Chapter Text
"Floods" is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
-Toni Morrison
Forever Trying
Dyslexia: I have it, you can thank Sectumus Prince by reading their wonderful work, but most of my chapters aren't betaed, so you are just going to have to deal with my misspellings, reversed words, and missing words.
KEY Information:
I am stealing stuff from the Apprentice books including Claudia Grey and the kids books, I'm also changing the timeline so neither is strictly canon or will be observed here. A lot is getting moved around for my own entertainment and because the first apprentice books were entertaining but poorly plotted with downright stupid charactization.
Master Tahl is alive. Her death arch nor Bant Eerie's arch have or will happen.
Dooku is still in the Order and Galidraan hasn't happened yet. He only had two Padawans: Rael Aveross and Qui-Gon Jinn.
Xanatos exists but Obi-Wan hasn't met him yet. Feemor does not exist.
Qui-Gon Jinn is in his late thirties. He has just been asked to join the Council and the retiring Chancellor revealed this tidbit to Obi-Wan.
As a Council member Qui-Gon is considered too young to have a Padawan.
Notice the Prologue, I apologize for the block of info but it cuts the Bandomeer Arch and re-imagines the Melida/Daan arch in important ways.
Prologue
Initiate Obi-Wan Kenobi had not been chosen as a Padawan.
Despite his high grades from endless studying, despite practicing his katas until he couldn't walk straight, and despite beating his opponent in the Initiate trials, no Master rose to greet him. His gaze lingered on a large human Master with long brown hair; Master Qui-Gon Jinn.
Of course, Obi-Wan knew that Master Jinn had lost his first apprentice two years before when the boy left the Order to rule his birth-father's planet. It was somewhat scandalous and near unheard of for a senior Padawan who had been about to graduate to being a Knight. But it wasn't dishonourable, even if Master Jinn seemed to be as depressed as if his Padawan had died.
But he hadn't died, and Master Yoda had confided in Obi-Wan that Master Jinn might be looking for another apprentice.
However, despite Master Jinn's appearance in the audience of the Initiate trials, when he turned his back on Obi-Wan at the end of the match, Obi-Wan knew the last of his hope had been dashed.
Obi-Wan didn't understand!
Sure, he knew he had a bit of a temper, that he could be impatient, and maybe he asked too many questions, but he thought he made up for it with hard work. He had the best grades in his class, he spent more time in the archives than anyone below the rank of Padawan, and he was a great duelist.
He could beat Quinlan Vos, his friend who had already been chosen as a Padawan.
"I don't understand," Obi-Wan said, flinching at the weakness he heard in his own voice, but he had to understand. He had to. "I did everything asked of me."
Except master meditation, but that was him and practically every other initiate.
So what was it? Was there something wrong with him? What was he lacking? What didn't he understand?
Was he not worthy within the Force? Did the Masters see some darkness in him he hadn't been able to sense himself? Was he so unaware?
Or was he just too impatient and angry? Was his very desire to be the best he could be, his pushing himself and subsequent disappointment when he didn't live up to his own expectations, the root of his undoing?
Master Yoda sadly smiled up at him. "Meant to be, what is, be will it."
What was meant to be was his deportation to the Agricorps. The planet was an unorganized one on the skirts of the Republic.
After a month of living there, working day and day out, turning the fields under an unforgiving sun that felt too close, the humidity cloyingly thick so it was if he never felt dry or comfortable, as if he could never take a full breath, he learned how pampered he had been at the Temple.
He wasn't great at growing plants with the Force, and therefore was tasked with jobs that required more physical labour. He didn't enjoy the work, per se, but he did like that it was demanding enough to distract him from his self-reproach for failing out of the Knights Program.
After two more months had passed, he grew to love the community of the Agricorps, even if he didn't feel like he was best suited to this line of work. The Corpsmembers were still Jedi, the elders there still had much wisdom about their culture and the Force to pass down, of which Obi-Wan remained a devout student. The Corps also offered something the Knights Program actively discouraged: the greater possibility of having biological families and exchanging public romantic ties.
Knights weren't celibate, but they were discouraged from marriage because of possible politics and the nature of their work being dangerous.
