Qui-Gon had anticipated many changes upon taking another padawan. Considering the… well, considering, Qui-Gon hadn’t been sure how he would take to the return of such a responsibility. Obi-Wan was a precocious boy, but he was only thirteen, vulnerable and impressionable and oh so eager to please.
Qui-Gon missed him already.
Logically, of course, Qui-Gon knew him to be safe and content in the care of the other Masters at the Temple. Obi-Wan was probably helping to train Younglings at this very moment, one of his favorite duties. Still, Qui-Gon worried. He wanted to be near him.
This mission, however, was far too dangerous to involve such a young child in. Qui-Gon had been tasked to investigate and evaluate a structure on Mustafar that had recently fallen under suspicion. Owned by several shell corporations, it had taken the Temple’s research division weeks to track the names backwards to a void. There was no concrete owner of the sprawling building tucked away in a cliffside on the lava planet. It shouldn’t even be there. Hence, Qui-Gon, along with Master Plo Koon and the recently knighted Salik Hann, was to look into it in accordance with a request from the Senate. Strangely enough, the request had encountered some difficulty going through to the Temple. Apparently, it had been sent several times over the course of a month, though the Temple only received notice when it was personally delivered to the Council by a representative from Alderaan. Most curious.
The ship, a light cruiser equipped with the very latest in stealth technology, began its descent into the dust-choked Mustafarian atmosphere. Plo Koon stepped up to stand behind Qui-Gon and Salik as they brought the craft to the surface. The structure had a landing pad and, seeing as no one hailed them or otherwise dissuaded them from using it, Qui-Gon saw fit to touch down on it.
A few meters away, just visible through the dust and dim red glow of lava, a door into the cliff face seemed to lead into the structure. Visible along the cliff were windows, outcroppings, hatchs, and other indications that the building was far larger than its floor plan would suggest, spanning several hundred meters at least. Force only knew how deep it went.
“Holy kriff,” Salik breathed. “What’s going on here?”
“Peace, young one,” Plo chided, setting a hand on Salik’s shoulder as they stood. “That is precisely what we are here to determine.”
Qui-Gon followed Salik to their feet, stretching. “It appears uninhabited,” he remarked, leading the way into the back of the ship where they began unpacking the protection gear.
“Indeed,” Plo mused.
“The nearest mining town is nearly a hundred kliks away,” Salik said, tugging their enviro suit over their hips and sliding their arms into the sleeves. “It doesn’t make sense for anything to be here at all.”
Qui-Gon slipped his helmet onto his head, activating the seal and waiting for the comms device to come online before speaking. “Considering the illegality of its purchase, I doubt whoever owns this bought it as a vacation home.”
“Is it technically illegal if it’s bought by no one? I mean, ‘no one’ did pay for it, after all,” Salik quipped, hitting the button to open the hatch.
Plo Koon hummed. “I am not certain. Regardless, the Council is concerned.”
Together, they dropped out onto the landing platform. The conversation withered in the blistering heat of Mustafar. Even through the enviro suits, the sulfuric stench was strong. Qui-Gon could hear the bubbling of lava not so very far below them. Stronger than that, though, was the near-suffocating aura of the Dark Side. The Force was thick with it. Qui-Gon glanced to Plo, who nodded. Salik chewed their lip anxiously. Something was waiting here for them. Something bad.
Briefly, they surveyed the platform. Despite the Darkness, it appeared to be every bit as unoccupied as it had upon their approach. Though the door was armed with sensory equipment and a comms unit, no one made a move to acknowledge their presence.
Salik gestured to the door. “Shall we?”
They approached the door, scanning left and right for traps or ambushes as they went. Nothing presented itself. It was quiet, even as Plo and Salik plunged their lightsabers into the door and began cutting it apart.
Qui-Gon watched their backs, staring out into the lava flats as they worked. The door was thick, and it took several minutes for them to cut it. In that time, nothing changed but the lava, bubbling sluggishly and shifting across the landscape. In the distance, something exploded.
“All clear,” Plo called. “Let us proceed.”
The hole they’d cleared was small, maybe a meter, and it took a bit of contortion to fit himself through behind them. Once inside, Qui-Gon straightened and looked around.
They’d broken into a surprisingly small square room. The walls, low and too close for comfort, appeared to be the very lavarock the place was carved from. Three tunnels, equally narrow, ran from the room, one from each wall. Light fixtures emitting sick red light jutted out at eye level roughly every two meters.
Salik glanced around, sticking their head down the corridor heading left. “Each of these feels… bad. How should we proceed, Masters?”
Plo Koon rubbed his chin, closing his eyes and turning a slow circle. “You are correct, Salik. This place is deeply evil. I fear we may have stumbled into something much larger than ourselves.”
The very air in the place hummed with evil. It was like nothing Qui-Gon had ever felt; strong enough to make him nauseous. Below the evil, though, running under and through it like a leaf caught in a stream, was something else. Something small and strong and angry and scared. Something - no, some one - else was here.
