FicWad

Beings of the Force should not gloat or indulge in wild acts of celebration, but it is difficult, indeed, to keep from doing a very undignified (but oh, so satisfying!) dance of triumphant glee around the bridge of D-1 as both Mitth’raw’nuruodo and Chas Uliar are given heroes welcomes aboard /Outbound Flight/. Qui-Gon Jinn, being Qui-Gon, of course merely stands back with his arms crossed within his sleeves and smiles a small and inscrutably smug smile, gazing fondly upon the two Chiss brothers and Lorana Jinzler as well as the remarkable Jorj Car’das and the startlingly useful and intelligent and caring (once that outer veneer of cold, angry young cynicism has all been stripped away) Chas Uliar. And the sight of Qui-Gon’s classic wise and mysterious Jedi Master pose (and it is little more than a pose. Revan can feel his student’s giddiness and relief and joyous anticipation of whatever might come next, bubbling in his awareness and in the Force like the froth of an agitated carbonated drink) is the very last straw. Revan, with an uncaring whoop of glee, throws his arms wide, grabs the Force ghost, and spins him about like a top, dancing him around the bridge and in a spiral that ends in a closed loop around those five critically important beings, circling them in a wildly exultant and protective gesture.

“Master Revan!” Qui-Gon gasps, shocked enough to speak out loud instead of projecting his thoughts, despite being clearly torn between being affronted at being manhandled and being worried over the amount of noise and sheer spectacle they’ve just made (even though none of the other beings physically present could have possibly seen or heard them).

“Stars and galaxies, Qui-Gon! Give it a rest! You know that they can’t see us, any more than any of them can hear us. For such a troublesomely rebellious figure in life, you are often positively timid now that you’ve neither breath nor body to risk losing, child,” Revan sighs in exasperation. “We’ve managed to do something truly extraordinary, here. You should be glad of that and proud for the part you’ve played in brining this about, not skulking about silently in the background as though you’ve reason to be ashamed of yourself. Put aside your weighty and ultimately useless burden of self-centered guilt, for once, and celebrate with me! Seek growth, not punishment or suffering, and let the Force know your joy for the new balance you have helped to strike here! The winds of time are in gale-force, blowing away the myriad dark futures that the Sith Master has desired and been busily plotting out for these people and this area of space and therefore allowing the possible pathways of probable futures that the Force itself has desired to come about to reestablish themselves. These young one will be able to grow, now, within the light of the Force and their love and loyalty for one another. Sidious will never find a foothold within Mitth’raw’nuruodo’s soul now that would allow him to trick the Commander into bartering first his honor and then his soul and finally his life for nothing more than the sake of idea of safety that ultimately would never come about, no matter how hard or how cleverly he might have striven for it. And Lorana Jinzler and Syndic Mitth’ras’safis will live and learn and grow together, in the Light of the Force, as will the others of /Outbound Flight /and Jorj Car’das as well – another one who now will never know the insidious touch of the corrosive taint of that venomous Dark Lord of the Sith. Be happy, Qui-Gon! Please. Stop trying so hard and simply trust/, simply/ be/, for a time, in and within the Force. For once, just trust in the Force and trust in another’s wisdom enough to follow a few simple directions. Guilt and forgiveness are not things of the Force, young one. If they were, I should have never helped you to survive your death, for I would have held you to account for the wrongs you have done to others and allowed you to pass into death and the Force as punishment for your crimes. But the Force is not about vengeance or revenge. The Force is Light and so it embraces life and growth and love, youngling. Grow from this. Put aside your burden of pride. Learn to live in the Light of the Force. And for stars’ sake, Qui-Gon, learn how to /laugh again! We’ve done something wholly good and right here! When the Force itself is awash with joy, it’s only right for us to celebrate, ourselves, over what we’ve helped to accomplish and what these young ones will be able to do and become, now, that they never could have hoped to, before.”

