master_luke (master_luke) wrote in thegalaxy, @ 2016-04-10 00:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | !locale: naboo, luke skywalker, qui-gon jinn |
Who: Luke and Qui-Gon
When: Before scouting trip with Leia
Where: Naboo village
What: The rise of the Jedi
Rating: These two? G.
As when he visited his mother, Luke traveled through the Naboo village as unobtrusively as possible, even turning away any stray attention that might have landed upon him. He as yet wore his robes, but the cloak was concealing enough, and their import did not hold the same sway here as it did years prior. He had allowed his heart to hope again, now that Rey had brought him here and showed him what was occurring...at one time, he thought that he would only witness the rise of the next change, if he was lucky. Now, it seemed he might be able to be a part of it once more. He reached the appointed home just as he expected, and without hesitation rapped upon the door. It felt different, this meeting, than speaking with Obi-Wan, for at that point he needed to reconcile two very different men in his memory. Instead, gratitude was more in order here, not just for his father, but for his mother as well. Late nights had become the normal routine for Qui-Gon in the last few months. Though better recovered than the healers had thought possible, Qui-Gon still contended with the aches and pains of an aging body anxious to remind him that it had endured more than enough of late. So it was tonight, with Qui-Gon installed on the couch, a cup of tea on the table at his side, and a holoreader in his hands. He had made a point of filling in the gaps left by his jump through time. A true history of the Empire was difficult to come by, but, with Padme's account of how the Empire had come to be, the Jedi Master was better able to separate Palpatine's fiction from fact. Qui-Gon found the lack of information on the Jedi frustrating, to say the least. How many had disappeared at the edges of the galaxy, survivors who had their own stories to share but were silenced by the Sith's vicious hunt for them? There were rumors, of course, and speculation, but so many Jedi had been lost. They were all but a myth in this era. The article currently before him was little more than a fairytale. It would make a good holodrama, he thought, but he'd yet to meet a Jedi who could walk through walls. Qui-Gon sighed, and marked the text for a later time. Obi-Wan might find the account amusing. He was about to start on the next article when there was a knock at the door. Qui-Gon frowned. He hadn’t expected a visitor. When he reached out with his senses, he found a curious lack at the front door. Someone was trying to go unnoticed. Qui-Gon sensed no malice, however, so he stood, back protesting, and went to the door. A hooded and cloaked figure waited on the other side. That, combined with the touch of the Force that said, Don’t look this way, was enough to avoid the attention of the average passerby. Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow. “Master Skywaker. You’re up late this evening.” The smile that greeted him reached the bright blue eyes, even though they were shadowed by the cloak. Luke removed the hood in a long-familiar gesture. “So I am, Master Jinn. But then, so are you.” Just as he had been unprepared to see his mother, Luke was surprised at the emotion welling in him at meeting another figure from his past, but more than that, another Jedi. He had forgotten the sense of peace he once had around others like him, since he had spent so many years now in exile. All of that crossed his mind in but a moment, as he returned himself to the present. “I hope I am not intruding too much on your privacy. Truth be told, my sister has insisted on leaving tomorrow to look for a good base, and there was too much I wished to discuss with you before that.” His smile turning wry, he added, “And perhaps a little less of the Master and a little more of the Skywalker wanted to meet you.” With a smile of his own, Qui-Gon stepped back and gestured Luke into the house. "One of the great mysteries of age. Your body needs more sleep, but makes enough complaints about other matters to keep you from getting any. Please, come in." There wasn't much house to enter, something that Qui-Gon found suited him perfectly well. Its entrance opened directly upon a large room that served as a combination living space and kitchen. A small hallway at the back showed the way to the sleeping quarters and 'fresher. Qui-Gon had done little to personalize the space, though a number of plants lined the windows, gifts from the Naboo who had not been shy to show their appreciation for the Jedi Master while he had been with the healers. "You have your father's curiosity," Qui-Gon remarked as he led the way to the modest seating area. "And maybe a sense of his mischief as well. That's good to know." Inclining his head in thanks, Luke entered the small home, his gaze sweeping over it only for