Reading Time: 91 Minutes

Title: Cub
Series: OB-1
Series Order: 2
Author: Sunryder
Fandom: Star Wars
Genre: Crime Drama, Kid!fic, Science Fiction
Relationship(s): Gen
Content Rating: R
Warnings: Violence-Graphic, Violence-Against Children/Child Abuse. Discussion-War, Melida/Daan
Author Note: The Clone Wars moral of the story: It is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Word Count: 65,090
Summary: Temple under attack! Artifacts vanished, lightsabers stolen, and a virus turning their technology on the Jedi inside these hallowed walls. But the Council has no idea how, or who might be responsible. Meanwhile, Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi has been busy helping his Master resolve the Grand Council to secure the future of his fellow Initiates. But now they have a new problem, and Obi-Wan wonders if he’ll ever get to be a proper Padawan and not just his Master’s aide…
Artist: Spennig
Artist Appreciation: It’s a joy to work with an artist for the second time. Spennig, you’re the best! I love every single piece.

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Chapter Twelve

Obi-Wan hoped someone used the Force on Master Tyvokka the way he used it on Obi last night. Or maybe he hadn’t needed to because Obi-Wan was so tired that he started walking into walls halfway back to their apartments. Master Tyvokka was probably right not to talk about things with Obi last night since he doubted he’d remember the conversation this morning. But Obi-Wan wouldn’t have minded starting the day with breakfast and conversation about Bruck instead of breakfast and talking about Obi-Wan’s classes. But Tyvokka insisted. And, well… Obi-Wan was worried, and worried made talking easier.

Still fairly early in the morning Obi-Wan rambled the entire way up to Brair’s hangar, where Trion was waiting to give them a report on the malware. Obi-Wan greeted Trion and hopped up on the counter, which the droids didn’t like, but today it felt right. Maybe because MO was already on the counter complaining about something.

“Good morning, Trion. I hope we’re not interrupting.”

The traditional photoreceptor clicked on and off like a blink.

“Grownups seem like some alone time in the mornings.” Obi-Wan shrugged. “But Master Tyvokka said you were going to update us on the malware. And I told Master Tyvokka about Knight Daroon and how he thought you couldn’t do the research because you’re a droid. And how MO defended your honor.” MO straightened up at the praise. “He said it was an art, not a science, but Trion can do art.”

<<Art that is made of mathematics.>> Scrolled across the floating screen.

“My music teacher said that all music has its roots in mathematics. Do you want to learn music with me?”

Trion’s MA<E turned to Tyvokka, who looked happy to drink tea from Brair’s stash and watch their conversation.

<<The malware originated in main tech room.>>

“I thought Knight Daroon said it couldn’t have.”

“He said only Jedi had been in the room over the last few weeks.”

“That… so that means one of us did it?”

<<Yes. This is good news.>>

Obi-Wan twisted to Tyvokka, who explained. “Knight Daroon said he couldn’t conceive of a different place where the malware might’ve been uploaded. So, this means that he didn’t need to conceive it.”

“So, we have a security flaw, but not an inconceivable one.”

“Just so.”

“Do you know who uploaded the malware?” He asked Trion.

Trion blinked again. <<I have a specific place, but not a specific time.>>

“Ruzry Is going through the list of potential suspects. But the computer log is suspect because it would make sense for the malware’s first task to be corrupting the saboteur’s presence.”

“But the droid who handles the office—”

<<Is a fundamental part of the security system who would be vulnerable to the same deletion.>>

“Wait,” Obi-Wan whipped around to look at the droid. “Are you at risk like the security droid was because you’re so tapped in? Did I get you sick?”

One of Trion’s articulated arms spun around the ceiling and found an angle to pat Obi-Wan on the head. <<My systems are well partitioned from the Temple’s systems. I am unharmed.>>

“I’m glad. Have you been enjoying the change in work?”

Trion didn’t blink this time, but the hand did stop mid-pat. <<I have.>>

“I’m glad. You said that just doing dock stuff gets a little routine.”

<<It has.>>

Tyvokka hummed, long and slow. “Master?”

“We’ve been getting a little routine too, haven’t we?”

“No!”

“No?”

“No.” Really, no. “The… opposite?”

Tyvokka hummed.

“I mean, we had a routine. But then the High Council changed and we had a new one, but then we’ve gone… back?”

“A good description for it. I would’ve preferred to work the case with you.”

Obi-Wan leaned in, because there was no telling when Ruzry would pop up. “I would’ve rather done it with you too. Not that Ruzry wasn’t great, but…”

Tyvokka scrubbed a paw through Obi-Wan’s hair, which felt so different than Trion’s patting. “I’m sorry that we were separated.” Obi-Wan didn’t have words for the squiggle he was feeling. Proud and happy, but… uncomfortable too.

“Did you have a good day yesterday? Obi-Wan asked.

Tyvokka blinked like Trion. “What?”

“Did you have a good day doing High Council things?”

Tyvokka huffed out a slow breath. “No. I didn’t. They were important, but not good.”

Obi-Wan leaned against Tyvokka’s bulk.

“Did you have a good day?”

“I did. Not because we weren’t together. Just, it was nice to…”

“To do something.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about—”

But Master Tyvokka was interrupted by Master Sinube sticking his head in the door. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, but the Guardians have lost him.”

“Lost—” Obi-Wan whipped around. “You know who uploaded the malware!”

“We do.”

“Then why did you come down to ask Trion about it?”

“I said Trion was going to update us on his ‘project.’”

“That’s the malware.”

“Among other things.”

“You didn’t tell me!” Obi-Wan said, more to Trion than Tyvokka.

“Obi-Wan.” He thought he should start sitting on tall things more often, because it was nice to have Master Tyvokka able to look him in the eyes without having to kneel down. Only, Master Tyvokka didn’t say anything. Just looked Obi-Wan in the eye and waited.

He knew. In an instant. And didn’t know why he hadn’t understood before.

“Oh… that’s what’s wrong with Bruck. Why would he—”

Tyvokka looked so soft and sad.

“Oh, he’s scared. But he doesn’t have to be. No one is getting sent away.”

“For now.”

“But why would helping someone put malware in the Temple make him a Jedi?”

“That’s what we need to find out.”

Obi blushed at making Master Sinube wait, but he just gave Obi-Wan a soft smile, like he understood.

The people waiting outside Trion’s office were a little less calm. “We’ve lost him in the water system.” Master Drallig, with more emphasis than Obi had ever heard him use.

“Rewind to the last visual.” Master Drallig held up his padd to Tyvokka, but it got bumped out the way by one of Trion’s floating screens.

Trion cued up the footage while Tyvokka explained. “We’ve had Bruck under observation for several days on the assumption that he was making physical contact with our saboteur.”

The screen beeped, and Obi-Wan watched a sped up version of Bruck make his way through the Temple on standard cameras and a series of mouse droids. (Obi gave another screen a pat to send to Trion in thanks for helping.) He went into the Room of a Thousand Fountains, slipped behind a waterfall, and never came back out.

“One of the mouse droids made it past the waterfall to check, but the only thing back there is a ladder down to the water purification system.”

They rewound it again to check for clues, and while the adults got orders to get guards on the main Temple exits and on the external pipes, Obi-Wan watched Bruck.

He went from tree to tree on his tip-toes, glancing around at the sound of every drop of water.

“He looks scared.” Obi-Wan said, without thinking.

“He does. And that’s why you want to review things with organic eyes.” Ruzry said.

“Are we certain the boy didn’t unleash the malware for himself?” Master Drallig asked.

“He didn’t.” Obi objected.

Master Drallig knew Obi, and he knew Bruck, and he probably knew more children better than any Jedi other than the Crechemaster herself. But still.

“He’s a bully, but not this.”

Maste Drallig gave Obi a sad look. “Everyone’s character can reveal dark depths that no one would imagine. We are all full of potential no one would like to admit.”

“But Bruck was great yesterday. He came up with all the good ideas to help the children on Melida/Daan. You don’t do that and this.”

Master Drallig gave Obi-Wan a sad smile that he didn’t like at all.

“There is Darkness in Bruck,” Tyvokka agreed, “but I believe it is still external, smeared on him, but not yet self-generating.” Tyvokka turned to the bundle of Shadows and Guardians who’d been waiting for them to finish. “Get to the exits and guard any entry point to the water system and start a search. Do it quietly and carefully, because there is an Initiate stuck in there with whoever is doing this. He needs our protection.”

@@@@@

A dozen alcoves and pathways through this junction, and the little fool Bruck Chun settled in the single beam of light on the lowest platform, twisting in circles and try to spot his Master lurking in the dark.

“I am impressed.”

The boy whipped around, looking the entirely wrong direction.

“Truly. Twelve hours late is impressively terrible.”

“They wouldn’t let any of us leave the Creche.”

“And before? The whole night before when you ignored my calls?” Xanatos cast his voice to the other side of the room and watched the boy spin.

It would’ve been perfect timing. The whole Temple was devoted to getting the team off planet. Xanatos would’ve gotten lost in the hustle and bustle, but little Bruck Chun had to be helpful.

“They were paying attention to me. I couldn’t just leave. They would’ve asked questions.”

“You didn’t want to leave because they were already paying you attention. So pathetic.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore.” Bruck shouted into the void.

Xanatos flew down from the rafters and smashed the boy against the wall, holding him there by a crushing grip on his jaw. “You what?” He hissed.

“I don’t want to be here anymore.” Xanatos tried to smile, tried to soothe, but his lips pulled back in a snarl.

“You feel wrong. And I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

Xanatos wanted to take the stiletto dagger up his sleeve and slowly press it between the wastrel’s ribs. To watch him scream and writhe, trying to get away from the pain.

Bruck screamed at the murderous rage even such a dolt could feel in the Force. The pathetic creature lost control and used the Force to shove Xanatos back just enough to scramble away. Xanatos leapt and wrapped around the boy, cradling him close to his chest. “I am your Master.” He breathed in the whelp’s ear. “You wanted to prove to me that you were worthy of being my apprentice.”

Xanatos didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want to offer such an honor to this miserable waste of the Force. He wanted to drain the boy and drop him into the water supply, letting all the Jedi drink the blood of their fallen child without knowing their failure.

But he needed Bruck Chun.

Here Xanatos was, one of the greatest minds in the galaxy, trapped in this sewer like a rat. And if Bruck went upstairs and talked, Xanatos would have to run without his prize. And from the moment Xanatos killed the boy, he was on a clock. A clock he could not outrun.

Xanatos let him go, let him turn around and meet Xan face to face. “You have proven yourself worthy, little Padawan.” The shaking child didn’t even notice the way Xanatos spat out the word. “We just need to leave the Temple so we can begin our apprenticeship fresh, without all their rules, and their neglect.”

But the boy shook his head. He dragged his bloody knuckles over his jaw, where Xanatos had held him against the wall. “Grownups shouldn’t hurt children. And I don’t want to be your apprentice anymore.”

The boy flinched at Xanatos’ rage, so he swallowed it down and donned the same face he’d used to make his first million. “Dear boy, they’re not going to let you back. You’ve gone too far. And if anyone finds out what you’ve done for me, you’ll be ruined.”

Oh, Jedi were so easy. Jedi children even easier. He could feel Bruck shutting down, unwilling to go forward, but unable to go back. Xanatos put on an air of kindness. “I can help you with that. But now that you’re not going to be my Padawan, I will need something in return.”

“What?” Bruck’s voice cracked, too tired to cry.

“I promise, I’ll never tell anyone you wanted to leave the Order, or about all the stealing, and the Healing Halls,” the boy flinched at that one. Somehow, he thought one little fire crystal was worse than unleashing a plague on the Temple’s security system. “I won’t tell them about all the clever things you’ve done for me, if you do just one more, little thing.”

“What thing?”

Xanatos paused, because what he wanted, desperately wanted, was to have the boy lure soft-hearted, soft-headed Yoda to some bridge where Xanatos could blow the little troll to oblivion. But there would be no escaping the Temple with his prize then.

He was tempted, oh so tempted, to kill Yoda and use the troll’s death as a distraction, but Bruck had proven unreliable and distractions required precise timing. Reward was for today, and vengeance was for tomorrow, and for a pawn with more spine.

“All I need you to do is deliver this little box to Qui-Gon’s rooms.” Xanatos reached into the shadows and pulled out a package the boy couldn’t see with his eyes or the Force. No matter how many times Xanatos played with the shadows before him, Bruck always jumped.

Even now, the boy took the box, but hesitated. “It’s a gift for my old master. To tell him I’m sorry I missed him.”

(Xanatos was oh so tempted to give Bruck one of the boxes with an active bomb, so he could be missing Qui-Gon forever. But unlike Yoda, Xanatos wanted to see the light leave Qui-Gon’s eyes and have Qui-Gon go to the next world knowing Xanatos had killed him. So, he gave the almost-apprentice a bomb without its final connections and timer. All the pieces without the boom. That way, his old master could feel appropriately terrified and like the fool he was for missing Xanatos all this while.)

“That’s all you have to do: deliver this little box to Qui-Gon’s rooms, and then you can go back to the good little sheep and hope for a Master, certain that I will never breathe a word.”

Bruck hesitated. “It’s just a present?”

“It will cause him no physical harm, I promise.”

A thousand kinds of mental and emotional harm, which loophole the boy was competent enough to hear, but he didn’t care.

He wanted freedom without the consequences, and there was no such thing.

The boy ran away; box held between his hands. And yes, Xanatos wasted a few precious moments wishing he’d given the boy a real bomb just so he could blow up along the way as punishment for making everything more difficult. But still, who knew what the future would bring?

Xanatos reached into the shadows and donned his Jedi clothes and his pack, full of enough little bombs to collapse some turbolifts and cause some chaos.

Then, he tucked in his earpiece and listened to the sound of the boy’s wet, panting breaths as he ran way, listened through the bug he’d put on the boy’s lightsaber the day they met.

Making his own way to an exit was easy, but all his plans to have the malware start glitching the treasury doors were ruined by two Jedi setting up a sloppy guard.

That little fucker.

Bruck had been followed.

(Oh, for a bomb to detonate in that little waste’s hands.)

Xanatos liked subtlety. He liked being four steps ahead and the slow, dawning realization in his prey’s eyes that there was nothing they could do. He’d won.

He could still have that here. Not with the same subtlety as he preferred, but the prize at stake was too valuable to risk.