Qui-Gon opened his mouth to say as much, but was interrupted by Salik. “I believe,” they said, “that we are not alone in here.”
“Yes,” Qui-Gon agreed. “I think the same.”
Plo Koon positioned himself by the hallway leading off to the right. “I will go this way,” he declared. “Salik will go left. Qui-Gon, you will go straight. We will meet back here in one hour. I see no other way to effectively scan the premises.”
“Are you certain that splitting up is safe?” Qui-Gon asked. “We still aren’t sure what we’re walking into.”
“Whatever it is,” Plo declared, “I sense that it is a good deal more frightened of us than we are of it.”
Qui-Gon wandered down a seemingly endless maze of lavarock and dim lighting, turning left and left and left again before the passages guided him back to the right. Though he’d been apprehensive at the start, it seemed now as though the only danger was that of getting lost in the endless tunnels, which seemed to adhere to a radial pattern. From the communication he’d had with the other two, they’d been having much the same problem. The place was endless and identical and Qui-Gon walked for fifteen minutes before he came across anything of significance.
All at once, the narrow tunnel opened up into a large room. This one, unlike its rock predecessors, was smooth durasteel and plastoid, lit up bright white and almost sickeningly modern. There was not a speck of dirt to be found. At the far side of the room sat a door. Closer to Qui-Gon, standing in the middle of the floor, was a computer terminal, interface open to a generic navigational screen. Qui-Gon stepped forward, mindful of the way his footsteps and breathing echoed off the walls.
He activated his comm link. “I believe I’ve found something.”
“What is it, Jinn?” Plo Koon said.
“I am not yet sure,” he responded. “It appears to be an entirely different part of the compound. Unless I am mistaken, it goes much further into the rock.”
“Keep in touch. If you require backup, Hann and I will be with you at once.”
“Noted.” He flicked his comm off, dropping his wrist back to his side, hand hovering over the hilt of his lightsaber. So far, he was alone, but there was no telling how his interaction with the computer might change that.
The navigation screen depicted several options, advertising everything from environmental control to door locks to something simply labeled ‘Feeding Time.’ Whatever purpose the buttons might have served remained a mystery, though, because each one redirected him to a page reading ‘System Error: User permissions not enabled.’ Why have the computer there, then? There was no obvious place to enter a password.
Giving up on the computer, Qui-Gon advanced on the door. It seemed to be the only other thing in the room, and whatever Force-presence had made itself known in the entryway was stronger there.
Beside the door was the sort of terminal a droid might connect itself to. It seemed to be the only way to open the door, brute force aside, so Qui-Gon laid a hand on it, coaxing the thing into the proper configuration. The door opened with a hiss and Qui-Gon found himself facing yet another hallway. This one was narrow like the rest, but sterile and plastiod in the fashion of the new room. It was obnoxiously brightly lit, but more concerning were the myriad hallways branching away from it. Just as the building material had changed, so had the layout. These halls broke off at right angles and proceeded in a grid fashion, a sharp departure from the wheel-and-spoke model of before. The main hallway continued straight back into the compound and nearly out of sight, terminating what seemed like thousands of meters away in yet another door. Qui-Gon took a step forward, but something in the Force reached out and pulled him back.
Qui-Gon Jinn was not a stupid man.
He commed the others.
“You’re right,” Salik said. “This is freaky.”
Gathered up in the white room, the three Jedi regarded the new hallway. Plo and Hann had been quick to respond to his call, tracing his location through the maze to meet him in the room with the computer and discuss their next moves. Both Plo and Hann had found their own oddities, Salik’s being room upon room of books in an unrecognizable text and Plo’s being a sheer dropoff that left the reckless walker in a pool of lava.
“This feels completely different from the rest of the structure,” Salik continued, pacing the length of the room and running their hand along a wall. “I think we should split up again, take a few halls at a time. I still don’t feel anything dangerous, just Dark.”
Plo nodded. “Salik is correct. I sense that something important lies in these halls in particular, and I would like to find it. Qui-Gon, you will take the end room?”
“Of course,” Qui-Gon says.
“Good. Salik will go left again and I will continue to the right. Check every hallway in order,” he commanded Salik. “Nothing should be disregarded. We are in dangerous territory.”
Qui-Gon sensed that Plo did not mean this in the physical sense. His apprehension mounted as he began down the hallway.
The silence, previously empty except for his breathing and footsteps, was now alight with something. Qui-Gon couldn’t put a name to the sound or even be sure it was a sound and not a disturbance in the Force, but something was making the air down this hallway ring. He took his lightsaber in hand.
The door at the hallway’s end, just like the one before it, was blank except for a droid plugin, which Qui-Gon manipulated in the same way. This time, though, he held the door shut, positioning himself to be on the defensive before letting it slide open. He tensed and burst into the room to find…
A gymnasium. It was by far the largest room he’d come across so far, with high ceilings and a wide, empty floor and exercise equipment of various kinds scattered about. Along one wall was a bank of computers, the interactive sort the Initiates used to practice piloting starships and to take their practical exams. On the same wall was one final door. This one was strange, constructed of heavy durasteel and almost comically short. The only sort of humanoid capable of passing through something like that comfortably would be a child or a dwarf species.