No one would think to use a Jedi Corpsmember's child against the Agricorps to sway the outcome of a territory dispute. That had been a historic issue that had spawned a few wars, which was the exact opposite of what the Order intended to be.
Obi-Wan had never considered dating or starting a family of his own, but with the Corps, such things were normalized. Force-sensitive children followed at their parents' heels, listening to stories of generations of Jedi Corps and Knights before them.
Some of those younglings chose to go to the Temple and bid their families goodbye, but most stayed to learn the trade of their parents.
On the planet Melida, there were three families from the Agricorps. An elderly couple told stories about growing up in the Temple together before joining the Corps after being Knighted. In their field unit serving on this planet were two other couples and five younglings between the couples all several years younger than Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan felt like an outsider. During those first few months, he found it near impossible to let go of dreams, but soon these people started feeling like a new sort of home, especially when the two elders offered to train Obi-Wan in Ataru for an hour before first meal each day.
It was a new beginning, a new life, until the planet they were stationed on descended into civil war.
The fields they had been helping these people tend, the work of seasons, the work of years, undone in a week of bloodshed.
Obi-Wan remained with two elders as the rest of their party was forced to retreat.
The elders, having graduated from the Knights Program once, tried their best to end the war.
They failed.
Obi-Wan was forced to lay his elders to rest. Those two wise Jedi who had shown him that what it meant to be a Jedi was more than Knight blazing into battle, that pursuing life and tending it was as noble a duty as defending justice in the galaxy.
Unfortunately, Melida/Daan had other lessons for Obi-Wan to learn—namely, the horrors of war. It taught him how evil war could be as he fought with child soldiers, younglings younger than him with no training for combat or field survival.
He tried to help them—the Young, they called themselves—as best he could. He ended up becoming one of their leaders, and he felt disgusted with himself any time he led a raid, sick any time one of the children died, and disheartened as they began to starve with no way to help themselves but to contribute to the war by joining one or both sides of the 'grown ups'.
Obi-Wan's hope rose briefly when Master Tahl arrived, but she had nearly been killed within a week on the planet. They had been no closer to peace than they were before her arrival. She was a Jedi Master who would likely never see again, and if she didn't get to a proper healer or doctor soon, she might very well die.
In the end, it was Master Qui-Gon Jinn who saved them, who helped stop a war, and who rekindled Obi-Wan's dream of becoming a Jedi Knight.
A dream that he thought would never be.
Until they arrived at the Temple, one year after his first leaving from the Temple. He was fourteen years old when Master Jinn asked him to be his Padawan.
Chapter 1 - The Water Remembers
Ben Kenobi hadn't vastly enjoyed the secret life of Force ghosts. Not when he had been a living being, alone in a hut on Tatooine, trying to commune with Qui-Gon's ghost. And not now, being a dead man himself and certified Force Ghost watching his Padawan's son struggle to rebuild the Jedi Order.
Ben sighed. It wasn't Luke's fault. The boy would have been a great Jedi, was a great Jedi. Luke Skywalker was everything his father had never lived up to. But with about four months of training from Yoda, a ghost, and a couple old texts, rebuilding the Order wasn't just a tall ask. It was laughably unfair.
Presently, Qui-Gon, who was also dead and also a ghost, echoed Ben's sigh. "I admit, this was not the way I imagined the Force would be balanced."
Ben gave his old Master an exasperated look. But, because he could, Ben joked, "Maybe you should have taken that Council seat, after all. Maybe that's where we went wrong."
It wasn't. The Sith had outmaneuvered them well before then. But the expression of distaste on his Master's ghostly visage was well worth it.
No, Qui-Gon's mistakes could probably be pointed in his being a Master of the Living Force who was ironically obsessed with prophecies. Prophecies that were written by those gifted with foresight, a decidedly Cosmic branch of the Force arts.
Qui-Gon shook his head. "If the Council could have been redeemed, it would surely have been by you and Anakin."
Ben laughed, and the Force warped around them, Qui-Gon reaching out to place a hand on his ghostly shoulder as they were thrown to the stars.
Physics as a ghost were… different.
"I still suck at this," Ben grumbled as Qui-Gon guided them back planet-side.
Except it wasn't back to Luke. No, this was the Temple of Ben's youth—the Council Room, to be precise, filled with familiar faces who were in reality long gone.