Xanatos flicked open his comm and turned the malware from a sneak into a plague. By the time he put his comm away, the Room’s lights were already flickering, and it would spread from there. They would know he was coming, no subtlety at all, but it was hard to hunt for someone when your sensors didn’t work. While they panicked, he’d find a way around. (The guards had been incompetent thus far. They wouldn’t learn the shadows now.) Soon enough, they’d realize that the only way to remove his plague was a hard reset of the entire system. And when the power when down, he’d have his reward. And while they dithered, he’d leave them some ‘gifts’ along the way.

Chapter Thirteen

Obi-Wan took the stairs two at a time. Down was easier than up, not just because of gravity, but because delivering a message also came with a bunch of questions Obi-Wan didn’t have any answers to. He doubted the other Padawans running padds around the Temple got grilled about when they were going to get the Temple’s systems back up and running.

And it wasn’t like Obi-Wan was just going to go around telling people that their saboteur had probably gotten spooked and the little camera glitches had turned into glitching everything from turbolifts to airlocks. They all knew the glitches had gotten worse, but not why.

So, stay on the stairs, relocate to the Temple’s central body, bring out those personal comms and spread the word to other personal comms, and—Obi-Wan heard a cry down a side hallway—try not to get injured.

While out running messages, Obi-Wan had come across one sprained ankle, two sprained wings (on one person), and a bloody nose. But based off the bump in her shin, this one was an actual broken bone.

“Obi!” Bruck waived him over. “Good, come help me. I can’t carry her myself.”

“That’s rude.” The Senior Padawan hissed through clenched teeth.

“You’re a Lasat. You have high bone density. It’s not rude, it’s science.”

Obi-Wan… well, he didn’t know what was going on. All the other injuries had just needed someone to lean on while they made their way to the Healing Halls. This was Bruck telling Obi-Wan to grip his wrists so they could basket carry her all the way to medical. This was also Bruck who’d vanished off the cameras this morning, but who Tyvokka said didn’t know anything. Obi-Wan didn’t know what to say, or do.

“Obi, come on!” So, Obi-Wan grabbed Bruck’s wrists and together they picked up the padawan. Then Obi spent the whole walk to the Halls trying and failing to figure out what to say.

Apparently they did something right because Master Che was triaging at the Halls’ entrance. The Twi’lek healer stopped them long enough to run the back of her hand over the top of their patient’s foot, then directed them to put her on one of the hoverbeds.

“You did the splint.”

Obi was about to say no, but Master Che wasn’t looking at him.

Bruck froze, like he didn’t know whether to puff up or run away. The same look he got when Master Drallig was paying him too much attention. “Yes, Master.”

“That was good work.” Bruck looked to Obi-Wan to check he’d heard her right. “We’ve got medical teams doing runs through the Temple looking for injuries. Go join one.”

And then, Master Che was gone, off to another wounded Jedi limping in. Bruck gnawed on his bottom lip, and Obi-Wan had no idea what Bruck was looking at him for, but Bruck shrugged off his lightsaber and outer tunics, then grabbed a pack and went running to join another team on their way out the door. Four hours ago, Obi-Wan was eating breakfast with Tyvokka and complaining that his master just wanted to ask about his classes.

Obi-Wan would like to apologize to the Force for not being grateful.

Thank the Force they’d been with Trion with the malware started attacking. He’d told Obi-Wan before that it wasn’t his responsibility to handle such things, so if Tyvokka hadn’t been in the room telling the probability droid to get involved, he wouldn’t have, and things would’ve been much worse. As it was, things weren’t great.

Any Temple system that could function independently from the main servers had been partitioned and purged to keep the malware out and let them function without problems. That made the Healing Halls and several of the Shadow subsystems their only safe places. Trion said he had some corner of his massive processor looking for any other places that could partitioned and purged to make more safe zones, but thus far they were all digital spaces, not physical ones. (It turned out a lot of people in the Temple had private servers.) A few High Councilors had relocated with Tyvokka to the Shadow basement, but most of them were out and about helping people get to the safe zones and handing out comms not connected to the Temple systems.

Obi-Wan knew he was getting close to their command center when he ran into the line of mouse droids Trion had spread through the Temple, creating a clear, almost hardline signal from the command center, up to IT, and on to the refectory where people were gathering.

Obi-Wan slipped into the room in time to hear Master Poof up on the Temple’s satellite verify, “I checked again, and as best I can tell, the malware hasn’t made it up here. I know we’ll have to do a hard reset just to make sure, but I don’t want to take the risk of shutting things down when communications down there are so spotty.”

“Agreed. We’ll update you when we have an action plan.”

The master nodded and signed off, her little holo blanking out on Yaddle’s private comm. Obi-Wan glanced at the screen in the corner of the room running numbers. When he’d left on the last message delivery, they had 57% of the Temple patched into a private comm web, and now it was up to 62% and increasing as he watched. Obi-Wan was a little surprised that there wasn’t a computer someplace with everyone’s private comm numbers in it, but he’d caught one of the Guardians making a note, so that was probably on the list of security changes they’d make when this was all over.

Thankfully, Tyvokka was where Obi-Wan left him, patched into the private comm network and helping direct their resources, which is where Masters Mundi and Koth also were, while the rest of the Council was either trapped someplace else in the Temple, or helping people get to safety.

“How in all the worlds did they manage to do this?” Master Mokninn groaned, also right where Obi-Wan had left them, in a chair in the corner with a frozen MRE pressed to their head.

Tyvokka didn’t look up from his work, just nudged one of the floating screens around to face the High Councilor and left Knight Daroon to their mercy. “I don’t understand the question.”

“How could this happen?”

“Again, you come to this office with an electronic storage device—”

“I understand how the file was uploaded!”

“Mokninn.” Tyvokka rumbled and twisted the screen back, while the old master took a slow breath before apologizing.

Oh. Twisting the screen put Knight Daroon where Obi-Wan could see him. The overhead lights were off in the IT center, just the pale blue glow of electronics at night. The Knight had removed his goggles and the clearest thing Obi-Wan could see were his milky, white eyes that almost glowed in the dark. In the day, the Knight’s skin had been so thin and pale that Obi-Wan could see the thin blue lines of the veins under his skin. But now, in the glowing light, his skin was translucent. He could see the pattern of interlaced veins, and almost see the pulsing with each heartbeat.

“That’s a problem for later.” Tyvokka interrupted Master Mokninn and Obi’s train of thought. “We have Jedi in the water system looking for the perpetrator, and several Shadows and Cin’s security personnel are out following the Force for someone who doesn’t belong. We’ve got exits shut down and we found the perpetrator’s escape craft outside. Finding them is only a matter of time. We need to focus on protecting our people while the people who know how to look are looking.”

“Is there a reason we’re not just leaving the building?”

“Logistically, it will take some time for the problems to stack up.” Master Yaddle answered. Her hand was on Master Tyvokka’s wrist, and Obi-Wan didn’t know why.

“These aren’t stacked?”

“No. Right now, injuries are minor and we have workarounds. A mass exodus from the building will give our perpetrator a chance to escape, and we’ll have Coruscanti news on our front porch trying to find out what’s going on.”

“Is keeping this quiet more important than protecting our people?”

“Do you want everyone knowing the Jedi Temple can be so easily hacked?” Tyvokka asked, and Yaddle gave Obi-Wan a pointed look. He scampered across the room and pressed in against his Master’s side.

“If we’re just hunkering down in the hopes that we can resolve this problem quickly, what’s the plan for resolution?”

Master Yaddle turned to the screen and Obi-Wan realized there were two. One with Knight Daroon, and the other with Trion. Obi-Wan bit back a grin at the vid feed of a droid’s emotionless face He appreciated that Trion got to do more than ‘type.’

“Our best solution is… to turn it off and turn it on again.”

Master Mokninn melted in his chair, which was rude, but also seemed fair. Anyone could turn a computer off and on again.

“I understand your concerns, but simple doesn’t make the solution bad. Often complex computer systems are staffed by people who know what they’re doing and look for correspondingly complex solutions.”

Script flashed on Trion’s screen below his image, and Knight Daroon nodded. “Trion is right. Turning off the Temple servers won’t be like turning off a single computer. This is a massive endeavor and it will take time to get everything back up again. Especially with all the layered systems. This malware is smart enough that if we don’t partition properly, it could hide and come back out again.”

“Are there alternatives?” Yaddle asked.

“Trion and I could hunt the program down, but that would take at least another 12 hours, and at most, a week.”

Trion’s script flashed again, this time short enough that Obi-Wan could read it. <<Organics are vulnerable to harm. This is fastest.>>

“Well, if Trion says so.” Tyvokka sighed. “How do we do this?”

“We’re going to partition everything we can, then we shut it down. It will be a rolling shutdown, and a rolling activation. It should take a half an hour from beginning to end, but it might stretch longer.”

“Why?” Master Mokninn moaned from the corner, and Obi-Wan didn’t know how they’d ended up with him down here.

“Have you had an experience where you turned off your padd and it took longer than you expected to reboot because there were updates pending that you didn’t know about?”

Mokninn nodded, but was off screen, so Yaddle had to confirm.

“We might have some of those.”

“We don’t regularly update the temple’s systems?” Master Koth asked, and it was the first time Obi-Wan had heard him frazzled.

“Of course we do, but some of these systems haven’t been turned off in the entire time I’ve been in charge of the temple’s technology infrastructure. It will take time to reboot, but once the entire system is off, the bug will be killed.”

“So, the threat to life and limb will have passed once the system reactivates.” Yaddle checked.

“It should. I’d prefer that everyone stay in their safe zones while we reboot, but we shouldn’t have any more dropping turbolifts or…freezers.”

Everyone grimaced at that. They’d had a Knight in the refectory deep freeze for twenty minutes. If they hadn’t known how to go into a hibernation trance, they would’ve had a fatality.

“After we get everything booted up, Trion and I will need to run a scan on the whole system to make sure the malware didn’t have a failsafe, or that we didn’t a private server. The follow up scan will take hours. Dealing with this will be the rest of the day.”

“So, all our systems will be down while we hunt for the perpetrator?” As usual, the practical question came from Master Mundi.

Knight Daroon blinked. Or rather, Obi-Wan thought the shift from white to grey was his eyelids. “I am uniformed about… perpetrators. I handle systems.”

“The plan is not to hunt while things are down.” Tyvokka explained. “Our plan is to have everyone stay put and stay on their guard during the reboot. We assume that Trion and his cameras will help the search when they come back up.”

“And we’re sure, absolutely sure, that the best way to get rid of this bug is to shut down the entire system.” Master Mokninn asked.

Knight Daroon needed a look from Yaddle to know the question was aimed at him. “Yes. It’s designed to be the most efficient and complete way to eliminate it.”

“Do we think that’s what the attacker always planned? That whatever they’re here for, they always intended do it when we shut the systems down?”

“It makes sense.”

“Then why have they taken so long? Why not scramble our systems from the beginning instead of give us time to know we have a problem? Could they have?”

They looked to Trion, who at some point had blanked his screen and left the conversation, so Knight Daroon answered with a simple, “Yes,” and went straight back to his work, because criminal motives weren’t his job either.

“We can’t know.” Tyvokka sighed.

“But what are we thinking it might be?”

Obi-Wan leaned hard into his master’s side. Nobody could answer that question, and Obi started to think that maybe that’s why his master didn’t like them. And probably why the rest of the Council was out helping people and left Master Yaddle and Tyvokka to handle the arrangements. (Master Koth looked like he was developing a twitch.) “Maybe they were hoping we’d think that all of the system problems were little glitches, like we did before. Maybe they were hoping to accomplish their task without needing to go into full shutdown. Maybe we spooked them as we got closer. Maybe they wanted a dramatic shift.”

As Tyvokka listed off a dozen more possibilities, Obi-Wan caught a Shadow slipping in the door. He immediately focused on Obi-Wan, who tried to only raise an eyebrow and not do anything that would distract Tyvokka. The Shadow just gave a small shake of his head then gave a pointed look around the room and landed on the nearest corner before he settled beside the door.

Obi-Wan glanced to the corner and found Master Yoda, who’d been sitting so quietly that Obi-Wan had missed him entirely. Master Yoda met Obi-Wan’s glance with a raised ear, but stayed in his corner.

That was weird… but before Obi-Wan could think too hard about it Master Mokninn snapped, “Their task was killing Yoda!”

“Was it?” Master Koth sighed. “Because if I wanted a Jedi so old and powerful as Yoda dead, I’d drop enough credits to blow up his ship in empty space and hope he ran out of oxygen before help arrived.”

Everyone in the room paused and look at Master Koth, a little dumbfounded.

“What? There are three, maybe four Jedi who could beat him in a fight, and I’m not one of them. Which means there are may be that many non-Jedi in the galaxy who would beat him, and I can’t even name them, I just assume that some bounty hunter or warlord out there might be able to manage it. But either way, I wouldn’t announce myself. If I wanted Yoda dead, I’d want him drunk, asleep, and comfortable. But if you want to succeed in killing him, you don’t give him warning.”

“Unless you want him to be afraid.”

“Yeah, he looks really afraid.” Actually, Master Yoda looked sleepy.

“They threatened Yoda and took the entire Temple hostage. Perhaps we should be more afraid than we are.”

“Then someone doesn’t know us very well.”

“As fun as these theories are, we can’t answer them until we find our criminal.” Yaddle reminded.

“How long do you two need to prepare before down power?” Tyvokka asked.

Knight Daroon and Trion somehow exchanged a look. “In theory, about twenty minutes.”

Tyvokka twisted around to Masters Koth and Mundi, who’d taken over the comm system while the others talked. “Is that enough time to put people into position around the archives, the treasury, and the Healing Halls?

“You think that they’ll move when the power is cut.” Master Mundi said.

“I think we moved into position around the water pipes and they turned their bug into a plague. I think they know they’re about to get caught and they’ll want to take advantage of the situation.”

There was a shuffle at the door and in limped Brair, with Ruzry under his arm. Obi-Wan grabbed a chair and scrambled it over while the others demanded to know what happened. “He insisted on coming up to tell you personally.” Ruzry shifted him down.

“We don’t know if the comms are compromised,” Brair said, like they’d been fighting about this the whole walk in.

“Briar, what happened?” Master Yaddle demanded.

“I found the bad guy.”

Ruzry was supposed to tease Brair for calling him that instead of saboteur or perpetrator. But Ruzry didn’t tease. Obi-Wan sank back against Tyvokka’s bulk.

“I’m aquatic, so I was assigned to head into the pipes to see if I could pick anything up. And, I have these prototype drones and Trion and I have been working on, so I dropped them off.”