The frightened Force-presence was almost tangible here, sparkling across his tongue and making his ears pop. It was wild, out of control like a sandstorm on Tatooine. A child.
Qui-Gon approached the door.
Qui-Gon had stood in the eyes of many a hurricane in his time. He’d known what it was to seek refuge from nature in nature. He’d talked unstable Force users down from ledges and watched them throw themselves off of them. He understood what it was to walk from the Living Force into another’s signature. As he drew closer to the door, he passed from the freezing cold of Darkness into the hot, untamed psyche of a scared child and he marveled at the energy of it, beating against his shields and screaming as it tried to hold its own against the seething ocean beyond its borders.
There was a slat in the door, the sort that slides back to allow something to be passed through. It was narrow and low, down by Qui-Gon’s feet. It was stained with gore. Qui-Gon called upon something calm within himself and took a deep breath.
He unlocked the door and let it slide open, not yet daring to step inside. At once, a small figure dropped from above, landing in the door frame in a flurry of red and black and lightsaber light. Oh, Force help him.
The child launched at him with remarkable speed, growling and baring his teeth. He was a Zabrak, Qui-Gon noticed, with red skin and bold black tattoos. The bigger problem was the lightsaber in his hand and the fear-fueled Force energy flowing from him. It took all of Qui-Gon’s self-control not to draw his own weapon. Instead, he sidestepped the child’s attack.
“I mean you no harm,” he said as the child regrouped, turning and running back at him. “Please drop your weapon.”
The boy snarled and swung his lightsaber. Qui-Gon had no choice but to activate his own, swinging it up and using the boy’s own momentum to twist his saber from his hand. Qui-Gon called upon the Force to push it across the room and switched off his own weapon. “Stand down,” he repeated. “It’s alright.”
The child was not deterred by the loss of the lightsaber. He jumped, quick as anything, and two tiny feet hit Qui-Gon’s chest hard, knocking him back into the room from which the child had come. The boy latched onto his head and began beating him, smacking his tiny fists against Qui-Gon’s torso and pulling his hair. Qui-Gon let himself be pushed to the ground before grabbing the boy’s wrists. “Peace, child!”
The boy growled again, straining against Qui-Gon’s hold. Then, sensing the futility of his gesture, he sank his sharp teeth into the meat of Qui-Gon’s arm.
Caught quite unawares, Qui-Gon yelled and released the boy, who went flying back out the door and into the gymnasium. If it were not for Qui-Gon’s own training, he undoubtedly would have escaped into the tunnels. As it was, Qui-Gon was able to tackle him to the floor just in front of the door, pinning all four limbs and holding him down with the Force.
The child was young, much younger than Qui-Gon had expected for someone so strong. He couldn’t have been more than ten standard years, maybe less given how skinny he was. His size did nothing to diminish his fight, though, and Qui-Gon had to work to keep him down. The child was clearly panicked, terrified of Qui-Gon and the ways in which he might hurt him.
Qui-Gon reached out with the Force, touching the boy’s mind with his own in an attempt to calm him. The initial backlash was strong, borderline painful, but Qui-Gon persisted, washing the boy’s mind in waves of calm and safety and stability.
It’s alright, he pushed, I mean you no harm. I am here to help you. You may relax now.
The boy did not know enough control to speak back, and all Qui-Gon received was an unrefined rush of fearhungerangerhelpmehelpmeHELPME.
“It’s alright, young one,” he spoke aloud. “Let me help you.” It was then that he realized the child was warm even through the gloves of his enviro suit. Qui-Gon wasn’t sure if Zabraks were supposed to run hot, but this boy was burning. “Are you ill?”
The child, still squirming, but weaker now, pushed out again into the Force, showing Qui-Gon a brief slideshow of shadowy memories. A man comes into his room. He is hungry. A needle is pressed to his neck. He is hungry. He will do whatever it is he is asked. A laugh tears the room apart. A door is locked. An absence. He is hungry. He doesn’t feel well.
“It’s alright now, young one. My name is Qui-Gon Jinn. I’m a Jedi Master and I’m going to help you.”
At his last words, the boy’s eyes went wide, but whatever realization he had come to came too late. At last, the poison took its toll and he passed out underneath Qui-Gon.
Qui-Gon barreled down the corridors in search of Plo and Salik. Their comms indicated that they were together somewhere near here but, try as he might, Qui-gon could not find the entrance to the room. Coming didn’t help, either, as all Salik and Plo could do was try to direct him through the identical rows of corridors. He was running out of time.
In his arms, the boy’s life force faded slowly, pulsing and flowing and running from between his fingers. Poisoned, no doubt, and left for dead in that locked room by whomever had lived in this fortress before they had arrived. As for who that was, Qui-Gon was beginning to have what his padawan so often called a ‘bad feeling.’ They needed to get this boy back to the Temple.
