”

Cheeks heating, Obi-Wan stays silent and just ignites his saber, falling into Ataru’s opening stance, turned a little to the side with saber held upright in front of his chest. Qui-Gon lifts his eyebrows, and Obi-Wan wonders if he will continue the conversation, forcing the point.

Luckily, Qui-Gon flips into the air and attacks instead.

The next day, when Obi-Wan follows Qui-Gon to his reserved training room, Master Dooku is waiting.

Qui-Gon’s steps slow at the sight. 

“Is it a private session?” Obi-Wan murmurs. It’s the most discreet way he can ask, Does your open invitation for the whole Temple to join you in fact exclude one single Master?

“It is not,” Qui-Gon says after a moment, resuming their walk down the hall. “We have this child’s arrival to thank; Dooku hasn’t shown such interest in the Temple since Galidraan.”

Obi-Wan winces at the mention of the tragedy, perhaps the most painful in the Order’s recent history.

“We must be thankful,” Qui-Gon repeats, before inhaling as though steeling himself for battle. “Try not to take any of it too personally.”

Qui-Gon’s overlong legs close the gap before Obi-Wan can ascertain what, exactly, “any of it” might be.

“I have no intention of interfering,” Master Dooku declares. “I only thought I might watch, if it would not be too disruptive.”

“Of course not,” Qui-Gon says.

It rings slightly hollow to Obi-Wan’s ears, and presumably to Master Dooku’s too. This doesn’t stop Master Dooku from sweeping into the room first and holding the door open for them like an afterthought.

The moment Obi-Wan comes in, Master Dooku fixes his fearsome stare on the baby against his chest. “Infants and lightsabers do not mix.” 

“Obi-Wan and I are perfectly capable of keeping him out of danger,” Qui-Gon points out. 

“Even with all of Ataru’s flailing?”

Qui-Gon pauses, and Obi-Wan is likewise too stunned to form words. Ataru is flowing, vaulting motion: the height of Jedi elegance. To label it as “flailing” is to diminish one of the greatest traditions in the Order, one practiced by every member of Master Dooku’s lineage. 

The baby fills the silence by vocalizing a little and then blowing a raspberry.

“Quite so,” Obi-Wan replies before he thinks about it. When Qui-Gon and Master Dooku turn to him with identical raised eyebrows, he does his best not to cower. “Attempts at communication should be encouraged at this age.”

Though there is no visible change in their expressions, Obi-Wan has the sense they both approved of that answer, or were at least amused by it.

Master Dooku withdraws to the side of the room, unobtrusive if impossible to forget, and observes Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan as they spar. Qui-Gon dances through the motions, ever-graceful despite his size. Obi-Wan wins one of their first two bouts, but the acrobatics leave him disoriented as always, always a second behind. He tries to compensate with feints and flourishes. But to an astute observer, those can’t hide the fact that he overbalances often, constantly scrambling to correct himself before he topples right over. “Flailing” is frankly a fair description, where he’s concerned.

Not for the first time, he has the very un-Jedi thought that he’s better with a blaster than he’ll ever be with a lightsaber.

He scores a second hit: an overreaching swipe that requires too deep of a lunge, too open a stance. In any real battle, he would be leaving himself wholly vulnerable to counterattacks. Qui-Gon chooses to ignore this, simply readying himself for the next bout. 

“Padawan,” Master Dooku interrupts.

And Obi-Wan lowers his saber. “Yes, Master?”

“You do an excellent impression of a modern Jedi. There is a holodrama casting director somewhere who would be thrilled to hire you.”

This is perhaps the most convoluted critique Obi-Wan has ever heard. Or perhaps it’s a compliment? Every sentence Master Dooku utters sounds like he’s judged you and found you wanting, so it’s difficult to tell.

Qui-Gon has no such doubts. “Do not take your frustrations with me out on a new generation.”

“Then perhaps you should have worked harder to curb your own extravagance.”

“This so-called extravagance is the very nature of Ataru-“

“How comforting to know that, when one day you will find yourself fighting in a small space and be instantly killed, it will be natural.”

Obi-Wan tenses.

Master Dooku glances his way, perhaps realizing that premature death is a sensitive subject at the moment. Then he forges on regardless. 

“Obi-Wan in particular can do better than Ataru.”

“Every form has its strengths-“

“And you are making the mistake that I did, in assuming your strengths are the strengths of your Padawan.”

Qui-Gon’s retort falters on his lips. He must be even more surprised than Obi-Wan, to hear his master associate himself with anything as mundane as a mistake. 

A moment later, Qui-Gon’s gaze flickers to Obi-Wan. Perhaps he’s hoping Obi-Wan will defend him. 

“What would you suggest?” Obi-Wan ventures. 

It’s neutral, because neutrality’s the best he can offer. He can’t bring himself to argue wholeheartedly against Master Dooku, not when the man might just be right.

“Makashi?” Qui-Gon asks. He’s quieter now. If he’s being facetious, Obi-Wan cannot detect it.

Master Dooku scrutinizes them both for a moment.

“Possibly,” he finally says. “You would benefit from something solid and conservative. But even now, I see glimmers of potential.”

“Glimmers” is no high praise, but Obi-Wan suspects he’s gotten off easily as Master Dooku turns on Qui-Gon.

“And you. Tell me, are you leaving yourself wide-open to attacks out of arrogance, or is it merely obliviousness-”

Master Dooku’s speech is cut short when his own saber flies straight off his belt, zooming across the room towards the baby’s outstretched hand.

Obi-Wan dives to intercept it, only to feel it swipe the end of his fingers. That, at least, alters its course, and the saber misses the baby’s hand to smack into the wall instead and clatter onto the floor. Settled on his stomach, he tries to twist to see it but gets stuck halfway around.

“I don’t know. Would you blame arrogance or obliviousness, Master?” Qui-Gon asks, not even trying to hide his amusement as Obi-Wan scrambles to fetch the saber. On second thought, Obi-Wan scoops up the baby too, to keep him out of further trouble.

“What child learns to steal a saber before it can sit up?” Master Dooku scoffs, taking back the saber with a decidedly child-directed glare. In response, the baby grants him a shiny, drooly grin.

“An excellent point. I’ll update Mace immediately on the child’s progress.”

Master Dooku’s head snaps up towards Qui-Gon. “Leave Mace out of this.”

“I’ll tell Master Yoda too, not to worry.”

And then Qui-Gon is gone, and Master Dooku is following him out the door, insisting that he would never be disarmed in a true fight, but it is below a Master of his stature to play tug-of-war with an infant and risk damaging the new Serennian silver filigree on his handle and you cannot flit off like you’re still twenty years old, Qui-Gon, come back and engage in a reasonable discussion. Obi-Wan looks down at the child, now busily chewing on the cloth of the baby carrier.

Since arriving at the Temple a few days ago, he’s seen a few instances of levitation. Even with his excessive midichlorian count, it would take a prodigious leap for a child this young to try summoning objects himself.

“You’re a little troublemaker,” Obi-Wan informs him while strapping the baby back to his chest, now that saber training seems to have ended early. He says it in Mandalorian rather than Basic, in an attempt to spare the child’s feelings, not that someone this young can pick up on full sentences in the first place. “Who taught you to grab sabers? Those are not nutritious, by the way, even for silly little teething babies.”

The baby in question watches him attentively and then offers a long stream of burbling in response. It’s different from his usual vocalizations, with jerky fluctuations in pitch and volume and an overall (oddly aggressive) tone. 

To Obi-Wan’s ear, the burbling has an obvious Mandalorian accent.

He cannot possibly have picked this up just now, or even learned it in the Temple. He’s on the way to bilinguality, because someone took the time to converse with an infant and encourage his fledgling attempts at expression, to start teaching him the language of Mandalore.

And Obi-Wan holds him a little closer and lowers his mouth to press one kiss to the top of his small, golden head. It’s such a natural thing to do, and he wonders how many hundreds of times he’s done it before.

Chapter Text

At night, Obi-Wan lays the child down on his bed, newly stripped of any blankets that might endanger breathing. After his own routine, Obi-Wan lies down next to him and rolls onto his side, bringing up his knees, curving around him like a human shield. Though fast asleep, the child always rolls in his direction too, mirroring him, curling up into his hollow on well-honed instinct. Obi-Wan meditates like that, sometimes, following the rise and fall of his tiny chest until they are in perfect synchrony and he falls into sleep himself.

