Work Text:
~*~
Cody was hyperaware of his Jedi. The war brought him close to that, but this trip to the past solidified it. He’d need to get a hold of it. He couldn’t afford to get paranoid. But for the moment, it proved to be a benefit. He noticed the moment something shifted in Obi-Wan and instantly called a halt to his spar with Quinlan.
Quinlan followed his gaze to where Obi-Wan stood at the edge of the sparring area in a large, converted hold on Jaster’s flagship. Obi-Wan wavered on his feet and Quinlan swore. Only a quick bit of Force use from Quinlan stopped Obi-Wan from hitting the ground faster than Cody could be at his side.
“What…” Cody started to ask as he carefully situated Obi-Wan in his arms, only to stop at the look on Quinlan’s face.
Quinlan carefully reached for Obi-Wan’s hand, closing his eyes and doing something with the Force. Cody only ever understood a fraction of what they told him they did with the Force.
“Vision,” Quinlan said. “A strong one, if I had to guess. I haven’t seen him get hit with one like this since we were teenagers.”
Cassius Beviin, who’d been across the room sparring with a commando whose name escaped Cody at the moment, approached carefully. The rest of the Mandalorians in the room paused in the sparring or conversations and watched intently.
“Is there anything we can or should do?” Beviin asked tentatively.
Quinlan shook his head. “We need to just let it pass. Once it has, Cody and I will take him to our quarters. He’ll need water and rest. Possibly pain meds if it leaves him with a Force headache. Ones this bad sometimes did that.” Frowning, Quinlan admitted, “He’d get them like this when we were kids, but once we became adults they more often came as dreams. I haven’t seen him get a vision while awake since shortly after he was Knighted. And last time he collapsed from one, he was 16? Maybe 17. So, this is intense.”
Cody frowned heavily. He did not like the implications of that. For a vision to deviate from standard now, it couldn’t bode well for them.
“A sign from the Force that we really have stumbled onto something?” Cody dared ask after he considered it for a few heartbeats.
Wincing, Quinlan shrugged.
“The Force doesn’t exactly work like that. But it also does give us warnings. So maybe?” Quinlan offered unhelpfully.
Cody groaned and most of the Mandalorians in the room looked unimpressed. He heard several mutters of stupid Jetii osik and he really couldn’t disagree.
“So the Force is as unhelpfully cryptic as certain Jedi Masters we know?” Cody grumbled in annoyance.
That earned a few amused chortles and snickers from the Mandos.
Quinlan snorted. “I’m sure Master Yoda would be honored to be compared directly to the Force itself.”
With nothing to do but wait, they lapsed into silence.
Several tense moments passed before Obi-Wan roused.
“Oh, well this is embarrassing,” Obi-Wan murmured when he realized he was cradled in Cody’s lap on the floor.
Cody stroked his forehead.
“Fairly sure you just scared several years off my life,” Cody informed him.
Obi-Wan looked contrite as he replied, “I shall notify the Force of your complaint.”
Smiling wryly, Cody muttered, “You do that.”
Quinlan carefully helped Obi-Wan sit up.
“Can you walk or is Cody carrying you to our quarters?” Quinlan asked, tone making it clear he wasn’t going to tolerate arguments.
Obi-Wan sighed. “I don’t promise to be quick about it, but I can walk. Though water and something for the headache would be appreciated. It’s been a while since I’ve had a Force headache this bad, and I need a clear head to make sense of what I saw.”
A new voice broke in.
“Was it something useful?”
Blinking owlishly, Obi-Wan turned his head to look at Jaster.
“Possibly,” Obi-Wan allowed. “I need rest and meditation to sort it all out. But I think…I think once I have, we’ll have several new leads to follow.”
Anticipation saturated the air around them. One didn’t need Force sensitivity to feel it.
“Then we’d best let you rest,” Jaster said sternly, the words directed as much at his people as at Cody, Obi-Wan, and Quinlan.
Slumping back against Cody, Obi-Wan nodded. “That would be appreciated.”
~*~
Water, painkillers, and a two-hour nap later, Obi-Wan readied himself for meditation in their quarters. He longed for the serenity of the Room of a Thousand Fountains for this, but needs must. Though he did make a mental note to pick up some sort of mat for meditating on. He and Quinlan would both benefit from it, no matter how capable they were of doing without.
“Should we do this together?” Quinlan asked as he settled into position in front of Obi-Wan, knees close but not quite touching Obi-Wan’s own. “Or do you just want me to keep an eye?”
Obi-Wan considered that for a moment. While Quinlan’s psychometry didn’t work in a vision, he was still highly observant and lacked the emotional reaction of having been the one to have the vision in the first place. In Obi-Wan’s memories, Quinlan might catch something that Obi-Wan had missed. Or at the very least, a second set of eyes on it all might help with understanding it.
“Together,” Obi-Wan replied after contemplating all of that. “I want you to see what I saw. We’ll make better sense of it together and determine if it really does have something useful for us.”
Quinlan nodded and readied himself for the joint meditation.
“I’ll keep watch,” Cody vowed.
Obi-Wan smiled softly. “I know, darling.”
Obi-Wan and Quinlan sank into their joint meditation with the ease of two beings who’d done it for years. Their deep familiarity with one another made it far easier for them to achieve a proper joint meditation with each other than anyone else. A small part of Obi-Wan still regretted that joint meditation with Anakin had never been easy. But now wasn’t the time for such thoughts.
