Chapter Text
A week after Jedi Master Qui-Gon’s funeral, his padawan, Jedi knight Obi-wan Kenobi disappears.
There’s commotion inside the temple, masters and knights alike lead a search for the young knight through all the levels of the city, try to reach for him through the force, send scouts through the galaxy. One of their kind, a member of their family, has gone missing. The Jedi temple is heartbroken.
Things seem to get worse when the Jedi knights in charge of the hangar report that the ship with destiny to Tattoine had never taken off. The child, they inform, hadn’t left the temple, and yet he can’t be found anywhere inside it. The uproar that causes puts all the eyes on the Jedi responsible for the departing. When summoned to the Jedi Council, the creche master insists that she had entrusted the little one to the designated escort to take them to the hangar.
“I remember it, clear as day,” she had said, clutching a hand on her robes, the same one she had run through the child’s blonde hair as she kissed his forehead in goodbye. “No force-sensitive can ever forget being in the vicinity of Anakin Skywalker.”
Jedi Master Yoda doesn’t listen to any of his fellow members of the council. Plans of rescue and search had been piling up since the absences had been notified. And though there had been some well-laid suggestions, all of them were born out of panic and worry and so to follow through would be far from wise. Doesn’t make it any less tempting, though.
“Strayed from its path fate has,” Master Yoda announces, and though his voice remains calm and composed, there’s a heavy cadence in it that clogs the air. “Unclear the future is. Our trust, in the Force we must put.”
“What about Obi-wan?” Master Fisto asks, still unused to referring to his underclassman with a title to his name after having so recently been promoted to Master. “What about Anakin?”
Master Yoda hums, eyes lost in the force as he examines the hanging thread that had once connected Knight Kenobi to the rest of the temple through the force, and the thin but golden thread that had started to solidify with every day youngling Skywalker had spent in the creches.
“Alive they are. But unreachable, for now.”
“We have to keep searching,” Master Plo-Koon insists. “It’s the least we can do to try to amend our mistakes, for not giving them the support they asked of us.”
It is not meant to be an accusation but the council bristles either way and the force, which had already been a turmoil of emotions, soon colors with the murky tones of regret, helplessness and impotence.
They left because they would have been parted from each other otherwise.
Our decision forced them to leave.
Our fault. Our short-sightedness.
Plo-koon’s comment is discarded and the meeting comes to a close. But the Jedi don’t give up on any clue they can find about their whereabouts, not until Geonosis happens and suddenly they are being asked to fight a war they have not prepared to, a war they are not even sure about supporting. Hands already full with sudden battle plans and political teatries, and millions of lives that were engineered everyday for them to have an army to lead.
When they hear about him again, many years later, it’s from the holo news about the clone wars. They recognise the soft walk of a Jedi, the shiny copper hair, the facial features now hidden behind a beard.
And they mourn, once they take notice of the brilliant golden eyes of a sith.