a moment before he returned his attention to Qui-Gon. “Much to my uncle’s despair, I assure you. He and my aunt used to say that I had too much of my father in me. I was never very content on a moisture farm in the middle of Tattooine. Of course, now, I miss the solitude.” His smile warmed his face, which was still lined from the many years of harder living since then. “I hope you do not mind if I ask more about your thoughts on him. I know what my mother has told me.” There was a tone there, that suggested speaking to his mother was very novel and emotional, but his gentle expression remained. “And of course, I was with him when he died, but it was so little a time to speak with him then.” “Tattoine is a fine place to become lost,” Qui-Gon observed. “At least, it is if one wishes to remain lost.” He had fond memories of the planet, in spite of the unfortunate circumstances that had led him to it. The people there were strong, and kindness had been hidden in some of the most unlikely places on what had seemed, at first glance, a merciless world. “I’m afraid that I never had the opportunity to meet Owen Lars. It was good to hear that Shmi found happiness with his father. I would have liked to offer her more. Letting Anakin go was not easy for her.” Qui-Gon regretted that he had been unable to free Anakin’s mother, his concern for her allayed only by the knowledge that Wattoo was hardly the worst of masters. “I am glad to know that someone was with Anakin, in the end, and that you had the chance know him, if only briefly. Your sister’s counterpart had many questions about the being he was before Darth Vader. It is my pleasure to share what I can of the boy I knew.” His back still insistent that he’d been asking too much of it, Qui-Gon retrieved the cane he’d left beside his chair before he headed to the kitchen. “Can I offer you anything? I have a pot of tea warming.” “Tea would be perfect.” Luke absorbed the mention of his grandmother, letting each detail continue to flesh out the knowledge of where he had come from. He had to marvel at how even inconsequential tidbits made a clearer, larger picture of his past. “In all their lives, there was both great happiness and great pain,” he observed, although this time he was thinking of Owen and Beru. They had been the family he’d truly known, for as long as he could remember. Speaking with Padme had been fulfilling and illuminating, but Luke would never forget the first woman who mothered him. “I did not know you were injured,” he observed, as Qui-Gon retrieved the cane. “But then, I am reminded often that I know less than I thought.” His smile returned. “Most often by my sister. Apparently, I will have twice the reminders now.” "True enough," Qui-Gon agreed. "Life rarely allows one without the other." He poured a fresh cup of tea, the motion eliciting a sense of deja vu. Luke was the latest in a string of unlikely guests. Never could Qui-Gon have imagined that he would play host to the children of Anakin Skywalker in a small home on Naboo, or to his apprentice aged several decades beyond what he had last recalled. Such strange circumstances, he mused, though welcome all the same. "Oddly enough, it was you who helped to heal this injury," he noted in response to Luke's observation. Qui-Gon returned to the seating area, offering Luke the tea before he sat down with his own unfinished cup. "Your counterpart, from the same reality as your sister's younger self, was present on the station when I arrived. The rift has an interesting sense of timing. It brought me here early enough to escape a second funeral, but not quite early enough to avoid Darth Maul's blade." Choosing a seat opposite, Luke took a grateful sip of the tea. Yes, it would take time to get used to being around others again. More than he liked to admit. “I’m not even sure where to begin a reply to that,” he admitted, wryly. “Another me….one who made very different choices, with different outcomes. I have always counseled not to look back with regrets, but what about sideways at them?” He chuckled. “It’s very different to know what path those choices would have gone.” Very much so, for his nephew. But from what Luke had read, his nephew, as he was known now, did not even exist. Which was worse? “So, the rift brought you here at the moment before your death,” he mused. “I am grateful that one of me, at least, could help you. And yet Obi-Wan is here years before he died, in my time.” Strange how that memory could still elicit a pang. “I was with both him, and later my father, when they died. Each event shaped my life significantly. And each,” he admitted, “saved my life at those two points by sacrificing themselves. Knowing that he is here, and you are here….it is causing me to look back at moments in my own life.” “Regret has its usefulness. As with most things, it is only when we indulge in too much or too little that we find ourselves in trouble.” Qui-Gon settled gratefully against the support of his