He wakes one night to a new sort of cry. A bottle (usually the answer to all fussing at this hour) is firmly rejected. Obi-Wan gets out of bed, picks him up, and starts towards the crèche or perhaps the Halls of Healing, only to have the baby fall back asleep before he’s even left the apartment.

He wakes again the next night to the same ominous, broken-off weeping. Obi-Wan shifts onto his back and drapes the child over his own chest. Small head heavy against his breastbone, he unfurls his mind and tries to wrap his presence around the child’s radiance, now dimmed by flickering shadows. Stroking the child’s back, he exhales calm into the Force, slowly guiding his breaths with his own.

In time, the child’s mind relinquishes its tiny parcel of fright. Obi-Wan accepts it gratefully and does his best to unpack a dreaming infant’s wandering train of thought. He finds only a scrap of an image: darkness broken only by stripes of red light, spiraling in strange circles. The whole scene is chilled by dread.

Once freed of his fears, the baby eases back into sleep. Obi-Wan sets him down on the mattress again and then rises to fetch a glass of water, in hopes of settling his own nerves. When he steps into the common space, he finds Qui-Gon is already there, hunched over a cup of tea. 

They ran into each other like this all the time, just after Melida-Daan. Lost and raw from too little sleep, Obi-Wan remembers how he would stutter an apology and shuffle back out, feeling even noisier and more awkward than usual in the nighttime quiet.

Now, Obi-Wan checks that there’s more tea and sits down with a cup. “I think the child might have had a vision.”

It’s funny, how Qui-Gon blinks owlishly at Obi-Wan. He looks about as lost as Obi-Wan used to feel at this Force-forsaken hour. 

“What makes you think so?” he says, voice both soft and rough with sleep.

With the Force, Obi-Wan reaches once more towards his room, assuring himself that the child is well-settled before he attempts to explain himself. “It’s not much, but I saw a dark place …”

Obi-Wan wakes up to the sight of the baby gnawing one of his shoes, never mind that Obi-Wan had left those shoes over by the door to keep from tracking dirt in.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he says, firmly pulling the shoe from his hands, “but if my shoes need shining, I will ask.”

As the child blinks up at him, bereft, Obi-Wan replaces the shoe with the bottle that was several feet closer, just presumably not as tasty.

“We have a darling little menace on our hands,” Obi-Wan tells Qui-Gon, after bundling the child up into his arms. “Anything small or potentially dangerous has to be placed outside his line of sight, or he will snack on it.”

Qui-Gon glances at his line-up of flowerpots by the window, ready to topple. “That is very good to know.”

He takes the child as Obi-Wan gets his breakfast. Holding him very delicately (perhaps a little too delicately, supporting his neck like he’s an even younger infant), he goes to show the child each of the plants, introducing each one by their species name, home planet, and special quirks.

“And this one,” he finally says, circling back to the table, “is from Stewjon, and could use rather more sunlight than we’ve allowed him. He requires a delicate touch.”

Obi-Wan glowers. “I’m not delicate.’”

“Just because a plant can survive rough handling,” Qui-Gon instructs the child sagely, “does not make it undeserving of gentleness.”

The child squeaks in agreement, the traitor.

“Oh, and Master Yoda would like to see the two of you for morning meditation in his room at 9.”

Obi-Wan chokes on the last of his tarine tea, because it’s five minutes to 9. He shoots to his feet and takes the baby back. “Why didn’t you wake me earlier?”  

Qui-Gon shrugs. “I thought you could use your rest.”

Half-grateful and half-infuriated, Obi-Wan makes a strangled noise, summons his robe, and wrests away a handful of inexplicably stolen soil before it can reach the child’s mouth. The clod crumbles all over his clothes instead, as Qui-Gon blinks in astoundment at the mess. Obi-Wan sighs and takes the child as he is, trying his best to brush the dirt off as he races towards Master Yoda’s quarters.

He’s almost late when he arrives, breathless and disheveled, with a dirt-stained child jubilating in his arms. Upon entering, he finds that Master Yoda is there with Master Windu, so Obi-Wan has managed to humiliate himself before the two most respected members of the Order in one go.

As he toes off his shoes and catches his breath, Master Windu looks at him for a good long while. His face twitches. Obi-Wan nearly panics, since he has always known Master Windu to be stern and serious, yet the Force whispers that he’s fighting hard against a smile. 

“Was it the child’s fault or Qui-Gon’s?” he finally asks.

Obi-Wan lifts an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you mean, Master.”

Master Yoda chortles outright. “Mats, we have. Sit.”

Indeed, there are four mats prepared for them in this otherwise empty room, set out in rows of two. Obi-Wan takes the mat opposite Master Windu and sets the child down to face Master Yoda. Then, he sweeps his gaze over the walls, scanning for possible choking hazards.

“Thank you for coming,” Master Windu says, as though a Padawan would ever turn his invitation down. “For several years now, Jedi with a strong connection to the Cosmic Force have sensed ripples in the Dark Side, clouding our vision. Many of us interpreted them as signs of our own fate, or of our own inner darkness.”

Obi-Wan forces himself not to wince as Master Windu directs his heavy stare squarely at him. Clearly Qui-Gon told him about the shadows. Is this remedial meditation? An intervention requiring the two greatest Jedi of the age, to cleanse some defect at Obi-Wan’s core?

A few moments later he notices exactly what Master Windu said. 

Many of us.

He continues. “Recent events suggest there is a deeper meaning, and that the implications extend far past any individual.”

“Narrow red lights, you described to Qui-Gon.”

Obi-Wan nods. “Yes. Perhaps there were other things to see, and it was just a memory from before his eyes could pick up those other colors.” The attempt at optimism sounds weak, even by his standards. “But the scene was consistent with red lightsabers.”

Master Windu nods. “Let us meditate on the possibilities.”

Obi-Wan glances at the child, who has rolled onto his stomach and is pursuing meditation according to his own traditions, thoughtfully licking the mat.

With a smile playing on his lips, Obi-Wan closes his eyes and tries to settle into contemplation. Where Qui-Gon can cast himself into the Force’s deeper currents with a second’s notice, Obi-Wan tends to find himself stranded in shallower waters, tethered in place by the anxieties and attachments of the moment.

Yet it’s easier to sink into the deep with Masters Yoda and Windu there to anchor him, folding their minds around his. Master Windu is a colossal presence in the Force, like a sunbeam passed through a muli-faceted Corusca gem, speckling the world in sunbursts. Master Yoda emanates warmth more than light, his strength concealed in some wavelength Obi-Wan can sense but not measure outright. Remarkably, Obi-Wan can also make out the child, where most beings would be overshadowed. He feels like a little, glowing blob. Its light reaches improbably far, curling around Obi-Wan in curious tendrils, difficult to distinguish from the Force’s own Light. They shine almost the same.

When they have all dropped deep into meditation, Master Windu takes the lead with confidence, honing in on a wrinkle out in the Force like a ship jumping to hyperspace. Last night’s blurred image comes into focus, now painfully sharp. 

It shows a single dual-bladed red saber, spinning at impossible speeds. 

Within seconds, the vision blurs into a fiery haze and begins to fade, and Master Windu seamlessly cedes control. Master Yoda takes it, and redirects their attention inwards towards the webs of life strung between them, spanning a galaxy. The connections emanate light, clearer and more dazzling than Obi-Wan has ever realized. 

There is nothing to see. Instead they hear a voice that’s indistinguishable from Obi-Wan’s own, resonating in their ears or maybe their hearts. Please, it pleads, take Luke somewhere safe.

Master Yoda hears out the message, marred by the whir of a saber, and then lets it go, retreating to known ground. In his absence, Obi-Wan is left in the lead. 

The Force abruptly turns fuzzy, blurred and confusing. It always is, to his senses. The masters ought to give up on him and end the session, yet they choose to wait.

It takes an eternity of casting around blindly, but finally Obi-Wan senses a hum, awakening as a thrum in his bones. He has felt something like it once before on the planet of Ilum, where Jedi usually go to discover their saber’s kyber crystals. It is almost the same hum, and then a speck of light emerges in the vision like a crystal singing out to him, amidst the darkness.

