Chapter Text
It was not initially noticed when Master Qui-Gon Jinn disappeared.
In hindsight, Master Tholme often thought that said far more about Qui-Gon than it did about anyone else.
The first to notice anything amiss had been the Halls of Healing.
More specifically, one particularly exasperated healer had lodged a formal complaint with Battlemaster Cin Drallig after Master Jinn failed to attend his follow-up appointment for the shattered bones in his foot. The injury had been severe enough to confine him to Temple rest for several weeks, with mandatory physiotherapy on alternative days. Missing an appointment was not unsusal but missing one without sending so much as a message was.
Battle Master Drallig, who oversaw both the Temple Guard and the day-to-day security of the Jedi Temple, had sighed the long-suffering sigh of a man who dealt with far too many absent-minded Jedi Masters. And way too much of Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn
He had sent a brief message to the Guard.
If anyone sees Master Jinn, remind him the healers are looking for him.
Then, like every other insignificant administrative task that crossed his desk, it had vanished beneath a mountain of more pressing concerns. A diplomatic dispute in the Senate about water rights. A shipment of confiscated Sith artefacts requiring new containment wards.
Qui-Gon Jinn's missed appointment had become little more than another forgotten note in Drallig's schedule.
The next person to notice his absence had been Master Tahl.
Though both of them would deny it with remarkable consistency, the Temple had long since accepted that Qui-Gon Jinn and Tahl were inseparable whenever their schedules aligned. They would never call themselves lovers, nor partners, despite the fact that most jedi Masters had relationships of their own.
Everyone else simply stopped pretending otherwise.
Qui-Gon had failed to meet her beside the second-largest fountain for afternoon tea.
Tahl had sent him a pointed message expressing her disappointment and the hope that whatever had distracted him was worth abandoning perfectly good tea.
When no reply came, she had merely huffed to herself. It was not unlike Qui-Gon. Not alarming but simply irritating as he was wont to be.
She simply accepted a different invitation from another friend instead, and by all accounts enjoyed an excellent afternoon discussing archaeological preservation over warm cakes and imported Chandrilan tea.
Life in the Temple moved on.
It was the physiotherapist who finally realised something was genuinely wrong.
Master Heren had once been one of the Order's finest duelists before an old spinal injury had permanently retired him from active service. He had redirected every ounce of that relentless discipline towards rehabilitation.
His patients recovered, or they wished they had. There were very few beings in the Temple brave enough to ignore one of Master Heren's appointments. Qui-Gon Jinn, apparently, had become one of them. Two missed appointments without so much as a cancellation.
Master Heren marched to the residential wing with the determined stride of a man intending to personally drag a stubborn patient back to the Halls of Healing if necessary.
He rapped sharply upon Qui-Gon's door.
No answer.
He knocked again.
Silence.
His expression darkened. He contacted Battlemaster Drallig. He would get his victim out of his rooms if the Battlemaster had to drag him out.
Drallig, upon hearing which patient had gone missing, remembered the earlier complaint from the healers. Three missed appointments, possibly more. He was going to give his Padawan nephew an earful for being so disrespectful to the Healers. Master Drallig smiled at the thought.
He arrived within minutes, carrying his Master override key. No response came to his repeated knocking, so Drallig entered the override code.
The lock disengaged with a soft hiss. The smell reached him before the door had opened fully. The mess of decay and death.
Years as a Temple Guard allowed him only the briefest moment of stillness before training took over. He drew his lightsaber but did not ignite it. The sitting room was undisturbed and the dust in the kitchenette suggested it not been used in days. Only the bedroom door stood slightly ajar.
He pushed it open.
Master Qui-Gon Jinn lay upon his bed exactly where one might expect a man recovering from injury to be resting.
Except for the knife buried to its hilt in his chest.
Drallig backed away immediately , careful that he did not touched anything. He retreated out of the quarters, sealing them behind him.
Then he contacted the Temple Shadows.
Which was how Master Tholme found himself standing in the silent apartment scarcely twenty minutes later, staring at a corpse that, by every reasonable measure, should not have been possible.
The door had remained locked. The security logs showed no entry after Qui-Gon had returned to his quarters five days earlier. The next being who had come to the door had been Master Heren. The windows did not open this high up in the temple and they show no sign of forced entry.
There was no sign of a struggle in the bedroom. Only a dead Jedi Master in a room no one should have been able to enter.
Master Tholme had spent over forty years hunting spies, assassins, smugglers and Sith cultists. But never actually in the Temple he called home
Impossible crimes were, unfortunately, becoming a speciality.