Chapter Text
"I will train him then. I take Anakin as my Padawan learner."
Obi-Wan's breath caught in his chest.
"An apprentice, you have, Qui-Gon. Impossible to take on a second."
Mace grimaced, tilting his head in such a way that Obi-Wan knew he was perceiving another shatter-point approaching. The Korunn master shifted in his seat.
"The Code forbids it."
Force-forbid that Qui-Gon choose now, to listen to the Code. Obi-Wan's breath continued to be caught, alarm bells ringing in his ears.
"Obi-Wan is ready."
Yoda looked at Obi-Wan, raising a clawed hand as the young knight started forward. Obi-Wan was ready to gasp out something, anything to keep this farce moving and to let him escape the laser-focus of the High Council. He could feel their presences in the force, swirling around him, his Master and the boy in concerned scrutiny.
"Our own council, we will keep on who is ready."
"He is headstrong, and has much to learn of the Living Force, but he is capable. There is little more he can learn from me."
Obi-Wan shook slightly, his control slipping for a second. His breath came flooding back into his lungs, and a word, a word he didn't often say to the Council or to his Master, in earnest, a word he couldn't prevent from slipping through his gritted teeth, that word came like a blaster-bolt from his mouth.
"No."
Unease in the Force. All eyes on him. He found his breath returning easier than it had in years.
"Padawan?"
Obi-Wan turned towards Qui-Gon, hand slashing through the air in negation.
"I said, no. In the midst of a political crisis and with a suspected Sith on the loose, you don't get to cast me aside to serve your own interest in some random, untrained boy with a high midichlorian count. You don't get to thrust me forward to face the trials because I'm an inconvenience to you in the face of some ancient prophecy!"
Obi-Wan finished that last sentence at a shout, and hated, despised himself for making the poor boy from Tatooine flinch in fear in the process. The circuit of constant communication between the Councilors in the force was disrupted and uneasy. Qui-Gon stood, mouth agape in shock. Obi-Wan quickly shielded his training bond even more securely, not wanting to feel the admonishment he was sure was about to be transmitted to him from his Master.
"My apprenticeship to you has not been easy, Master. Force knows the fault does not solely rest with you, but I cannot believe you would do this. The boy can wait until after Naboo is resolved. Until after we find the Sith. It could wait until after I take the Trials, until after we do our duty to each other. The boy isn't going anywhere, and I am still your Padawan."
The child edged further behind Qui-Gon, who was rallying.
"Padawan, control yourself. Surely you can see, the boy has great potential. Potential that needs to be nurtured and guided down the right path."
Obi-Wan turned to look out over Coruscant, jaw clenching despite his efforts to "control himself". Windu leaned forward, speaking to intervene.
"Master Jinn, Padaw- Obi-Wan, this is the Council chamber, not a shou-
"Have you ever wondered, Master, if you are at all the right person to be taking Padawans under your tutelage? That you are in fact guiding them down the right path?"
Obi-Wan turned to stare Qui-Gon dead in the eyes. He was making the Jedi Master uncomfortable. He was about to make him angry.
"I imagine you have seriously thought about it before. I can imagine it keeps you up at night wondering if it is the will of the Force that all your apprentices will one day want nothing to do with you. Nobody can fault Feemor if he feels this way - he is a strong Knight now despite you refusing to acknowledge his apprenticeship under you. His first Master dead in a tragic accident, his second ashamed to admit his involvement in bringing him to Knighthood. Am I to be discarded as an afterthought, a mistake to repudiate as he was?"
Fist clenching now too, images of Bandomeer, Gala and Telos IV flashed through his head. A cruel laugh and a red sabre. A collar around his neck.
"And as much as I try my hardest to do some days, how could we forget your first official Padawan, Xanatos? Fallen to the Dark Side when you - and the Council - were foolish enough to send him on a mission to his home planet, to confront his corrupt father? Your Padawan became a slaver, an brutal industrialist and killed thousands to pursue revenge against you before his death. Was that the right path for him? His father could have been handled by any other team of Jedi at the time, but you wanted to test him. Wanted to be sure he wouldn't be bound by the ties of family, that he would choose the right path for himself. What a waste."