There is always a lesson with kyber crystals: they won’t come to you until you’ve learned it. Every time he stretches his senses, reaching for this bit of light, it moves back out of his grasp. It is as much like a lantern as a kyber crystal, offering him a way forward, though in the darkness he cannot even make out the path under his feet. He holds onto the half-vision, searching for the light longer than he really should. 

At last, he opens his eyes and returns to reality, only to find the child sucking on Master Yoda’s gimer stick.

“No!” Obi-Wan tries to dislodge the cane from his grasp.

“Yes!” Master Yoda retorts. “Delicious it is. Ate it often, Mace did, and grow big and strong did he not?”

Though Master Windu smiles at his master’s teasing, it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I saw a red saber clearly, with a design like a Temple Guard’s,” he says heavily. “I sense betrayal brewing, where we least expect it.”

Master Yoda’s ears droop, and he hums in concern. 

“An older Obi-Wan I heard, and saw. Ten or twenty years older, he was. Not gray or wrinkled, but aged beyond his years.” Solemn, he bows his head. “His dying words to the Force, we heard.”

Breath catching, Obi-Wan looks towards the child. “Is that your name? Luke?”

Immediately Luke drops the stick to twist around and gaze back at him.

“My darling Luke,” he whispers, pulling the child into his lap.

“Ba,” Luke replies promptly, wide-eyed and impeccably attentive.

“It seems the Force answered Obi-Wan’s prayer,” Master Windu observes.

Obi-Wan’s heart twists and sings, all at once.

“Yet subtle are the ways of the Force,” Master Yoda murmurs, rubbing his chin in thought. “Miracles, it may perform, but no more than are needed.”

The statement is heavy with special significance, but Obi-Wan can’t tell what. He looks to Master Windu and finds his whole frame is tight with displeasure.

“Obi-Wan asked for Luke to be taken somewhere safe,” he explains. “And the Force brought him here. Not another planet or system, but here.” 

“What,” Obi-Wan intones, plainly incredulous, “there was no safe place anywhere in the future?”

His eyes dart between both masters. He waits for reassurance, for an admonishment that he’s misunderstood once more.

“I’ve come to believe this Obi-Wan was alone because no one else was left,” Master Windu says instead. He isn’t looking at Obi-Wan at all, gaze directed through the window to the Senate Building on the horizon, or perhaps beyond it. “We may be looking at a full collapse of civil infrastructure, or at least of the Order.”

At least of the Order.

“That’s confidential,” he adds a little later. “It would be unwise to cause mass panic over a bad feeling. And I sense the moment requires discretion.”

Obi-Wan nods without thinking. He’s stuck trying to picture himself somehow outlasting the Order by skill or, in all likelihood, pure luck. The image comes easily: a lone figure lost in the thick of war, saber and heart devoted to any cause they can still find, Jedi robes blackened by ash and other people’s blood.

It seems impossible to reconcile with the picture the Force offers of him, singing lullabies at the end of the world.

A tap from the gimer stick rouses him. “Collapsed, the world has not. Not yet, hm?” After a second, Master Yoda pokes Master Windu too. “Of your vision, what have you to say, Obi-Wan?”

“Whatever I saw wasn’t nearly as substantial as the messages you received." He waits, but they say nothing; Master Yoda makes a noise of encouragement. "I suppose … it seemed like a kyber crystal, and I suppose it represents, well, light. So even if things seem dark, the light isn’t gone yet. I think it’s just waiting for us to learn the right lesson.” 

He falls silent, wholly uncertain, only to find both Masters nodding in approval.

“You have my thanks,” Master Windu says, before glancing down at Luke with a quirk of his lips. “You both do, for offering us hope.”

Obi-Wan returns to his quarters, only to find a gray-cloaked figure blocking the door.

“I’m afraid Qui-Gon’s teaching the Initiate Ataru class,” Obi-Wan informs Master Dooku.

“‘Afraid’ is the right term. I’m well-aware he’s infecting a new generation with his exuberance. No, I thought I might have a word with you.”

Obi-Wan tips his head, curiosity piqued. As a third legendary Jedi Master in a day seeks him out, he could almost mistake himself for a person of importance.

“Of course.” Obi-Wan maneuvers Luke onto his hip to free a hand for the door.

“You meditated with my master today.”

“I’m afraid I can’t disclose anything.” Amidst all the revelations, Obi-Wan vaguely remembers Master Windu asking for confidentiality.

“I doubt there is anything worth disclosing,” Master Dooku scoffs. He glides in, picking his path around the dirt scattered from when Qui-Gon started moving his plants. “One of the downsides of living nine centuries is that one loses all sense of urgency. It is unfortunate, how that lethargy has spread through the Council.”

Obi-Wan frowns. Master Dooku doesn’t seem to know that Master Windu was present at today’s meditation, much less that he seems deeply troubled by the shadows in the Force.

“Nowadays Sifo-Dyas sounds like the most reasonable one.” As Obi-Wan settles Luke with a bottle, Master Dooku keeps muttering, mostly to himself. “And that is a sign of ruin like nothing else.”

“May I help you with something?” Obi-Wan asks.

Master Dooku’s expression lightens, at least a little. “You have attained excellent marks in Improvisational Medical Analytics.”

“I’m flattered you noticed,” Obi-Wan answers by rote, when in fact he has a slight bad feeling about the direction of this conversation.

Master Dooku reaches into his voluminous cloak and pulls out a couple ounces of blood sloshing around a hospital-grade tube. That feeling becomes decidedly more acute.

“… There are at least fifty labs on-planet that could analyze that properly, without improvising anything.”

Master Dooku places the vial on the table, looks at Luke, and picks it back up. “I have reason to believe external laboratories have been compromised.”

“Well, there’s still the Jedi labs, unless … ah.”

Unless the sample was illegally obtained.

It’s odd, watching Master Dooku squirm. He’s elegant even in this, simply drumming his fingers on the table.

Obi-Wan keeps his face blank and is perhaps a little slower and more diligent than he needs to be, when wiping up every stray drop of milk. “When you ask someone to commit multiple felonies, it’s polite to offer an explanation.”

“You have no evidence this isn’t legitimately obtained.”

“Yes, I could plead total obliviousness to obvious criminal activity. That’ll finally make the Council Knight me.”

The drumming gets a little slower. More thoughtful.

“The Force does not indulge in time travel,” Master Dooku abruptly declares, “and yet it dropped a child from the future on our heads. He is a tangible message, when our own senses are failing us, telling us to abandon our naïveté and truly deal with the galaxy. The Jedi are not safe,” he enunciates with violence. “We are not flawless. We will walk ourselves into oblivion unless someone wakes up to stop us!”

He finishes this speech with a slam of hand against the table. Luke flinches in surprise. Obi-Wan finds himself doing the same thing.

Then it occurs to him that Master Windu said essentially the same thing, albeit in a more measured fashion. Obi-Wan wonders how much stronger the Order would be, if Master Yoda’s Padawans actually talked to each other.

 “How does this justify stealing biospecimens?” Obi-Wan finally asks.

Master Dooku seems to settle himself by folding his arms into the sleeves of his coat just as Obi-Wan does. “There was an irregularity, when searching the Naboo databases for the child’s family. The blood test results for their current Senator are inconsistent.”

“Inconsistent how?” he presses.

“Many of the Naboo are known to be born with light-colored eyes that darken in their first years. According to the databases, the Senator ought to have grown into naturally brown eyes, yet his eyes are blue.”

Obi-Wan waits, but no further explanation is forthcoming.

“Contact lenses wouldn’t be the most unusual fashion choice out of that planet,” he finally points out.

“The truth is not so simple,” Master Dooku retorts, now quiet yet more urgent than before. “I have meditated on the matter, and there is a far larger shadow cast here, if only someone else would see it.”

Obi-Wan contemplates this claim, and the strange itch he’s had since his vision this morning. There is a lesson to learn. A lesson he’s missed entirely.

He’s not sure that lesson has anything to do with the Senator of Naboo’s ocular fashion choices, but what’s a little lawbreaking among lineagemates?