Qui-Gon ran back into the training room and forced himself to pause. His panic was helping no one and getting him nowhere. He needed to center himself. Closing his eyes, he gathered the Force around him. What about this room was different?
He reached out, feeling all around, looking for any thread that might connect him to Plo and Salik. Where could they have gone? So close, but…
The mats.
The mats on the wall to the left of the doorway were a ruse, put there only to distract Qui-Gon from the second entrance to the room. Unwilling to set the boy down, Qui-Gon used the Force to throw the mats aside, revealing a short passage terminating in some sort of fabric covering. Then, a lightsaber sliced through the fabric, cutting it away and revealing Salik’s shocked face on the other side.
“Master Jinn!” Salik’s eyes fell to the child in his arms. “Who is that?”
“I do not know, but we must leave,” Qui-Gon said, jogging to join Salik and Plo in a room so much different from the ones he had seen that he was rendered momentarily speechless.
The room was illuminated by a massive orb of water hovering in the middle of it. Through the water swam a school of small, colorful fish who occasionally came to the surface to observe the three Jedi. Dark wood paneling sucked the light to the walls, pulling at it greedily and drawing attention to the numerous tapestries hung there, one of which had been destroyed by Salik. Behind the bubble, Plo Koon was contemplating a small table, barren save for a pair of dinner settings. Another door, presumably the one Plo and Salik had been directing him to, led out into a new white hallway.
“What has happened?” Plo demanded. “Who is this child?” He reached out to take the child from Qui-Gon’s arms, but Qui-Gon pulled back.
“He was locked in one of the rooms,” Qui-Gon explains. “He’s been poisoned and it is imperative that he receive medical attention.”
Plo Koon nodded gravely. “We shall leave at once. Knight Hann, I trust you recall the way out?”
“Of course,” they stuttered. “But, but wouldn’t it make more sense to stay? I mean, this place is obviously a Sit-”
“We are leaving,” Plo intoned. “Now. The issues that have presented themselves here will wait for discussion before the Council.”
“Of course, Master. This way.”
Maul had been trained to react to anything. He wasn’t quite sure what that ‘anything’ was, but he was sure that he would be able to handle it. Many a time, he had wondered what life was like beyond the three or four rooms and hallways he saw on the daily. He caught glimpses sometimes, in holovids and texts and while staring out that long-gone window at the miners, but he wasn’t sure how to put the images together into a cohesive whole. It was comparable to looking at several grains of sand and trying to picture the whole dune. Impossible.
Sometimes, Master would tell him that he was being trained to face great trials, to look the cruel and unforgiving reign of the Jedi in the face and beat it to the ground. Surely, that must involve entering the outside world, so Maul felt safe in his wondering, felt that it was justified to want to be prepared.
No amount of imagining could have prepared him for what it was truly like.
His memories of the last few cycles of consciousness were hazy, consisting mostly of yelling and fighting and the burn of an unfamiliar poison through his veins. Something was terribly, terribly wrong, and his Master would not tell him what it was. Perhaps it was a test. It did not feel like a test.
As he drew closer to consciousness, Maul also found himself remembering several vast presences, light and bright and warm and unlike anything he had ever felt before. Was all the outside world like that? It hurt.
Then, Maul was awake.
As was his custom, Maul came to silently, trying to figure out where he was before acting out and screwing the whole thing up. Something bad had happened, and if he wanted any chance of surviving, he could take no chances and make no mistakes.
His first impression of the outer world was pain. Everything hurt, and far beyond the usual stinging ache of hunger and day-old bruises. Maul’s head was a battleground, wooden staffs cracking off the inside of his skull with every beat of his hearts. And his arms, useless arms, arms like lead, were pinned to the surface he laid on. So were his ankles and waist. He’d been pinned, but to what?
Maul reached beyond the pain, stretching despite the ache in his very essence to identify his surroundings. The thing he laid on was surprisingly soft, giving with his weight and not poking him with anything sharp. Beyond that was a wall of light so bright Maul was forced to retreat within himself, recentering around the pain in his head and trying again. It was like the man who had come to rescue him, only thousands of times stronger.
Think, Maul. How did this happen? How did you get here? You should know, so think.
Voices. Maul heard voices.
“...To be recovering from the poison, but there are several old breaks that must be tended to, and he is malnourished.” A woman’s voice, he thought, not that he’d ever heard a woman in person. Human, by the sounds of it.
Then, a deeper voice, male. The man from the training room. Maul’s pulse picked up and he worked to calm it. Master could always hear when he was afraid. Even if he couldn’t sense Master now, that didn’t mean he wasn’t near. “Do you have any idea what happened to him?”
The woman spoke again. “I can’t say for sure, but… the majority of his body has evidence of trauma, be it scar tissue, bruising, or otherwise.”
A younger male broke in. “Master, if this child truly is a Sith apprentice-”
“Quiet, Obi-Wan. You must not speak of such things. This is a matter for the Jedi Council to discuss-”
Jedi. Maul’s eyes snapped open. He was sure now that this was a test. Master needed him, or needed him to show how well he could perform. A roomful of Jedi was quite a bit for a first venture into the outside world, but who was Maul to complain? He harnessed the fear, dug into it and used it to snap the bindings that held his wrists down.
