Chapter Text
Dooku is an unusual master.
Which—obviously. He came to the Temple late; he was Grandmaster Yoda’s padawan; he’s descended from royalty. Qui-Gon figured he’d be unusual.
And he is unusual, in those ways Qui-Gon expected. His robes are dark and a sharp contrast against his pale skin, and they’re always immaculate, always kept just so; his cloak is made of silky, soft material far nicer than anything that comes out of the Temple. His hair is always neatly slicked back, and his mannerisms, his ways of speaking, are measured and full of forethought. He’s sometimes intense, and sometimes distant, and he expects nothing less than excellence.
But he’s also unusual in ways Qui-Gon hadn’t expected. He’s far more affectionate that Qui-Gon had though he’d be; his compliments are as frequent as his critiques, and always come with a warm hand on the top of Qui-Gon’s head, or, once he’d grown taller, on his shoulder. His sense of humor is wry and made mostly of well-timed quips—for a long time Qui-Gon was too young to really understand it, but age and growth came with comprehension, and he revels in every time he earns his master’s warm, low laugh. Their training bond is a wide open thing, so often flooded with Dooku’s pride in him that Qui-Gon feels spoiled with it. And two things Qui-Gon had really only come to realize as the years of his apprenticeship passed: Dooku utterly despises unjust leadership, and he sometimes uses the Dark side.
———
The first time he feels Dooku use the Dark side, they’re on Crel and Qui-Gon is fourteen, one year into his training with Dooku. He’s rash, and he’s gangly, and he’s too loud, and he thinks being a padawan is absolutely brilliant, and so is Dooku.
Crel is a mining colony of a planet, its subsurface a vast network of tunnels and shafts first built long ago that continue to expand, spreading out like cracks in ice, as the galaxy’s demand for thorilide grows, and Crel’s leader Finis Obrim situates himself perfectly into the space.
Or, at least, that’s how Dooku describes it, as Qui-Gon takes them out of hyperspace and into orbit around Crel, dusty gray against the backdrop of stars. He cuts his gaze across to Dooku with an eyebrow raised.
“What’d he do to you, master?” he asks, curious. He knows Dooku well enough to recognize the distaste under his crisp accent. Dooku huffs.
“It’s not what he’s done to me,” Dooku tells him. “A leader can only grow as rich and supercilious as Finis Obrim through exploitation, selfishness, and disregard for basic rights.”
Well. That’s that, Qui-Gon supposes. Maybe he should’ve read the briefing himself, instead of just having Dooku summarize for him in these moments before landing. He glances at Dooku again as he takes them into atmo. “Do you think he’ll be a problem?”
Dooku huffs. “He is already a problem,” he says, indignant, then shakes his head. “Directly, no,” he says. “We’re not scheduled to meet him, and I doubt he’d make the effort to make an appearance.”
Qui-Gon’s almost sad to hear it. Watching his master deal with irritating and pretentious politicians in that aggressively polite way he has is always endlessly entertaining.
They’re flying low over the landscape now, the gray, rocky surface flying fast under the windscreen. The city they’re meant to land is just now appears in the distance, hazy and almost hard to separate from the craggy landscape it’s situated in.
“What did he say about the deaths?”
Dooku takes a moment. “I really should be making you read these yourself,” he murmurs, somewhere between amused and scolding, as he pulls up the briefing on his pad. Qui-Gon grins. “Ah, here,” Dooku says, before he quotes, “‘It was a tragic and unpredictable incident, and our hearts are with the six victims’ families. We also want to assure our investors that this will not cause a delay in production. Crel’s facilities are state-of-the-art…’ He goes on and on.” Qui-Gon watches from the corner of his eye as Dooku turns to face him, and the disgust in his scoff is palpable. “Six people are dead, and he’s worried about production and image .”
“Sounds like a politician to me,” Qui-Gon tells him, with a sly, wry kind of humor, turning to give Dooku a shrug. His master makes a small noise of agreement, and sits back with his arms crossed as they quickly approach the city.
“Indeed.”
——
Their guide for the tunnel tour—a request from the Senate, to insure structural integrity and investigate any potential wrongdoing—is waiting for them at the landing platform.