Obi-Wan reaches forth and takes the vial to inspect it. “So you need a comparison against Naboo’s records?”

“To reveal any falsification, yes. He may have fathered many children and meddled with his planet’s data to avoid constant scandal. His own relatives died far too long ago to be in the database at all.”

Obi-Wan nods. “I’ll do it. Just a moment.”

He sets the child down for a nap and then goes to the closet to fetch his class blood testing project, which he had cobbled together from spare parts. It’s disconnected from any existing medical software and deeply, thoroughly untrackable. Perfect for criminality, though that was hardly the original goal.

Upon seeing the ramshackle contraption, Master Dooku lifts an eyebrow. Still he wisely stays silent, simply handing over the Naboo holocron (probably also stolen, if Obi-Wan thinks about it).

Miraculously, his old project turns on, and Obi-Wan starts the manual calibration. “Expected species?”

“Human, Variant 4.”

Obi-Wan types that in and starts reading off the results as they show up. “The high-level metrics all check out. He is human, variant 4, and he’s got the same blood type as the records say. He’s not related to the child.” He detaches the holocron and hands it back. “Maybe there’s a little discrepancy hidden somewhere, but you really would need a proper lab for that.”

“I see. Thank you,” Master Dooku says, surprisingly polite. Quietly distraught.

And the itch pulls at Obi-Wan, insisting he’s missed something, so he punches in a set of tests that weren’t mentioned in the database at all.

“He’s in exceptional health for his age,” Obi-Wan offers tentatively. “These metrics would shame an athlete, he must do a lot of aerobic exercise. And- oh.”

Obi-Wan halts the tests, repositions the vial, and restarts them.

The result comes out the same.

“What is it?”

Obi-Wan narrows his eyes. “Are you certain this is from the Senator?”

“Very.” When Obi-Wan stays unconvinced, he adds, “I took it from the Senate clinic. All the Senators have mandatory daily screenings, for the new Hesken Fever outbreak.”

So this vial was stolen from inside the Senate building. Obi-Wan upgrades the severity of the felonies he’s abetting, even as he reruns the calculations once more, now re-calibrating his sensors and rebooting the whole system.

He wouldn’t even consider these results for a second, if not for the baby just one wall away, a beacon in the Force.

“The midichlorian count is over 20,000,” Obi-Wan mutters, and Master Dooku’s eyes flash ominously. “But he grew up on Naboo. Did his family decline the Jedi’s offer?”

“There is no trace of him in our Archives,” Master Dooku says, in almost a whisper.

“But we should have found him.” Naboo is firmly in Republic territory, not so very far from Coruscant. Jedi, including the Seekers, travel around that area constantly. This child should have been obvious to them.

“Unless …” Master Dooku trails off, gaze cast somewhere far away.

So Obi-Wan speaks up, handing the vial back. “You need to check the count with the Temple Healers.”

Master Dooku doesn’t react. He sits still as stone, aura swirling gray in the Force.

“Tell the Temple,” Obi-Wan repeats, insistent. “Don’t go around the Council, work with them. With Master Windu, at the least, he’s got the authority to keep things quiet-”

Master Dooku interrupts him, spitting, “He will not react. The proper reaction would be fear, and that is not the Jedi way.”

The Jedi way, he says, all concentrated sarcasm.

Obi-Wan straightens up. “Then I’ll tell him.”

Master Dooku shifts to fix Obi-Wan with a look of disbelief. “You’ll implicate yourself in five felonies?”

Five felonies is overkill. Sloppy, really; Obi-Wan could have done it in under three.

Obi-Wan does not mention this, simply squaring his shoulders. “For the sake of the Jedi, yes.”

He can even keep Master Dooku’s name out of it. If Obi-Wan shows up with misappropriated specimens, the blame would likely fall to Quinlan or one of the other Knights, long before anyone suspected a respected master.

Master Dooku scrutinizes Obi-Wan, sizing him up like a threat. Like someone who’s finally earned his attention.

“I will bring it to my master directly,” he finally says. “And while he will likely guess at your involvement, I will refrain from providing active confirmation.”

With that, Master Dooku leaves the apartment, and Obi-Wan goes to check on Luke, bending over the crib to watch him sleep. Still, he can’t shake the clinging edginess, like he’s missed a sign flashing just inches from his face.

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan meditates. With the grace of the Light, all should be clear, yet Obi-Wan seems to trip and fall into blind spots as a way of life.

He meditates on Senator Sheev Palpatine of Naboo and finds a whole gaping lot of nothing. There is no notable thread to grab onto, nothing out of place, as though the man is quite insignificant in the galaxy. This is odd. The masters say no one is insignificant to the Force, and even if Obi-Wan’s never fully believed them, certainly a Senator should have a whole bright web of people whom he cares for and who care for him. 

Obi-Wan looks and looks. He does his best, and he finds only a blank where Sheev Palpatine’s light should be, a blank space and a growing sense of frustration churning his own stomach. As he peers into a blind spot like a void, he wonders at his own utter dullness. It shouldn’t be this hard for an almost-Knight to sense something about a Senator, currently in-session mere miles away. Yet even when he expands his attention to the Senate as a whole, or to the role this Senator might have played in another Obi-Wan’s future, the void seems only to grow. It expands, spreading until it obscures the galaxy’s fate entirely from Obi-Wan’s view. 

Every time Obi-Wan grows close to attaining a semblance of focus, he is overtaken by that strange, Ilum-esque vibration in his bones. It’s not that Sheev Palpatine is somehow related to Ilum. No, this humming seems unhelpful: intent on distracting him from the subject entirely. Equally stubborn, Obi-Wan shakes it off.

He keeps staring into the void, his stomach twisting, and for a moment the void stares back. It shifts like a living thing, like a titanic summa-verminoth where he expected only the vacuum of space. It regards him, like a spaceship it could crush with a curl of a single tentacle.

Then it offers its judgment of him: a single word. A quiet cackle, a lightning-strike through space and time. 

Irrelevant.

The humming abruptly intensifies to a rattle. He tries and tries to push it away, yet it shakes him until he cannot possibly ignore it. He loses track of the vision entirely.

Disconcerted, he opens his eyes and unfolds himself and walks shakily over to Luke, now stirring from his nap. In his sleep, he’s clutched his necklace with one fat, tiny hand. Eyes opening, he lets it go to instead flail adoringly in Obi-Wan’s direction, a display of affection Obi-Wan feels abruptly unworthy of. He picks him up anyway, despite being exhausted by the sudden spike of darkness, now percolating through his mind.

He picks him up, and the damned humming starts again, and Luke’s hand flies right back to his necklace. The orichalc pearl now hangs off to the side. He instead curls his fist snugly around just the humble bit of japor.

“Well, my love,” he murmurs. “What have you got there?”

His own curiosity piqued, Obi-Wan pokes at Luke’s hand until it uncurls once more to reveal a rounded wood snippet, with just a plain circle carved around the top. The Archives already examined it and deemed it unremarkable, but something pulls Obi-Wan to reach for it and twist.

The circle isn’t just a carving; it’s a join. When Obi-Wan holds the top of the pendant still and unscrews the bottom, it comes apart in two neat pieces, revealing a hidden compartment. Its secret slips out and drops onto Luke’s chest: one small, light blue kyber crystal.

“It calls to you,” Qui-Gon repeats.

“It does.”

Qui-Gon squints at the kyber crystal, rolling it delicately around his palm. Kyber crystal is famously hardy, yet he handles it like treasure.

“I do not sense anything of the kind,” Qui-Gon finally pronounces. “Its loyalties are already set.”

Obi-Wan thins his lips. “I already have a crystal, and that isn’t it.”

“Perhaps your future self lost your current weapon.”

“Oh, that’s reassuring.”

Qui-Gon passes the crystal back to him. “Rebuild the saber. It will shed more light on who this Obi-Wan was, at his core.”

“Of course, Master.” Dutifully, he takes the crystal and drops it into a pocket, swallowing the traitorous thought that they’ve already shed too much light into his inner workings. “It might take some time alone, though, to concentrate on the design ...”

“You might ask the crechemasters, if they’d like to take Luke.”

It turns out they would.

“It’ll do him good,” a crechemaster informs him, when he delivers Luke to them, “to try and grow a bit more comfortable with other people.”