“I am not unaware of what we have accomplished here, Master,” is Qui-Gon’s acidic response. Drawing a little further back from Revan (out of easy reach), he then twitches his shoulders so that his robes will once again hang straight and adds, sarcastically, /“We’ve managed to do far more good here, by working together, than you could have done on your own. You were ready to sacrifice the whole of /Outbound Flight for Mitth’raw’nuruodo’s sake alone.”

“I am not the only one who has been tempted towards an unnecessary sacrifice, Qui-Gon. And unlike me, you persist in being willing to sacrifice much – beginning with your own continued existence and apparently not even ending with the greater good of the galaxy as a whole – that you need not and should not throw away, thus,” Revan counters sharply. /“How often must I warn you of the time you are wasting and the energy you are losing by remaining as you are, rather than moving on to the next phase of being, before you will heed me? How many times must I tell you that your actions and your behavior, whenever you choose to willfully ignore both my advice and the will of the Force itself by doing such foolishly selfish things as aiding Sidious in seeing to it that Obi-Wan and Anakin would be off of /Outbound Flight before it passed into the Unknown Regions, would accomplish little but to alienate the ones you claim to care about most, did they but know of these things, before you will hear and believe me? I know of nothing else to do or say that I haven’t already tried that will finally make you listen to me. But as I believe in the Force and the inexorable triumph of its Light, despite the darkness and evil so pervasively spread by beings such as Sidious, I am an eternal optimist. So I will tell you this once more: you will do those boys of your no good indeed if you continue on this way. And that is an unalterable fact, Qui-Gon Jinn.”

“That seems a trifle overly dramatic, Master.”

“It is not, Qui-Gon. It is only the truth. Listen to me! Life is electrical, is power, is light. Life is light and light is timeless because the waveforms of light, the complex and precise and unique photonic shapes, never die. The living body, which generates such waveforms in the form of the electrical patterns of thoughts and feelings, can die. But the waveforms of consciousness will still be there and will always remain, unless and until their eternally outward streaming light is absorbed within a larger field of energy. The vast majority of beings are absorbed, thus, upon the deaths of their bodies into the vast and expanding energy field that is the Force. This does not mean that they cease to exist – not precisely, though it may certainly seem that way, from a more physically literal perspective – but they do, thus, lose their individuation, becoming a part of the larger pattern, the greater whole, that is the vast and expanding energy field of the Force, utterly assimilated into its body as essential component parts, rather like sources of fuel being both consumed by and transformed into fire. For some of us, though, who realize that mind is relationship, soul is pattern, and spirit is the combination of the two, the death of the body or the absence of flesh is only the beginning. For just as life is light and light is ageless, its photonic patterns forever and endlessly repeating themselves, evolving slowly as other forms interact or coincide with those reverberating echoes, life is spirit and each individual and unique spirit can deliberately choose to exist wholly as light, as the Light that is the Force, with the thoughts of mind preserved in relationship to the power of the Force and the soul a distinct pattern forever unspooling within the vastness of that energy field, both a part of it and yet distinct and unique in its own right. This is what a Force spirit is. This is what I am. And it is most assuredly not what you are, Qui-Gon Jinn. You are little more of a pale ghost of what you were and of what you could yet become, an imperfectly preserved and therefore fading echo, a particle of energy caught between two phases and rapidly and inevitably losing power so long as you continue, thus, between two states. Laws governing the conservation of energy apply even in death, child. Such things cannot be helped and they cannot be changed. Which means that you cannot remain where you are and as you are forever. Either choose to ascend to the next state and phase upward, into Light, or make your choice by continuing to fail to choose and dwindle into loss of individual coherency until the Force absorbs you. These are the only choices for you now, Qui-Gon. You remain where you are and as you are half out of some misguided, stubborn refusal to acknowledge the futility of clinging to your old life – as though you could ever return to being the simple creature of flesh you were before Darth Maul struck you down and stole the life from your body, on Naboo – and half out of a selfish adulation of your own pain and your own desires. You are not helping anyone, thus – neither yourself nor the two young ones you left bereft and abandoned on Naboo, with the death of your body. I have said so many times before, I know, but it is the truth and I am determined that I will keep repeating it, until either you listen or you finally succeed in driving yourself to a state wherein my words can no longer reach you.”