Voices cried out. Maul glanced around the room, taking in his surroundings and counting his enemies. One adult human male, one adult human female, and an adolescent human male, all emanating that blinding glow, all moving to strike him. The test has begun.
Maul tried to rip his legs and torso free, but found that it took two tries to do so. He was weaker now that his adrenaline was spent. Sicker than he thought. The medical equipment he was hooked up to shrieked as he thrashed, rolling to avoid the grabbing hands of the female and the Reach of the male. He tumbled out of the bed and to the floor. A needle ripped free from his arm. He hurt.
Take the pain and make it into power. Come on, you know how to do this. You’re not weak, Maul.
The two adults were closing in on him again. Not good. Strangely, the adolescent had pressed himself against the wall of the room, retreating from the fight instead of engaging. Pathetic. Had no one taught him better? He would surely be punished.
Maul’s vision was still oddly blurry, making it difficult to track the blows when they came. The man was reaching for his hands just like he had in the training room, seeking to pin him down and take him away, seeking to hurt him, seeking to kill him because that is what Jedi do, Maul, you are in grave danger, we all are in grave danger and we must fight.
Maul scrambled to his feet, backing up until he hit the wall. He was not wearing fighting clothes but instead a thin gown that was open in the back, leaving him cold and exposed and unpleasantly reminded of the worst aspects of his training. No matter. He had no weapons. No matter. Maul was a weapon, and he was going to survive. He was going to make Master proud. He bared his teeth, growling at the man as he approached.
The man moved, but it wasn’t to attack. Instead, he raised his hands to his head, lifting his chin and exposing his throat to Maul. He was saying something. Maul struggled to focus beyond the pounding of his hearts.
“I don’t mean you harm. You are safe. Please allow us to help you,” the man said, aura pulsing with something that attacked Maul, that beat itself against his shields and felt… good? Calming? For a moment, Maul relaxed.
No. A trick. Maul was above such Jedi deception and he did not want to die. He surged forward, planting a foot against the wall and aiming for the man’s throat.
Something hit his midsection. He hit the floor. His lungs seized up.
A needle pricked his neck.
He was gone again.
When next he awoke, he was alone. It took a few moments to recall the series of events that had taken him from his room, but when he did, he called upon the Dark Side, ready to break his bindings again and-
“Hello?”
What?
“Hello? Are you awake again?”
Maul reached out with the Force and found only the presence of the male child from earlier, the one who had pressed himself against the wall and avoided confrontation. Perhaps they were left alone to fight? Not an unusual punishment, but how did the Jedi expect him to fight tied down to a bed? Maul opened his eyes and jerked back when he found blue-grey ones hovering above him, wide and staring.
“Oh, sorry. I wasn’t sure if you were awake or not.” The eyes sat back and Maul found that they were attached to the younger presence, a human who, upon closer investigation, couldn't have been much older than him. “It’s just me in here,” the child continued. “I know the adults kind of freaked you out earlier.”
Maul stayed silent. He had no idea how to react and his fear was stolidly refusing to coalesce into strength, instead mixing with the remnants of nausea and making his stomach churn and his head spin. Not good.
“My name’s Obi-Wan. You’re in the Jedi Temple.”
Right. Maul could not allow himself to become distracted, not in enemy territory and not when Master could be… when Master could be needing him, or near, or something. He jerked against the restraints but found them to be significantly stronger than last time. He growled, gathering the Dark around him and trying again. Nothing. He was trapped. He was trapped and they were going to kill him or experiment on him or experiment on him and then kill him and he was a failure, failure, failure, weak weak weak letting the Jedi win I shouldn’t even be taking the time to train you-
“Yeah, you won’t be getting out of those,” the child… laughed? “I’ve seen stronger people try. You could have hurt yourself last time.”
Once again, Maul’s brain failed him, presenting him with a blank when he called upon it for an appropriate response to this scenario.
“Like I said, I’m Obi-Wan and you’re in the Jedi Temple.” Obi-Wan was leaning back in his chair, making it difficult for Maul to follow his movements, restrained as he was. Was this some sort of tactic? For what? “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you’re a Sith apprentice.”
“What would you know?” Maul growled.
Obi-Wan shrugged. “I can feel your Force signature. It’s Dark. What’s your name?”
Maul, once again, resorted to silence, trying in vain to figure out how to proceed. The Jedi had caught him. If this was a test, had he failed? If not, would his Master come in to terminate him? Surely he had broken some cardinal rule.
“Okay,” Obi-Wan said. “That’s alright. We can work on that. I’m going to call you… Stripes, okay?”
Maul blinked. That was ridiculous. He wasn’t even striped! Sure, he’d had a limited experience with mirrors, but he knew vaguely what he looked like, and ‘striped’ was not it.