“Welcome to Crel,” he greets them, once they disembark. He’s a stout man with unusually wide, dark eyes, dressed in clothes that look too clean to be outside in this windy, dusty place. “I am Rice Dellian, the tunnel manager of this area, and your guide.”
“I know,” Dooku says, then, “I am Jedi Master Dooku, and this is my padawan, Qui-Gon Jinn.” Both Dooku and Qui-Gon himself nearly tower over the man, and Qui-Gon wonders if all of Crel’s native population is so similarly short.
“I regret to inform you that Senator Obrim won’t be able to join us,” Dellian tells them. “His Excellency is always so busy running everything.” He waves his hand to encompass the city beyond them, full of similarly stout buildings.
Dooku raises one sharp eyebrow. “How beneficial that we aren’t here to see him,” he says, flat and dry. Qui-Gon nearly chokes on the startled snort he manages to keep to himself, although Dooku’s answering amusement curls in the Force between them and Qui-Gon has to duck his head to hide his grin. Dooku makes a show of looking around when he says, “Where are these tunnels, then, tunnel manager?”
Dellian shifts just a little, as though he hadn’t expected the Jedi to be so direct. “Er—yes, of course, right this way,” he says, turning and leading them off the landing platform. It’s only a few steps before they come to a bunker-looking structure with a great metal door. “Just through here, Master Jedi,” he says, as he opens the door. It swings out to reveal a cavernous dark and a steep staircase Qui-Gon can barely see, and comes with a burst of stale air. Rice Dellian pauses in the threshold, glancing back at them. “And—watch your head,” he adds, before heading into the dark, his footsteps making a dull clanging on the metal stairs.
Qui-Gon looks at Dooku. “No lights?” he murmurs, waving his hand at the tunnel entrance. Dooku unclips his lightsaber with a quirk of his lips.
“‘His Excellency?’” he quotes with something like a scoff. “I mean, really.”
Qui-Gon laughs softly, trailing close behind Dooku as they head down the steep stairs, one hand on his master’s back and the other trailing along the ceiling. Dooku is hunched over in front of him, but Qui-Gon is still short enough yet that all he really has to do is duck his head down.
“I hope it opens up at the bottom,” Qui-Gon murmurs, mostly to poke at Dooku’s height, and to hear the huff of his laughter.
“Oh, you do, do you?” he says, and the blue glow of his lightsaber shakes, just a little, when he shakes his head in a kind of fond exasperation.
Dellian is waiting for them somewhere at the bottom, although his voice comes to them before they reach him. “I’m terribly sorry to leave you in the dark like that. I forgot to mention we’re having some maintenance done on the stair lights,” he says, and his voice gets weaker when he takes in the glow of Dooku’s lightsaber as they reach the bottom of the stairs. There is light down here, a soft, yellowy kind of glow that feels almost too dim to see in, and the ceiling does it taller—tall enough for Qui-Gon to stand straight with room to spare, and nearly tall enough for Dooku, although he still stands at a slight angle to keep his head clear of it.
Dooku holsters his lightsaber with a relish that earns him Qui-Gon’s near-silent laughter again. “Not to worry, Rice Dellian,” Dooku says, “a Jedi is always prepared.”
Dellian’s mouth pulls into a flat line. “Of course.” He pauses while he looks over a clipboard attached to the wall, and then he’s turning back to the Jedi with a huff. “Right, follow me then,” he says, leading them deeper into the tunnel that stretches out before them. The walls are roughly hewn from the rock, and Qui-Gon reaches his hand towards it, running his fingers along the bumps and ridges of the stone as they walk. He stretches his feelings out into the Living Force, always an unusual sensation underground; he follows it to the miners, somewhere ahead of them, and into the thread of ancient stillness of the rock itself. Although this rock isn’t as still as others he’s encountered before. It’s almost like an ocean on a quite, dark night—vast and deep and connected, and, at least for now, calm.
“—unnecessary for the Senate to send you all the way out here,” Dellian is saying, when Qui-Gon pulls himself back into the present. Dooku is watching him, where they’re walking side by side behind Dellian, and he gives his master a nod, a curl of ease in the Force. Everything’s fine.
Dooku’s gaze lingers on him a moment longer before he turns, looking at the back of Dellian’s head. “Oh?”