Obi-Wan goes down to Archives, newly haunted by the worry that his attachment to Luke might be unhealthy, a threat to his healing. With a distracted mumble, he presents his crystal and is quickly shuffled off to the architect droid Huyang, the Temple’s reigning saber design specialist.

“I’m not sure I should be building a saber with this,” Obi-Wan admits. “There must have been two crystals, don’t you think?”

“Hmm.” Gripping the crystal between two mechanical digits, Huyang holds it up to the light and examines it carefully. “This crystal is small, but sufficient to power a saber on its own. Connect with it, and sense what shape this new saber will take.”

Even before he can reach out to the crystal, the crystal reaches for him, surprisingly vocal for a semi-animate rock. Within a minute, Obi-Wan learns that this crystal has unusually strong opinions about its saber. Within a few more minutes, he’s established that those opinions are exceedingly odd. Though Huyang pulls out multiple boxes of parts, none of them match the images in the Force, and Obi-Wan finds himself fumbling through increasingly inadequate descriptions:

“The top half doesn’t have a metal exterior, it’s got a sort of thin, brown funnel instead …”

“Apparently the bottom has a chromium ring, but finished so it looks like gold?”

“It needs a rubber accordion in the middle … like for unclogging a sink.”

Huyang goes through ten drawers of saber parts before he starts searching other areas entirely. The dirt-brown funnel has to be pulled from a speeder engine. The activation button (usually a small, red circle) is instead a long rectangle plucked off a droid, so bulky that a user could hit it without any focus at all. Where one would expect sleek, clean metal, this saber’s exterior is enveloped in deeply ridged rubber, adapted for someone who would otherwise drop it constantly. 

The overall shape is odder than any of the individual parts. A lightsaber ought to be a solid cylinder, weight distributed evenly up and down the hilt; Obi-Wan’s own saber looks that way, like Qui-Gon’s before him. If the inner parts don’t naturally fill out the space, saber makers add extra weight to achieve the effect of balance, a practice Obi-Wan had gladly followed. By contrast, this saber is patently un balanced. The top narrows almost to non-existence, stripped down to bare parts, strangely skeletal and vulnerable. Yet the base is heavy and bulbous, because all the circuitry’s been restructured and jammed into the bottom half.

“Fascinating.” Huyang switches on his monocle for closer inspection. “There is precedent for tapered designs like this, though they fell out of fashion three centuries ago.”

I can’t imagine why.

It looks like a scrap pile in handheld form. There are golden accents on the base, like lipstick on a Hutt.

“Alright then, turn it on.”

Gingerly, Obi-Wan flicks the massive gold switch and braces himself. Given how unorthodox the wiring is, he half-expects it to result in an explosion. 

(That he could accept. Better that than a red blade to match the darkness dogging him, ever since this morning.)

The blade ignites: a cool, pure blue. That’s one catastrophe averted, leaving him with the second, quieter crisis over how this barely resembles a lightsaber at all.

“Go on, try it out,” Huyang encourages.

Obi-Wan takes several steps away from the table into the center of the room and tries a little flourish, twirling his blade just twice. It just feels awkward. The uneven weight distribution throws the whole movement off, interrupting the flow halfway. He tries stepping into Ataru’s opening stance, holding the saber vertically at his side, only to know immediately that it’s wrong. The heaviness of the base seems to drag him down, making him feel sluggish before he’s even begun. The crystal too hums in disapproval, as if it didn’t pick this whole setup to begin with.

Obi-Wan snaps the switch off.

“This is ridiculous, anyone who looks at it can tell its balance is off.” He sets the saber on the table and pushes it towards Huyang. Perhaps he’s a little too rough, but that saber (cocooned in enough rubber to be virtually indestructible) can take it. “If this is what it’s supposed to look like, I’m not interested.”

If this is what I’m supposed to grow into …

“I believe you should keep it with you regardless and give it another chance. Any saber can be a powerful tool in the hands of one who knows how to wield it …” Huyang fusses away, now advising him on special cleaning fluids for keeping the rubber fresh. Resigned, Obi-Wan clips the saber on his belt without really hearing any of it.

Irrelevant, the voice said, and Obi-Wan is increasingly inclined to believe it.

“Do you have a new saber?” Qui-Gon probed curiously when he returns late that night.

“I do, and it’s a saber no one would want.” He raises his robes to offer a glimpse of the offending item. Qui-Gon raises his eyebrows in equal bafflement.

When he removes the saber from his belt before bed, the crystal doesn’t reach out at all.

Obi-Wan cannot stay as he is. Irrelevant, inadequate, doomed to a tragic young death, the words don’t matter, given how clear the sentiment is. He cannot be of any use at all, unless he can rewire his innards, rebalance every part of himself.

Luke adjusts beautifully to the crèche. He is perhaps a touch too happy each time Obi-Wan returns, a little too clingy in the aftermath. But he must learn to do without, and so Obi-Wan leaves him for longer stretches each day.

Obi-Wan must learn to do without.

He lingers in the salles for hours at a time, rededicating himself to the fundamentals of Ataru with his real lightsaber in his hand. He practices the spins and vaulting leaps, trying to burn them into his nerves until they become second nature.

He sends himself to the Halls of Healing with a sprained ankle.

After two bacta wraps and one scolding from Master Che, he’s back running exercises with extra flourishes, his arms expending twice the energy to compensate for his weakened footwork. He catches Master Dooku watching through the window one time, radiating even harsher judgment than usual.

Obi-Wan opens the door and immediately asks, “Would you do me the honor of sparring?”

“I thought you would never ask.” 

Master Dooku swans in and ignites his saber, its hilt curved in classic Makashi fashion. For days now, Obi-Wan has woken up with a bad case of nerves, which abruptly intensifies.

Ataru is an aggressive form. Obi-Wan loses the bout before launching his first attack.

In the following rounds, he cycles through all his opening gambits and loses each time, just a few motions in. With Master Dooku’s speed, there simply isn’t time for offensive maneuvers. Obi-Wan lasts longest when he ends up on the back foot, putting all his energy into parrying, but the round’s interrupted when Master Windu walks in.

“I am not clear on what your problem is, but torturing the younger generation is not a solution.”

Master Dooku turns to face him, saber still ignited. “I would have you know he invited me in, entirely unforced.”

Master Windu shoots Obi-Wan what might be a look of pity.

“Qui-Gon does his best with me,” Obi-Wan clarifies hastily. “But I see a great deal of room for improvement in my skills.”

“You’re not alone in that,” Master Windu says generously, though Obi-Wan very much doubts it’s true. “Every Jedi sees room to grow.”

Master Dooku outright scoffs.

“Unless they’ve settled into the arrogance they prefer to see in everyone else,” Master Windu adds, looking directly at him. 

In synchrony, they leave. When Obi-Wan exits his room later, he spots the two of them a few doors down, locked in a duel of their own, sabers blurring with speed and, if he’s honest, ferocity. The level of viciousness is shocking for the Jedi salles, more so for venerated Masters. Perhaps their struggle isn’t about saber skills at all.

Obi-Wan leaves Luke overnight. It’s an important step for him; the crechemasters tell him so when he asks. They’ll also tell him they’ll call, if he descends into inconsolable crying.

Luke’s the baby, yet Obi-Wan’s the one breaking apart. The bad feeling, the undercurrent of curled-up coldness that’s haunted him for days or maybe his entire life, warms and warps in his gut like a Sarlacc emerging from its pit. There is no logical basis for his fast-evolving dread, his growing conviction that, forget the crechemasters, he ought to be at Luke’s side. There is no basis but that he’s once again made the mistake of caring too acutely. He’s formed an attachment where he shouldn’t have. Dreamt up a place for himself in Luke’s life where one doesn’t exist. Half-awake, half-caught in a fever dream, he wonders how many nights away it would take for Luke to forget him entirely. 

A baby’s memory is short. Luke will forget the other Obi-Wan in the coming months, if he hasn’t already.

Past midnight, Obi-Wan starts to meditate on irrelevance.

