They ate in silence with Qui-Gon contemplating how best to find out why the boy had run away. When they were finished he tried to approach the matter a bit differently than before.

"Obi-Wan, did you know that it was me who brought you to the Temple?"

The Padawan looked at him in surprise. He clearly hadn't known. Qui-Gon smiled gently at him and continued. "I was on a routine mission when I found you. Everyone at the Temple was cooing over you when we got back, marvelling at the small boy with the beautiful eyes."

Qui-Gon laughed lightly and Obi-Wan smiled a bit. It occurred to the Master that this was the first time since the mission had started that he had seen this expression on the boy's face. Feeling that it was the right time, he changed the course of the conversation.

"You know, Master Calan was also on that mission."

The smile vanished instantly and Obi-Wan looked at the ground once again.

"You know, sometimes I wonder where the enthusiastic boy from seven years ago went to." Qui-Gon Jinn said with an amused grin on his face.

His Padawan shot him a glare. "He vanished shortly after you started with your early-morning-what-a-great-day-wake-up-call."

“Who are you?” Mace demanded viciously, raw anger almost totally uncontrolled.

Qui-Gon’s mind raced trying to discern the seething hatred he felt directed at him. What could possibly have happen to create such a transformation in the man advancing on him. Against better judgment, he extended his arms out stating, “Qui-Gon Jinn” in his most non-threatening tone.

“I should kill you for this vile masquerade.” Mace replied cold-bloodedly as he closed on the intruder.

“I watched Qui-Gon Jinn struck down over ten years ago.” With that, Mace raised his own weapon and pulled the trigger.

"Does the Council believe these rumors of a time machine?" the young Jedi asked, busying himself with the ship's controls.

"That's why we were sent here, to discover their validity." Qui-Gon answered, gazing out the front view port.

A small dot in space loomed directly ahead of them, growing larger with each passing minute.

“Do ‘you’ believe it possible?” Obi-Wan inquired, sparing a glance behind him.

"There have been beings technologically advance for centuries. Throughout that time there have been individuals who've spent their lives in the creation of such a device." Qui-Gon intoned ominously.

You didn't answer my question. Obi-Wan sent, turning his attention back to the control console.

"What I believe is immaterial. If such a thing exists it could be infinitely more dangerous than any weapon ever built. It could completely change the face of the galaxy as we know it."

"He has turned, my master," Vader said to Emperor Palpetine. He knelt on a platform, staring at a large hologram of the Emperor.

"Yes, I have felt a strong surge in the Force. You have done well, Lord Vader. You must continue his training, and make sure that he never goes back to the Light ever again."

"I will, Master. He will be with us forever."

"Good. Now get back to his training." Vader bowed his head, and got up as the hologram faded.

Vader walked up to his son, who was staring ut of the bridge of the Executor. "My son, we must get back to our training."

"Do you believe in fate, father?" Luke asked.

"Of coarse," he replied.

"What do you believe my fate to be?"

"You fate is to rule the galaxy with me ."

"If it is just me and you, where does Palpetine come into all of this?"

Vader sighed. He didn't want to tell him of his plans, not yet. "You will learn this in time, my son, but for now, we must continue your training."

"Okay." Together, they walked off of the bridge and headed into the training room.

"Han is going to kill you," Leia screamed at Lando, each ducking behind objects--objects that have fallen from something, broken from something, or just something tipped over. There were even chunks missing from the Falcon's wall.

"I hadn't planned on this," Lando replied. Soon after he stood, ran backwards trying to find a safer haven, firing all the while.

Leia, did the same, but stumbled. She fell to the floor, unconcious. As she laid there, she had a dream, a vision. It was Luke, battling a dark figure. Darth Vader. But Luke wasn't the same, he seemed different, dark. His eyes were filled with rage, filled with despair. They stopped, and began talking. She couldn't hear the words, but could somehow tell that they were talking, not as enemies, but as...friends...allies.

Swallowing his trepidation, Obi-Wan spoke gently but firmly. “I know you miss them,” he began. Anakin glanced up at him. “But a Jedi must never put himself before those he serves. He must be willing to forfeit his desires for the sake of aiding others.”

“I do want to help people,” Anakin insisted, “but how can I be a good Jedi if I’m always sad?”

“All pain passes in time, padawan,” Obi-Wan assured him.

The boy looked down. “I guess,” he mumbled, clearly trying not to be impolite but still coming across as grumbling.

Obi-Wan sighed inwardly. Perhaps this was simply not the best time to help Anakin straighten out his views, seeing as they were both tired and most likely edgy. But he could also not help wondering that if it weren’t now, then when would be the time? Furthermore, if his words were not getting through, how was he going to reach the boy?