own chair, the complaints from the muscles in his back finally easing. “Emotion can be dangerous when you lose yourself in it, but ignoring it entirely defeats the purpose of having any sort of feeling in the first place. Better to acknowledge what you can see at the edges of your vision than to pretend that what is directly in front of you is the only matter of importance.” Qui-Gon had his own regrets, Obi-Wan and Anankin’s fates chief amongst them. “I still find myself wondering what would have happened if events had unfolded differently. If I failed Obi-Wan and Anakin in leaving them behind. I have been told otherwise, of course, but the thoughts linger. You, and your sister, offer hope that some good came of it all.” Listening intently, Luke only paused to sip at the tea as he mulled over the outlook that was certainly something his other self seemed to have embraced. “I have regrets of my own, to be certain,” he answered, after a moment. “At least one affects us all directly right now, and I will talk on that. But….I feel I owe it to my father to speak on him as yet.” Setting down the tea, Luke laced his fingers in front of him, his elbows resting on his knees as he thought back over what he had said to his mother, the words he had told his sister more than once. “I don’t know that events would have been markedly different had you lived, had you been the one to train Anakin. I cannot say. They might.” These were all questions Luke had wrestled with back on Dagobah, when Obi-Wan and Yoda finally told him the truth. Years had not given him satisfactory answers. “They might not have. My father was consumed with finding a way to have everything he had been denied. The entire Order would have had to change to give him a semblance of that. He wanted to be with my mother, he wanted my sister and I, and these were things denied to him just like his own mother was.” Luke only understood because of the small connections he had made with Anakin both right before his death, and the scant times he was still able to reach out after. In time, his father’s spirit had become one with the Force completely and Luke could not reach him anymore. “After he fell to the Dark side, he joined the Emperor as Darth Vader, joined the Sith. For nearly twenty years, he served the Empire. I faced him, more than once, as an adversary. The first time, and even the second, I did not know he was my father, not until he sensed it and told me himself. And I rejected that.” Although he smiled, more at the memory of his more rash self, there was a sadness to the thought. “It wasn’t until Obi-Wan and Yoda confirmed it that I was sure, but...I knew, even trying to not believe. I knew it was true.” “The path to the Dark Side is more complex than many believe,” Qui-Gon mused. “Anakin is not the first student I have lost to it. He would not have been the first Padawan of mine to fall, had I been able to accept him as my apprentice. I doubt that I alone could have saved him. There are so many could have beens, it’s difficult to say at what point Anakin strayed beyond the reach of those who loved him. Perhaps it was the will of the Force that he fall. Perhaps not.” He offered Luke a rueful smile. “The Council did warn me. Master Yoda sensed the fear in your father, even when he was a child. But I don’t believe that keeping him away from the Order would have done any more to save your father.” Anakin could have fallen at any time, for any number of reasons. Left to his own devices on Tatooine, he could just as easily have fallen to the Dark Side, though perhaps not been so easily found by Palpatine. “When I met Anakin, he was still young enough to view the world in absolutes, to hold onto unvarnished hope. The galaxy could be easily divided into good and evil. What he decreed should happen, would happen, even if it took time. He even believed that Jedi could not die.” Qui-Gon shook his head. “I was so certain he would be different from the other children found too late. I suppose that he was, but not in the way that I had hoped. It might have been better had he not known of the prophecy.” Although he wished to pursue the stories about his father, especially as a child, Luke was more captivated by stories of other Padawans on the same path. “I had one that I mentored that turned to the Dark Side,” he admitted. “Kylo Ren. He was….is my nephew, Han and Leia’s son.” He wasn’t sure if anyone had told Qui-Gon this as yet. “When I look back at what happened with my father, that is the aspect that causes me the most regret, but also the most questions. Do you think that these paths are fated?” Pausing, he added, “Was age a factor? Or being raised by family, instead of separate? I did things very differently, some of it out of ignorance of how the Order once was, some because I did not agree with those methods. And now, we are looking at training other Force sensitives, some of them adults. Is this going to be something that is insurmountable?” “Difficult, yes. Insurmountable? I