In response, though, Qui-Gon simply sets his jaw, crosses his arms within the loose sleeves of his robe again, and takes him the same obdurate pose that he always seems to take whenever he is preparing to receive orders or advice that he has no intention whatsoever of following – feet planted squarely in a defensive position, shoulder-width apart; muscles loosely relaxed but obviously ready for action; back straight and chest thrown forward in such a way that the folds of his robe part naturally, falling back to either side and revealing the belt with the lightsaber hilt attached to it, making a clear path between hilt and hand; and head raised proudly, with his chin tilted upward in silent challenge. To Revan, this pose is somewhat less than impressive, giving that Qui-Gon’s “body” and everything on it (including that deactivated lightsaber) is little more than a weakly flickering field of imperfectly captured and reflected light, lacking even the seeming solidity of his own form. But then, Qui-Gon likely doesn’t even mean to look particularly imposing. He’s simply taking this stance because it’s the stance that he’s always taken. Like almost everything else about Qui-Gon, from his smallest unconscious mannerisms all the way up to the existence-ordering beliefs and attitudes that he deliberately chooses to cleave to, the pose is merely another holdover from his previous life, a bad habit that he has carried over with him and hasn’t had sense enough yet to retire as no longer of any use.

While he was still alive, Qui-Gon became so used to always being the rebellious one, the one with a special connection to the Living Force, the one who would inevitably end up being proven right (if usually after the fact) in his apparently initially baseless and impulsive assumptions/beliefs/actions, that he simply can’t seem to wrap his mind around the fact that he no longer is that person (if, indeed, he ever truly was, to begin with – a fact that Revan, frankly, could argue, though he’s refrained from doing so, thus far, in order to avoid muddying the issue any more than it already is). Though the death of his body has inalterably changed the basic fact of his existence, Qui-Gon, in his blind obstinacy, refuses to allow himself to adjust to that change by actually altering the way he thinks or behaves. This refusal to accept what has happened to him to the extent that he would be able to at least recognize the need for such a paradigmatic shift in his way of being is the biggest and most serious obstacle to Qui-Gon ever learning how to become a Force spirit. It is also, without a doubt, the single most infuriating character trait about the man. There are times, frankly, when Revan is enormously thankful that he did not ever have to try to deal with the living being of Qui-Gon Jinn as another physically present being of flesh. He’s quite certain that, if he had ever been faced with a person as stubborn and arrogant and smugly self-blind as Qui-Gon Jinn when he was still just another embodied entity, he would have ended up strangling the man to death with his own two bare hands. To be perfectly truthful, the temptation to try to do so even now, when such an action would ultimately be futile (given that Qui-Gon is already dead), is so strong that his hands twitch with frustrated purpose every single time he sees Qui-Gon strike this particular pose.

This time is no different. Revan’s hands are itching to act – to reach out and shake some sense into the man, at least, if not to strangle him until he loses that irritatingly complacent and self-satisfied air – and he is forcing himself to silently run through several calming mantras when Qui-Gon (apparently taking his silence for capitulation) foolishly heaps insult upon injury by snidely quoting a certain ancient (and, from Revan’s point of view, far too influential in the practices and decisions of the current Jedi Order) Jedi Master by the name of Simikarty: “‘Hearing is not seeing; seeing is not knowing; knowing is not understanding; and understanding is not preventing. Certainty can be as much a curse as uncertainty, if not more. Without knowing, one has more options to choose from in forming a reaction.’”

“Don’t you try to parse words with me, young Jedi!” Revan snaps, furious enough that he simply doesn’t care if Qui-Gon can see his anger. /“I know all the accumulated wisdom of your Order and more. I know truths that your Masters have forgotten or chosen to ignore and facts that the Jedi have never even dreamed of, much less discovered! You /will lose, if you play that game with me. Even your beloved Simikarty could best you at this game: ‘A choice can be as dangerous as a weapon. Refusing to choose is in itself a choice.’”