“Well, that’s too bad. Your cheer and endless conversation will be missed,” the young man said with teasing sarcasm.

It was a joke, but Obi-Wan knew it was true. He wasn’t exactly the most talkative or light-hearted person to have around. Qui-Gon had always worried about him being too serious all the time. It would turn him prematurely grey, he’d said. Well it was a good thing now that he was more mature than most of the Jedi his age. It would take someone with a great understanding of the gravity of such a duty to train Anakin. It was a serious task and Obi-Wan took it very seriously.

“There you go brooding again,” Brandeis said, breaking into Obi-Wan’s thoughts.

The young Master shot his friend a glance. “What you call brooding, I call contemplation. I’ve always failed to see the flaw in wanting to think,” Obi-Wan rejoined.

Slowly, she dragged her mind out of the darkness, unwilling to face the uncaring universe, but coaxed by the knowledge that she was no longer alone amid the shadows of her cell, spurred into awareness by the subtle, pressing presence of the man who had come to mock her.

More than a generation after her mile-long keel had tasted hard vacuum for the first time, the Imperial Star Destroyer remained instantly recognizable - an icon of power. Even minding her own business in a parking orbit around a lifeless world like Avirandel, the mere sight of her would be enough to send the crews of most ships - military and civilian alike - scrambling to man the guns, raise the deflectors, and find the nearest exit vector from the system.

He smiled, waited for her to try again, and wondered how she saw him. A tall young man, his homespun robes and relaxed posture softening the blunt curves and hard edges of his fleet commander's throne. Long-legged, level-eyed, his fingers steepled easily in front of him.

A Jedi Master.

Jacen crouched beside them in the mud, awkward and angular, as though unable to intrude in the grief-shaped geometry of the moment.

"But anyway... if you use the Force, then what you call... what would you call it? Anyway, when you say someone... someone like a Jedi... what you can do - isn't that just a different internal balance, weighted towards particular things? Instinct, energy, insight - which can be developed further in certain circumstances. There's no absolute difference that makes someone a Jedi or not a Jedi... just a difference of degree - in a lot of different areas. That contrast is useful, but it's really an artificial distinction - a simplification of a messy sprawl of... stuff."

"Um, maybe."

"Maybe that's an overstatement in itself, but it's the way I'm used to thinking about it. It doesn't make one man better or worse than another, more right or more wrong... it's different from what makes a great poet, or a skilled smith, or a canny moneylender, or what makes a man become a vagabond... none of which is to say that any of those things are necessarily incompatible with it, or inferior to it... but I guess it's what makes me a Knight of the Sword, rather than... than someone else, if you're following me."

Jaina huffed. In her attempt to not laugh at the serious diplomatic flub on their parts, she found an impish giggle welling up. The harder she fought it the more the laugh couldn’t be denied. She unsuccessfully stifled a snort. When Tyria lost control first with a giggle, the pair fell from Jedi seriousness to teenage hilarity in a matter of a second.

“I do.” Jacen nodded decisively. “Yes, I do. Could be we’re worrying about all this for nothing. Maybe when she gets to Vikova and sees Jag again, that will be all it takes for Jaina to see how she’s gone wrong.”

Luke stood too, and held out his hands. “I think, Jacen, that this is one of those times when we can’t rely on the Force to be with us. I think we just need a little Solo luck.”

Mara’s hands left her hips, one going to her chest, the other wrapping her waist. It was heart-wrenching to watch a mother’s love wrestle with the disciplinarian inside. In the end, Mara’s rational self won out. “Don’t do it again, young man.”

“But Snuggles –”

“No.” Mara held up a finger. “Next time ask for Mama’s help before you go rooting around in the flowers.”

Ben’s head drooped in acceptance. “Kay.”

Mara chucked her son on the cheek. “Go put away Snuggles and get cleaned up.”

The boy nodded before shuffling from the room. He barely made it a few steps down the hall, though, when Luke’s voice greeted his son. “Hey kiddo. What happened to you? You’re a mess!”

Ben’s response was muffled.

“I bet she was,” Luke’s disembodied voice said. “Go do what you were told and hurry back. Breakfast is almost ready.”

“I would have thought, Jag,” she replied, frowning, “that if you were going to decline my invitation, someone of your intelligence and strategic cunning could at least invent a more plausible excuse than this.”

“What?”

“Do not take me for a fool, Jag. We have seen it all on the Holonet.” All at once Iliana seemed to tower over him. “The Chiss prince and the Alliance princess. Such excellent publicity. Such great symbols of newfound ties.”

“It’s not –”

“Honor and duty, Jag. The Chiss are your people as surely as the Vikovans are mine. Your commitment to them is complete.”