It was somewhat odd to see his younger self and younger Master, who still had brown hair, not a trace of grey, with his ghostly Master standing beside him.
"Time is meaningless to the Force," the ghost of Jinn said.
Ben cocked his head. "This is the mission to Pijal, isn't it? It must be—look at your face, trying to be so serious when they just invited you to join their number."
Ghost Qui-Gon crossed his arms and grumbled, "Yoda said it was a bad idea."
Ben snorted. "And now I'm surprised you didn't join just to spite your Grandmaster."
His Master glowered at him. "Do you really believe I would have left you, even now?"
"Even you didn't know, Qui-Gon. Besides, you did leave me."
"I'm sorry, I—"
"You were wrong," Ben snapped. "Yes, I'm aware. You know, I used to always admire you for your ability to admit fault. But I didn't realize until years after your death the big things you never took ownership of."
"I wasn't wrong."
"The hell you weren't," Ben said. They had had this conversation before, of course, but it remained unresolved between them. "Perhaps you could have raised Anakin differently. Perhaps, had you been able to guide me. But I was too young and he was too old for a traditional Knight to lead him into Knighthood. We were too close in age, and neither of us were ready for the responsibilities you left us with."
"If the war hadn't—"
"But it did."
"Something wrong, young Obi-Wan?"
Both Ben and Ghost-Gon turned to look at Yoda. But the old Master didn't see them; in fact, none of the breathing Masters did.
Except for the sole Padawan who was frowning in Ben's general direction.
Ben smiled and waved, but his younger self didn't react.
His spirit Master chuckled. "He can't see us, but he can sense us. You always did underestimate yourself."
Ben glowered at him. "Thanks for helping me with that, Master."
His Master smiled at him fondly, folding his translucent arms into his somewhat less transparent robe sleeves. "You are feeling bitter today."
Ben snorted.
"Padawan," the younger Qui-Gon chided. "Control your breathing."
"We should leave," the specter of Jinn said, suddenly sounding worried himself.
Mace sat forward. "Are you worried about the mission, Obi-Wan?"
The Vaapad Master always came off as strict and harsh, but Ben knew Mace to be one of the Council members most aware of others' emotions. True, Mace was blunt to a fault, but it was in the vein of being earnest and facing one's issues head-on, not to belittle or dismiss them.
Sometimes Ben wished Mace had taught Anakin.
Either Anakin would have never fallen and found inner peace with extreme emotions and his best qualities, or they would have murdered each other. But seeing as the latter had happened anyway, Ben was of the opinion that almost anyone would have done better than he had done.
"Or panicked about your Master's ascension to the Council?" Ki-Adi Mundi asked, with none of Mace's good intentions.
"Karking bastard," Ghost Qui-Gon said with real feeling toward the less than sympathetic Council member.
Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi jumped, his head swiveling in their direction, where Ben and Qui-Gon stood in the sunlight of the windows that went through them.
Ben shook his head. "Figures it would take a Padawan to feel the Force, not the Council, nor your illustrious self."
His ghostly Master ignored Ben's jabs, closely watching the Obi-Wan who still had a pulse.
The Padawan swallowed hard as the Council focused on him. "I—can't you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Mace asked.
"Us," Ben said, directly into Mace's ear.
The Jedi Master didn't so much as twitch.
Padawan Kenobi, however, looked around the room. "Can't you sense that?"
"Sense what?" this from the living Qui-Gon.
"The Force," the Padawan said. "It's… sad. Disappointed."
Ben's heart arched for the young man, at what was to come, on his path that would only grow more difficult, darker,
"The Dark Side, avoid it, must you," Master Yoda intoned.
Ben glared down at the old Master, who was still somehow naive. "Rude. My disappointment doesn't make me 'Dark Side'."
Padawan Kenobi blinked and said aloud, "I think you just offended him."
"What?" Mace and the living Qui-Gon asked.
The Padawan flushed. "They aren't the Dark Side."
"Who isn't?" Qui-Gon the younger asked.
Qui-Gon the older huffed a laugh.
"Qui-Gon!" Obi-Wan exclaimed, stepping back and grabbing the hem of his Master's robe as he stared at where the ghosts were staring.