As the only person in the room with proper medical experience, Master Yaddle opened the room’s first aid kit and went to Brair. But as she went to unwind the fabric wrapped around his arm, Brair touched her wrist and murmured at her to wait.

“I was on one of the platforms putting up a temporary camera, and thank fuck I’ve got tentacles. I didn’t hear a thing, or feel a thing, but I could taste the sweat. Maybe he was trying sneak past? Because the Force didn’t warn me at all.”

“How did they hide from a Jedi Master?” Mokninn asked, but Brair ignored them

“I could taste him, and I’m not a spy, or a sneak, so I’m sure I did something that told him I knew he was there.” Brair scoffed at himself. “I didn’t even have time to reach for my lightsaber before he attacked.” Ruzry handed over a prepackaged tea. They tasted terrible, but at least it was warm.

“I’m a decent fighter. Master Rallelu wouldn’t let me not be, but it took me about two blows to know I wasn’t a match for him, so dove straight into the water and retreated. No human can out-swim me. I left all the drones behind. When I got out, I called Trion to shut it all down remotely, which he’s done, but the drones are destroyed, and the cameras haven’t caught anything.”

The room waited a moment to be sure Brair was done before Master Mokninn shuddered. “A bounty hunter?”

“But how did they hide from a Jedi?” Master Koth raised. “What technology could do that?”

“You left the scene?” Master Mundi asked.

“Of course I did.” Brair gestured to his wounded arm. “Other people can put up cameras, and other people can use their lightsaber. I can… I can do this.”

At that, Brair looked to Obi-Wan. And Obi, didn’t know why. But others did. Half the masters in the room hadn’t been talking when Brair finished, and all of them were looking at Yoda.

Master Yoda, who looked every one of his 800 years, hobbled over to Brair and peeled back the bandage on his arm.

It was a lightsaber burn.

“Ruzry?” Tyvokka asked.

“It’s Xanatos. I don’t know where he learned to hide in the Force but he does it and he does it damn well. I diverted Kaan and Gukriar from the pipes to hunt for him and they don’t have a trace.”

“Isaav?” The Shadow standing by the door, the Shadow Obi-Wan had completely forgotten about, straightened from his position. Now that Obi was looking, somewhere in the argument several people had arrived, not the least of which were guards in arm’s distance of Master Yoda.

“Ruzry sent me ahead.”

“I stayed to help Brair and re-coordinate the search. I sent him ahead to make sure we weren’t out-ran.”

“Ruzry, we do not need—”

“Do not fight me on this.” Ruzry snapped, and Tyvokka accepted it with a nod. Oh, there was security behind him too.

“Fight her on what?” Mokninn asked.

“Extra security.” Master Dooku said. He must’ve arrived with the other guards. Probably there to protect his master from his fallen Grandpadawan.

“All our plans are at risk because who knows what Xanatos is here for.”

“Are you sure it was Xanatos?” Master Mundi asked. “Has Master Brair ever come into contact with him?”

“Brair gave me a description of his attacker and then I showed him a picture to confirm. Even without: red lightsaber, Dark, dark hair, and knows how to break into the Temple is a fairly exclusive list.”

“But what is he here for? As you said, if you wanted Yoda dead, you wouldn’t announce it.”

“I wouldn’t, but I’m still governed by logic and reason. Xanatos has fallen.” Master Koth said, and Master Yoda flinched. He’d stayed by Master Yaddle’s side as she slathered bacta over Brair’s wound. Obi-Wan couldn’t do much, but he could do this. He stepped forward and took Master Yoda’s clawed hand in his, trying to press comfort and ‘it’s not your fault’ into the Force.

“The Dark side corrupts your thinking.”

“Not so much that you don’t know up from down.” Master Dooku argued. “If Xanatos wanted Yoda dead he would’ve actually tried to kill him. He was always clever and the Dark side wouldn’t strip that from him.”

“Then why is here? Just to taunt Yoda?”

“If it was anyone other dark sider trying to rob the Temple, I would assume it was for an artifact. Something to increase their power.”

“To make him rich?” Mokninn suggested.

“He’s already the head of a massive corporation in the Mid-rim.” Master Mundi reminded him.

“Maybe his lightsaber is failing and he’s here for more crystals?”

“Do we have eyes on the Vertex?” Master Dooku asked and the whole room… paused.

Obi-Wan was getting tired of that happening. Espceially since he was in the perfect place to see Master Yoda’s face and ears fall.

“The what?” Master Yaddle asked.

Obi-Wan could pick out who knew what Master Dooku was talking about and who didn’t. Despite the awkwardness that made Obi want to step into the hall, Master Dooku explained like he was unbothered. He was part of a negotiating team between two powerful Republic planets over who deserved custody over massive, misdelivered shipment of the crystal. The only place they would agree to store the post precious mineral in the galaxy while they negotiated was the Jedi Temple.

There was sniping, and ‘No one thought to bring this up?,’ and ‘Our children are here!’ But Obi-Wan didn’t care about any of that.

No, things like this had happened before. Had happened plenty in just the last week. And every time they did, Obi-Wan felt his master’s thick, living walls spring up between them to keep him from feeling the storm that Master Tyvokka kept under tight control.

But not now.

Right now, Master Tyvokka just felt tired.

“This is a conversation to be had in private.” Master Yaddle interrupted the argument.

It was only because he was looking at her that Obi-Wan caught it.

Not Yaddle, but behind her. Moving through the dark corners of the room and looking at Obi-Wan’s master with the same, ‘I told you so’ smirk that Bruck got when Obi-Wan had to breathe deep before he lost his temper.

But Tyvokka didn’t know about the vertex. Obviously, or he wouldn’t feel so tired. So why was Master Arkill looking at him like that?

“How in the stars did he even he find out about it?”

“Again,” Yaddle snapped. “That’s a problem for tomorrow.”

“Is It? If half of us didn’t know about the vertex, how could he?” Master Koth argued. “Why are we anticipating him going after something he couldn’t have known about?”

“Because that is the most obvious target.” Dooku argued.

“Going there, he is.” Yoda said. “The warning I felt, when said it Dooku did. And feel it too, you do.” He said to Tyvokka.

“I do..”

Yaddle took the conversation back over. “We’ll lock down the archives, just in case. We’ll have Yoda guarded and out of the way.” She held up her hand to forestall any objections, but Yoda didn’t make any. “And we’ll have guards ready to catch him outside the treasury.”

“Dooku–”

“I will guard my master.”

“Good. I will take the archives, and Ty?”

“I’ll take the treasury. But I’d like you each to have a Shadow who he cannot hide from, in the Dark.”

“Master Kostana taught me to sense such things.” Dooku said.

“Then perhaps you can teach her lessons to the Shadow who will be accompanying you.”

Master Yaddle just said thank you.

“Would it be more effective to have Master Yoda at the treasury?” Master Mundi asked.

“The shadows, I do not sense.”

“Not to catch him, Master, but maybe to try and talk him down.”

Dooku snorted. “He won’t calm if he sees either of us. He’ll be enraged.”

“Maybe that will help too.”

“We are not risking lives to taunt the darksider.” Both Yoda and Dooku flinched. “Apologies, and condolences.”

“And you have mine, Master Tyvokka, for what I believe someone must ask: should we move Kenobi?”

Tyvokka rumbled.

“He has a point.” Master Yaddle said. “The last time Xanatos saw Qui-Gon was when he was trying to get back to the Temple to look for Kenobi. He mentioned in his reports that he used the boy’s name when talking to Xanatos. If Xanatos has fallen so far as to contemplate attacking Yoda, who knows what tale his mind might’ve spun about Kenobi.”

“Xan was always territorial. If Feemor was on planet I’d be most worried about him.” Dooku said. “If Xan thinks Qui-Gon took Kenobi as a padawan…”

“No, he’s been in the Temple long enough that his spying should’ve told him otherwise. And even if it hasn’t, Obi-Wan is safer in the Shadow halls than anywhere else.”

“Master.” Master Arkill said. And oh, he was behind Obi now.

Obi had always thought it would feel good to have Master Tyvokka sigh at Arkill the way he sighed at Obi, but it wasn’t what he’d hoped.

“Perhaps you should stay here.”

“Why?” Master Tyvokka was so… damn tired. In a way sleep wouldn’t reach.

“You are the only of us who can see through the shadows when they’re on a screen.”

“That’s possible?” Master Koth asked.

“With practice, all things are possible.”

“And you have practiced. I’d say you should be at the treasury, if we were sure he was going after the vertex. But we can’t know what goes on in Xanatos’ mind. If you are here, watching on our rebooted screens, you can help with all of the locations. Or any fourth place if we’re entirely wrong.”

“Eriad.”

“We are ready, after all. One Fallen Jedi who never even became a Knight shouldn’t be a problem for us to handle without you. Should it?”

Everyone looked uncomfortable. Even Master Mundi, who Obi hadn’t thought knew the meaning of the word.

“Eriad, I am not the one who doubts your abilities.”

“Does anyone?” Mokninn asked, with enough confusion that Obi-Wan didn’t feel so left out.

“I will take the treasury, Master.” Ruzry offered.

“Not alone.”

“No, I was planning on doing it all by myself because, as you know, I’m quite stupid.” Tyvokka huffed out a laugh. When this was all over, Obi-Wan was going to buy Ruzry… something. He’d ask Bant. (Or Feemor. He seemed like he’d be good at that kind of thing.)

With Ruzry’s acknowledgement, the masters broke apart to hand out assignments, Master Dooku called Master Drallig to coordinate security, Tyvokka called on Shadows who could actually see shadows, and Master Yaddle got everyone to safe zones while Trion and Knight Daroon started the countdown to shutdown.

Soon enough one of the medical teams arrived to take Brair to the Healing Halls. Because today hadn’t been long enough, it was the medical team Bruck had joined. Bruck, who probably should’ve been waiting in the hall, given… things. But no one stepped him when he came up and asked Obi-Wan what was going on. Obi-Wan glanced at Ruzry, who was the least occupied adult in the know, and she nodded.

“The malware came from Xanatos, Master Jinn’s former padawan. They think he’s here for some Vertex the High Council has stored in the treasury.”

“Vertex? He—”

Bruck cut himself off and Obi-Wan let him. Honestly, at this point, Obi-Wan wasn’t even sure what Bruck knew, or knew what they knew, and Master Tyvokka was still tired, and he and Master Arkill were fighting about something and Obi-Wan didn’t know what. Bruck looked almost sick with relief.

The medics were quick about bundling up Brair, and on their way out the door, one of them leaned back in and asked Bruck if he was coming with them. Then, because no adult in the world made sense today, the medic looked between Bruck and Obi, then winked and headed out. Obi didn’t know why Bruck stayed. If Obi-Wan had had anything to do with the mal who brought the malware, he’d want to be as far away as possible.

While Master Tyvokka got himself together enough to handle coordination, Ruzry did the checkup. She gave Obi a scrub on the head and looked Bruck in the eye to ask how he was doing. “Anything new?”

Bruck choked out, “I’m fine.”

“Nothing you want to tell me?”

“I just want to see what happens. I’m not—”

“Not Obi. I wasn’t asking about that. Nothing else?”

Him? Why would anyone be asking about him? “Ruzry.” Obi-Wan did the interrupting this time. And yes, he did sigh. Everything was a mess and he felt the weight of it all pressing on his Master, and Obi didn’t know how to buoy him up. “What do I do?”

“Ruzry understood the question. “Stay safe.”

“But—”

Ruzry pressed her hand to Obi’s cheek. “Right now, you stay safe and that’ll be enough. Everything else is for later.”

Later came quickly, but there wasn’t much to watch. With the computer systems down, all the security cameras were dead, so Tyvokka was watching everything happen from three mouse droids Trion had looped in and broadcasted back to three floating screens. Mokninn had objected to the lack of visuals, and Tyvokka had pointed out that Trion was going to be a little busy putting their systems back together to be prioritizing their video feeds.

But even then, it was… anticlimactic.

Which sounded pretty terrible when Xanatos started tossing bombs around the room when he started losing. But… it was.

Xanatos came to the treasury, like they knew he would. He snuck in through the shadows, like they knew he would. Obi-Wan figured Xanatos must be pretty good at the shadow walking because the other Jedi fell back to guard the door almost immediately while Ruzry alone handled the fight. From what Obi understood, she was the only one who couldn’t just feel the shadows, she could see them – though no one had really explained what that meant, and it seemed like the sort of thing Obi-Wan shouldn’t ask.

He couldn’t tell if Xanatos was good, because all Obi-Wan could see was Ruzry moving like water through the dark, fighting a red blade moving on its own. It was less than a minute before Ruzry stabbed into the dark and every Shadow in the room with Obi got that pulse of victory, so he assumed it was a hit.

But then… bombs. Xanatos pulled back from Ruzry’s hit and there was a bright flash and the camera shorted out.

“Report!” Tyvokka called.

Thirty seconds later Ruzry confirmed they were all fine, but, “The bastard was packing miniature bombs. He ran. I’m in pursuit. I’m sorry, Master. But I could use some backup.”

 

Chapter Fourteen

“I’ll stay safe. I promise.”

“Thank you, Cub.” Tyvokka pressed his forehead to Obi’s. “Almost done.”

Obi-Wan tried to agree, but all that came out was a hmm.

“Cub?”

“Later. Go catch the bad guy.” Obi-Wan tugged Tyvokka’s moustache with the best grin he could manage. Tyvokka didn’t like it, but he had to go.

Xanatos had vanished. Ruzry wasn’t getting any pheromones, Kaan couldn’t smell him, and Masters Yoda and Dooku were on their way in the hope that some trace of lineage influence might help. But they all knew that wasn’t going to work. They had to find him, and they had to do it before he killed some poor guard standing by the back door who understand how shadows worked. (Obi-Wan wanted to be working on a list of questions. Because he’d thought shadows were a metaphor, not a literal. But he was a little too tired for questions right now.)

Tyvokka had to go, and they both knew it. But still, Obi’s Master directed one of the guards to take Obi-Wan to the Healing Halls. Then he glanced at Bruck and told the guard to take them both, and take a second Jedi with them. “You’ll stay there and wait until I come for you. Do not join one of the medic groups roaming through the Temple.”

“I promise.”

Tyvokka looked at Bruck and waited until he promised too.

Tyvokka left with a boop to Obi-Wan’s nose. Boops shouldn’t feel sad.