“Yes, but –”

“You would do anything to further their interests.” Her stare seemed to bore straight into his soul. “Including –”

Before she could say more the loud beeping of Jag’s comlink intruded.

Of all the problems Joran had with the Jedi, Qui-Gon was never one of them. He and his former Padawan may have disagreed about a few issues, but Qui-Gon had always been loyal to him and it had been a pleasure training such a talented student. If he had one regret, it just might be the loss of his relationship with Qui-Gon. He had enjoyed the younger one's company and youthful attitude, happy to see a Jedi with some defiance, even if it did challenge his own ideas perhaps a little too often.

[He] would remain hidden, a shadow in the Force's light, until the bright soul he had once known had gone from the space vessel. Then the darkness could emerge, and the once-loved apprentice would never know he had been so close.

What kind of creature functioned in that bland, disgusting state? What sort of demon would reduce a quick-witted, intelligent, compassionate woman to a mound of ash and smoke? And then have the audacity to stay in place, beside the man who had adored-and lost-her?

The Temple was buried in sorrow. Masters, Knights, Padawans and crechelings shuffled from the main building to the pyre, arms entwined, expressions severe.

And Bant. She'd been there, too, off in a corner, her braid clutched in quivering fingers. The flames had reflected in her wide, welling eyes. The fire…it was everywhere.

Later, when he tried to sleep, huddled in his bed, it sizzled and licked around him, the stench clogging his senses and filling his mind.

It would never leave him. It would never forget what he'd done.

Qui-Gon stroked the cropped spikes of hair, "And I choose you now, Obi-Wan. I choose you over complete desolation and the futility of a lonely life. I choose you because I know you still exist, beneath the false guilt." He reached out and, with acute tenderness, embraced his student. "I can't let you leave. I still believe we can find you, Obi-Wan."

Obi-Wan's head was tucked under his Master's chin, and for the first time in a decade, he felt…but then it vanished, under the mounds of ash. As he knew it would.

He leaned against Qui-Gon, and listened to his heartbeat, gradually bringing his arms around the man's waist.

Qui-Gon dissolved in his grateful weeping, so he didn't hear the tiny little murmur, stolen on the wind.

"I can't."

“I am Force-sensitive as well but not nearly as powerful as Luke is.”

I ground up a root that grows in our backyard that makes you itch and put it in his underwear drawer. Mom came into my room and I thought I was a goner, but as soon as she closed the door she started laughing. Dad was the one that was angry. Apparently it is not nice to make a guy’s nether regions itch.

“Losing someone you love leaves a scar on the heart that never quite heals.”

“What’s to tell?,” the Master asked conversationally. “My Padawan, a boy I first met when he was merely a child, decided that my teachings and my guidance weren’t enough for him. He decided that his new Master, a Sith no less, was more qualified to be his teacher, his mentor,” he said as if he were giving a simple mission report. “Several hours ago, I confronted my former Padawan Learner and we fought. Now he’s dead, and I’m alive and I can’t change that and neither can you, or Yoda, or anyone else!,” he yelled, his emotions finally boiling over. Tears were raining down his tanned cheeks as he dropped his head into his hands and sobbed for his lost student, a boy he’d raised and loved as his own son.

Goodbye peace and prosperity and stability. A fine performance, but the final act collapsed into chaos.

My family has been reduced from a loving husband and four boisterous children to just Aliya and me.

We have spent the past three years in countless refugee settlements. They’ve all blurred into one in my memory, crowded and unsanitary and permeated by a fear so intense that it seems a physical force. Full of people who have lost all hope of survival.

I refuse to relinquish that optimism. I want my youngest daughter to live, to retain the innocence I lost when the Vong first arrived insystem. I want her to grow up thinking that her sweet dreams of a quiet home and a peaceful life can become reality. I want her to be as naïve and sheltered and misinformed as I once was.

Not that she would ever be aware of it.

I used to be an idealist, honestly believing that politicians cared about protecting the people they represented. That my little domestic fantasies would be safe from outside threats.

“—pending your transfer to a designated containment site—”

Apparently, whitewashed fences don’t stop foreign invaders.

Lemme tell you about your aunt, kid. Whadd’ya want to know? How she looked? How she lived? How she died? What?

He grinned and asked me to tell me how she lived. He told me that he’d seen a holo in his parent’s room, that he knew how she looked. He didn’t need to see her, he already did.

Maybe he didn’t need to see her, but I sure did.

I thought for a sec, then told him she was a princess.

He interrupted me and told me he knew that, too, and didn’t need to hear that. Asked me if I knew anything else besides what his mom and dad told him.

Kid, I could write a book.

"Well now, what shall I do with you three miscreants?"

"Uh... let us go?" It was the tallest of the three Initiates who answered, a gangling, dark-skinned pre-teen with a shock of black curls and very white teeth. The knight's attention focused on him.