“The incident with those six workers last month was an unfortunate freak accident, nothing more,” Dellian tells them, waving his hand and sounding perhaps a little too casual. Qui-Gon and Dooku share a glance.
“I’m sure the Senate will be pleased to see our reports confirming that,” Dooku tells him, measured and polite in that way he gets sometimes, when Qui-Gon’s realized what he really wants to say is something too rude for his master’s sense of propriety.
“Quite,” Dellian says, and Qui-Gon can’t see his face, but he can imagine the flat, pulled-lip expression that must accompany the word. Anything else either Dellian or Dooku might have said, though, is forgotten as they reach the end of the tunnel.
The tunnel’s mouth ends abruptly and opens into a sort of room. There’s crates stacked to one side of the space, and the ceiling is dome-shaped and taller than the tunnel’s. Most of the rest of the space is taken up by a mostly-empty rack of supplies—a few gloves, helmets, lights, and some kind of equipment Qui-Gon doesn’t recognize left on the hooks and shelves—and a long table, with bench seating. The room itself acts as a sort of central wheel, and half a dozen or so tunnels shoot off like spokes; one tunnel is covered with the shimmering electric blue of a restriction barrier.
“This is the central hub for the mining operations in this quadrant,” Dellian tells them, stopping in the center of the room and moving his arm to encompass the space. “You can see over there is space for the workers to break and eat, and store their equipment.” He turns, then, to the barricaded tunnel and waves a hand towards it. “Tunnel four is the incident site. As you read in our reports, there was an unusual, unexpected, sudden cave in about a quarter of a klick down.”
Dooku hums softly—an acknowledgment of Dellian’s words, but more of a sign that he’s deep in thought. Qui-Gon watches him for a moment, studying the lines on his forehead and opening their bond to more of Dooku’s feelings, although nothing particularly strong comes through. Dellian is looking at them expectantly, so Qui-Gon makes a show of moving his attention through the room. He’s almost starting to regret not reading the briefing himself; maybe then he’d recognize more of what he’s looking at.
“This looks reasonably appointed,” he says, which is mostly bullshit, but Dooku’s left him hanging here and his silver tongue is far better than Qui-Gon’s. He drifts towards the equipment rack, picking up a pair of gloves. “Are these routinely serviced or replaced?”
“Some of the equipment is, of course,” Dellian says, “although the miners tend to prefer bringing their own gloves, and helmets, too, on occasion.”
Interesting. Qui-Gon smoothes his thumb over the fabric in his hands, his finger catching on small tears, pressing in on places small holes worn through. He places them back on the hook as he says, “When will the current shift be over?”
Dellian checks his watch. “The midday meal break starts in around forty minutes from now.”
Qui-Gon gives him a nod, and he glances at Dooku just in time to see his master turn his attention back to their conversation. He’s stopped a few paces in front of the barricaded tunnel, and Qui-Gon feels certain there’s a kind of mischief in his eyes when he turns from Qui-Gon to Dellian.
“How fortunate,” Dooku says in that voice he gets sometimes that Qui-Gon’s taken to mentally calling his ‘Count’ tone. “That sounds like just enough time to investigate this cave in.”
Dellian’s eyes go wide. “You can’t go in there,” he tells them immediately, tone harried. “The tunnel is unstable, it’s a massive safety hazard—”
Qui-Gon hadn’t realized he’d made his way around towards Dooku until his master’s hand falls on his shoulder, squeezing a little. “Why, it can’t be so unstable,” Dooku says. “You’ve continued work in the other tunnels, after all, and if it was such a hazard, I’m sure that would’ve been halted to prevent further incidents.”
There’s something so thrilling, watching Dooku weave his words and back his opponents into corners they can’t escape from, Qui-Gon thinks. Dellian flicks his gaze between the two of them, and his expression shifts a few times before it lands on something indignant but resigned. He sighs, an irritated sort of sound, and he turns towards the barrier’s control box.
“Don’t expect me to accompany you,” he says while he keys in the release code. “And don’t expect me to take the fall if something happens to you.” The barrier’s blue shimmer draws to the sides, and a puff of dust and stale air floats out into the central room. Dellian turns to them with an accusatory look. “You’re making this decision against my express wishes, and I will make that known should you not return.”