"Control your Padawan, Jinn," Tiin reprimanded.
Ben snapped, "You blind deaf fools! Can you feel nothing? This is why the Sith beat us: because you don't listen, no matter how plainly the Force speaks to you."
Padawan Obi-Wan gasped, "What?"
"The boy is unfit for a new mission in this condition," Ki-Adi Mundi said.
The living Qui-Gon put a hand on his Padawan's shoulder and whispered, "What is wrong, Obi-Wan?"
Ben approached the pair until he was eye level with his teenage self. "I'm sorry, my dear. I'm sorry for what you will suffer, that no matter how hard you try it will never be enough, but know that the Force will always be with you, and there will always be hope."
Tears spilled down the Padawan's cheeks despite Ben knowing that even as sensitive as the boy was, he wasn't hearing all of the ghost's words.
But the sentiment, the emotion, was clearly received.
"Are you crying?" Even Piell asked in consternation.
"Kark you," the ghosts said in unison.
Obi-Wan flinched, leaning into his Master for support. Qui-Gon in turn dropped to a knee to look his Padawan over. He put a large hand to the boy's cheek, completely ignoring the Council.
"Obi-Wan, what's wrong?"
The Padawan shook his head. "I don't know—it's just so…"
Mace rose to his feet as well. "Just breathe, Padawan."
"This is ridiculous," Tiin said.
"Agreed," Ki-Adi Mundi said. "You are not a youngling, Padawan, to be so overwhelmed by the Force."
Ghost Qui-Gon turned on Ki-Adi. "How dare you?"
Even Piell went on without noticing the rising ire in the Force brought by the two ghosts of a distant future. "We shall reconvene about this mission." Even finished by catching Qui-Gon's eye with an expression that said the invitation to join the Council was being put in peril by this display.
Ben Kenobi had had just about enough of the oh-so-wise Council.
-)o(-
Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi had had better days. He had only found out this morning from the Chancellor Kaj, not from his Master, that Qui-Gon had been offered a seat on the Council.
An offer that would result in Obi-Wan being abandoned because new Council members did not have Padawans.
Qui-Gon had been the only Master who had ever—sort of—wanted him as a student.
So what hope did he have at sixteen, only two years into his apprenticeship of finding another Master? It wasn't like their apprenticeship had been flawless—far from it. Obi-Wan thought he had been getting better at reading his cryptic Master. He had even grown fond of his Maverick ways.
Despite being near opposites, and being terrible at communication with one another, they had formed patterns together. They had learned to live with each other and, at least he had thought so, care and somewhat respect each other.
But obviously, if Qui-Gon couldn't be bothered to speak to him directly about leaving, because he was 'too emotional' about the issue, then Obi-Wan had earned nothing.
Not respect, not a place within the Temple; nothing.
Would he be sent back to the Corps? It wouldn't be the worst fate. But to get his hopes up, to put in two years and to be flunked out because of his Master's decisions, not his own, was… cruel.
Obi-Wan had vowed to himself that if he was shoved to the side that he would at least get himself placed in the Explorcorps rather than the Agricorps.
But even that vow seemed implacable as he made a fool of himself in front of the Council.
It started like a tap on his shoulder.
Obi-Wan had opened his shields to search for what he sensed in the Force. Despite the almost oppressive power that radiated from the Council members, and the room itself, Obi-Wan sensed…
Grief.
Despair.
A sense of failure so large and overwhelming it cast the sunlit room into foreboding shadows.
This Temple, which had stood for many thousand of years before even Master Yoda had been born, felt as if it would crumble beneath his feet.
That's when he started hearing the voices.
Words of an older man's voice that nevertheless felt as if it came from his own throat, and then an echoing of his Master's spirit. It was as if his Master stood in two separate places in the room.
He startled as he heard someone in the room swear. He leaned into his Master for support as the foriegn emotions washed over him. Something in the Force, something monumental, was about change.
Like the cracks forming in a dam before it burst.
He exclaimed himself when he saw a mirror, yet translucent, version of his Master standing behind Master Windu.
Obi-Wan was barely aware of what he was saying, of the Masters chastising him when he tried to translate what was inexplicably happening in the Force.
And then—
The Force spoke to him.