“Issav, I need you.” Master Arkill called, and the guard told them to stay there until he came back. It wouldn’t surprise Obi if Arkill wanted him to stand there and watch Tyvokka saving the day on the screen, because Arkill seemed far too pleased about Xanatos escaping. But Obi-Wan had bigger problems than the sigher right now.

While the grownups were busy being ridiculous, Obi-Wan grabbed Bruck and dragged him into the hall.

“Uh, we promised not to go running off.”

Obi-Wan went around the corner and pushed Bruck into the first alcove he could find. “We’re not running off. You’re going to tell me what’s going on.” Just a couple of days ago they were talking about what it would be like to visit Kashyyyk. That felt right. Staying here and being tired didn’t.

“You and I just watched the same escape.”

“Bruck!” Obi-Wan made himself take a step back and breathe. Three days ago, he and Tyvokka were talking about their visit to Kashyyyk. They were going to go. They had plans. And it wasn’t Bruck’s fault that the grownups were idiots who thought they could make Tyvokka stay. Who thought Obi-Wan would stop being his padawan. But if the grownups were going to be idiots, then Obi-Wan wouldn’t because he was the padawan and he would fix this.

“Bruck. Everyone knows something is up with you.”

“There isn’t!”

“Bruck!” Obi-Wan breathed again. “All of us kept our mouths shut when Ruzry asked because even though you’ve been a shit to us—”

“Obi.”

“—you’re still one of us. And I don’t know why none of the adults have put you in the timeout chair and told you you can’t come out until willing to tell the truth, because everyone knows you know something, and now I’m going to find out.”

“Obi, I don’t know anything.”

“Master Tyvokka knew it the moment he saw you. He had Trion and the mouse droids track you into the water system. That’s how they found Xanatos.”

“They tracked me!” Bruck squeaked.

“He knew and he did everything he could to protect you.”

Bruck wasn’t listening. His hands were in his hair as he started to panic breathe.

“Bruck, if you were going to get into trouble, you would’ve gotten in trouble before.”

“You can’t know that.” Bruck’s voice cracked.

“No, I can’t. But I know that Xanatos has run off and they don’t know where he is. He’s running around the Temple trying to kill Master Yoda and it’s my master who has to go out there and stop him, and now they need to know.”

Bruck hesitated.

“Feemor has mentioned things about Xanatos, when we’re talking. Xanatos makes Feemor sad. I don’t know what he did, but if he was enough to make Feemor sad, if he was enough to make you quiet, I don’t like him.”

The Force whispered to him to stop talking, so Obi-Wan waited. “They’ll stop him.” Bruck’s voice broke. “Grownups shouldn’t hurt children.”

“He shouldn’t have hurt you.”

Bruck started to cry and Ob-Wan pilled him into a hug. Obi wasn’t great at it, but he told himself to channel Tyvokka and Bant, the two greatest huggers he knew.

“I met him in the Room of a Thousand Fountains three weeks ago,” Bruck confessed.

“You don’t have to tell me that stuff, if you don’t want. Feemor says that some stuff is private. You can tell them to Feemor, or some other mind healer. I just want to know where you think Xan might be so they can stop him.”

“I don’t know.”

“Then let’s work it out together. What do you know?”

Bruck started to pace. And probably would’ve kept walking until the adults finished and took them off to the Healing Halls, and they didn’t have that kind of time.

“We know he can’t flee the Temple because they’ve got his aircar.”

“Then why do we need to talk about this! They’re going to find him anyway!”

“And who else is he going to hurt before they do?”

“He hasn’t hurt anybody!”

“He hurt Brair.”

“When he was caught!”

“And he hurt you.”

Bruck gulped and opened his mouth.

“If you’re about to say that doesn’t count, I’ll—”

“You’ll what? Thrash me?”

Obi-Wan didn’t like how Bruck said that like it meant he was right. “Adults shouldn’t hurt children. If he was willing to hurt a kid who was helping him, who else would he hurt?”

“He won’t be able to hurt Yoda.” Bruck tried to object and got back to pacing, but it didn’t really sound like he believed it.

“And who would he hurt to get to Yoda?”

Bruck yanked on his hair and Obi-Wan thought he was going to take off down the hall.

“You’re right, Yoda can take care of himself. But the masters said that if Xanatos wanted Yoda, he wouldn’t have announced it. And they’re going to keep an eye on the treasury and he’s not going to be able to get in there.”

“Then he’s just going to run away!”

“But he can’t! He can’t get out of the building. So, what is he going to do if he can’t get out?”

“I don’t know? Hide?”

“He can’t go back to the water, so where do you think he’s going to hide?”

“I don’t know!”

“Did he go anywhere else when you were—” Obi-Wan stopped himself before he said ‘working together.’

Bruck heard it though, and stopped his pacing to shove him. “Screw you, Obi!”

Bruck tried to storm off and Obi scrambled after him. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m just scared. My master is out there fighting a dark jedi.”

“He’ll be fine. Out of everyone, he’ll be fine.”

“He’s worried.” Obi-Wan said to Bruck’s back.

“He’s what?” Bruck refused to turn around.

“He’s worried. That’s why he told someone to escort us.”

Bruck whipped around. “Then why are we in the Halls!”

“Because you haven’t told me what happened and you might be able to stop him!”

“I don’t know anything!”

“Ruzry said witnesses always know more than they think they do, you just have to get them to calm down and ask them the right questions!”

“Well, I’m not calm!”

Well, neither was Obi. The both of them silently decided to take two deep breaths and walk to opposite sides of the hall.

“What did he have you steal for him?” Bruck rolled his eyes, but started listing.

“The lightsabers, a Knight’s comm, a few paint sticks from the Creche, a fire crystal, a dark-brown cloak–”

“Wait, what?” Obi-Wan straightened up. “Did you just say a fire crystal and try and go past it like it didn’t matter?”

Bruck was going to strain his eyes with the rolling. “It was one of the smaller ones that they use to help Initiates train without exhausting themselves with one of the bigger ones.”

“But why would he want a healing crystal?”

“To test me.”

“What?”

“He had me steal a bunch of little things, and then he said…” Bruck trailed off uncomfortably. “He didn’t think I’d be able to steal the training sabers, so he gave me an easy task.”

“Stealing a fire crystal is easy?”

“Like I said, it was a little one that the Initiates use.”

“Why do you know about them?”

“I don’t know about them.” Bruck crossed his arms and glared.

Why was Bruck more fussed about this than the lightsabers? “Why do you know about them and I don’t know about them.”

“Because you’re not a healer.”

“Neither are you, and I’m friends with Bant.”

“I listen when our healing instructors talk instead of just let Bant do all the listening for me.”

That… didn’t sound believable. “Look, Obi, if you ask questions after class, you get a better grade without having to do well on the assignments, so I ask.”

Obi-Wan had a thousand questions, not the least of which was how in the stars Bruck managed to keep this quiet from everyone else, and why would he even be talking to the healers? Bruck had flunked all but the basics of self healing that every Jedi had to know. Bruck was even worse than Reeft, who managed to leave everyone just as injured as before but make them twice as hungry.

But that’s not what they were talking about right now. And if Obi poked, Bruck might shut down.

“What if it wasn’t a test?”

“It was a test. He said it was.”

“What if he lied?” It took everything Obi-Wan had not to say it like Bruck was an idiot.

Oh.

It was taking everything Obi-Wan had not to be a jerk. Not to be a jerk to a guy having the worst day of his life. Obi-Wan didn’t want that.

Bruck had spent stars-knew how long in the company of a fallen Jedi. Who’d left the Order, almost killed Qui-Gon Jinn, threatened to kill Yoda, hid in the Temple, attacked other Jedi, and now was bad enough to make Master Tyvokka worried.

And Bruck had been with him alone.

And Bruck had walked away without doing anything bad. He’d just been stealing things and scared of not getting a master of his own. Obi-Wan had defied Yoda’s orders and run off with a droid to avoid going away, and now he was being a jerk to Bruck about the same thing?

Obi-Wan didn’t know what his face was doing, but Bruck was looking at him like he was being weird. “Bruck.” Obi-Wan put his hands on Bruck’s shoulders. He didn’t say he was sorry, because Bruck wouldn’t like that. He’d prickle again. So instead, Obi-Wan asked the question again. “What if he lied?” Asked like the thought was brand new. Because, it was. If Tyvokka had lied to him, or MO, or Brair, Obi-Wan would’ve needed someone else to point out to him.

“I don’t know anything about fire crystals other than that they exist and they’re used in healing.”

“What else could Xanatos use them for? Could he be healing himself right now so the masters will underestimate him when they find him?”

“If he was a good healer in the first place. But… he isn’t.”

“Did he—” Of course he hurt Bruck. Obi-Wan already knew that. But somehow the thought was worse, that maybe he’d hurt Bruck then pretended he could heal him and didn’t. That felt meaner somehow.

“You can tell when people can heal with the Force. He can’t.”

Unless they were wearing healer robes, Obi-Wan absolutely couldn’t tell, but okay. “What else do they do?”

“They just heal.”

“But how?”

“Didn’t you pay attention in class? They’re like a power pack. You plug in it to a Jedi and give them extra charge.”

Obi-Wan gripped Bruck’s shoulders like he’d figured it out. “Could they charge his powers?”

Bruck smacked him off. “Not that kind of charge. They only work for healing.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. You couldn’t stick a healing crystal in your lightsaber in place of the kyber and expect it to do anything. It’s just different!”

“Healing crystals are spectacular at channeling energy.” A voice scraped out of the dark. The Force screamed and Bruck paled, twisting around in terror.

“The crystals take the energy from the Jedi and amplifies it.”

Now the voice came from the other side.

“How did you find me?” Bruck shook.

“Oh, Bruck. I know everything. Haven’t I? All this while, you thought it was proof you were supposed to be my padawan. That’s what you told yourself, in the dark. You were doing the right thing.” The voice took a turn for gleeful. “Because the Force was telling you I was supposed to be your master. How else could I know?

“I had a bug.” Behind them! But no, just the voice. “On your lightsaber this whole time. How pathetic must you be that you didn’t even notice something on your lightsaber? Really, your first thought was that I was brilliant, which I am, and the Force was telling me all about you. But the Force doesn’t care about you. It wouldn’t waste time telling me your secrets. Not when eavesdropping would do. I’ve been listening the whole time, Bruck. All your talking to masters, trying to get someone to pick you so you could leave me. All your lying. All your pathetic crying in the middle of the night because you ‘don’t know what to do.’” His voice twisted in imitation.

“And if I know that, I know everything, don’t I?”

Bruck stilled, and there he was: Xanatos. Like he’d materialized in the hollow of a shadow.

“You don’t know anything.” Bruck breathed.

“I know that you’ve ruined your own life. I know that you’ve been running around pretending to heal people like that will get you rewarded. Like that will make up for all that you’ve done.” Xanatos took slow, leisurely steps forward. Obi tried to drag Bruck back, but he wouldn’t move. “But it won’t. And you know it won’t. You’re not going to be able to get away from this. That’s why he refused to tell you anything.” The last was directed to Obi-Wan. Obi didn’t– he didn’t want to look at Xanatos’ dead eyes.

Bruck opened his mouth, and–

“Uh, uh, uh. I heard everything Bruck. You didn’t say a word because you thought if you just didn’t talk, it would all go away. But you know that will never happen.”

He strolled a slow circle around them. There was nowhere to go, and Obi-Wan still felt cornered.

“You might’ve been able to keep it quiet, but you can’t now. You’ve told someone. And you stupid boy, you didn’t even tell one of those medics you might’ve been able to keep quiet because they see you as a patient. No, you went and told your biggest rival like the ‘stupid face’ you are. At least I was going to keep your secret.

“I’ll still keep my word, but Kenobi won’t.”

Obi-Wan tried to object, but it was like speaking under water, and Xanatos just carried on.

“Don’t even bother trying to deny it. He’s going to scream it from the rooftops to get you kicked out. Just like you did to him.” The circling slowed and Xanatos twisted his way around Bruck. “Because that’s who you are, isn’t it, Bruck? A failure who can’t win on his own merits. You have to cheat to get what you want. You have to set him up for failure, and even then, he wins. Even then he catches one of the most famous masters in the Order. While you, you can’t snare anyone or be loyal for more than a day.

“If he knows, he’s going to tell. And your life is over.”

“Shut up.”

“It’s over. You and I both know it. You’re doomed, Bruck. I’d take you with me, but you don’t have the strength for it. But maybe, just maybe, you have the strength to make him keep your secret.”

Wait, what? Obi-Wan’s brain crashed like misjudging a Force jump and running into a wall.

“Maybe you can make him stay quiet. No one would know. I won’t tell anyone. And you can blame it all on me.”

What was Xanatos saying? And why were they just standing here? Crashing made Obi-Wan feel like his brain had been rebooted. And now Bruck turned to look at him with wide eyes and all Obi-Wan could do was look back in disbelief.

“I wouldn’t!” Bruck shook himself and shouted Then again, “I would never.” This time with tears.

“I know.” Obi-Wan said, and he did. But it wasn’t enough for Bruck to believe.

“See.” Xanatos said Before Obi could convince him. “Everyone already expects it of you.”

“Shut up!”

“You might as well.”

“Shut up!”

“Or maybe I’ll kill him and let you take the blame, because no one will believe you anyway.”

“I said, shut up!” And Bruck charged. No lightsaber in hand, just heartbreak, and Obi dove after him.

@@@@@

For all Yoda and Dooku’s knowledge of their lineage member and Tyvokka’s shadow walking, Xanatos was gone. Dooku tried to defend that neither of them knew Xan particularly well. “Yoda saw Qui and Xan more regularly, but he and Xan had disparate personalities.”

“Is that politician for they didn’t like one another?”

“Yes. According to Yoda, Xan was arrogant and self-centered. According to Xan, Yoda was interfering and condescending. Both were right. By the time Xan was grown, Qui had I had a mildly fraught relationship. I only met the boy twice because Qui kept him away.”

‘Mildly fraught?’ Tyvokka glanced at Tholme, who’d joined the search with his psychometry, and couldn’t fathom it.

“Not all lineages are like yours, Master Tyvokka.”

Tyvokka didn’t think it was the lineage. Cin took tea with Yoda every week.

“My apprenticeship was not Cin’s. Yoda was master for both of us, but Cin studied the saber.” Tyvokka understood the tenor of the moment, so did not point out that Dooku had studied it as well and was on that list of four Jedi who could probably defeat Yoda. “Cin knew from the beginning that he wanted to head Temple Security and be a Battlemaster. He knew he wanted to roam around in one of those masks and guard the temple. He could happily stay here, being taught lightsaber forms from masters as they came and went. I wanted different.”