There are extraordinary Jedi, long-remembered for their intuition or strength. But Obi-Wan doesn’t have a midichlorian count over 20,000, the way everyone seems to these days; his fate is not to be an extraordinary Jedi but simply a good one. A good Jedi steps lightly. Like water, they pass through the world, gently flowing in and out again, leaving no trace but perhaps the imprint of old kindnesses on others they served, scattered across the galaxy. A good Jedi will live quietly without causing trouble and will pass more quietly back into the nothingness of the Force, unmarked. 

They will vanish like the other Obi-Wan. A well-meaning misfit of a Jedi, with a junkpile saber and a makeshift tank of a baby carrier and, apparently, an entire life: erased from existence by a single lightsaber swipe.

Obi-Wan cannot honestly call it a great loss.

He at last falls asleep with the fleeting thought that being forgotten might be the best fate he can ask for.

Luke vanishes.

The crechemasters swear they put him down in his crib last night. He had fussed, fighting sleep with uncharacteristic crankiness, and they had thought of calling Obi-Wan down to comfort him.

“But we didn’t want to disturb you,” one of the crechemasters explains in mournful tones, when Obi-Wan comes down in the morning. “We’ve asked so much of you as it is.”

Choked by a lump in his throat, Obi-Wan cannot correct them, I would have come.

(He hasn’t taken in a full breath, not since he woke up to a dull, vaguely sinister dead end where Luke’s light ought to shine.)

They say Luke quieted with time, settling into sleep if not into proper rest. A crechemaster dozed just one bed away all night, ready to bring him a bottle the moment he awoke. They didn’t realize anything was out of place, not until a whole night passed in silence and morning found the crib empty.

Obi-Wan’s not invited to the Council Meeting this time. Master Drallig of the Temple Guards takes his statement (that he’s felt wretched for days, but failed to realize it meant anything) and then disappears into the Council chambers for a decidedly closed meeting. There are no crechemasters or Shadows or Archivists invited this time. Obi-Wan peeks around the hallway to see Master Dooku turned away at the doors, and thus gives up any hope of being allowed in himself.

He drifts back to his quarters and sits at the kitchen table. It’s funny how fast the room’s changed in just a few days. Qui-Gon’s plants, whose domain had spread unchecked for years, have been neatly reorganized in tamper-proof transparisteel shelves. Bottles and nutrient-enriched formula packs clutter the counter. A bib lies draped over a chair, ready for the next feeding. 

Obi-Wan holds a cup of tea, its heat painful on his palms, and wonders what lesson the Force wants him to learn.

Qui-Gon finds him an hour later, cup replenished with sapir dregs and perhaps topped off with another sort of liquor. He sits down heavily in the next chair over and waits Obi-Wan out.

“Did the Force take Luke back?” Obi-Wan finally croaks.

“From what I have gathered, there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. Master Drallig again assures us that no Shadow could have broken into the creche and removed him.”

This is the Force’s prerogative: to bring the child into their lives and then steal him away, just as abruptly. Attachment is ultimately a waste of emotion. Anything, no matter how precious, can be lost.

(But this is redundant: a lesson Obi-Wan learned long ago.)

“The Council will deliberate in the coming months on the information brought to us,” Qui-Gon adds.

“Is that it?” Obi-Wan’s voice turns snappish, from equal parts irritation and exhaustion. “The Force used him to deliver a message, and now he’s irrelevant?”

The words clang as soon as he says them. They’re wrong, the sentiment’s all wrong. 

The thought is reflected in Qui-Gon’s frown. “Several members have tried to reach out to Luke himself, but it seems Master Sifo-Dyas warned them against being too energetic in their search. He says Luke has passed into shadow, and we risk a far more imminent collapse of the Order if we try to chase after him.”

Though he got his own share of ominous feelings from reaching towards Luke earlier, Obi-Wan huffs. “So now the Council decides to listen to Master Sifo-Dyas?”

Qui-Gon holds his gaze, studying him closely. His face is set with concern, yet something oddly like satisfaction echoes over their bond.

“I do not always agree with the Council’s decisions,” he says. 

It is a common sentiment from him, and he expresses it more mildly than usual. Yet something about it makes Obi-Wan study him.

“For instance,” Qui-Gon says with a smile in his voice, in the crinkles around his eyes, “I cannot imagine why they have not yet approved your Knighthood.”

“What,” Obi-Wan intones.

Qui-Gon leans back and folds his hands into his sleeves. “They have their reasons, I am assured. Sometimes I wonder if Master Yoda is lengthening your apprenticeship now in apology for the years you missed in your youth.”

A childish whine nearly tears out of his throat. He just barely stops it, converting it to a half-strangled snort.

“But for my part, I believe you are more than ready for Knighthood, and I could not be prouder,” Qui-Gon adds, casually. 

Obi-Wan had expected to die before hearing those words.

 “You are surprised.”

“A little,” Obi-Wan says, lying through his teeth.

“Why? If we dispense with the Council’s opinion, what line is there, to divide you from the Knights around you?”

Obi-Wan opens his mouth to answer and then struggles for a presentable reason. My intellect, but his hodgepodge knowledge base (constructed from Mandalorian and improvised medical devices and other, equally niche topics) serves him well enough in obscure corners of the galaxy. My saber skills, but he can hold his own against Jedi his own age, and on a real battlefield, his familiarity with a blaster provides him an advantage over most of them. My judgment, but in that realm, perfection is not required. Even legendary Jedi Masters are still learning, alongside him.

“What line,” Qui-Gon breathes, “outside your own head?”

With tenderness he usually reserves only for the most precious flutestem buds, he brushes one hand over Obi-Wan’s head and, with a little flick, sets the Padawan braid swinging. 

He rises from the chair again and places his hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder one more time. “Get some rest.”

Obi-Wan nods in agreement, and he goes.

In fairness, Obi-Wan makes a sincere attempt to slip into meditation. He fails, unsettled by the strangeness of the day and by the feeling that, somehow, the Force is waiting to take a breath.

He eventually reaches for his comm and tries calling Qui-Gon, only for the call to fail instantly; no doubt the battery’s died again. Scrolling further, he sees a missed call from Quinlan, and tries returning it.

“How are you doing?” Quinlan begins the interrogation instantly, clearly aware of Luke’s disappearance. “And don’t you dare say ‘fine.’”

Chastened, Obi-Wan rephrases his answer. “I suppose I can’t get myself to believe it yet, that he’s really gone.”

His head understands it. Always several steps behind, his heart thuds with hollow disbelief that the Force could allow such a tragedy.

Quinlan whistles thoughtfully. “It’s been a weird day.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan huffs. “To top it all off, Qui-Gon told me he’s proud of me and I’ll be just fine as a Knight. Should I take this as a sign the world’s ending?”

He inflects that question with a dry laugh, only to get silence from Quinlan’s end.

The silence stretches.

“Quinlan,” Obi-Wan asks slowly, “what have you felt?”

Quinlan picks up psychic impressions constantly, all around the Temple. Perhaps as usefully, he picks up passwords, and Obi-Wan knows well enough that Quinlan’s perfectly willing to use them, whenever curiosity gets the better of him.

“Stay out of it,” Quinlan finally answers, low and urgent. “They said it’s only Masters on this one, and I happen to agree.”

“Who‘s ‘they’?” Obi-Wan demands. “And what am I supposed to stay out of?”

When Quinlan again takes too long to respond, Obi-Wan reaches towards Qui-Gon in the Force and finds a particularly unflappable flavor of serenity, the kind that means his shields are all the way up. With a scowl, Obi-Wan unlocks his datapad and checks the recent activity on his and Qui-Gon’s credit account. There ought to be a new tea shop on there, maybe two or three given how long he’s been gone.

“Right,” Quinlan finally mumbles, “so I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place.”

Oddly, the last transaction was from early this morning, for three large boxes of store-brand tarine from the local grocery. Qui-Gon doesn’t drink this brand (all the flavor has been carefully bred out of it, he complains), but it’s Obi-Wan’s favorite tea. They only keep one box at a time. There’s no reason for Qui-Gon to buy more, as if he plans to leave Obi-Wan alone for some time.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Quinlan then adds in warning.

“I would never,” Obi-Wan primly lies. “Have a nice night.”