Something must have shown on his face, because Obi-Wan made some sort of strange half-laugh noise. Maul had never heard Master laugh like that. Actually, Maul had never heard anyone in real life talk at length like this, not to him. Not a real person. “If you don’t like it, tell me your real name,” Obi-Wan challenged.
No. Maul wasn’t sure why he didn’t want to, but he didn’t. If he had learned anything from Master, it was that less words were safer, and Maul didn’t want to know the punishment Obi-Wan’s Master might have for insubordination.
Obi-Wan did something strange with his hand, flapping it in the air beside him before setting it down again. “I know you’re scared,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“I can feel it,” Obi-Wan countered. “I can feel it, and I think I get why Master Qui-Gon and Healer Juno freaked you out so much. But it’s safe here, okay? We’re going to help you.”
Maul frowned. What was Obi-Wan talking about? What did he need help with? How would Obi-Wan’s Master help at all? What was a Healer?
Obi-Wan barreled onward, oblivious to Maul’s confusion. “I don’t know what they tell you about the Jedi when you’re training to be a Sith, but it can’t be good.” That, at least, was correct. The child knew something. “It’s not true, though.” Never mind. “We aren’t… perfect, I know, but we can help you.”
Maul just stared at him, waiting for the words he was saying to form themselves into some sort of sense. Obi-Wan looked back, equally as determined. They stayed that way for a long moment, just looking, and Maul realized that he had never looked Master in the eye before. He looked away.
He had to figure out how to escape. These Jedi were too much for him to handle alone. Perhaps if he could get back to Master….?
But what if Master was upset? What of the punishment he would receive?
Maul bit his lip, working to expel the thoughts. Whatever punishment he would receive upon his return would be deserved. No use in thinking otherwise. For now, though, Obi-Wan might be a valuable asset. Master had told him that people could be used to his advantage, and Obi-Wan clearly knew the rules of this place. Perhaps he could help. Perhaps Maul could teach him the evils of the Jedi and they could escape together!
No. No, Maul. That’s not how this works.
But. But, just for now. Maybe, Obi-Wan could be his ally.
Obi-Wan spoke again. “You have to stay in the Healing Halls until Healer Juno clears you to leave. Then…” He trailed off for a moment. “Then, I’m not sure. But we’re going to help you.”
Suddenly, Maul was struck by the feeling that he’d been taught the wrong definition for every word in the galaxy.
Obi-Wan stayed until Stripes fell asleep again, pretending to read something on his datapad while he looked around the room again and again, searching. For what, Obi-Wan didn't know.
Stripes’s Force signature was unlike anything Obi-Wan had felt before. It was disorganized Darkness, pain and fear and anger and suffering sewed into a shield Stripes wrapped around himself. It wasn’t like the idle Darkness of Bandomeer, where the Force cried out in pain and the world raged on without a care, nor was it the brooding cold of the Sith holocrons in the Archives (that Obi-Wan had never seen because Quin definitely didn’t know the keycodes to the restricted levels). It pulsed orange and red, oozing like an infection. Obi-Wan shivered, pushing his own shields up higher and crossing his arms over his chest.
Finally, Stripes’s hypervigilance gave way to the drugs still pumping through his IV and his eyes slipped closed. Obi-Wan watched for a minute or two longer, counting his breaths and tracking the way his eyes moved beneath the lids just like Master Qui-Gon had taught him until he was sure he was asleep. Then, he powered his datapad down and slipped out the door.
Qui-Gon was still in the receiving room of the Hall’s overnight care unit, sitting serenely in a chair, eyes closed and signature radiating the water-feeling of meditation. Healer Juno was nowhere to be found.
“Master Qui-Gon?” Obi-Wan said, waiting a few meters away to be acknowledged. It… wasn’t exactly as though he distrusted Master Jinn, but following the events of Bandomeer, Obi-Wan had felt it safer to err on the side of caution in all his interactions with him. The closer people got to Obi-Wan, the less he could see of them and the more their signatures became jumbled, piecemeal things. Respect and distance were the staples of Obi-Wan’s life these days.
Qui-Gon’s eyes opened even as he remained perfectly still. “What is it, Obi-Wan? Is the child awake?”
Obi-Wan shook his head. “He was, but he’s asleep again.” Qui-Gon frowned and Obi-Wan continued, determined to present his thoughts this time. “Master, that boy is a Sith. You know he is. The Council must have figured it out by now.”
Qui-Gon sighed, unwinding himself from his meditative pose and planting his feet on the floor. He patted the seat beside him. “Come over here and sit a moment, Padawan.” Obi-Wan obliged and Qui-Gon turned toward him, face stern. “Your position in this ordeal is rather unique. You are a padawan with knowledge of a situation that few Jedi Masters in the Temple are privy to.” He ran a hand through his hair. Obi-Wan scratched at his face. “What Master Koon, Knight Hann, and I found on Mustafar was concerning in a way that few things have been in many years. The child in that room is undoubtedly a Sith apprentice. The implications of this…”
“There are always two,” Obi-wan murmured. Oh, Force. The Sith were back. If the Council was being this secretive already, it must be true. Of course, Obi-Wan had known Stripes must have a master somewhere, but he’d been hoping he was wrong. If Stripes was young, though, there might be hope. He might be turned, convinced to give up information. “This isn’t some fluke? Some imposter hoping to cause chaos?”