“You spent much of your apprenticeship with Master Kostana and Sifo-Dyas, correct?”

“I did. And I still think we should bring him back from Vaenor to consult on the Grand Council.”

“He is on sabbatical and asked not to be interrupted. I’m sure gossip has reached him about what we’re doing and he hasn’t chosen to interrupt himself, so we won’t be doing it.”

“He is a seer and a respected member of the High Council.”

“And there are others.”

Tyvokka expected Dooku to say, ‘Not like him.’ Precisely what he’d said the dozen other times they’d had this argument. But he did not.

Instead, Dooku gave him a smug little look. “Yes, there are others.”

Dooku was a masterful negotiator, though he walked a little too far in the grey for Tyvokka’s taste—as did the master who did most of his training. They didn’t like one another, but respect didn’t require like. But this is the first time Dooku had done one of his masterful turns on Tyvokka the same way he countered other people and won arguments against them.

This was also the first time Tyvokka had spoken with a high councilor’s padawan.

And more important: the grandmaster’s padawan.

“Thank you.” Tyvokka rumbled.

Dooku walked away with a nod and went back to work. Tyvokka had the impression that Dooku had been quietly watching this whole mess, waiting to see if Tyvokka was going to figure it out for himself, waiting for the chance to tell Tyvokka about his experience. Or at least, tell him as much about his experience as Dooku was ever willing to share.

Tyvokka took a look around the room at his fellows, from Tholme running his bare hands along the floor, to Kaan and Gukriar sniffing things, to Yoda, tucked in a corner, leaking frustration into the Force. Tyvokka had proven no help with the tracking, but perhaps he could do some good there. Tyvokka joined Yoda on his bench, and for just a moment, embraced the quiet.

“I am sorry. I just wanted you recognize the problem, not vote you out.”

“Apologize, I do, for… pouting about it.”

Tyvokka chuckled. “Feemor?”

“A mind healer, my lineage did not need.”

A mind healer everyone in his lineage very much needed, but that was an argument for a different day and a different person.

“Also apologize I do, that all your responsibility it has become.”

“I’m sorry for not realizing how much we dumped on your plate.”

“Dumped, it was not. Slowly accumulate, it did. Had Xo Lahru and Pra-Tre Veter with me, I did, for so long. And then Pra-Tre passed, murdered in the field, and shocked we were, and tired. Choosing one to replace him, fell by the wayside, it did. Xo and I, for so long, did we sit together. Only died twenty years ago, did he. Realize, I did not, how much I was carrying, until saw someone else, I did.”

“I wasn’t even carrying all of it, Master. Yaddle and I have been sharing the load.”

“Right, you were, need to share the load, I do. But share more, need you.”

“Ah, Grandmaster, I will share it more than they wish.”

“Decided, you have.”

“Decided I did the moment I knew I could not have both.”

“Do both, you cannot?”

“Do both well, I cannot.”

Yoda hummed. “Maybe more practice you need?”

“No. Some things you know you will never be good at. This is one.” ‘Mildly fraught’ as their relationship was, Tyvokka imagined that Dooku would argue that Yoda hadn’t been good at it either. If Tyvokka opened his comm right now he’d have at least two messages from Plo – one a mission update and another scolding him for working so hard. He talked with Tholme almost daily, Quinlan liked to sleep over in Tyvokka’s apartments, and one of Lissarkh’s favorite pastimes was telling other Trandoshans that her grandfather was a Wookiee, then picking a fight in his honor.

It broke his heart to think of decades from now, little Obi-Wan telling another Jedi that their linage wasn’t like that. He would not have it.

Considering the way the week was going, Tyvokka shouldn’t be surprised that he was interrupted by an argument instead of success.

“We shouldn’t be surprised that Xanatos managed to get away. He was gifted in the first place. I don’t know how he learned to shadow walk, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he found the secrets of the universe out there.”

“Frankly, I think it’s that we were aiming to detain, not kill.”

Tyvokka rolled his eyes at that. Kaan’s hunting instincts put Tyvokka’s to shame. He left it to someone else to keep that disagreement from turning into a fistfight and checked on the frantic beep of his comm. “The system reboot is complete. Trion is hunting.”

“May he have better luck than we.” Tholme said, dragging on his gloves back on.

Ruzry approached Tholme – maskless and furious that her own skills hadn’t yielded anything. Tyvokka meant to stand, meant to join them and see what they could find together. Some part of him knew there was a conversation happening around him, someone saying that they had people on the exits, guards around the children. They had fallen back to protect the vulnerable. Xanatos was not getting out. He was a cornered animal, and they knew what to do with those.

But Tyvokka wasn’t there right now.

Something else was pulling him. The future would not be denied, not after so many days of seeking it out and it being unable to communicate for all the changes that made the string thud, hard to predict. Tyvokka was half in the future and half in the present, strumming on the strings of the Force even though all he needed was common sense, and common sense said to catch him.

“No, he’s not.” Tyvokka murmured, eyes glazed over.

Yoda agreed. “Worse than that, Xan is.”

Dooku opened his clever mouth to speak, but Tyvokka raised his hand for quiet, which fell across the room. “Something is wrong.”

It… it wasn’t the future. Though that balanced on a knife’s edge.

Such delicacy required the present.

The music between he and his Cub… the war drums and clarion trumpets reared up at him and took the terrible, electric tone of fear.

Tyvokka’s comm screeched with a distress call from Trion, but Tyvokka was already running. Yoda a double bounce off the wall behind him, to land on his shoulder and grip tight as they tried to outrun fate.

@@@@@

Obi-Wan lasted three strokes before Xanatos hammered on his overhead block and smacked him to the floor.

“Really, boy. This is getting sad.”

Xanatos giggled the first time he tossed them both like push-feathers across the hall. Not hard enough to break, but stupid enough that they should’ve taken their chance and run.

But they hadn’t. Bruck got up and charged Xanatos, and Obi-Wan went after him. Went away from the grownups down the hall, away from the grownups who would’ve heard them screaming for help if they were just a little bit closer. Away from grownups who wouldn’t be facedown on the floor, every bit of them hurting, their lightsaber Force knew where while a Darksider with a gaping side from where Ruzry had stabbed him was still winning.

Bruck… Bruck didn’t get up last time. He’d crashed into the wall with a wet thud and hadn’t gotten up. Xanatos had ignited his blister-red blade straight into the floor so he could drag it, leaving a molten trench in the floor as he stalked Bruck’s crumbled body.

Obi-Wan had to get up. He had to try again.

“I can’t believe anyone thought you’d ever good enough to be Qui-Gon’s padawan.” Xanatos snorted.

He’d done that every time too.

Obi-Wan wasn’t a Jedi, he was a flimsiwork aid. Obi-Wan was weak, and small, and pathetic. But no matter the taunt, Xanatos looped back around to, “Qui-Gon already had the best, how could he downgrade to you?”

Obi-Wan had cared the first round, but then he didn’t have room to care about anything but surviving.

And then Bruck hadn’t gotten up.

“Perhaps I’ll leave you alive, but take your hands.”

Xanatos ignited his saber into the floor again, the sound of stone snapping as it melted where he dragged.

“That way, you don’t have to worry when I kill him, you couldn’t do anything anyway.”

Xanatos crouched down – not on his knees, never that – to loom where Obi-Wan could see him properly. “The healing crystals channel living energy, which is also fire.” A little twist to his saber, gouging the hole into a crackling puddle. “Which means they will amplify the hell out of the Temple’s reactor core. Which is where I put them when I went on my walk while you all scampered about like headless porgs to deal with my glitch.”

Bruck groaned. Thank all the gods, great and small.

“Hmm.” Xanatos wasn’t looking at Obi anymore. “Yes, I think that’s what I’ll do. Not a hand. You’re too pathetic to say conscious after that. I’ll leave you both alive, mostly, so you can die in the fire with the rest of them. Die knowing that I’m the best of them all.”

Xanatos stepped over Obi-Wan’s body to get to Bruck. Obi-Wan dragged his hands beneath his chest and pressed up. He had to stop to heave in great breaths before he vomited right there. Something was wrong. Something in his belly. Or his lungs.

But he had to get up.

Hands off the floor. Up to his knees.

And there was Xanatos, tsking and looking down on him like he was a daft little thing. “It would’ve been easier for you, if you’d stayed down.”

Xanatos looked at him the way too many adults did.

Like he was a dumb little kid who should’ve done as he was told.

Obi-Wan stuck out his chin and lurched his leg forward, enough to get his right foot under him.

“Oh, Cub.” Xanatos crooned and lit his crackling red saber.

Behind Xanatos, Bruck moaned, “Obi,” and pressed against the wall, trying to get up. Obi-Wan couldn’t afford to look at him. Couldn’t afford to hear Bruck begging Xanatos to stop. Not to kill him. To hear him slide back to the ground as the world churned around his wall-battered head.

With a heave, Obi-Wan forced himself to his feet. Xanatos held the blade to Obi’s throat. A fancy reverse grip, because Feemor told him once that Xan thought talented meant dramatic. Obi-Wan let the tears come, from the pain and the terror. Let them well up and drip down his cheeks. Xanatos pressed his left hand to Obi-Wan’s cheek and brushed a tear away.

Obi-Wan gulped out a sob that bent his head forward, Xanatos pulled back the lightsaber on instinct. He’d rather keep Obi-Wan crying than accidentally cut off his head.

Xanatos leaned in to murmur in his ear, “You were never going to be good enough,” the lightsaber extinguished.

Everyone underestimated children.

Obi-Wan threw his weight into a punch straight to Xanatos’ ribs, right in the blistered stab wound Ruzry gave him an hour earlier. Then flowed through and Force shoved with all his might at Xanatos’ right hand and his lightsaber went flying. Kick to the knee at the same time Bruck tossed himself forward and slammed Xanatos to the ground.

Bruck scrambled off, and Obi-Wan dragged him to his feet, both of them stumbling back into the wall for balance before they ran.

But Xanatos didn’t get up.

He was… he was bleeding. A puddle already starting to drip from his black tunic and form on the marked floor beneath him. Obi-Wan didn’t know lightsaber wounds could bleed.

Lightsaber! Right. Obi-Wan frantically looked for his saber, but saw Xanatos’ before he felt his own. Obi-Wan stumbled over and picked it up, the dropped it again.

The blade was screaming.

Right. Can’t leave it. Can’t pick it up. Obi-Wan apologized to the blade – it wasn’t the saber’s fault Xanatos was terrible – then gave it a mighty kick down the hall. (The saber went further than it should’ve, and actually skittered around the corner and down the stairs.)

Obi-Wan lurched around and found Bruck slouched against the wall, staring at Xanatos, who was staring right back, with bloody hands pressed to his ribs.

“Are you okay?”

Bruck didn’t answer.

“Bruck!” He jolted and blinked back to awareness. “Are you okay?”

“Not great, but not… that.” He nodded at Xanatos.

“I’m dying.”

Obi-Wan could hear Quin’s voice sing-song, ‘Too bad. So sad,’ and bit his lip to keep from saying it. Without taking his eyes off Xanatos, Obi-Wan flicked open his comm, glanced down to see they still didn’t have a signal, and put it away. “As soon as the comm system you broke goes back up, we’ll call for help.”

“One of you can’t go for help?”

“I’m stupid, but I’m not an idiot.”

Xanatos smiled at that, charm dulled by the blood on his teeth. But Obi-Wan didn’t care. They weren’t going to leave him alone, and Obi-Wan wasn’t leaving Bruck alone with him again.

Bruck rocked forward onto his hands and knees and told Obi-Wan to find his saber. “I can help him.”

“What?”

“I can put pressure on the wound. You keep your lightsaber on and watch my back.”

“Bruck. We’re not doing that.”

Thank the Force Obi-Wan didn’t have to say it out loud. Bruck understood that he couldn’t stand and Obi-Wan was barely keeping himself together. Honestly, if he went to get help, Obi-Wan didn’t know if he’d make it. Not even back down the hall and around the corner to where grownups were supposed to be.

“Maybe we can wrap something around his wrists to keep him from doing anything.”

“Bruck—”

“Helping him is the right thing to do.”

“Good doesn’t mean stupid.”

“Obi.” Bruck rocked back to his knees and looked like he just wanted to slouch to the floor and fall asleep until today was nothing but a memory.

“He tried to kill you.”

“Yeah. But I’m not him.”

This was an appropriate time to sigh. “Hold on.” Obi-Wan stumbled around the room until he found his lightsaber, conveniently at the foot of a wall tapestry. It would take more effort than Obi-Wan had to cut off strips and actually tie Xanatos’ wrists, so Obi-Wan just cut off the bottom half and stumbled back to where Bruck was patiently – tiredly – waiting out of range.

Obi-Wan made the executive decision that since it was his lightsaber and he was the one in the best condition right now, Bruck could wrap up Xanatos’ hands as best he could. Then Obi-Wan would sit on them while Bruck used another bit of tapestry to give aid.

It was a good plan. Right up until Xanatos screamed bloody murder and almost jackknifed off the floor when he tried to lift his hands above his head. Both of them stumbled back. They’d never heard an adult make that noise before.

Bruck demanded that they stop.

“We can’t just let him have his hands!”

“Then hold them down!”

“Where?”

“Just—on his chest!” Obi-Wan found himself pressing Xanatos’ wrists against his chest, while Bruck pressed every bit of blood-soaked tapestry against the wound.

“I need more.” He demanded, voice and hands shaking while Xanatos gasped for breath. Obi-Wan scrambled to his feet and headed for the next tapestry down the hall, ready to just strike the whole thing down.

A sharp, bitten-off scream was the only warning that Xanatos had a blade.

@@@@@

The Force was a strange thing.

Tyvokka sprinted as fast as his long legs and the Force could carry him. But there was a crossroads, in the Temple and in life. Just a breath of a beat, a moment where he could turn left or he could turn right.

Left was a problem he could solve. A problem that put the entire Temple at risk. He could go that way and save them all.

Or he could go right.

Tyvokka didn’t hesitate.

Off to the right as Yoda used his shoulder as a springboard to the left.

Not a moment of hesitation, but still not fast enough.

Tyvokka careened around the corner to the snick-hiss of a lightsaber engaging and the crackle-vroom of a swing through something.