“Of course,” Dooku says, slick and sticky-sweet. “Your reservations are duly-noticed, tunnel manager.” He steps out from behind Qui-Gon and makes towards the tunnel entrance, and Qui-Gon trails close behind. Dooku pauses at the entrance, and it's not a threat, but there’s something veiled in his words, something that makes Dellian swallow when he says, “We’ll take full responsibility for any risk or injury we may encounter.”
——
The tunnel grows dimmer as they walk deeper, further away from the central hub, though Dooku doesn’t reach for his saber, so Qui-Gon leaves his at his hip, too. He follows behind Dooku, staying a half-step or so behind him, and he lets his fingers trail over the carved stone on either side of them. This is the narrowest section they’ve encountered thus far, and while it’s tall enough that they can both stand straight, it’s tight enough that it’s easy to Qui-Gon to reach both sides.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, padawan,” Dooku says, pulling Qui-Gon’s attention away from the way the rock feels under his palms. The entrance of the tunnel is nothing but a dim light by now, far enough away that their words won’t carry.
“I’m thinking that was a lot of protest for something accidental,” Qui-Gon tells him. “And a very bureaucratic way of saying the workers have to provide some of their own equipment.”
Dooku hums. “Quite so,” he says, almost to himself. “We’ll be sure to speak with miners, on their meal break,” he adds, and then comes to a stop. Qui-Gon bumps into his back, and feels Dooku reach behind to steady him.
“What’s going on?” Qui-Gon asks, brows furrowed, pushing up on his toes and pushing his hands against Dooku’s shoulders to try and see past him.
“We’re nearly there,” Dooku tells him, and then turns his body sideways. “Look.”
Without Dooku blocking the way, Qui-Gon leans forward—one hand resting against the rock wall, the other curled around Dooku’s shoulder—and peers down into the darkness ahead of them…and sees nothing. At first. He keeps looking, lets his eyes adjust, and he pulls on the Force, too, until the faint outline of a pile of rubble comes into view, still some paces before them.
“Why’ve we stopped?” he asks, and his voice has become something closer to a whisper with the darkness, with the sight of this unwitting grave, with the way he’s half-distracted by sinking himself deeper and deeper into the Force.
“Safety,” Dooku says, first, quick, and his arm comes up to curl around Qui-Gon’s back, a familiar warmth and weight. And— “Respect,” he adds, after a pause, and it’s a moment later when Qui-Gon finds the way the Force bends around the bodies buried under the rocks, the echo of their imprints lingering like ghosts in the Living Force.
He’s seen death before; he’s felt death before. But the way death feels in the Force, a haunting, a mourning, never gets lighter, never gets easier. It’s something he’s almost grateful for, in an unusual sort of way—every death deserves respect, and remembrance, and peace, and the way it hits him every time forces him to slow down and pay its due.
It’s a somber moment that comes and passes. The miners in the other tunnels appear like little flames as Qui-Gon stretches himself deeper into the Living Force again, easy to feel although they’re far away and flickering through the stone around them.
The stone itself is deeper, older—it’s much harder to sense than sentient beings, and Qui-Gon sits with it for a long moment, sinking his Force perception into the crevices and seams of the rocks until it uncurls in the Living Force, cool and calm like a deep, frozen lake.
Dooku’s signature comes to him first, a comforting, familiar, bright flare at the edges of his awareness like a signal before he hears Dooku speak, asking, “What do you feel?”
“The rock,” Qui-Gon tells him, his own voice sounding to him like he’s speaking underwater. He can feel his hand on the rock, a point of contrast with the way he’s unfolded its faint signature in the Living Force. The lake of it stretches on and on, and—there’s something like a shimmer to it. Something distant, sitting at the edges. “There’s something…” he says, trailing off as he leans closer, deeper. He thinks it’s the echoes of the collapse, maybe; like a web of hairline cracks in ice, a memory of too much pressure, the tension of a held breath.
Only—he presses closer still, peering into the stone’s faint signature until, like the rubble in the tunnel, an outline begins to form—
His awareness shrinks so suddenly his vision blacks out, and he slams back into his body with a gasping breath. He pitches, but doesn’t fall; Dooku’s hands keep him steady and standing while his chest heaves, lungs greedy for oxygen.