Qui-Gon set a hand on his shoulder. “I hope so, Obi-Wan. Knight Hann has already returned to Mustafar with several others to gather more information. What they return with will determine how the Council proceeds.”
Obi-Wan’s head spun. His leg bounced and his mind raced as he tried to sort through the ways this might go. The return of the Sith was like something out of a nightmare, the sort Bruck told the crechelings to scare them when he got bored. To think it might actually be happening now, that Obi-Wan was being caught up in the motions of things he was entirely unequipped to handle… Bandomeer had been enough, and he’d only just returned.
Qui-Gon set a hand on his leg, startling him from his thoughts. “Peace, Padawan. Release your anxiety into the Force. Many things are still to be determined.” Obi-Wan takes a deep breath, letting the worry and the residual anger and the old aches and pains melt away into the background of the Force. Qui-Gon nodded. “Good. Now, for the time being, I’d like you to try and befriend the child.”
Obi-Wan balked. “Stripes? But he’s- he’s not- he’s a Sith, Master! I thought you didn’t want me to be too close to the Dark.”
Qui-Gon chuckled. “Stripes? Is that what you’ve been calling him?”
“Well, yeah. Because he’s, you know-”
“Stripey?” Qui-Gon laughed again. “I suppose it is rather fitting. Regardless, I understand your concern. That child- Stripes- has been deeply marked by the Dark Side of the Force, but he is still a child, and thus is still owed a chance at redemption. I’d like you to, with permission of Healer Juno, take him with you on your travels today.”
“I don’t have a choice, do I?”
Stripes didn’t hold Obi-Wan’s hand as they entered the cafeteria, but Obi-Wan would almost rather he did. Instead, he walked less than a step behind Obi-Wan, half-hidden in his tunic and tripping him up at every turn.
Following one growly but mercifully short medical checkup and a mildly combative redressing of Stripes in some spare Padawan tunics, Stripes had been cleared to shadow Obi-Wan through the weekend as long as he returned to the medical ward at night. The Mindhealers wanted time with him, but Healer Juno managed to convince them to ‘let him get acclimated first, Force, let the poor kid breathe.’ Then, it had been left to Obi-Wan to convince Stripes to venture outside the Healing Halls.
He’d clammed up entirely during the checkup, refusing to talk as Healers poked and prodded and asked questions and ignoring Qui-Gon’s attempts at ‘lighthearted’ conversation. Little Gods, Obi-Wan may have all the subtlety of a charging bantha, but even he was better than that.
Obi-Wan was fairly sure that Stripes thought everyone in the Temple wanted to murder him, with Obi-Wan being the only exception. Nothing Obi-Wan said had been able to calm him, but he’d finally followed him out the door when Obi-Wan told him that he had friends waiting for him in the cafeteria and that the Healers wouldn’t like it if Stripes went hungry.
Now, Stripes followed him closely, projecting spikey, aggressive thoughts at anyone who dared look their way, which, of course, drew more people to look their way. Thankfully, it was already 14:00, well past the normal mealtime, and the cafeteria wasn’t too crowded when they arrived. Quinlan waved to him as soon as he crossed the threshold, then did a dramatic double take as he laid eyes on Stripes. He tapped Luminara on the shoulder, who turned around and promptly had much the same reaction. Obi-Wan waved back.
At the sight of the other kids, Stripes actually grabbed onto his robes, clinging to him like a youngling half his age before jumping away as though burned. Wide yellow eyes stared up at Obi-Wan and asked so many questions.
Obi-Wan tried to start with the obvious. “This is the cafeteria. Those are my friends Quinlan and Luminara.” He pointed to them and they waved again, this time with less wide-eyed shock and more carefully schooled indifference. “They’re nice; I think you’ll like them.”
Stripes looked from him to the two of them and back to him again. “They’re.... apprentices?” He looked disbelieving, more now than ever before.
“Yes,” Obi-Wan affirmed. “Well, padawans, but it’s the same concept.”
Stripes looked at them again, that same searching expression from the Healing Halls taking over his face. In the Force, Obi-Wan felt him reach out, testing Quinlan and Luminara and pulling back at their greetings. Then, he squared his thin shoulders and asked, “Where’s the food?”
Stripes nearly went cross-eyed when presented with the buffet line at the front of the cafeteria. Obi-Wan understood the sentiment. It was a daunting sight for those not accustomed to it, and from what little he’d picked up from Master Qui-Gon and the other adults, Stripes was decidedly not accustomed.
He spent a good few minutes staring at the options, clearly at a loss. Obi-Wan got his own food, but by the time he returned, Stripes was still staring.
“What do you want to eat?”
Stripes shrugged.
“What do you like to eat?”
Stripes shrugged.
“Okay, well, I’m pretty sure Zabraks are carnivores, so I’ll get you some nerf burger?” Force, Obi-Wan hated making his own decisions, let alone other people’s.