Qui-Gon scowls at that, face darkening, hands shifting to his hips, before he seems to catch himself. With a small, triumphant smile, then, he recites, in a placid, implacable voice, “There is no emotion; there is peace. There is no ignorance; there is knowledge. There is no passion; there is serenity. There is no chaos; there is harmony. There is no death; there is the Force.”

Regaining his control with some effort, Revan calmly counters, /“And the arrogance you embody through the pride you feel is not emotion? The willful stupidity you display by clinging to your old habits and the patently false beliefs and ideals of your Jedi Order is not ignorance? The obsession you have with protecting Obi-Wan and Anakin – at any cost, even when they would not want to be protected so – is not passion? The disobedience you continually show and the purposeless strife and unnecessary confusion you sow behind you, though your willful behavior and actions, always selfish certain that you alone know what is right and best, is not chaos? I suppose next you shall also be claiming that your body did not, in fact, die on Naboo?” /he adds, raising a questioning eyebrow. /“The Force /is/, child, most assuredly, but you, on the other hand, will certainly cease to exist as a thinking and feeling individual if you continue on as you are. So if you feel the need to cling to a false set of tenets, then at least have the courage to be honest enough to choose one that matches your frame of mind and current state of being, Qui-Gon Jinn. ‘Peace is a lie; there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.’” /Revan recites the words of the Sith Code with effortless calm, and it seems to shatter something within Qui-Gon.

Recoiling from the Force spirit as though from a poisonous viper, Qui-Gon flushes a hectic red and furiously cries out, in a voice most would describe as angrily bellowing roar, /“I am not and have never been of the Dark! How /dare you compare me to the Sith? I am a Jedi Master and – ”