don’t believe so.” Qui-Gon leaned forward, echoing Luke’s posture, his arms braced against his knees. “I wish I could tell you for certain if your nephew’s fall was a product of inheritance or of fate. I cannot. In fact, this is the first that I’ve heard of it. “The Order made many mistakes, Luke. Even Master Yoda could not always see a clear path. Could age have been a factor? Possibly. Xanatos was beyond the age at which most Force-sensitives were accepted into the Temple when I found him, and the Dark Side consumed him. Yet there are other Force-sensitives who were never identified, never trained, who lived out their lives without once setting foot on that path. Their lives may have been difficult, but these beings were not corrupted. That tells me that there is no magical age at which one must join the Jedi in order to avoid the lure of the Dark Side.” As Luke suspected, Leia had not told the others. “I believe that up until now, my sister and Han didn’t wish to draw attention to their son’s struggles, but if there’s still a chance of turning him from that path, as my father turned away in the end, then we need help in doing so.” Sighing, he drew his hand down his beard. “I agree, there are so many factors to consider. In this case, I think that Kylo….or Ben, as we knew him, felt abandoned and very misunderstood by his parents, and to an extent, myself. But for now, I see two paths ahead, albeit intertwined. That this galaxy needs Jedi again, there is no doubt. I’ve….sensed that this is a time for us to pursue that. And if possible, to save my nephew.” It was not the reason he had come to see Qui-Gon, discussing Ben and the fall of the new academy, but there was much here to be learned, he hoped. “Can you tell me more about Xanatos, this padawan of yours? And of what you saw in my father? I feel as if I have gone around in circles reexamining all that I know, and it’s too little by far.” “Their caution is understandable.” The political and personal ramifications of revealing that Kylo Ren was, in fact, Han and Leia’s child could be catastrophic. So few understood what the Jedi had been. It would be a simple matter for public opinion to turn not only against prominent figures in the Resistance, but against all Force-sensitive beings. “Your father is the first Jedi I know to have given in so completely to the Dark Side and then returned,” Qui-Gon cautioned Luke. “That should tell you how difficult a task you set before yourself. Anakin was, in many ways, exceptional. He was clever, and gifted in both the Force and in intellect. He was also kind. I suspect that you reached the part of him that still understood how to love.” Pausing, Qui-Gon gathered his thoughts. He knew more of the Dark Side than most Jedi of his time, and that knowledge had once been a source of shame. Had the Force intended that he live through such experience so that he could offer counsel now? He doubted that he would ever know for certain. “Xanatos was like your father in only one respect. He had talent. What I did not see was his selfish pride and capacity for base cruelty. The Council was reluctant to accept him into the Order, but he was still young enough when I found him that I successfully made my case. He spent several years with the other acolytes before I took him as my Padawan. He excelled in all aspects as a Jedi, save for his unyielding self-interest. Master Yoda gave me no shortage of warnings, but I explained away Xanatos’s failings as a product of youth. I only realized how mistaken I had been when we were sent on a mission to his home planet. His father had become a despot, a leader who denied his people their freedom and prosperity for his own gain. When Xanatos saw what could have been his had he remained behind, he became envious. When his father was killed, Xanatos’s envy turned to anger.” Luke’s thoughts traveled along a similar vein to Qui-Gon’s in regards to Kylo; so much that Luke did not yet admit that he had told only the other Master this information so far. He would touch more on that later. “In this day and age, we face more people thinking that the Jedi were a myth,” he explained, although he nodded in agreement. “The amount of history that was lost is staggering.” But anger….that, he knew well. “Both my father and Kylo Ren have been consumed by a similar anger, the rage at having something denied. I believe that my father felt, by the end, that he had nothing left to lose and it made his path easier. He convinced himself it was too late, no matter what he did, and to be shown that it wasn’t….that was how he turned it aside. Given the choice to come with me or remain with the Emperor, he could finally see a different way. I am not sure that it is how my nephew feels, nor that it will be enough to sway him.” Taking a deep breath, Luke let calm infuse him once more, to not let the more frustrating questions about his kin cause more turmoil. He needed to be clear. “Was it then that