He could feel Yoda and Windu's disapproving stare, their hands a little too close to their lightsabers for comfort. He realized how it might look, a child cowering behind a tall, respected master as his young apprentice raged before them. The other Council members remained silent. More problems from Yoda's lineage in the council chamber? Perhaps at this point it was unremarkable to them. Obi-Wan caught the boy's eye. Xanatos had been a boy once. So had he, and Bruck Chun. They all had parents once too, not that he himself could remember them.
"I mean no disrespect to Lady Skywalker, who I am told is a gracious host and loving mother, but if your prospective new Padawan is already feared to be prone to emotional attachment issues, perhaps it would be best that you and the Order take the opportunity to mitigate them by freeing his slave mother from a Hutt planet so we could prevent another Fall like Xanatos'?
Obi-Wan had once been considered too angry and emotional to be taken by a Padawan. His old sense of injustice was rising again.
"And perhaps, even with dwindling Senate support, we certainly seem to have the funds for opera tickets, swamp teas and those fancy kriffing chairs. I'll free her myself if it stops this madness."
Anakin frowned behind Jinn. On a planet where the Jedi occupied an enormous, opulently decorated temple and the incalculable wealth of the galaxy's elite was visible from out the windows of the Council Chamber - skyscrapers, luxury speeders, glittering shopping arcades - it must seem ridiculous to him that the Temple full of lightsaber-wielding superbeings couldn't free his mother from the likes of Watto, either by coin or by force. Obi-Wan sighed as he realized he'd planted another seed of discontent in the child's heart. Windu looked particularly hurt by the dig at his craving for opera. The energy in the room was uncomfortable, embarassed, tense. They could be doing more. They weren't because the Senate had been boxing them further into a corner over the decades. More approval, less mission information. More fighting, less negotiation. Undermanned, overdeployed
Just like...
Obi-Wan sighed, the anger draining from his body, leaving him slumped and exhausted. He was still holding Jinn's gaze.
"Melidaan. The Young."
Jinn recoiled, looking now off to the side.
Obi-Wan kept studying him. The long hair tied in a knot. The shabby robes, further in tatters from the action on Naboo and Tattooine. The lightsaber hanging from his belt that Obi-Wan had once looked forward to seeing ignite every time just before a practice duel commenced. His Master. His friend. His teacher.
His father.
"You abandoned me in the middle of an active warzone where I fought for months to protect children from annihilation at the hands of their own parents. I left the Order, but you left me - I know it was to save Master Tahl, but you left me there for months. I was a child, a starving, frightened child, stopping a civil war by myself without even a lightsaber to do it with. You returned eventually, but it was too little, too late, Master. I think about everyone I could have saved if you'd only have come back a few weeks, even a day sooner."
He couldn't look at Anakin again now, the little kid that he was. He couldn't do it without seeing Nield and Cerasi. The tunnels. The ambushes. The bombing and the pangs in his stomach from giving his supplies away to younger kids.
"Can you look at me and tell me you are the right Master to teach the Chosen One? Forget the prophecy, can you look at me, Qui-Gon Jinn, and tell me you are the man that a frightened little boy, who, we must remember, was freed from slavery barely a fiveday ago - you're the mentor he really needs? Of all the Jedi in all of our Temples and across the galaxy, you think you're the man for the job? The Council already has their concerns about his ability to keep to our path. You've never been one to do so."
A nod from one of the council members, curtailed before completion.
"Can you teach him our ways from scratch, help him through the night-terrors, keep him safe? I bet you won't let him leave your side and you're already thinking to bring him with you back to Naboo. You'll take him into dangerous situations daily and insist it's the will of the Force when he's injured, broken and scarred by the consequences you bring onto him. Can you look me in the eyes, can you look at me and tell me he will be safe with you?"
Silence.
More silence.
People shifting uneasily in their cushy council seats.
"Look at me, Master Jinn. Can you look at me and tell me you're who this child needs? Can you look at me, and tell me he'll be safe? That you won't one day leave him behind too?"
Silence.
Silence.
Nothing but silence, in a tower at the top of the world.
"That's what I thought."
Obi-Wan Kenobi turned on his heel, bowing slightly to the Council as he did so. His boots clicked across the embossed floors, the doors flying open without even a gesture as he fled the chamber.
He didn't let the tears fall until he was in the turbo lift.