“-gon? Padawan!” Dooku’s voice comes to him as his breathing slows. He realizes he’s clutching at Dooku’s arms, although he doesn’t bother to let go.
“‘m alright,” he says, and leans his forehead into Dooku’s chest. He can feel his master’s Force signature now, curled up around his own like a blanket, and he wants to stay here longer, soak in the comfort, but— “Master,” he says, and, “Master,” he says again, urgency sliding into his tone. “It’s going to happen again.”
Dooku says nothing—Qui-Gon listens to him breathe, and enough time goes by that he wonders if Dooku didn’t hear him. He goes to speak again when Dooku beats him to it, skipping all the questions Qui-Gon had expected from him and simply asking, “When?”
Qui-Gon shakes his head. “I—I don’t know,” he says, and he thinks about stretching back into the stone, but he can’t. The Force slips around him, not yet ready again to bend to him. “Soon, though, soon, it’s like—” He does have enough command of his own signature to open it to Dooku’s, and he pushes across what he found: the signature of the planet itself, all of the stone stretched underneath the surface, and the cracks like webs coming from the mining operations, starting to shake.
“Your gifts in the Living Force are endlessly remarkable, my padawan,” Dooku tells him, and it comes out like he hadn’t meant to say it; like it was simply a thought he had, an awe at Qui-Gon’s Force perception. “The workers,” he says, intentionally now. “Come quickly.”
He pushes Qui-Gon ahead of him and follows close behind as they make their way back out from the tunnel, the bright spot of the central room growing brighter and brighter until they step from the entrance. The midday meal is yet to start—the room is empty.
Qui-Gon stops near the center, looking around. “Where’s Dellian?”
“A coward,” Dooku says, though it comes out almost like a growl. He stops, too, and there’s a pull on their bond as Dooku stretches himself out in the Force. “—knows it’s unsafe,” he’s murmuring to himself, stopping only when he opens his eyes again. “This way,” he says, and Qui-Gon is nearly running to keep up after him when he takes off down one of the other tunnels.
The glow of the work lights and the sounds of durasteel on stone meet them from some distance as they rush down the narrow tunnel, growing stronger as they get closer, until they round the final bend, the miners in sight. They’re still a few paces away when Dooku shouts, “Collapse!”
A dozen gazes turn to them with varying kinds of wide-eyed surprise. “Who are you?” someone calls, and, “What?” someone else says.
“Collapse!” Dooku shouts again, although not quite as loud this time. They slow down as they approach the miners—Qui-Gon can see the dust on their faces, the cracks in some of their helmets, as they look between themselves. “You must leave now.”
“What do you mean, collapse?” the nearest miner asks. “Who are you?”
“Jedi,” Qui-Gon tells them, stepping up to Dooku’s side. The tunnel is almost too tight for the two of them to stand next to each other, but Qui-Gon just presses his shoulder against Dooku’s arm, making room. “I’ve felt it—the thorilide is unstable and any minute now—”
A low rumble through the rocks cuts him off, and he stops, looking to the ceiling as the rock seems to shudder, and a crack appears with a great, echoing snap . Dust and small pebbles fall down on them in the ensuing, eerie silence.
Dooku and Qui-Gon share a glance. Qui-Gon reaches into the Living Force, and it’s almost like working a sore muscle, to push into the signature of the rock. He doesn’t get far, though, before Dooku stops him with a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Save your strength,” he says, “we know it’s coming.”
The crack in the ceiling grows with another, longer sound, and they turn back to the miners. The sound jolts the nearest miner into action, and her expression goes from shocked to resolved. She stands quickly, turning to the other miners to yell, “Code 19, code 19! Everybody get the hell out!”
Qui-Gon is prepared for a mad scramble, but there’s an organization to the miners’ rush. Hands snatch up nearby equipment; ladders are held steady as workers climb down. The crack in the ceiling grows in fits and spurts, although the sound and the almost steady rain of dust and debris doesn’t bother the miners, who are working quickly, but—
Not quickly enough. The rock around them gives one great, heavy grown, the Force growing alarming heavy around him, and Qui-Gon watches in almost a slow motion as a piece of the ceiling comes loose, falling down and crumbling the sides of the tunnel as it falls.