Mercifully, Stripes nodded, accepting the plate Obi-Wan handed him and holding it still while Obi-Wan loaded it with nerf burger. Then, they trekked to Obi-Wan’s usual table.
“Who’s that?” Quin greeted, hastily swallowing a piece of bread and nearly choking in the process. “Weird-looking Initiate.” Luminara smacked him and Quinlan just laughed.
Obi-Wan sat down across from them and gestured for Stripes to do the same. “He’s not an Initiate. He’s… well, Master Jinn says that I can’t tell you much, but he’s a Force-user and he’s staying at the Temple for a little while. His name is Stripes.”
Stripes growled for the umpteenth time that day. “Stop calling me that! My name’s not Stripes.”
“Then tell me what it is,” Obi-Wan shot back.
“No!”
“You’re Stripes, then, Stripes!”
Stripes growled some more and Luminara made a placating gesture. “Alright, alright, let’s not. Obi-Wan’s right,” she says to Stripes. “If you won’t tell us your name, then we have to call you something.”
Stripes grumbled something unintelligible but otherwise conceded to Luminara. Then, he proceeded to do something which threw the whole table into chaos. He reached out and started digging into his nerf burger with his hands.
“No!” Quin cried, reaching across the table to stop him just as Obi-Wan tried to do the same thing. Their hands collided and the plate fell into Stripes’s lap. Luminara yelled, Stripes froze, and everyone in the cafeteria turned to look at them.
Obi-Wan blinked. Luminara blinked back. Quinlan shook meat juice off his hands. Stripes stared at Quinlan with wide, vacant eyes, completely unmoving.
“Okay,” Obi-Wan said. “It’s okay, let me get this off of you.” Stripes turned to him and watched with that same blank stare as Obi-Wan relocated the burger and patted him down with a napkin. “It’s okay,” he repeated. “We can get some more.”
Stripes frowned at him. “But… you said don’t.”
Obi-Wan took a moment to process that. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean- we just meant that you can’t eat it with your hands,” he clarified. “Sorry. We didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Then what do I eat with?”
Obi-Wan could feel Quin getting ready to say something, but Luminara kicked him before he could. “A fork,” he said instead. “Here, we’ll teach you while Obi-Wan gets you more food. It’s super easy, look.”
The nerf burger was not an isolated incident. The whole day was filled with accidents and misunderstandings and the constant stress of acclimating Stripes to a whole new way of being while at the same time preventing him from doing things like biting people. Or trying to jailbreak a training saber. Or anything that he’d tried doing, really.
By the time they’d eaten their evening meal, Obi-Wan was fresh out of energy and raw at every nerve ending. He spent much of the meal with his head pillowed on his crossed arms, eyes closed and noise-cancelling earplugs shoved in his ears. The uncertainty was getting to him, thoughts of what Qui-Gon could be up to and wonders about the Sith mixing with constant questions both about and from Stripes and leaving him twitchy and stressed. Luminara and Quin took pity on him, taking responsibility for Stripes until after dinner, when Obi-Wan felt a bit more human.
Now, walking down the hallway leading to the Halls of Healing, Stripes was edging closer to him again.
“What’s wrong?” Obi-Wan asked the third time Stripes took a breath to speak and swallowed it again.
Stripes glanced up at him, then around the hallway. “Are we going back to the white room?”
Obi-Wan frowned. “The- oh, you mean your room in the Halls of Healing?” They turned another corner and Stripes hurried to keep up.
“Yes. The white room with the adults.”
Right, the ‘adults’ thing. Stripes was highly suspicious of anyone over the age of twenty. Even Shaak and Depa were subjected to intense scrutiny before being allowed to join their sparring group earlier in the day. It was another thing Obi-Wan was planning on bringing up with Qui-Gon that evening. Nothing about Stripes was right, from his Force signature to the way he hesitated before doing anything. Once again, Obi-Wan thought of Bandomeer.
“Yes, we are going back there,” Obi-Wan answered. “Why?”
Stripes swallowed and Obi-Wan felt his signature shift, fear radiating off of him. He didn’t say anything, though, so Obi-Wan prodded him again.
“It’s alright. They just want to keep an eye on you during the night.”
“Because I’m a Sith?” Stripes stared up at him, gold eyes brimming over with… something.
Obi-Wan considered lying but couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Yes,” he admits. “They don’t have a choice,” he insists when Stripes’s eyes fill with tears. “You were being combative and we don’t know you well enough to trust you!”
Stripes recoiled. “They can’t keep me in there! I’ll escape! I’ll kill them all.” Obi-Wan flinches back at that, batting Stripes’s hand away from his, and gets a confused stare in response. “I will, I promise!” His small voice cracked and he met Obi-Wan’s eyes with such ardent honesty that Obi-Wan almost thought he was trying to comfort him.
Obi-Wan stared back for a long moment, mouth open. “I- That’s why they can’t trust you. I’m taking you back to the Healers and I’m going to bed. Come on.”