First, Tyvokka saw Bruck, pressed up to his elbows, hand on a shallow cut on his arm, staring at Xanatos… bisected, Tyvokka’s brain catching on that beat of space between one half of Xanatos’ body and the next. Bisected because Obi-Wan had slashed, not thrust. And there he stood, crystal-blue lightsaber glowing in his hand, where the padawan had just completed his swing.

Chapter Fifteen

Tyvokka slowed enough that he didn’t plow into his cub, but he didn’t need to stop to understand what happened. He loped around Bruck, slow enough to know the boy wasn’t dying, and wrapped his arms around Obi-Wan, gently turning off the lightsaber and removing it from Obi’s hand.

When the lightsaber powered down, so did Obi-Wan. Or maybe the world began again when Tyvokka flicked the switch. Obi-Wan shook, and his body forgot how to breathe, the panic attack hitting him fast and hard.

(The panic of feeling a life leaving in the Force, of another Jedi leaving because of his own hand.)

Tyvokka dropped to his knees and took off his cloak, bundling Obi-Wan into his arms and his Force presence, shushing away the pain.

“Are you all right?” He asked Bruck, who answered with a nod and shrug.

Tyvokka didn’t have time to wonder what to do. The occupants of the security room, the ones who were supposed to be watching his padawan finally arrived.

“Where were you?” Tyvokka snarled.

“We trying to get the system up. I didn’t—” Eriad was white as Initiate tunics. “I swear to you, I didn’t know. Not until Trion told us. Is he…”

Then footsteps behind him, all the Jedi that Tyvokka and Yoda had left in their wake finally catching up. Tyvokka buried his urge to bear his fangs by pressing his face into Obi-Wan’s hair.

“Little gods. What happened?”

Tyvokka felt the dread settle in, and bless him for taking such a stupid risk, but he felt Tholme put his hand on his saber. If Tyvokka broke, who else would be able to stop him?

Obi-Wan took a great, sucking breath, coming back to himself enough for his body to demand the oxygen. Behind him, Tyvokka heard the murmur, “Thank fuck.”

Tholme, darling Tholme, approached him while someone else – someone too far away for Tyvokka to care – went to Bruck.

“Master?” Tyvokka peeled his face away from his cub.

Tholme didn’t react. He was used to roaming about the galaxy without his face covered. But the Guardian behind him was used to a mask. Though, Tyvokka didn’t need to see the guard stumble back to know his eyes had gone full black.

“Master, we need to get him to the Halls.”

Tyvokka looked at the bisected corpse that was left of Xanatos.

“I will handle it, Master.”

“Handle it clean.” Words were hard with his fangs half-extended for the hunt

Obi-Wan curled into a tighter ball against his chest.

“There are cubs. Call legal.”

“I will.”

“I will.” Tera said, safely arrived from where he’d been on assignment at the Creche. “I will handle it.”

Tera understood. Coruscant Security Services had to be called. Lawyers involved. Xanatos’ next of kin informed. Tera would handle it. Tyvokka rose and tucked his cloak tighter around his cub, swaddled like a babe. One had a bacta patch to Bruck’s arm, with another ready to carry him to the Halls when the check was done. Good.

Tyvokka took three steps before he stopped and glared at the group. (Too many of them looked away at his eyes.) “Clean, I said.” One Shadow and one Guardian peeled away from the group, both miserably uncomfortable with the thought, but Tyvokka gave them a nod and they steeled themselves to do their jobs.

Even now, Tyvokka wouldn’t ask any questions that a prosecutor might use to taint the boys’ testimony, but two witnesses that he hadn’t were better.

Another three steps and Obi-Wan started to struggle. “Wait, wait.”

“I’m taking you to the Halls, cub.”

“Bomb.” The whole hall paused. “He said he had a bomb.”

<<A crystal shard in the reactor core.>> MO beeped from Tyvokka’s feet. <<Trion says Yoda got it. We’re fine.>>

“Good.” Obi sighed and sank back into Tyvokka’s arms. But not before looking around the room at all the people who knew what he did,. Tyvokka could see the glaze move over Obi’s eyes as he shut down with a shudder. Tyvokka waited just long enough to click his tongue at MO and gesture at his shoulder, letting the little droid grapple up and hold on tight before Tyvokka ran. Still fast enough to save Obi’s life. Tyvokka had been with plenty of Jedi when they made their first kill, but never had he been with one who’d done it in circumstances such as these. Tyvokka knew how to soothe Obi-Wan through a panic attack, but he didn’t know how much was panic and how much came when a child killed a Dark sider.

The Halls were ready and waiting for him, Vokara ushering them straight into a private room with dampeners in the walls. Tyvokka tried to unwind the cloak and put his padawan down, but Obi-Wan keened in pain.

“Vokara—”

She pressed the back of her hand to the auburn fluff of Obi-Wan’s head, the only bit of him she could reach underneath his cloak. Whatever bonds Vokara had with her staff were superb, because a few moments later a junior healer stepped in with an ice pack. Vokara peeled back the cloak just enough to press the pack to the exposed skin at Obi’s throat.

Obi’s breath caught, and he thrashed in Tyvokka’s arms, trying to get away from the cold. It wasn’t enough to end the panic attack, but enough to disrupt the flow. Vokara pressed her palms to Obi’s cheeks and he stilled.

“You’re all right, Obi. I know it feels like you’re dying, but you’re not. You just need to breathe.” Vokara took exaggerated breaths, accompanied by hands lifting off his cheeks ever so slightly, then pressing in. But catching his breath was enough to make Obi-Wan start sobbing again.

“Cub.” Vokara pressed on him with the Force. “I promise, you only feel like you’re dying.” She pressed the truth on him with the Force. “I need you to breathe.”

And so, after several long minutes, he did. With little bursts of sobs like other people had hiccups.

“I killed him.”

“I know, cub.”

“I killed him.”

“He was going to kill you.”

“But I killed him, and I wasn’t supposed to be there. If Bruck and I had just stayed in the room with the guardians—”

“And if the guardians had been paying attention and held you back, or if they’d gone with you, or if we’d caught Xanatos in the ambush, or if we had better security on the water system so he couldn’t sneak in. Questions like that will drive you mad.”

“But he wouldn’t have gotten to us if I stayed.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he would’ve stormed the room. Or maybe you would’ve stayed and Bruck would’ve left. Xanatos was a talented duelist and shadow walker. I don’t know if either of the Guardians with you would’ve been able to survive him, especially if he took them by surprise. And what would’ve happened to Bruck if he’d been alone? Yes, things might’ve been better, but they also might’ve been worse. In the future you can think about what you’d like to different in the future, but that is not a problem for today. Today is for breathing.”

That was enough. Obi could make himself prioritize that. Eventually, he calmed enough that Vokara asked if Tyvokka could unwind his cloak and she could check him over.

“Bruck is the one who got hurt.”

“I’ll check on him when we’re done here, but I have other healers who can help him. You are my priority right now.”

“Why?”

Vokara climbed up beside them on the bed and stroked her hand through Obi’s sweaty hair. “I can feel every patient in my Halls, cub. You are the priority.” Obi-Wan was already a jumbled mess of feelings, and he definitely didn’t know what to do with that one, but he agreed to a checkup.

“Do you need a second witness?”

“Witness for what?” Obi-Wan curled in on himself, like Tyvokka was asking for a witness to his crime.

Vokara didn’t need to glare. Tyvokka bundled Obi back up with a growl. “You did nothing wrong. You defended your life.” Tyvokka tugged on Obi’s hair until he looked up again. “You did not make me come around that corner and find your body. You did the right thing.”

Something in Obi unclenched and he flopped face first into Tyvokka’s fur.

“I am so sorry, but for now, we have to have a witness to our conversations because I am still a security official and I don’t want anything I say to you to be called contaminating your testimony. Tera is talking to CSS and getting this all resolved. I want to make this as easy for you as possible, which means sacrificing privacy. It is not because I am uninterested, or because I don’t care.” Obi-Wan nodded against him. “But still, I’m sorry I can’t give you whatever you want.”

“I get it.”

“Do you?” Tyvokka tilted him back. Obi-Wan had tears in his eyes, but he understood. “Thankfully, Vokara counts as witness enough for the purely medical. But for a check…”

“You need someone not you as a second witness.”

A sharp knock interrupted and the same healer from before stuck their head in.

Tyvokka had a brief moment to be terribly impressed by Vokara’s staff, but it wasn’t for Obi. “I’m so sorry, Grandmaster, but the High Council is out here asking for an update.”

Tyvokka snarled and Obi grabbed him by the wrists. “It’s okay. You can go.”

“Cub.”

“I have Master Che. And MO, And we needed another witness anyway.”

Tyvokka hadn’t been planning to leave. Not Obi.

“Go, Ty.” Vokara said. “Give the teenage boy some privacy and have everyone else get a move on. You’re his legal adult, so they’re going to have questions for you. Go answer them.”

Tyvokka nodded, but Obi-Wan still had ahold of his wrists. “You’ll… you’ll come right back?”

“I swear.”

Obi-Wan nodded, but still didn’t let go. “Because, I need you.”

“I need you too.”

“I just…” his little voice cracked, “you saved me.”

“I didn’t. You saved yourself.”

“No, it was you. I… tag.”

“What?”

“Tag. That’s how I got him.” Tyvokka rumbled and pulled Obi-Wan into a hug, then stayed there for not nearly long enough.

“I will come back. And you’ll learn all the things to beat Plo and Tholme.”

It took Vokara poking to make him leave. Even then, he picked up the little droid up from where he was rocking back and forth on his wheel and dropped him in Obi’s lap. Though the moment he left, he wished he hadn’t gone.

“What in the Force is going on?”

“Is Obi okay?”

Adi clapped her hands and imposed some silence. “Apologies. We did not mean to take you away from your padawan. We only need to know enough that we can help get things done. Eriad is the only one who will speak to us, and has only said that you were first on the scene. The healers won’t tell us about Bruck, and Trion has locked down whatever footage he has.”

“Because it is an active investigation.”

“Would you like an update?” Coljor asked.

Tyvokka waved them on, ignoring how Saesee grumbled under his breath that that’s all they’d been asking for for the last half an hour.

Tera put in a call to his preferred contact at the CSS, but they were held up at the station and had yet to arrive, so Tera had taken the necessary time-sensitive samples and was maintaining the scene. “He asked me to ask if Padawan Kenobi has told you what happened.”

“He’s told me things as his master, but I haven’t asked any questions and I can’t pass any of it on.”

“Why?” Saesee asked.

“Obi must be questioned by CSS, not us.”

“I’m sorry, but why?” He asked again, and this time it was Julfra who answered.

“Right now, he is the victim of an attempted murder. He has two guardians with him who need to be able to testify that he wasn’t prodded in any way that might taint his testimony. Any questions we ask would be considered biasing the victim.”

“What?”

“I have never not asked a victim questions. Have I been doing it wrong all this time?” Poor Adi said.

“You have been the person doing the investigating.”

“That’s not what we are?”

“We’re not investigating the break in?”

“We will, but the death takes precedence. We do not have the authority or jurisdiction to investigate someone killed in the Temple. No more than anyone else on Coruscant could investigate someone killed in their home.”

“But Tera is running it?” Adi sked.

“Tera is handling the scene and has the experience to do everything properly, while also protecting the children, and the Temple.”

“And what else do we do here? You can’t just mean for us to stay out of the hallway where Xanatos died and wait for CSS to come and look? A High councilor’s padawan killed the head of an interplanetary conglomerate.”

“But he’s not handling it.” Saesee said, like he understood.

“Clearly.” Julfra said.

“I don’t– do any of us know what we’re doing here?” Adi asked.

“Tera–”

“Is handling the investigation—insofar as he’s allowed. But someone on CSS is going to start asking the High Council questions. Or someone is going to start asking us questions, and none of us know how to answer.”

“You’ve negotiated treaties.”

“As you said, that is not the same thing. We need you.”

“Wouldn’t you handling it put enable you to protect Kenobi?” Julfra asked.

“Probably. But then I wouldn’t be with my Padawan.”

“Tyvokka. We don’t know what we’re doing.”

“Well, you’re adults. You’ll figure it out.”

It was surprisingly easy to leave them standing there and go back to his cub. Vokara was dragging out the checkup to keep Obi from worrying. But still, he perked up at the sight of Tyvokka, like some part of him didn’t quite believe he was coming back. His padawan was still wrapped up in his cloak and any doubt about leaving them out there burned away like smog in the sunshine.

Vokara shoved security out of the room and gave him the rundown: bruises, psionic trauma, balm and ice packs, and an appointment with his mind healer first thing after he’d eaten and slept. CSS could wait until after those two.

Tyvokka nodded in agreement, and though it pained him, opened the door so security could listen in and they could pretend to be alone.

Tyvokka climbed into the bed and wrapped himself around his padawan, who in turn was wrapped around his droid. MO gave Obi a bump and then hopped out, putting himself on duty at the door. Obi snuffled and burrowed deep before he murmured, “I think it’s time for us to go to Kashyyyk now.” He twiddled Tyvokka’s fur between his fingers. “The Temple doesn’t feel right anymore. I mean, it didn’t before this.”

“You’re right. And I’m sorry we stayed so long.”

“We had things to do.”

“Yes, but they were things that other people could’ve done. Things that other people will do when we leave.”

“Wait,” Obi-Wan perked up. “We get to go?”

“As soon as Vokara and Feemor clear you. And as soon as CSS says we can leave the planet. I can’t imagine it will take more than a few days.”

Obi-Wan settled back down, a cloak-wrapped bundle against his side. For all his lifetime of meditation, it took Tyvokka several long minutes to actually relax into the bed. As though his body didn’t believe him that they weren’t going to be interrupted looking for quiet at this time of day. It wasn’t mediation or practice that got him there. It was Obi. Reaching out from his cloak pile to tug on Tyvokka’s moustache.

Chapter Sixteen

The Healing Halls were chaos. Dozens of people injured in little ways from the malfunctions, and more coming in all the time because they’d been waiting for things to clear up before they tried to make the journey. Somebody with more pressing injuries was going to need Bruck’s private room. And if anyone asked what he was doing out here instead of there, that’s what he was going to say. The security following him around had rolled their eyes, but told him he could roam, so long as he didn’t answer any questions until CSS talked to him.

That was easy to do, since no one was looking at him with dozens more serious injuries coming and going.