your padawan embraced the Dark side fully?” Qui-Gon lowered his gaze, seeing only his memories for a moment. Xanatos had been so angry as the life he might have had crumbled around him. He had been so hurt. Grief had pushed him across that final step away from the Jedi Order and Qui-Gon, but had it pushed him so deep into the darkness that he could not be reached? “No,” Qui-Gon said at last. “I don’t believe that it happened in an instant. Xanatos turned on me, and on the Jedi, but I committed my own sins as his master. I made no attempt to reach him after he disavowed the Order. No one did. His anger and hatred festered inside of him. The Jedi of my time were clear in their thinking. Once someone has allowed the darkness to cast such a deep stain, it cannot be washed away. That was what we believed. Could Xanatos have been saved? Maybe. Maybe not. But I am certain that, by the next time I saw him, it was too late.” Now, that, Luke understood. “I made the same mistake,” he offered, quietly. “I have been looking outward for an answer, leaving my nephew with the First Order, going so far that my own sister did not know where I was. In truth, I have been searching for an answer to the larger problem, of how to restore the Jedi themselves, but it comes down to wanting a solution for all that also solves the solution for just one. If I could find such an answer, in the Jedi temples of old, it might save him along with those who are also out there, without help.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face briefly, directed inwards. “I have the fatal flaw of hope. It served me well with my father, but very less so with my nephew. Now I am looking at the possibility of facing him once more, and as you say, it may be far too late. I can only hope it is not so late for others.” “There is one key difference you forget, Luke,” Qui-Gon stated with gentle patience. “Kylo Ren is your family. That is something I could not offer Xanatos.” The Jedi Master straightened, his featured lined with remorse. “You must learn from the mistakes of your predecessors as well as their triumphs.” Could he tell Luke what he felt he must? The Force was little help when Qui-Gon reached out to it in search of counsel. This was a decision only Qui-Gon could make. In the greater balance, one Jedi Master’s privacy meant little. “Some years ago, when Obi-Wan was only fifteen, I placed him in a desperate situation. Someone I cared for, deeply, was used in the political games of people she had believed to be friends. She died. I was not there to save her, though I had sensed the danger. I loved her. For a time, justice and revenge were one and the same to me, so much so that I lost sight of everything else. Obi-Wan could have been killed through my negligence. He very nearly lost his master to the Dark Side. I expect that he would have if, to me, he had not been as family. That, I’m afraid, is the price that we pay, as Jedi. Love damns us as readily as it becomes our salvation.” Although Luke looked ready to reply to that, instead he fell silent, before picking up his tea and taking another sip. Finally, he said, quietly, “There is much here for me to think on. I….have come close to a similar situation, although I took a different way.” His eyes held sympathy, but also some conflict, as yet unnamed. “Kylo…..Ben...is family. That will never change. But it might feel to him to only be blood, now. You were family to Obi-Wan in more than that. In an effort to teach Ben impartially, I may have eroded what familial ties we once had. It does not change that I love him, even though he has become someone unrecognizable. Growing up, I had Lars and Beru, but I craved more. I’ll never be able to accept completely that Ben may be gone. If that is damning….well, it may be.” Setting the tea down, he steepled his fingers together. “There was someone I felt very strongly about, but when I chose to start the Academy, we parted ways. We could not reconcile both our feelings and the duty I felt to the Jedi. I began to think that the restrictions I learned about later, the warnings against attachment, may be the right way. And yet...my counterpart married, had a son, was seemingly happy, and still reformed the Order. Do you think either is the right way, now? Is it enough our salvation to allow for such emotion, and to act on it?” “I believe that we must find our own path. If the Order’s customs in my era were truly the best way, I do not believe that Anakin would have fallen. The Sith found our vulnerabilities and exploited them. You are aware that I often disagreed with the Council. It has long been my opinion that strict adherence to the Code is shortsighted. There must be room to adapt.” Qui-Gon’s voice was insistent. “You may not be able to save both the Order and your nephew. Perhaps you are not meant to. Not all at once.” Qui-Gon looked Luke in the eye with steady conviction. “You do not have to carry either weight alone. You never did. That is a