Him personally.
He couldn't have stopped the tears if he tried, he felt the Force in his heart. He didn't care that the Council was reprimanding him, nor that this would reflect poorly on Qui-Gon.
He was in awe, and his heart ached for his people.
For the galaxy.
This wasn't darkness, this was compassion for the darkness to come.
The only things keeping him on his feet at that moment were Qui-Gon kneeling in front of him and Master Windu's hand on his shoulder.
"Embrace the Darkness, you must not," Yoda's warning pierced Obi-Wan's daze.
It was the wrong thing to say.
"No," Obi-Wan murmured, unable to voice a real warning or explanation.
Because it wasn't the Dark speaking to Obi-Wan now, it was an ancestor offering wisdom, offering strength and hope for the storm that was to come.
Death, yet the Force.
All things died, all things changed, but the Force remained and life went on.
But the Force was angry with the Council, the two ancestors of their people outraged that their offerings, that their efforts to speak so directly to them all would be taken for Darkness. So outraged, in fact, that something seemed to give.
Obi-Wan's back arched and he gasped in a breath as something or someone entered his spirit.
It was said that in each Jedi, there lived their people, all who had come before and all who would come after.
For a moment, time stood still.
Then the dam broke.
All Obi-Wan could do was scream.
All he could feel was pain and despair.
-)0(-
Ben reeled back from his younger counterpart as he watched in horror as the Padawan's skin split and burned, a thousand minor injuries lost to the gore of a hundred wounds more severe.
"What?" Ben asked. "I didn't mean to do—"
"Obi-Wan!" Mace and Qui-Gon yelled, as Mace caught the Padawan's head, bracing him at the neck while Qui-Gon caught the rest of him.
Qui-Gon's robes were crimson in minutes.
Ben looked back to his mentor, who smiled back at him, but he seemed to be fading around the edges.
"What did I do?" Ben asked, unheard and unseen by the living Qui-Gon, who was white with fear as looked down at his Padawan bleeding out in his arms.
"You changed the course of time," the spirit of Jinn said, with both gravity and peace.
A course changed, a fate decided.
Ben watched the living Master run out the door with his Padawan. Leaving their ghosts behind.
Ben looked down at his own hands as they faded away into the greater energy about them.
"We are one with the Force," Qui-Gon said.
Ben closed his eyes as time rewritten and his past became a mere possibility. "And the Force with us."
Master Qui-Gon Jinn bowed his head. "With them."
Together, they faded into and joined with the Force.
-)0(-
"Master Che!" Mace yelled as he followed behind Qui-Gon, who was trying his best to not jostle Obi-Wan as he ran.
"What happened!?" Master Che asked, getting an oxygen mask on Obi-Wan as Qui-Gon placed him on the gurney.
"He was attacked by the Force," Mace said as they helped the healer get through the layers of Jedi robes.
"Where is the blood—" Che cut herself off as they saw the wounds blooming across the boy's chest.
It was more than a few cuts; it was lashes, burns, blaster shots, sun exposure, and broken bones.
Qui-Gon felt ill as he held tightly to their Master-Apprentice bond. Obi-Wan had passed out within seconds of the attack, and it was all Qui-Gon could do to hold onto the spirit that seemed to waver at the other end of their tether.
More healers came and pushed Qui-Gon away. He backed up to a corner, dropping to the floor and into a meditation, trying to give his Padawan as much support as he could.
The healers wasted no time inducing a coma. Surviving all those wounds would be a miracle, and no one wanted Obi-Wan awake for any of this. Qui-Gon felt Mace kneel beside him, putting a hand on his shoulder as he joined in the meditation to help give Obi-Wan's spirit an anchor to life.
In most cases, this simply wasn't a possible option, as such an assisted healing meditation would need to be started almost immediately after a healing coma and be committed to for extended hours.
In the field, such a scenario of treating unspeakable trauma and the safety to meditate would be rare.
But Obi-Wan had been attacked in the Temple.
In the heart of the High Council, and not one of them, not Obi-Wan's own Master, not the Council members, nor even their Grandmaster Yoda, had foreseen or been able to prevent the attack.
"Get his heart restarted!" someone yelled.
"Clear!"
"His legs!"
