#sassmaster obi but y'all knew that one anyway

[sanerontheinside]

Was working on fic prompts last night and one got very long and very out of hand and formed another AU because I do that. If I continue working in that AU, I’ll link to this, but for now it works as a standalone, so 

(borrowed a little from @deadcatwithaflamethrower‘s ReEntry, as usual) (also I think this slips into an AU of @doctorwithafryingpan‘s proposed Tahl Lives AU)

Beautiful is the Temple on Alderaan, with its high vaulted ceilings and its carved pillars and walls, with the statues that line its halls. Splashes of brilliant colour dapple its floors where sunlight bursts through the stained glass panels above and falls to the ground in soundless cascades. 

It would be so easy to make this place austere, ascetic as the Jedi are thought to be - aloof and cold, cold as the mountain winters.

But Alderaan is not cold.

Though the Temple sits nestled in the mountains, perched far away, near-inaccessible unless you know precisely how to make your way to it, the Temple is not cold, it is not austere, it is not at all aloof.

It is, however, somewhat abandoned. Many of the old Temples are, for there are far fewer Jedi these days than even a mere century ago.

The first time Qui-Gon Jinn comes to the Alderaanian Temple, he comes with Master Dooku. Master Dooku is the definition of this perfect Jedi, the only definition Qui-Gon knows. He is cool, he is clinical, he is aloof.

Qui-Gon chafes under the weight of his - frankly chilling - ever-evaluating gaze, his unrelenting sternness. His Master’s praise is rare at best, and he is not a demonstrative man. The only contact the boy can expect is the heavy press of a hand on his shoulder to correct an error in his form (and, stars, he can’t stand Form II). Once, he got himself sold into slavery by complete accident, and his Master chided him for it, made him feel a fool and unwanted -

No. Made him feel how acutely he had inconvenienced his Master.

(Qui-Gon does not know this is wrong. All he knows is that he is not enough, and it’s his fault entirely. He’s sometimes tried to explain, but his explanations are inconsequential, so he pulls them into himself and forces them down. It will be years before he realises that his frustrations escape him in other ways, and the skies are blanketed grey, and the clouds grow heavy and his lungs go tight before they spill.)

(And then, for a time, he feels less tense.)

The first time they come to the Alderaanian Temple, Qui-Gon meets an Archivist who is warm and kind and reminds him of Tahl. She smiles and helps him look for the texts he needs for his classwork, sits him down at her table and throws up her feet to the chair beside her, settling in to read, herself. When confusion knots his brow and he’s all but broadcasting his dismay at failing to understand a simple problem, she catches the tense line of his shoulders in the corner of her eye and softly asks him to read it out to her. Qui-Gon does.

He watches, fascinated, as her agile mind bends and twists and turns, fingers skittering over the table between them. She explains herself, backtracks, prompts him, breaks down the question into parts, tells him things he’s never heard before, pulls up old texts as evidence, and through it all she even finds ways to make him laugh. She never once makes him feel lesser for not knowing so much of what she’s said, never chides him for not looking something up before asking.

Predictably, good moods do not last. He’ll forget what it was about, in a week, because all their arguments are one and the same, but for now Qui-Gon feels the sting of his Master’s words keenly, and he takes himself outside to sit on the Temple doorstep. He tries to be still for a moment, shaking not with the cold - then gathers a breath of air in his lungs and slowly counts as he holds and lets it go. It’s cold, but warmer than the day before, and there is no sharp, biting wind. He looks up just as the first of a flurry of snowflakes twirls through the air and some of them settle, lightly prickling, on his skin.

Behind him the Archivist’s already-familiar presence is warm as it draws near. He doesn’t want to be seen, but at the same time, he wants that comfort. He wants someone to see him, really see him. Just someone.

The warmth of that presence seeps into him when she sits down, almost close enough to lean towards him and brush shoulders. “It’s early for snow,” she remarks absently, but says nothing else.

Qui-Gon thinks it must be lonely here, where she is one of a handful of Jedi whom he’s seen, and there are perhaps a handful more in the more distant parts of the Temple. Yet it is warm and peaceful, and he thinks that perhaps she isn’t unhappy even in this small circle.

By dint of a heavy snowstorm, Master Dooku decides to delay their departure a few days. Qui-Gon spends those days mostly sequestered in the Archives.