mistake we have both made. It is one I do not wish to see you repeat. Sometimes, it is most important that you try. And don’t tell me that Yoda said there’s no such thing. I’ve heard it often enough from the source, and I will happily argue the point with him should the opportunity arise.” At the mention of Yoda, Luke smiled, wryly. “And so he would say. Given the opportunity, he may again. Before now, speaking with you like this would have been an impossibility in my mind. But now much more is possible.” That levity aside, Luke grew pensive again. “I never saw it as a weight, but of course it was. It is. From the moment my uncle and aunt were killed, I knew what I would do, that I would follow in my father’s steps and become a Jedi. I have been...lucky, I suppose, in that I haven’t wrestled with the Dark Side as much as others. But despair, guilt, fear, all of those I have experienced in trying to bring back others like us into the galaxy. And back then, idealistic, I did not expect it to be on my shoulders, when for a long time, I put it there.” Pressing his palms to his knees, Luke stayed poised there for a long moment, reconciling those exact thoughts with what Qui-Gon pointed out to him. “I want us, the Jedi, to do good in this galaxy again, to bring hope. I came here because I sensed that perhaps, this time, it would happen. I do not wish the past few decades to hold me back from that hope. If I can say ‘we’ instead of ‘I’, then it is already lifting that weight. It may be that instead of trying to recreate what was, we can look at what will be.” “Then let us begin there, with what can be and not what was.” Qui-Gon smiled warmly. “There are too many of us from too many different time periods to keep track of which past ought to be copied in the first place.” “Or which future,” Luke agreed, amused. “And alternate futures. I should take the lesson there, that while so many possibilities existed, we are yet here, and now, and this reality is where we begin.” Feeling more centered than he had in some time, Luke continued, musingly, “Besides ourselves, and Obi-Wan, we have less than a handful of other Jedi. It is not many to start with, but start we shall. Are there others, Force-sensitives, that you think we should include now, as we look for a new, hopefully safer, home? My sister and I will be traveling tomorrow, examining a few possibilities. I don’t yet know how many I should plan for.” “Indeed.” Qui-Gon was pleased to see Luke’s mood lighten. “Better we get started before Master Yoda arrives and demands to know what we’ve been doing with ourselves. “I only know of a handful of candidates at this juncture, but that is hardy a fair measure. Given the native talents of some of our new arrivals, it’s possible they can feel the Force, but have not yet differentiated it from their original abilities. There’s no way to know how many beings born in this galaxy possess enough talent to attract the attentions of the First Order, either. In decades past, the Jedi could count on the assistance of the Republic and local governments to identify Force-sensitive children and alert us to the need to meet with their families. Such a system now would only endanger anyone being tested for midichlorian levels.” “And there are many families who would be resistant at best, if we tried.” Luke picked up the tea, sitting back now as he fell into contemplation. “I am back to my original conundrum, that putting my name out there would endanger more than it would help. For now, anyway. I must work through others. Should this be something we partner with the Resistance to accomplish? We know, at least, that they are in support of such efforts. Although, I do feel that whatever haven we can establish must remain as much a secret as we can manage, for now.” “I feel that it would be wise to take advantage of what help your sister is able to offer through the Resistance. Still, your caution is warranted. It would be best if this effort remain known only to a few outside of those who will join us as students or teachers. As tempting as it might be to do otherwise, we should avoid sites where the Jedi have been known to congregate in the past. We cannot rely on even the most ancient and forgotten sanctuaries to remain secret when the rift could easily deliver an enemy who knows of them into this galaxy.” “Where did Jedi not congregate, in the past?” Luke asked, rhetorically, although he smiled. “But I understand and agreed with that sentiment. I’ve been able to visit many of the older temple sites in the last decade, and I think there are a few places not terribly far that have been...overlooked by both the First Order and the Jedi in the past. One of those is D’Qar. There is also Malastare and Dagobah, both of which have very little history with the Jedi, and both are Force-rich worlds because of their landscape. And yes, Leia will have her share of input, which will likely be greater than mine. She has the benefit of knowing where the