He hangs up and immediately breaks into Qui-Gon’s room. He finds the usual messy scene, though the latest round of seedlings have been moved into new, larger pots, perhaps a little earlier than usual. Today, his table is covered in unrolled flimsiplast scrolls, covered in ancient Jedi poems on balance and detachment. Careful not to damage them, Obi-Wan extracts the datapad buried underneath.

Quinlan isn’t the only person who can guess a password.

Moogan37, Obi-Wan types: Qui-Gon’s current favorite strain of tea and its recommended brewing temperature. The pad unlocks in one try. Qui-Gon’s notifications are cluttered with alerts about horticulture and forestry across the galaxy, but one name stands out: Master Dooku. The conversation is short, just an address Master Dooku sent for some place in the lower levels. 

A cursory HoloNet search reports that it’s only an unused warehouse.

A slightly deeper search reveals that it’s owned by Senator Palpatine of Naboo; the whole block is. Coruscant property speculation is hardly an unusual side business for a Senator. Obi-Wan stares at this warehouse, wondering why it might deserve a Jedi’s special attention. When he tries reaching to the Force for guidance, the warehouse exudes the same dim menace that now seems to surround Luke.

Despite Master Sifo-Dyas’s warning, Obi-Wan dashes out the door, heart hammering with hope.

Chapter Text

Ordinarily a calm, rule-abiding pilot, Obi-Wan makes the half-hour trip down to the warehouse in just under fifteen minutes. The warehouse looks just as it did on the HoloNet: unlit and rusted, with fractures in the transparisteel windows. All the bustle of Coruscant is missing; Obi-Wan stops his speeder half a block away, because the mere hum of its engine rings too loudly in the eerie quiet. 

He makes his way forward on foot, steps falling soundlessly as he crosses a litter-strewn street, apparently forgotten by the sanitation teams. Obi-Wan can hardly blame them for the oversight. When he gets within sight of the warehouse’s main door, he’s also struck by an ill-defined urge to turn away and flee this neighborhood entirely.

Yet when he reaches into the Force, there is a thready pulse of light like a homing beacon, calling brokenly through space. It pulls him away from the door, redirecting him towards the warehouse’s side to a jagged gap in one window. After crawling through, he lands inside a dark hall, its swallowing blackness broken only by faint red letters glowing on a far wall. Obi-Wan squints at the boxy script. Though he can’t read it, he saw something much like it in his last elective, on extinct languages from pre-Republic times.

The sound of sizzling startles him. White ray shields flare to life, boxing in the whole corridor, covering both walls and throwing enough light to suggest this is not an abandoned warehouse. The building’s interiors are sleek, polished duramite. The floors have been intricately, lovingly engraved with tiny letters in that same chilling script, which should have died with the old Sith Empire.

Though a faint smell of bacta permeates the cool air, the lightning-fast shields fit a hospital less than a fully-armed battle station. Sensing the threat, Obi-Wan flings himself up into an air vent. A spherical black probe droid whirs around the corner mere seconds later. It zooms down the hall, sensors beeping in sharp warning tones, and then disappears around the other corner. 

After a moment’s calculation, Obi-Wan opts to stay in the vents. They’re spacious enough for a human, and they’ll let him avoid any other patrols guarding the main floor. Inching forward on his elbows, he drags himself in what he hopes might be the right direction, clinging desperately to a flicker of Light. This strategy brings him to a branching point, where one vent forks off towards the left. A crash echoes from that direction, followed by muffled, overlapping shouts.

It’s promising, yet the Force prods him away from the struggle, calling him forward instead. He goes where it beckons, even though the path ahead has a canister of glowing dioxis gas installed on the inside of the vent, just waiting to be triggered by a wrong move. Miraculously, the wiring of this trap grows familiar once Obi-Wan draws close: not unlike the respirators he learned to assemble in Medical Analytics, even if dioxis is a touch less healthful than oxygen. He reaches with the Force into the trap’s innards, attempting to detach the delivery tube from the rest of the mechanism. 

As Obi-Wan holds his breath and edges past, it occurs to him that this whole complex seems conveniently designed for someone very much like a Jedi. Like a particularly talented Jedi Shadow, given the booby traps.

When he gets past the trap without a faceful of poison, he finds several new holes in the vents. They’re all blocked off by the same white ray shields from before. One opening has a second layer of flickering blue electricity underneath the white, though an extra shield seems like a waste of energy. It must be restraining something valuable, dangerous, or both.

In time, Obi-Wan comes across an especially convenient central vent without any shields covering it. He silently drops down, landing in a crouch in the middle of a corridor between two lines of prison cells. Most are empty, walled off by both ray shields and doors with solid metal bars.

One also has a crackling blue energy field around it, and a baby lying inside.

Luke is on his back, unmoving. He could be asleep, but his limbs are splayed a little too oddly, his palms (usually curled up in sleep) lying open and limp.

“Luke?”

There is no response, and the darkness grows suffocating. Even so, Obi-Wan gathers up all the joy he can and pushes it towards Luke. In the Force, there is no wall between them, and he calls as brightly as he can.

Several seconds later, tiny eyes open. Lethargically, Luke turns his head in Obi-Wan’s direction and lets out a fragile coo.

His light in the Force is frail, wavery, vines flickering weakly in Obi-Wan’s direction. Obi-Wan grasps onto them firmly. Holding just as sternly onto his own sense of calm, he begins the search for solutions. This cell is well-sealed, without circuitry he can hot-wire or panels he can slice. The only possible locking mechanism is an odd square indentation set into the wall outside, yet Obi-Wan hasn’t a clue about how to manipulate it. Hand on his saber hilt, he flirts with taking a particular literal approach to slicing his way in. This would risk calling an army of probe droids to their location, but if it’s the only solution …

Luke whines again, distracting Obi-Wan, drawing his attention towards the funny little toy he’s now sucking on. It’s jet-black: not a toy one would find in the crèche. Funnily enough, it’s also pyramid-shaped with a perfectly square base.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers as he tugs the object from Luke’s hands with the Force, eliciting a feeble mewl. Obi-Wan shoves the thing straight up through the electric field, across the ventilation shaft and back down into his own hands. The base is covered in ancient engravings, now glittering a fearsome red. The whole pyramid emanates an eerie chill.

A chill that would soothe sore gums, making it quite appealing to a teething baby thief.

This was, however, not built to be a toy. At a guess, it is a holocron of significant value, one that could very well double as a key, as long as the electric field and the saliva didn’t short it out. After drying off the base with his sleeve, Obi-Wan fits the square shape into the indentation on the wall. The cell promptly opens, the door and energy shields both springing out of the way.

He summons Luke to himself with a stubborn pull of the Force and catches him against his chest. Luke squints at him woozily, unshed tears pooling beneath bleary eyes. Despite the danger, Obi-Wan steals one moment to press his lips to Luke’s brow, willing all the light in the world toward him.

With a child heavy against his chest, the vents above suddenly seem too small and risky. He instead looks to the exit, locked with the same square-shaped keyhole. The holocron efficiently unlocks it, revealing another corridor. To retrace his steps towards the back exit, Obi-Wan really ought to go forwards, yet the Force nudges him towards the left, this time. Left he goes, footsteps hastening, newly emboldened with a key in his hand and Luke back in his arms. His path brings him to a heavy blast door, once more easily unlocked.

Unfortunately, this is not an alternate exit. Instead Obi-Wan finds himself in an empty control room, every surface crowded with screens and switches and dials like a ship cockpit. One wall is covered in thick, one-way transparisteel. It overlooks a far larger laboratory: filled with tubes ranging from vials to empty, human-sized bacta tanks. Obi-Wan would call it a medbay, if not for the sneaking suspicion that nobody gets better here.

Down in the lab, four Jedi stand, trapped in the light of four conical ray shields: Masters Dooku, Billaba, Windu and Yoda. There is a fifth Jedi sprawled on the floor, without any shields wasted on him. He lies in shadow, face hidden from view. Even so, Obi-Wan can recognize his master.

Weaving freely between the ray shields, two strangers glide about, black cloaks streaming behind them. Lightsabers blaze fire-red in their hands. Obi-Wan squints at a screen and makes out the face of Senator Sheev Palpatine, who has apparently forgone his contact lenses for tonight, eyes glowing a sickly yellow. The other figure in black looks like a Muun, his pale, oblong face gleaming eerily in the low light. 