"Let you go?" he enquired, with as much astonishment as if someone had just suggested spit-roasting an entire Bantha. "Whyever should I do that?"

"'Cause you're a nice person and you like a good laugh?" the tallest Initiate hazarded.

"I am not a nice person and I had my sense of humour surgically removed in early childhood." The blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You."

The tallest initiate put on his best 'who, me?' expression.

"You were the one who painted my refectory chair with adhesive last week."

The tallest Initiate gave a boneless shrug. "What's the problem? You didn't sit in it."

"I do not appreciate practical jokes."

"Not even the good ones?"

It didn’t register with the initiate. He was too busy considering might-have-beens. If he hadn’t gotten his friends involved then maybe Dan wouldn’t be in the infirmary now. If they’d thought about things instead of just walking through a ‘keep out’ sign then Dan wouldn’t be hurt either. He’d been stupid, and Dan was hurt because of it.

Another hot drink was pressed into Thom’s hands. He sipped at it once or twice, but it was soon forgotten. The initiate’s thoughts were running in circles, like a wamprat in a cage. Consequences. He’d never once thought about the consequences of what he was doing, not really, and now his friend was hurt and maybe he’d even helped to stop someone ever becoming a Jedi.

An-Paj left the office, but Thom barely noticed. A familiar voice in the distance touched the edges of his consciousness, but he was too pre-occupied to make the connection. A pair of boots made their way into his field of view. After several long moments, their presence registered on the initiate. He blinked them into focus, then looked up. An-Paj’s earlier remark finally filtered through to him, but he didn’t feel as if he’d won anything. He simply felt a rush of immense relief. His knight would know what to do to make everything turn out alright.

Barin opened his mouth to say something, but before he could speak a distressed initiate barrelled into his chest and clung to him more tightly than a Mynock on a power-cable, sobbing and babbling incoherently by turns. The knight stood there, unmoving, glancing at An-Paj in astonishment. It was the first time the Healer had ever seen him utterly speechless.

I enter your bedroom, which now belongs to me. I will allow Anakin to take the one I have lived in for so many years. Memories flood my mind, one after the other. Memories of our life together. When I was hurt, you were there to comfort me. When I was scared, you where there to hold me. When I needed to cry, you offered your shoulder. You laughed with me, yet you were strict about my training. Everything I learned, I learned from you. Everything that I am, I owe to you.

I listen to the silence and wonder how I function with its monotonous sound. There is nothing there, yet there is. When you died, part of my own self did as well.

Can you get this gunship at least partially functional?"

Cairn looked at her face. The Rebel was serious. Cairn tested his bonds again. No dice. He was going to have to give her some sort of answer. Sitting on the deck with his hands bound looking up at her, he struggled to maintain some semblance of control in his dim situation.

"I can. I was on my way to do just that. The question is…why would I want to now?"

He watched her head shake. She flexed her free hand. Cairn glanced at her palm, at the round scars dotting them. She was a StimTar addict. Cairn smiled. Maybe that would be his ace in the hole. He had seen the junkheads back on Ord Veica walk around in Temple City hopped up on the black liquid. Most of them lost use of their hands after a few years. The Rebel shifted, closing her fingers.

"Because it beats freezing to death with a Rebel, doesn’t it?"

"Not necessarily. What happens when I get the engines started? Let’s just say, purely for arguments sake, that I am successful. What then? You drag me in to be interrogated by the high and mighty Rebel Alliance? C’mon lady, what kind of a DooPaa do you think I am? At least if I froze to death I could do it in peace."

Cairn was lying through his teeth. The last thing he wanted to do was freeze to death. He wanted to get the gunship functional, wanted to get back to the Fear…wanted to do his job, retire, and die in a warm bed. Far from here. In all of his Academy training, there had not been a course titled ‘What to do when you are stuck on a drifting hulk with a Rebel 101.'

“Colonel Klivian, sir, did you sign those forms?”

“What? You only gave me them a minute ago!”

“No, sir, the other ones – about my transfer.”

“Oh, those ones. I lost those.”

“What?! … Sir.”

“Kidding. I’ll get them to you in a couple hours, when I find them.”

“It takes you two hours to sign forms?!”

“Sure. Dismissed, Lieutenant.”

Most people would say there was nothing good about war, especially this one. People dying: not good. Worlds being destroyed: not good. Aliens from another galaxy, hell bent on destruction and domination: not good.

A lot of people said there was never anything good about any war – what did it achieve if not more pain for all concerned. Hobbie figured those people hadn’t fought in the Rebellion – or the Empire, come to that. Sure, war had more than its fair share of bad points, but how the hell else did these people expect their freedom?