At the center of the vision was a dark, shadowed figure. By the voice, it was a male, but the figure was so shadowed in every appearance that Obi-Wan couldn’t get a fix on the species. Vaguely humanoid in shape, but that still left dozens of options.
Our plans are progressing, my apprentice.
The voice wasn’t familiar at all.
Many of the scenes were though. Obi-Wan would know the Senate building on Coruscant anywhere.
Had Dooku not told him, back at the start, that the Sith was at the very heart of the Republic? Obi-Wan had dismissed the words as a lie, an attempt to turn him. Had Dooku been telling the truth? If so, why? Had he hoped to one day use Obi-Wan to help him overthrow his Sith Master? That was the way of the Sith was it not?
“Focus, Obi-Wan” Quinlan nudged. “Vision now. Other speculation later.”
Right, of course.
The vision.
More shadowy scenes. Meetings in the Senate. In other buildings in the heart of Coruscant’s business district.
Whoever this figure was, they were important.
Obi-Wan got the distinct feeling that these meetings happened over a number of years. It made sense. Consolidating power of any kind took time.
Giving up on learning anything directly about the being, Obi-Wan focused harder on the surroundings.
Then he noticed a nameplate.
~*~
“Hego Damask, you’re sure?” Quinlan asked as they reviewed what they’d learned.
Obi-Wan nodded, not understanding the tension in Quinlan’s body.
“Yes, quite. The nameplate on the door was one of the clearest things in the vision,” Obi-Wan pointed out. “At least it was to me. Why?”
Quinlan blew out a sharp breath.
“Hego Damask was instrumental in the rise to power of Sheev Palpatine,” Quinlan said, tone grave.
Obi-Wan stilled and Cody went rigid.
“Quinlan, are you telling me the Chancellor of the Republic is involved with the Sith?” Obi-Wan demanded.
Words barely above a whisper, Cody spoke up. “I think Palpatine is the Sith.”
Obi-Wan nearly toppled over in his haste to turn towards Cody.
“What? What makes you say that?” Obi-Wan demanded.
Quinlan swore. “It makes a sickening amount of sense.”
Eyes darting back and forth between them, Obi-Wan demanded, “How?”
Going to his knees beside Obi-Wan, Cody reached for Obi-Wan’s hand.
“Think about it. Palpatine is overly invested in Anakin, but you said it yourself. Palpatine always encourages the worst of Anakin’s thoughts about the Order and about you. He’s planting seeds there. He has plans to use Anakin for something. It doesn’t make much sense as the Chancellor. But as a Sith?” Cody pointed out.
“He’s right,” Quinlan agreed with a muttered curse. “I know Damask’s name because I dug into Palpatine when he started showing such…interest in Anakin. Wanted to be sure Palpatine wasn’t…the other kind of trouble for a child. But even as a teenager, Aayla noticed that Palpatine encouraged Anakin to think the worst of you, and the Order. She asked me why he’d do that and I never had a good answer. He’s been trying to drive a wedge between you two from the start. It never made sense before. But if he’s a Sith? It makes all the sense in the karking galaxy that he wants to get his hands on the Chosen One. Ensnaring the Chosen One could be what makes his plans succeed.”
Obi-Wan crumpled against the floor. “Oh Force. You’re right. You’re both absolutely right. It does make a horrifying amount of sense. How did I not see?”
The implications were horrifying on so many levels that Obi-Wan could barely comprehend them all at once.
Quinlan took a deep, steadying breath.
“If we take them both out now, none of that matters,” Quinlan pointed out.
Obi-Wan squeezed Cody’s hand for a moment as he struggled to compose himself.
“We can’t go kill two people on nothing more than a vision,” Obi-Wan disagreed. “No matter how reasonable we find our conclusions, we need something tangible. We need to find some proof of this first. Proof that we can take to the Council.”
Cody and Quinlan shared a long look. While they agreed with wanting to be sure before doing something that couldn’t be undone, they weren’t as concerned with having the sort of proof that would convince others.
“Proof that convinces the Master of Shadows,” Quinlan countered as a compromise. “There are ways to do this quietly enough that it can be covered up as an accident. It doesn’t need to be a holonet scandal.”
Obi-Wan swallowed hard. He knew, logically, that Quinlan was right. The Council would be much, much harder to prove it to and they may lose all chance to act. He wanted to be sure. But he couldn’t jeopardize the galaxy by wanting to do it too by the book.
“Very well,” Obi-Wan agreed. “We find proof, we bring it to the Master of Shadows, then we plan for one hell of an offensive.”
They just needed to find a way to explain all this to Jaster Mereel. They’d promised him help against Death Watch. If they were going to take off, they needed to be able to give a good explanation for why.
“We can relay what we saw to Tholme,” Quinlan offered, guessing Obi-Wan’s line of thought. “Let him start digging while we help Mereel a bit longer. We can take out the Sith and then come back to help him finish off Death Watch. Both objectives met, then we figure out if there’s any going back.”
Obi-Wan ran a weary hand over his face. He felt exhausted and drained on every level.
“In the morning,” Cody said firmly. “You both need rest. We all need clearer heads. We start planning first thing in the morning.”
The Jedi agreed readily.
The hunt was well and truly on.
~*~