Obi-Wan is no expert on galactic finances, but he has a sinking feeling that’s the head diplomat of the Banking Clan.

Obi-Wan drops his head once more and studies the controls around him. Though most are beyond his understanding, he identifies a few levers of interest and presses them. The ray shields vanish and free the Jedi, who instantly spring into action, catching both their captors by surprise. With the push of another button, the probe droids around the complex all power down, or so Obi-Wan hopes.

With that, Obi-Wan spins on his heel to leave. There are only two, the rule says, so he and Luke will be safe if he makes his escape right this minute. That train of thought is cut off by the tip of a third red lightsaber, melting through the control room’s blast door with an acrid smell.

One day, Master Dooku’s warning echoes in his ears, you will find yourself fighting in a small space and be instantly killed.

This control room is smaller than the Temple’s training salles. The ceiling is low, the walls cluttered with sensitive panels and wiring Obi-Wan does not dare disrupt. This is no place for Ataru’s flips and acrobatics, and as he reaches towards his saber, Luke whimpers.

Obi-Wan cannot fling himself into the air, not with a baby in his arms.

By the call of a homing beacon, Obi-Wan’s hand finds the other saber, dangling forgotten from his belt. He closes his fingers around the hilt, and the strange, solid shape fits his palm instantly. He grips the ridges of the rubber with a clammy hand. They seem to grip him back.

The room fills with the stench of molten metal as the red lightsaber continues burning through the door. Obi-Wan shifts Luke to the side, settling him on one hip, while instinct guides his hand upwards, bringing the hilt close to his head. This is the opening of Soresu: an older form than Ataru, neither as bold nor as impressive, but steady in its own quiet way. The weight of the heavy, oddly proportioned base by his head collects his thoughts and grounds them, drawing his scattered focus inwards. This weapon is not balanced, perhaps because its own appearance was never the point; it was built to balance him.  

As the red saber completes its arc, Obi-Wan prepares to meet it, lit saber in one hand, a child in the other.

An ungainly chunk of the door flies across the room and crashes into a control panel, flung by the Force. The gap reveals a third Sith Lord. Red skin, criss-crossed by labyrinthine black tattoos. Yellow eyes. A double-bladed red saber, like the one that felled another Obi-Wan.

With a single bound, the Sith closes the distance between them. He bares his teeth and spins his saber and drives one end towards Obi-Wan’s neck. 

Blue meets red and holds it back.

Though his saber is not quite as quick as in the vision, this Sith Lord is still speed incarnate, racing through unfamiliar stances of what can only be Juyo: the forbidden saber form, supposedly extinct for centuries. It batters Obi-Wan with attacks, each slash or kick landing with the full brunt of the Dark. Like vulture droids swarming a ship, the Sith whirls around Obi-Wan, everywhere all at once. The disorienting swirl of his cloak obscures Obi-Wan’s vision, as now-strangling darkness hems in his sense of the Force. 

Yet Obi-Wan holds his own. Step by step. Blow for blow. Abandoning the aggression of Ataru, he stays still at the center of the Sith’s storm and keeps himself small: small and defensive and solid, never moving unless he must. This crystal takes no more than he can give, never asking him to lunge so deeply that he cannot recover or reach further than his arm span allows. This Soresu is measured exactly for him. He moves with the hard-won grace that comes with years of mastery.

Growling in frustration, the Sith thrashes, sparks flying as his blows go wide and smack the delicate panels around them. One strike zaps the lighting system. The room plunges into now-literal darkness. Obi-Wan is left with only the stark blue of his saber to show the way.

It may not be the saberlight that warns him of the punch, as the Sith abandons all civilized tactics and shoves his own weapon’s hilt at Obi-Wan’s nose. On an instinct like practiced ease, Obi-Wan’s blade flicks up to meet it, slicing the saber cleanly in two. One beam of red gutters and blinks out.

The Sith, impossibly, gets more combative. 

He swipes not at Obi-Wan but at Luke. In one fluid motion, Obi-Wan turns to the side, pulls his child out of the blade’s path, and slices off the Sith Lord’s hand. As the Sith snarls throatily in twined pain and rage, Obi-Wan marvels at his newfound competence in dismemberment, of all things. At the same time, ancient durasteel conviction rings in his bones, as it has since he saw the first small face on Melida-Daan.

You will not hurt this child. I will not let you.

The Sith Lord summons his saber to his remaining hand. As the Dark Side seethes around him, his motions grow choppy. Erratic. Obi-Wan could snap into his usual Ataru, into the form he’s trained for his whole life, and attempt to seize an immediate victory. 

Instead he roots himself more firmly in Soresu, in the light of the tiny crystal singing stubbornly in his hand. He trades decisive victory for Soresu’s waiting, for the certainty that, in the long run, he and Luke will last. In the darkness, he surrenders to the tiny light calling him home, to the arms of his other self who waits across a chasm of the Cosmic Force, who glows close enough to touch.

I’m not certain I can do this, one of them thinks, or both, their souls tangled up across the years.

And the answer comes back, in his own voice. I have faith in you.

When Obi-Wan comes to, it is with an infant tugging on his braid, pulling his soul back into his body, his mind into what is here and now.

He is in the Halls of Healing, but not as the patient. He is seated with Luke in his lap beside Qui-Gon’s sickbed, covered with a great many wires but not, thankfully, the full machinery for life support.

“There you are.” Cheek turned against his pillow, Qui-Gon’s gaze rests on Obi-Wan’s face, softly contemplative. “How was your brush with battle meditation?”

Obi-Wan inhales deeply and looks over the child in his arms, checking that he seems quite unharmed. Luke burbles in reply and gives his braid another firm tug.

“Who did we lose?” Obi-Wan asks quietly.

“Only two Sith Lords.” 

Obi-Wan looks up, questioning.

“Your opponent is alive, albeit with only one of his original four limbs. We have him in custody. I am told that his tongue still works impeccably.”

“And has he got anything useful to say?” Obi-Wan asks with a tip of his head.

Qui-Gon shrugs. It is a movement of his eyebrows more than his body, clearly drained by the fight. 

They came so close to catastrophe.

“His name is Maul. He claims to be the last of the Sith. He first learned of Luke’s existence after Senator Palpatine spotted an unusual midichlorian count in the Grand Republic Medical Facility’s records.” 

Obi-Wan winces, remembering Master Dooku’s warning that Coruscant’s medical facilities might be compromised. Truly, the Sith had closed in on all sides.

“He admits he stole Luke from the creche, on his master’s orders.” Qui-Gon pauses, chest shuddering with a slow, halting exhale. “And he has quite a story to tell, of how the Sith would have ended the Jedi and the Republic itself within approximately a decade.”

Obi-Wan bows his head, eyes closed in remembrance. A moment passes in silence, before he brings himself back to the present. “What did the Sith want with Luke?”

He fears he knows the answer, even before Qui-Gon says it. “To train him, or use him. Among their kind, there seems to be little difference.”

“... Had they started?”

Perhaps their rescue was too little, too late. Luke seems unharmed, but not all wounds are visible to the eye.

“No.” Qui-Gon’s voice gains strength, forceful in its reassurance. “No, thank the Force.”

“You’re certain?”

“Maul swears they had only got as far as sedating him, while they decided what more to do, and there is footage to prove it. Seeing how Luke stole his key to the complex, he rather regrets not doubling the dose.”

With difficulty, Obi-Wan suppresses his smile. 

“The Healers have cleared Luke,” Qui-Gon continues, warm with mirth. “They only warn that he might be a little needier, for the time being. That he may require more affection.”

“Oh,” Obi-Wan murmurs, gazing down at bright blue eyes. “Well, that’s alright.”

Even as his body wobbles back and forth, both hands outstretched for balance, Luke does his best to look straight back up at him. He lets out a questioning coo.

“It’s perfectly alright,” Obi-Wan whispers.

“And how are you feeling?” Qui-Gon asks, just as gently.

I don’t know, Obi-Wan could lie. Instead, he lets the secret smile steal out, across his face. 

“Like a Jedi Knight,” he says, feeling silly and mischievous and more serious than he’s ever been.

Luke laughs, and Obi-Wan’s world lights up from within.