"His feet!"
"How in the great galaxy did this happen!?"
"His body temperature is plummeting!"
"But he has a fever!"
Qui-Gon tuned it out as he felt Obi-Wan's spirit latch on to the support he and Mace were extending to them through the Master-Apprentice bond.
If Obi-Wan died like this, he very well might take them with him, and Qui-Gon didn't care. This was their fault. It was their responsibility to protect Obi-Wan, to keep him safe in his own home, to guide him in the ways of the Force.
Not allow the Force to abuse him.
Because not only had Obi-Wan been attacked, but he had been the only one to sense something being off.
Time seemed to last decades in a meditative state, Qui-Gon both clinging to and feeding the light that was his Padawan.
Time seemed to jump across mere minutes.
Qui-Gon woke from the meditation to the pungent smell of some herb being held near his face. A way to break a meditation that was safe for all involved.
Mace grimaced as let go of Qui-Gon's shoulder and fell back against the wall, pulling his legs out from underneath him. He tilted his head back against the stone, exhaustion written over every line of his body.
Qui-Gon felt worse than Mace looked. In all likelihood, if Mace, a more experienced and powerful Master than him, hadn't been helping, Qui-Gon would have given all his life-Force to Obi-Wan.
Mace didn't ask how Obi-Wan was or if he was alive, because they knew he was alive, just they knew that he wasn't at all well.
Still, Qui-Gon managed to weakly ask, "What happened?"
Master Che's expression was indiscernible as she held a cup of water to his lips, putting a blue hand to the back of his head. He didn't understand why she had done the latter until he realized that not only couldn't he lift his arms but merely tipping his head back was a struggle.
Mace, however, had enough energy to help guide Qui-Gon back against the wall after he was done with the water. Master Che straightened Qui-Gon's legs out in front of him. He didn't have the energy to even care about the sensation of blood flow returning to his limbs.
"Happened my—?" he asked again, closing his eyes.
"We have him hooked up to several IVs and in a bacta tank. If it wasn't for yours and Master Windu's efforts, we would have lost him. His heart stopped thrice and he nearly bled out on the table… On you."
Qui-Gon didn't need to look to know that his robes were evidence to support what she was saying. They had probably left a trail of blood from the Council room to the healer's wing.
He waited for more.
When no more came, he tried one last time, "Happen?"
"What didn't happen?" she snarled. "He's been through war, Qui-Gon Jinn. Wars. There are saber burns on him that should have killed him. There are lashes that could have only come from a slaver's whip. And there are things I simply can't explain other than to tell you that he hurts. The damage goes bone-deep, and yet, it isn't as bad as it might have been. All the wounds are fresh. There is no secondary injury from use or movement or time. I do not understand how these wounds were inflicted on him without killing him, nor do I understand how all of this could have been done to him simultaneously."
Qui-Gon had no answers for her either, he understood less than she did.
Can't you hear that? Can't you sense it? Obi-Wan had asked.
"The Sith," Mace supplied. He let out a shaking breath, "There is no other power that could have done this. I can think of nothing else so malevolent."
"Wasn't… Dark Side," Qui-Gon exhaled around his tongue, which felt thick and unwieldy in his mouth. Each word was an effort to form. "Offended… disappointed, said."
Mace clarified, "I know what Obi-Wan said, but that was before he screamed, before whatever it was almost killed him."
Qui-Gon squeezed his eyes more tightly shut and didn't fight the tears as he tried to remember.
Qui-Gon!
But when Obi-Wan had exclaimed, it wasn't a cry for attention or help, just an exclamation. As if Qui-Gon had appeared near the windows behind Mace despite already standing at his Padawan's side.
But that made no sense. None of it did.
"He was attacked in the Council chambers," Mace growled. "And our only advice was to ignore it."
Qui-Gon opened his eyes to meet his friend's gaze. They were very different people, but in that moment, they were in perfect agreement.
What had happened to Obi-Wan was their failing, not a reflection on the Padawan.
Someone had attacked the Order, and through their arrogance and short-sightedness, they had failed to stop or understand its possibility.
But Qui-Gon vowed he would never allow it to happen again.
AN: Toss a coin to your witcher? A thought, a question, or feedback, pretty please?