Resistance would like to establish bases, and we should avoid concentrating both us and the Resistance in the same place.” Qui-Gon rolled his eyes at Luke’s humor. “I think you learned a bit more than Jedi techniques from Obi-Wan.” Some Jedi thought mischief beneath them. Qui-Gon had always believed that they were missing out. Nowhere in the Code did it say a Jedi could not enjoy life. “I’m confident that you and Leia will be able to find a suitable location. You have my support in any way that I can offer it,” he added, on a more serious note. “Though … perhaps not Malastare. The First Order knows of Liriael D’lander. They may well seek to find her there, if they have any inkling of her origins.” “Now, I am told that I inherited my sense of humor,” Luke returned, his blue eyes twinkling for a moment. “Obi-Wan would have told you not that I was the joking sort, but more likely that I was spoiled and didn’t listen well, if he and my aunt and uncle were anything to go on.” His lips twitched in amusement at that memory of himself, which was not inaccurate. “Ah, the one that was attacked, right? I wasn’t aware she was from Malastare. Not many humans there. Although having someone familiar with the area, and some of the people, would be beneficial.” He absently ran his fingers along the edge of the tea cup as he thought. “D’Qar remains my preferred spot. It is heavily forested as well, and though others have rated it before as a good location for a base, it is judged too remote, and no one has established themselves there. We have few locals to contend with, or hide from, as it were. Dagobah is similar, but the atmosphere is difficult for ships to navigate. Excellent to prevent enemy ships, but just as dangerous for our own.” “Remind me to tell you some time about Obi-Wan at thirteen.” The boy had been a handful, still had been even as an adult yet to face his Trials, though by then less likely to make impulsive decisions. Qui-Gon wondered how much of that stubborn nature had remained with his apprentice through the years. “There will be time to broach the subject with Liriael, if you wish. Each possibility does have its advantages. It would be best if we are able to remain self-sufficient in whatever location we choose, provide as few opportunities for the First Order to track us as possible.” “I will remind you. I am extremely curious.” Luke had spent too little time with Obi-Wan, and that time he did have was marred by the events surrounding them. He could stand to replace some of those memories with happier ones. In fact, he had to reflect, he knew his former mentor a lot less than he wished to. “I may, if I have the chance. As for D’Qar, it’s far enough from shipping lanes to render it a bit more remote than Malastare. And I think it might be a place we could manage.” He was looking forward to this short trip with Leia to examine these places, as they certainly had enough to talk about. He owed it to her, if nothing else. “The idea of training others again….it is both exciting, and yet gives me pause, I admit. It has been some time since I have trained anyone. I will be a rusty teacher, at first.” “Teaching comes back to you faster than you expect,” Qui-Gon assured Luke, recalling his own rough beginnings with Obi-Wan after the years he’d spent hiding from Xanatos’s failed apprenticeship. “This time, you’ll have other masters with whom you can share your concerns and thoughts.” “That will take some getting used to,” Luke replied, although the idea relieved and reassured him. Coming to Naboo proved more fortuitous than he even expected. “I’ve operated on my own for most of my life, admittedly.” He looked down into the tea cup, as if seeing a future in the remnants there, but shook off the morose thought. “And as much as I enjoy sharing my thoughts with another master now, it is late, and my sister will expect punctuality. I believe I have taken long enough advantage of your hospitality for a surprise visit.” He smiled once more, his innate good nature showing through. “I hope you won’t mind more of them in the future, though. Given this opportunity, I am not sure I will ever tire of speaking to you and the others.” “You are welcome at any time.” Qui-Gon folded his hands over the grip of his cane, ready to rise to accompany Luke as he took his leave. “This is as much an opportunity for the rest of us as it is for you. I’m grateful for this chance to see some of the future.” “I wish it had been a better one for you to witness,” Luke answered, as he rose, setting aside the tea cup with gentle motions and coming to his feet. His robes fell into place from long practice. “But there is much good left here, yet.” Preparing to go on the streets once more, he brought the hood up over his graying blond hair. “Rest well, Master Jinn. I believe you will be called upon soon to host a new set of students. Let us not have them wear us down.” With a twinkle in his blue eyes at that, he let Qui-Gon escort him to the door. |