The second time he comes to the Alderaanian Temple, the Archivist is no longer there. The Temple feels colder, because its walls have stood even nearer to empty in the last decade. It feels almost the way he felt, for much of these last ten years.

And yet, as he brushes his fingers over the old cloth- and leather-bound books, painstakingly cared for and preserved, he catches a hint of that warmth still. In his mind, a new flame burns - a young child he’d been forced (yes, forced, Master Yoda, you gave me no choice in the matter) to take as his Apprentice. They haven’t had an easy time of it, though their difficulties stem from different things.

Obi-Wan learned harsh lessons on Melida/Daan, lessons that Qui-Gon had wanted to shield his Padawan from learning. No matter how you try, no matter if you do everything right, you can still lose in the end - that was what Tahl had said. He couldn’t explain to this brilliant boy that the sacrifices to end their war had to come from the Melida/Daan alone, and not from Jedi. Instead he’d watched his Padawan suffer, thinking he’d failed to protect him - again - that he’d failed as a Master.

That he wasn’t enough. Again.

And yet this child had burrowed into his arms afterwards for almost the entire duration of their flight back to Coruscant, clung to him and wept into his tunics, and would not let go. When they made it back to the Temple, Qui-Gon had taken him straight to the Healers and refused to leave the boy’s side even to make their report until he was released a tenday later.

Those early days, Obi-Wan was restless without the tactile reassurance that Qui-Gon was still there, still with him. When they made their report to the Council, he’d inched closer and closer to his Master’s side without any conscious awareness of it, and Qui-Gon had finally given up all pretenses of serenity or aloofness, pulling his Padawan tight against him. In the privacy of their quarters, Qui-Gon held him for their shared meditations while he guided Obi-Wan’s mind, helped him reach out with the Force to see what his eyes no longer could.

They’d been removed from the active mission roster. Qui-Gon cornered Mace outside the salle once while Tahl watched Obi-Wan as he worked through his warmups, and demanded to know the reason in a low growl. Mace had deliberately brushed him off, but answered, not without sympathy, that Qui-Gon’s missions were always high-pressure diplomatic disputes, and many had a tendency to go to pieces.

“Mace -”

“It’s not an accusation, Qui-Gon. If anything, it’s something of a compliment. We have a tendency to run our best ragged, and we’ve been sending you into situations that, sometimes, should have been left alone entirely.” Like Melida/Daan - the words hung unsaid in the air between them, colouring it with regret.

“Never thought I’d hear you say that,” Qui-Gon grumbled, somewhat mollified.

Mace shrugged. “You didn’t hear it from me. We’re looking for something that has a bit less chance of going to pieces, but at the moment all we have is the Alderaanian Temple -”

“What?” The Force seemed to chime in his ears. “What about the Alderaanian Temple?”

Thus they had found themselves here, in the mountains. Qui-Gon still remembers the convoluted route the guides had taken his Master on, but when his Padawan looks left instead of right and asks, ‘why not that way?’ he listens and lets him lead on. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they find themselves at the Temple steps long before dark, when their expected arrival had been estimated at nightfall.

More and more, Qui-Gon lets himself hang back while his Padawan walks ahead, quite in reverse of tradition where the Padawan follows the Master. Obi-Wan is daring, yes, at times even reckless, but he’s never lead his Master astray.

In the quieter moments, and particularly in the evenings, Obi-Wan prepares tea for them both, almost ritually presents it to his Master, then curls up pressed against Qui-Gon’s side. It’s on one of these nights that Qui-Gon notices how the ache in his chest eases when his Padawan settles beside him. He’s reviewing an inventory list for the Temple - and, gods, if this is the work of the Head of the Coruscant Temple, he quite understands why Mace looks like he has perpetual migraines (because he actually does).

But when Obi-Wan presses close, the threat of a migraine recedes; and moments later, when the rhythm of soft shallow breaths proves that the boy has fallen asleep, Qui-Gon realises he will never, never feel at ease without this. That he has, perhaps, never felt so much wanted and needed in all his life. The feeling almost overwhelms him, constricts his chest and clutches at his throat and dares to steal his breath. He breathes through the sting at the back of his eyes, shuts off the datapad and shoves it away to wrap the small, beloved warm body beside him in a tight embrace.