Dozens more serious and an uninjured Master Yoda that Master Che managed to bully into a bed for a burn he’d gotten removing the crystal from the Temple’s reactor. Master Yoda turned the crystal over to Master Che with a wink to Bruck’s security that, “Tell CSS about this, we need not.”

Bruck had two seconds to panic about the attention, but then the Councilors who’d been roaming around like Initiates trying to avoid homework caught wind of Master Yoda and swarmed him for an update.

Master Yoda was terrible at telling stories. And not just because of his speech pattern. He’d been sprinting through the Temple trying to save them all from exploding and he managed to make it sound like a stroll.

“But Master Yoda,” Master Tiin said, “if they crystal had been in there when the system restarted, the building would’ve blown up.”

“No, it wouldn’t have.” Master Che didn’t pause in applying a bandage the old troll wasn’t going to keep on. “That shard has been infused with the love of a thousand Jedi healers. Like a blue kyber cannot create a red saber, a healing crystal cannot be used for harm. But Xanatos wouldn’t have known that. He only knew the physics of crystals, not the spirit of them.”

“How did he get such an idea?” Master Gallia asked.

“It’s a use I never would’ve thought of.” A Master said who didn’t know. Probably one of the Grand Council transplants.

“I have no idea. But we need better security measures.” Master Tiin grumbled

“No one else can get in.” Master Gallia objected.

“What a chance to take given everything that has happened this week.”

“There was a bomb in our power core and no one got the warning but Master Yoda.” The unknown Master sounded like Bant trying to flirt with Obi. Yoda probably wouldn’t catch it either.

“A dud bomb.” Master Tiin grumbled. Bruck was pretty sure he wanted to be anyplace else but here. Bruck wouldn’t have wanted to be on Yoda-watching duty either.

“Received it, I would have not, if running past Tyvokka and I had not been. Warning it was, yes. But also, information. Problem it might have become, it left there”

“At what point will we understand all that Xanatos did, and how?”

Bruck didn’t melt into his chair. Moving like that made you look guilty and guilty got you attention from grownups when you didn’t want it.

“A problem for the investigator, that is. And assign someone Tyvokka will.”

The Masters looked at one another at that. Oh, something had happened while Bruck was in that room getting his skin glued back together. But none of them wanted to tell Yoda. “Master Tyvokka has made it clear he will remain with his padawan throughout this.” Master Gallia said. Of course he would, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t appoint an investigator.

Master Che got called away from their tap dancing to help some Junior Healer log things for the CSS case, but she told Yoda to stay put. He needed another layer of wrapping before he left.

So, of course, the moment Master Che stepped into her office, Yoda hopped off the bed and headed for the door. “Master,” the unknown Master tried to object, but the old troll just waved them off with, “Fine, I am.”

And the rest of the Councilors just let him go. And worse, the rest of the healers too. One of the Senior Padawans tried, but Yoda just patted her and kept walking. “But Master Yoda—”

“If problems, I have, return I will. Need to worry about me, you do not.”

“But everyone does anyway.”

The room paused and panned their eyes over to him.

… fuck. That came out of Bruck’s mouth.

“Something to say, have you?”

You know what? Yes, he fucking did. Bruck was ending this day on a ship back to Telos anyway, why not?

Bruck tossed the shock blanket at one of his security and stood up to his considerable-compared-to-Yoda height. “Yes. Get back in bed.”

“Initiate—”

“No. Obi-Wan is in the other room having… a day and if he comes out here and sees that you’re not in your bed, it’s going to hurt. him.”

Yoda did those droopy ears and sad eyes that made everyone else cave, but not Bruck.

“And you’re not special.” The guard squeaked. Amateurs. “Look at how many people the healers are having to take care of right now. Every moment that they have to spend dealing with you because you think you’re too good to sit still and get treated is a moment they’re not taking care of people who need it. Get your ass back in bed.”

Bruck’s brain caught up with his mouth, and he gulped. That might have been too far.

“Please.”

And Yoda… went.

He went with a grin like he was humoring Bruck, which he didn’t appreciate, but he went.

And it seemed no one was going to call Bruck out on whatever in the worlds had just happened. All the grownups looked amused too, and that was good enough.

But none of that mattered in the face of Master Che standing in her doorway, watching him with crossed arms.

“I pulled open your file when you came in for treatment for your stab wound.” Fuck. “You have a gift for healing, but you gave it up. Why?”

“No, I don’t.” This was his worst nightmare.

“Let us begin as we mean to go on. Don’t lie to me.”

He was going to say he wasn’t. It would be easy. People accused him of lying all the time, but if you stuck to it, eventually they believed you. But Master Che… she was just going to stand there with her arms crossed and stare at him until he caved. “I don’t have the disposition to be a healer.” That’s how they’d said it in his review until he badgered them into saying the truth.

“What does that mean?”

“They told me I was too mean. So, I stopped trying.”

“You did more than stop trying. You purposely failed every class we gave you. That was stupid. No padawan of mine will be stupid.”

“What?” His voice cracked.

Master Che floated across the room the put her hands on his shoulders. “Bruck Chun, I would walk the way with you. I would take you as my padawan learner.

“You can’t want me.”

“Because you’re mean? So am I.”

“No, because… I’m broken.”

“To be alive is to be broken.”

“I didn’t tell them about Xanatos. I could’ve protected everybody, and I didn’t. Healers don’t leave people to get hurt.”

“You think we didn’t know, kid?” One of the guards said.

“What?”

“When Ruzry did the Initiate interviews, she poked you for all the necessary details and you didn’t even realize it. She got what we needed from you.”

“Clearly not.” The unknown Master said, and looked appalled.

“The kid might’ve had information that would’ve gotten us to Xanatos faster, but the Head of the Shadows, the Head of Temple Security, the Head of the Grand Council, and the mind healer over Initiates all decided whatever information we could get by forcing him to confess wasn’t worth giving him the space to fess up instead of being made to fess up. Ruzry said she interrogated him well enough to believe he didn’t know what Xanatos was here for.”

“Did you?” Master Che asked, like it was that easy.

“He said he wanted to mess with Master Jinn.”

“Scared, he was,” Yoda said from atop his bed. “A master of manipulation Xan was, long before a saber he had.”

“We cannot keep him here. Not if he was willing to follow a Dark jedi.”

“He followed Xanatos, and walked away from him.” Master Tiin defended, which was unexpected.

“His renunciation of Xanatos—”

“Shut up. All of you.” Bruck wanted to be able to silence a room like that. “The only opinions that matter are mine and his, and I have made mine clear.”

Yeah, for now. “After it was all done, he asked me to take a package to Master Jinn’s room. He promised he wouldn’t tell anyone about what I did, if took it. So, I did. He said it wouldn’t hurt him, physically. But there are worse things?”

“And yet, I still want you. Any more secrets you think might convince me to get rid of you?”

“I’m mean.”

“That’s not a secret, darling. Anything else?”

“No.” He tried not to sound desperate.

“Then once again: the only opinion that matters is yours.”

Bruck swallowed back tears. He wasn’t crying in front of these people. He also wasn’t talking because the words wouldn’t work, so he nodded his head.

Master Che stepped forward and took his face in her hands. “Let the emotions happen. They are nothing to be ashamed of. Listen to them, let them happen, or they will control you.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the little shard of fire crystal.

“I gave that to him. I snuck in to the Healing Halls and I stole it for him to prove I could be a good padawan.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I’m sorry I did it.”

“Good.” Master Che took Bruck’s hands and peeled them open to set the shard in his palm. “You stole it for him, made the worst decision of your life, and then you tried to save him. That makes you a healer.” She folded her blue hands around his, and he felt the warmth of the crystal pulse against his skin.

@@@@@

With sleep, food, a comm call with Feemor, his best tunics, and wrapped in the safety of Tyvokka’s smallest robe, Obi-Wan was ready to talk with CSS.

Tyvokka wasn’t though.

“I know you don’t like it, Master, but it’s a good plan.” Master Kaiffes, the Order lawyer appointed to Obi-Wan’s case had been trying to convince him for the last twenty minutes. Tera agreed with the plan, which meant Tyvokka was going to cave eventually, but not yet.

“Tell me again.”

“Somehow, it’s not yet a matter of public record that you’re Obi’s master, which means it’s in his best interests that you look like nothing more than a concerned member of the High Council. It would be even better if you could keep your paws off it entirely.”

“Why?”

“Ty.” Tera sighed.

“Tell me again.”

“As hard as we’re trying, we’re not going to be able to keep this out of the news. ‘Murder at the Jedi Temple’ is too sensational. Someone will leak. We’ll pick that fight, but the odds are we’re going to lose it. But what we can win is keeping Obi’s name out of any record so there’s nothing to leak. But keeping Obi’s name out of it only to let your name in ruins the whole thing.”

“Tholme will be in the room with Obi. Ruzry is going to be with Bruck.” Tera repeated.

“Why do we need to keep Vokara out of it?”

“Because if we send one in with their master instead of with security, it will look suspicious. Right now, we look more cooperative.” Kaiffes said.

“We are being cooperative.”

“Yes, but actually cooperative and looking cooperative are different things, as you well know.”

“We can’t just give Obi a fake name?”

“Oh, we’ve done that. In the official documentation they’re J.A. and J.C. – Jon Antilles and Jon Coleman.”

“I’m sure our actual Jon Antilles will be thrilled.”

“That’s what he gets for picking the most common fake name in the galaxy.” Tera grinned.

“On all the supposedly confidential documents we’re sharing with CSS they’re Obidiah and Brubeck. We’ve fudged their ages, their species, and their identifying characteristics.”

“Why not dissimilar fake names?”

“In case the boys make a mistake in the interviews. They’ve been given the speech about false names and they’ve been practicing, but just in case.”

“And CSS can’t be trusted to keep Vokara and I out of it?”

Kaiffes looked at Tera, who had been trapped in this conversation too long to be subtle. “Ty, there are plenty of people out there that hate you.”

“Obi didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No, but there are people trying to make their careers on the murder at the Jedi Temple. Taking you down adds a layer.”

“I thought the investigator was someone you trust?”

“He is, but for things to be clean, he had to tell his boss, and his boss is an asshole. He’s looking for a promotion.”

“I swear to you, we have done everything we can to keep Obi-Wan’s name out of anything official, but Tyvokka, you need to be prepared in case we have to reveal it.”

“Why? We have Bruck’s testimony. We have Tholme’s psychometry report of all the objects involved. Of the floor itself. We have the audio recording from Xanatos’ own bug. We have the internal security cameras being brought up just in the nick of time. We have video from a mouse droid that Trion re-routed in the hope it could do something.

“Obi-Wan was clearly acting in immediate defense of Bruck’s life and his own. The names of minors involved in a death are only provided when they are the victim and their guardians permit it – which any good lawyer could argue that he was and I am, and I do not permit the sharing of his name.”

“Telos can try to argue that Xanatos was the victim.”

“They will not succeed.”

“For diplomacy’s sake–”

The lawyer shouldn’t be making that argument. He hadn’t cared about diplomacy in days. “I am his guardian, and I do not give you permission to share his name. Diplomacy can go fuck itself.”

“Tyvokka—”

“No.”

“Will you break the law? If the Senate demands—”

“Then I will hire a private attorney to stand between my cub and their grasping.”

“It looks like the conversation is going well.” Obi-Wan interrupted from the doorway.

“Obi, don’t interrupt. I want to see Grandmaster rip some arms off.” With Quinlan by his side. (Where he’d been since he found out everything that had happened while his Master had him guarding the commissary. Tyvokka was pretty sure they were still fighting.)

“Quin.” Obi said, perfectly level.

“Sorry, Grandmaster. Obi told me I’m not allowed to make jokes like that for the rest of the month.”

“That must be trying for you.”

“Oh, it is.” Tholme drawled from the door.

Obi grabbed Quinlan’s wrist before he could say anything. So no, still fighting.

“Are you ready to go, Mr. Antilles?”

Quinlan snorted, because it was a little ridiculous.

“I am, Master Tholme.”

“And are you ready, Master?” He asked Tyvokka.

Tyvokka waved Obi-Wan forward. Obi-Wan graced him with a little grin. It had been a good night. Aided by a sleeping suggestion, but a good night. If he didn’t know his cub, he’d think he was handling everything well. But he did know his cub, and he knew Obi-Wan was wearing the smallest of Tyvokka’s robes over his tunics. He brushed his paws over Obi-Wan’s shoulders, straightening out wrinkles that weren’t there, then down his chest to straighten his tabards. Obi-Wan let him fuss.

He looked a little Jedi Master, and Tyvokka couldn’t let that stand.

“Boop.”

Obi-Wan broke into giggles. A strong hug and a tug to Tyvokka’s moustache later, and Obi was on his way out the door.

“They’ll be okay, you know.” Quinlan said, leaning against the door jam.

“Do you know?”

“My mind healer says I’m allowed to have feelings.”

“Would you like to talk about them?”

“No. Obi said I have to get you to the Council meeting on time.”

Tyvokka did not sigh. Obi-Wan hated it and he was working on it. “I am an adult, you know.”

“He said I’m not allowed to let you trick me into snacks.”

“Are you sure?”

Quin furrowed his brow and thought about it, then wilted. “He’ll do the sad face at us.”

Tyvokka sighed. “He will.”

“Off with you then, go be a grownup.”

For all he pretended otherwise, Quinlan was a good child, and walked Tyvokka all the way to the High Council chamber – he lasted until the turbolift before he started venting his spleen about Tholme. The boy would’ve walked Tyvokka all the way to his chair if Master Gallia hadn’t come up the hallway right after them with the look of a woman who somehow knew the contents of Tyvokka’s last meeting. “I’m… gonna prep the cookies.”

Tyvokka barked a laugh and let Quinlan run away. He would’ve liked to as well, but needs must. And honestly, the chitchat was a bit more fun when he could watch Adi vibrate.

Four seconds after the door closed and the Council officially began, “Fuck diplomacy?” In a voice that got increasingly higher, Adi explained the plan to keep Obi and Bruck’s names out of things, and ended on Tyvokka’s temper.

“Tyvokka, you’re a member of the High Council, you can’t—”

Yaddle giggled.

“What’s so funny?”

“He’s not staying.”

“What?”

“Tyvokka has been trying to step down and properly tend to his padawan since he took the boy. He stayed on for some consistency through the Grand Council.”

“Which is not done.”

“Now that we are open to looking, we will keep finding new problems to solve, and those new problems will benefit from his long experience and disposition.” Eeth said.

“Exactly!”

“You and I agree completely, Adi, just not about what the result should be.”