The crash and the crush and the cloud of dust Qui-Gon’s expecting never comes, though. He blinks, not having realized he’d closed his eyes, to see Dooku gone from his side and instead standing amongst the miners, hands held above his head, the crumbling rock held in a shaking stasis.
“What are you waiting for?” Dooku calls to the miners, who have been stunned to stillness, looking at him in awe. “Padawan, get them out of here!”
Qui-Gon jumps into action at nearly the same time as the lead miner. “Go, go!” she shouts, pushing miners ahead of her and down the tunnel past Qui-Gon. He reaches into the Force to lift those running slower, giving them a push towards the entrance, opening himself up more than he would usually need to with the way he’d drained himself earlier.
The rock around them shudders like a planetquake, and Dooku’s hold on the ceiling slips, slabs of stone plummeting down to him and the remaining miners—and then there is a great surge in the Force, a deep cold like the crash of an ocean wave, and the rock stops shaking, the ceiling stops falling.
Qui-Gon is so open to the Force that the sudden rush of cold feels like a sudden submerging into an ice bath, and it chills him so thoroughly that he’s shivering hard, teeth clacking, as he all but shoves the last of the miners out past the cracking, crumbling rock overhead.
Dooku meets his gaze, then, and holds it for one unblinking moment. “Go, Qui-Gon,” Dooku tells him. “Go now,” and his voice is strained, and that frightens Qui-Gon perhaps more than anything else about this.
“I’m not leaving you here,” Qui-Gon tells him. “I can hold it while you get out from underneath—”
“No,” Dooku says, cutting him off. “Go, Qui-Gon!”
“I won’t just leave you!” he shouts at Dooku, shaking his head even as he’s still shivering. “I won’t!”
“Padawan,” Dooku shouts at him, voice thick on the title, the endearment, “you will. Go now!”
His signature pushes against Qui-Gon, insistent and so cold and—
Qui-Gon closes his eyes when he turns his back on his master, and he runs.
He’s nearly to the central room when there’s a wild, terrible sound behind him, and the floor shakes underfoot. He catches himself against the wall, stumbling forward as he regains his footing. Don’t look back , Qui-Gon thinks to himself, don’t look back, don’t—
Something solid and heavy slams into his back just before the threshold of the tunnel entrance, and he’s pushed forward into the central room with the strength of it, falling to the floor in a sprawling heap moments before a dust cloud swarms into the room, pushed out of the tunnel with the force of the collapse.
He blinks and coughs, his chest aching with the movement, and he tries to push up onto his hands, only there’s a weight on his back, keeping him—
“—sy, easy, easy,” the weight is telling him, and then it’s gone, and Qui-Gon pushes his face up out of the dusty ground to see—
“Master,” he says, like an exhale, heavy with relief. Dooku is laying on the ground beside him, blinking up at the ceiling. His eyes look like a strange gold in the dust-obscured light of the room, and his face is gray with the layer of dust on it—as is his hair, and his clothes. Qui-Gon drops himself back down, though this time his forehead lands on Dooku’s shoulder, his lingering fear urging him closer.
Dooku’s hand comes to rest on Qui-Gon’s back, patting twice before just resting against him. Sitting like this, Qui-Gon can feel the way Dooku’s heart is still racing, his breathing still irregularly fast, and he sinks himself into the Force, looking for the reassuring curl of Dooku’s signature—now returned to normal, bright and warm, the rush of cold gone.
“Master,” Qui-Gon murmurs, turning his head to unmuffle his voice, “what was that?”
Dooku sighs. From here, Qui-Gon can see his eyelashes, and he watches them fall as Dooku closes his eyes. He doesn’t ask what Qui-Gon means; doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know what Qui-Gon’s asking about. “The right thing,” Dooku says, after a long moment, and he sounds more exhausted than Qui-Gon’s ever heard, although there’s something grim and almost defiant in his voice, an echo of his usual imperious tone.
(The right thing, Dooku told him. It’ll be several years before Qui-Gon understands that rush of cold as the Dark, and, even then, amongst all the other times, he’ll wonder if Dooku was right, about this time. If the Dark is really another tool, a desperate measure, in the right kind of circumstances.)