“We both agree that we need him, and we will keep needing him. Thus, he should stay.”

“And what of his padawan?”

“He can do what other council padawans have done before him and specialize in diplomacy. Or go on missions with other masters. It worked for Dooku.”

“I do believe we were trying to sstop imitating Yoda in every respect.” Oppo said with a polite nod to the troll himself. “And whether that method of padawan rearing works is up for debate.”

“Which is why so few councilors take padawans.” Eeth added on.

“So, you think he should go?” Adi objected.

“Yes.”

“You just said we need him!”

“And we will keep needing him. But we are strong and the Force provides. There will never be a good time to step down, so I think he should step down now.”

Yaddle started giggling and couldn’t stop. She couldn’t speak through the giggles, just gestured at Tyvokka, who was slouched in his chair, chin on his paw and watching them argue over what he should do.

“Apologies, Master Tyvokka.” Poor Mace looked so tired. “What will you be doing?”

“I will be stepping down from the High Council.”

“Are you certain?” Adi all but begged.

“Ask me again in ten years when my cub is grown. I will, of course, do my best to stay in comm range, and if they need me, I’ll be back in between missions, like any other Master/Padawan pair. But I’m going with my padawan.”

“Taking him to Kashyyyk will you be, for his first mission?”

“Perhaps. I will have to meditate on it and discuss the matter with Obi’s mind healer. Wookiee rights often involve hunting. I don’t know yet if that would be right or wrong for Obi’s healing.”

“How is he taking it?” Adi asked.

“Both better and worse than I thought he would.”

“How so?”

“He understands the logic of what he did, and that it was the best he could do at the time. With hindsight and more practice, he might do differently in the same situation in the future, but he understands he was doing his best.”

“And the worse?”

“He feels guilty about not feeling guilty.”

“Humans.” Oppo snorted.

“Of course, my padawan and I will take whatever assignments we are given by the High Council, so who knows what’s next.”

“Whatever you and the mind healer decide, we’ll need to keep an eye on the Telos situation.” Adi added.

“Could you explain the Telos situation to me?” One of the new councilors asked. “I’m still struggling to get caught up with all this.”

“One of the CSS investigators told the Senator for Telos about Xanatos under the guise of wanting him to facilitate telling the family. The Senator lost his mind. Apparently, Xanatos was a beloved First Citizen of Telos who did wonderful things for the people, with money he made as the head of Offworld from strip mining the natural resources of other planets with living beings.” Eeth explained.

“According to our investigation into how he found out about the Vertex, Xanatos was in massive, unbelievable debt.” Ki-Adi added.

“If he’d lived, he probably would’ve mined Telos next. Such a pity he died before they could hate him.”

“Telos is not a major player in galactic politics by any means, but they are significant enough. The Telosian Senator is causing a ruckus. We’re not going to be able to put him off for much longer.” Adi warned.

The official line was that Xanatos du Crion had used his intimate knowledge of their systems to sneak in and turn off the Temple’s power in an effort to steal something. Along the way, he emotionally manipulated a Senior Initiate and then tried to kill him. The boy’s friend interfered.

“The Senator doesn’t believe that because apparently Xanatos is known for his battle prowess and they can’t fathom a boy defeating him. ‘Defeat’ probably isn’t the right word. But it’s the one he’s chosen.”

“We’re trying to keep their names off the record, and keep the Telosian Senator from meeting them.” Tyvokka explained to their new comrade.

“Because he’ll track them down?”

“Because there’s a good chance he’ll take a look at Bruck and recognize him.”

Adi had the details. “Bruck’s father is the Treasurer of Telos and Bruck is on the list of initiates whose prime option is to go home if they are not chosen to be a Jedi. A few months ago, we likely would’ve put him on a ship back to Telos without even asking if he wanted it.”

“A few months ago, he would’ve wanted to go rather than enter the corps.”

“Most of them would.”

“If they get Bruck’s name, that gives them an age range for who the other Initiate was. And then it’s just a matter of searching.”

“As vague as we can keep this, we will. If they send someone to start demanding information, it might be in Obi-Wan’s best interests to be on a mission when their representative is on Coruscant.” Yaddle said to him. “I will also let you know if our legal division decides that it’s best for you to retain independent counsel.”

And that like, it was done.

Tyvokka gave them a nod and stood from his seat with no regret.

He shifted to the middle of the circle, a place he hadn’t been in years.

“We thank you for your years of service, Master Tyvokka.” Yaddle said. “And we look forward to when you join us again. I assume you intend to step down as the Master of Shadows?”

“I do.”

“Please let us know when you are ready to begin that transition and what role we might play in it. Further, let your regent know that we have plans to upgrade our security systems. That, of course, will be the jurisdiction of temple security and under the auspices of Master Drallig, but advice from your department would be wonderful.”

“I will let them know, Grandmaster Yaddle.”

“And of course, any advice you would like to give on the subject, we would greatly appreciate.”

Epilogue

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

Trion was getting pretty good at sarcasm, because one of his ceiling arms gestured as it ran the track across the room, encompassing the wall of processor behind Trion’s columnar body.

“I know, but I was thinking: it would be like how you’re always in here, but your screens are out there. One of your screens could come on the mission with us.”

Trion didn’t bother pausing, He also didn’t turn the big photoreceptor on him, so Obi-Wan knew he wasn’t getting the droid’s full attention. Which Obi-Wan would’ve felt worse about if he didn’t know he was being crazy.

HIs favorite floating screen nudged him in the shoulder. <<Are you stalling?>>

Heat bloomed in Obi-Wan’s cheeks.

<<You have wanted to leave the Temple on a mission for months.>>

“I know it’s crazy.”

<<Not crazy.>> The screen nudged him in the shoulder. <<Unpredictable.>>

If anyone could empathize with the stress of unknown variables, it was Trion. “I’m just… I’m worried. What if… everything goes wrong?” Words weren’t enough for the tangled, constant stress he was feeling. He couldn’t even explain what it was he was worried about because common sense and Trion’s statistics said they were going to go on the trip, study some ruins, and come home without a problem. And if there was a problem, Obi-Wan had Tyvokka, so everything would come out all right.

But he still… it felt like Obi-Wan was putting off a homework assignment that he knew he needed to do, and he knew what to do, he just hadn’t. Where every moment from now until the assignment was turned in, he just had this buzz in the back of his head demanding to know when he was going to work on it? How was he going to get it done? He’d be better off working on it right now!

But not about an assignment. And… not about leaving, or about coming home. It was like his brain had turned on the buzz and didn’t know how to turn it back off again.

The screen nudged him again and brought up a security camera recording of Feemor. “What if everything goes right?”

Obi-Wan should probably be more uncomfortable with Trion recording his meetings with a mind healer, but it was Trion. “I am trying.”

And now a recording of Brair and Obi, eating dinner together over a crate. Obi-Wan knew this night, and said in time with little video Brair, “Where does fear lead?”

Right now? Fear would lead to staying in the Temple until he made the buzzing go away — If he ever made the buzzing go away, which was starting to worry him. But going on the mission… well, going on the mission meant visiting Ossus, the Great Library of the old Jedi Order. And really? What was a little buzzing compared to that?

“Thanks Trion.”

He let out a great, deep beep in acknowledgement, but didn’t look up from his work.

“You still sure you don’t want to come?”

<<I am content with my expanded work.>>

Obi grinned. He ducked around the counter – avoiding darting mouse droids – and patted Trion on his domed head. That got all seven eyes on him. “I’m happy for you, buddy.”

Trion just blinked that one photoreceptor, and Obi-Wan darted out of the room with a cackle.

Knight Daroon and Master Drallig were making grand plans to change the whole security system in the wake of… all that. And Trion had done such a great job that he’d been called on consult. There were a whole new bunch of people coming to Brair’s hangar for their meetings with Trion, and Brair had been complaining that he had to keep talking to people. (Ruzry had commandeered the comm array to Melida/Daan just to make Brair repeat that to Feemor. He said it was the hardest he’d laughed in weeks. And then they’d all gone squishy-eyed, and Obi-Wan fled the room.)

“Ah! Here’s the other one!” Brair called. “You ready to head out?”

Obi-Wan had been roaming around Brair’s hangar while Tyvokka finished one last meeting before he could go off world. And now there his Master was, in the middle of Brair’s hangar, duffle at his feet and lighter than Obi had ever seen him.

“Everything good?” Obi tried to ask like he wasn’t nervous that something had popped up in the last hour that would keep his master on planet.

Tyvokka took a knee to look Obi-Wan in the eye, and make it easier for Obi to see his Master’s soft smile, like he got it, and he didn’t mind. “Everything’s good.”

“All right you two, we have presents.” Ruzry declared.

“Presents?”

“Baby’s first mission deserves presents.”

“Not a baby.”

“It’s your first mission. You’re a baby.” Ruzry insisted.

“Don’t fight her on it, Obes.” Quin interrupted. “Or she’ll call you Baby-Wan for the next year.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“I don’t need experience to make an educated guess.” He said primly. Which meant yes.

Ruzry, Quinlan, and Master Tholme had all come to Brair’s hangar to see them off properly. The last two days had been a mess of hugs and practical advice from everyone else, from the Creche to the Shadows. Which made Obi-Wan feel both better and worse that everyone else was acting like they hadn’t expected Obi and Tyvokka to ever really leave either.

MO sizzle-squeaked something that wasn’t actually words. He zipped into the middle of their little group and stretched up as tall as he could, which meant a few extra centimeters in his neck and in the wheel as he lifted up like tip-toes. Then MO squished down, boxy body all the way to the floor, neck to normal. He popped up like a pit droid then tilted back and gestured down with his handlebar hands to show off his brand new wheel.

“MO.” Obi dropped to the ground to get a better look. “You got treds!”

<<I did.>>

“How did you—where did you even put them?”

<<Same wheel. New shape.>>

“This is the secret project you’ve been working on.”

“Yup.” Brair said. “MO got a lot more enthusiastic about helping after you told him he got to go on missions with you.”

MO tried to glare at Brair for giving away his secrets, but the little droid was too pleased with himself to actually be mad.

“Now, from Tholme and I.” Quinlan stepped forward from where he’d been leaning against Master Tholme. Quin held up his empty hands, just long enough that Obi thought the gift was going to be a hug. Then with a dramatic flick of his wrists like he was throwing daggers, two sheaths of Tyvokka’s favorite cookies came out of his sleeves. “No sharing, no bartering, no begging. You’re going to a planet without a grocery store and these are only to be eaten by the two of you, and only for fun.”

“Very high bar.”

Quin tossed the cookies over Obi’s shoulders at Tyvokka and dragged Obi into a hug. “Good mission, Obi.”

“Good mission, Quin.” He was going to have to put Quin on the list of best huggers.

Ruzry was more polite than Quin, so she waited until their hug ended before she stepped forward with a disposable padd and little hard copy traveling ID. Obi flipped open the cover and there was his official picture next to a name that wasn’t his. “What’s this?”

“Baby’s first fake ID.”

“What?” Obi squeaked.

“You never know when you’re going to need to be someone who isn’t you. And the best way to create a false identity isn’t just on the computer, it’s to occupy them for a time. If anyone outside the Temple asks, Obi-Wan Kenobi is here. While this guy,” she tapped the passport, “is on Ossus. You and Tyvokka will have to talk about what kind of false identities you want, how much you want under Obi’s name, and so forth. But it’s always good to have at least one.”

Master Tyvokka stepped up behind Obi with his paws on Obi’s shoulders. Obi-Wan tilted his head back. “Do you have a fake ID?”

“Plenty.”

“But…”

“Wookiee are rare, but not that rare.”

“Do you have to dye your fur?”

“Brown is a fairly ambiguous color.”

Obi laughed. “Thank you, Ruzry.”

“It’s from the lot of us.” Ruzry said like it wasn’t a big deal.

Things with Tyvokka’s Shadows had been… tense since everything happened. Partly because of what happened, and partly because of Tyvokka stepping down. (Quin said there was more to it than that, but even he wasn’t in the know about inter-Shadow politics.) Things had gotten both better and worse after the entire Shadow division locked themselves in the Temple’s basement for two days after CSS got done with Obi and came out with a system for how they’d run things while Master Tyvokka was off world. Tyvokka said the boil had been lanced and they’d be fine in his absence. Which Obi had only mostly believed.

Obi-Wan stroked his thumb over the picture of other-him. Short hair, happy smile, holo taken a day the day after Tyvokka took him as a padawan. “Then tell them all ‘thank you,’ for me.”

“I will. The padd is basic biographical information for this identity. Learn that, and let us know what you add.”

Obi assumed the fake name and— “Alderaan? I’m from Alderaan?”

Master Tyvokka stilled behind him, and Obi held up the ID so he could get a better look.

“Cub Vynnirron. Cub? Really?”

“Hey,” Quin objected. “I did so much research into Alderaani naming practices to make sure that was a real and semi-common name.”

“Semi-common?”

“A name no one has ever heard of before raises just as many suspicions as a name like ‘Jon Antilles.’” Tholme explained, Quin back against him and Tholme’s chin propped on his head.

Obi took a cue from Quin and leaned against his Master’s side. Tyvokka put an arm around him and with a weighty sigh, handed the passport back. Obi could wait. If Master Tyvokka really didn’t want to talk about it, he’d move the conversation along. “Vynnirron was my Master’s surname.”

Obi straightened. “I though Grandmaster Idra didn’t have one?”

“When Alderanni descend from one of Alderaan’s Great Houses, it is their custom to give up their surname. But Republic paperwork won’t let you be both Alderanni and leave the surname blank. So, Houseless Jedi have made habit of adopting the name Vynnirron.”

“Why?”

“The House died in Alderaan’s Civil War. One of the first. It was said to be targeted specifically because they had Jedi.”

Obi traced the lines of a name that wasn’t really his, but was in a way that maybe mattered more than Kenobi. Obi-Wan had done the required Senior Initiate research project on his home world. He knew that Kenobi was plenty common in certain corners of the Outer Rim. In the chunk of space around his homeworld he was practically an Antilles.

But Vynnirron. That was his Grandmaster’s name. The name she’d chosen all for herself when she chose the Order. And Obi would bet two sheaths of cookies that there were plenty of documents where Vynnirron was Tyvokka’s surname as well. It was his Master’s name, and his Grandmaster’s before him. And something about that made the buzzing stop.

Obi-Wan tilted his head back and looked up at Tyvokka. “I like having our name.”

“I like it too, Cub.”

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