Revan cuts him off before he can say anything else, though./ “Do I need to recite to you the list of sins that you hold so closely to your chest, as if you were a woman giving babies suck? Do you want me to hold a mirror of Light up to your soul so that you can see the darkness and the rot within you? Is that what it will take for you to finally acknowledge the truth, Qui-Gon Jinn? Must I tell you, once more, of how the one who composed your Order’s precious Code, Odan-Urr, had, by that time, become tainted and twisted by accidentally delving too deeply in his deliberate and willing attempt to seek out and unravel the mysteries of the Sith’s dark powers and the evil that those who either join or recreate the Sith Order always inevitably sow, irregardless of what their intentions might have originally been? Is it necessary for me to recite for you, again, the list of those followers of Xendor who, after participating in the First Great Schism, pretended to return to the fold of the Jedi Order while secretly clinging to their dark ways in order to spread their taint among others, through their students, in the hopes that eventually another rebellion could be sparked and the Jedi could be defeated? Do I need to tell you, yet again, of the darkness and the poison that has existed within the core of the Jedi Order since its very founding, in the wake of the destruction of the Rakatan Infinite Empire, the falling out and scattering of allies which that Force-aided genocide precipitated even before the task itself could be accomplished, and the eventual culmination of that time of chaos in a series of brutal wars centered on the planet Tython that would later be named the Force Wars, a more than century-long, enormously bitter, and hugely destructive conflict that would end much as the war between the Jedi Order and Xendor’s Legions of Lettow would end some half a century afterwards, with many killed, some scattering to the far winds, and others pretending to return to the fold, in order to bide their time and secretly spread their corruption within the very bastion of the Light that had proven to be the downfall of those who had chosen evil and death over life and Light, vengefully sowing the seeds of death and destruction so that they might plant themselves in the very core of the then still nascent Jedi Order and come to grow all throughout it, riddling it with weakness and flaws that might later lead to a hoped-for eventual but inevitable reaping of revenge? The Jedi Order has been tainted with evil and darkness since even before those who would eventually formally create the Force-based organization fled from the fall of the Rakatan Infinite Empire to Tython. Its predecessors and its founders brought that poison with them, partially in the form of fear and anger and partially in the form of shame. The Force Wars were only the first visible symptom of that taint, and the creation of the Jedi Order did not banish it. It only sent the sickness into a remission that would erupt, again, first under Xendor, and then again, during the Hundred-Year Darkness whose exiles would spawn what the Republic knows as the Sith Empire while those agents who sought to return to the fold would later help to trigger the Third Great Schism, in the wake of which the Jedi-Sith wars openly began and have yet to end, with eruptions of darkness from within the Jedi Order itself forever lending aid to the perpetuation of that conflict through myriad resumptions of battle between various incarnations of the Sith or their survivors and the Jedi Order itself. Always, it is the evil and corruption lurking within the very heart of the Jedi Order itself that has helped to fuel both the Light-Dark conflicts and the Jedi-Sith wars. Many times, that taint has shown itself and led to open conflict in which so many have fallen that the core of the corruption itself has almost been destroyed, but make no mistake on this matter, Qui-Gon Jinn: the knowledge of the original division among Force-sensitives that would lead to the establishments of the warring camps of Ashla and Bogan, Light and Dark, Jedi and Sith, has been preserved among the Jedi Order since even before the time of the organization’s creation, and the anger and hate and thirst for vengeance that the knowledge of this division spawned has been carefully preserved and passed on from parent to child and teacher to student and Master to apprentice, by every name such apprentices have held, for just as long a time. This is the true root cause of the implacable hatred of the Light that all incarnations of the Sith exhibit, whether they all realize it or not. The line of those who have sworn revenge upon the Light and those who seek to cherish it is unbroken within the confines of the Jedi Order, though it has had many blind offshoots, including most of those who have been taught within the confines of the Rule of Two. Sidious is the first of this latest incarnation of the Sith who has been sought out by, sanctioned, and allied with by the current descendants of and claimants to that lineage. One member of that line sought to prevent that alliance by seeking to ally herself with Sidious through false means, so that she might murder him and usurp his place within the plans he had already begun to set into motion for the final claiming of the revenge of the Sith against the Jedi, but she failed, and fled beyond the confines of known space to escape the consequences of both her failure and her dissent. If Sidious succeeds in his plans, the carriers of the disease within the Jedi Order will join him, and he will marry the knowledge and traditions culminating in his branch of the Sith back to the line that originally spawned the Dark Jedi who spawned the Sith Empire that spawned the Brotherhood of the Sith that spawned the Brotherhood of Darkness that spawned the Order of the Sith Lords whose Rule of Two has currently culminated in Sidious. And if that happens, the combined line will systematically seek out its brethren among the exiles and the survivors of all of the previous incarnations of Sith and either form alliance with or else overcome, strip of all power and knowledge and resources, and then destroy. And when that has been accomplished, the strengthened combined line will then seek out its brethren among the eventual progenitors of the Dark Jedi, in the ranks of both those adherents of Bogan who fled from Tython rather than submit to the will of the followers of Ashla and the Force-sensitives who were on the other side of the division that was triggered by the decision to use the Force to destroy the Rakatan Infinite Empire but who, in the scattering that followed, did not end up either on Tython or anywhere in its immediate vicinity at all. Some of the descendants of both groups survived by combining their numbers and allying themselves with a race of sentient near-human beings who would eventually become the progenitors of both the Force-sensitive and Force-vampiric Anzati and the actual Sith species that would later be enthralled, enslaved, and interbred with by the Dark Jedi exiles of the Hundred-Year Darkness and so form the basis of what the Republic and the Jedi know as the Sith Empire. This alliance gave rise to both a theocratic, dictatorial empire that might more properly be termed a magocracy and a specific race of near-human Force-sensitives that the Jedi Order has chosen to call the True Sith, though the magocracy never claimed this name and the surviving remnants of this species has not yet claimed it, either. If an alliance formed by the combined lines of Sith, Dark Jedi, and adherents of Bogan and spearheaded by Sidious is ever able to contact and seek to ally itself with what remains of the True Sith, then the results would be catastrophic for the Force and very likely cataclysmic for both this galaxy and some if not all of its immediate neighbors among the eight bordering and surrounding galaxies. Do you honestly think that I would care if you have ever formally declared for what the Jedi and the Sith alike erroneously name the Dark Side in the face of such a risk as harboring and helping one who has proven himself willing and able to aid Sidious in his plans if you were to begin to show signs of wishing to join Sidious outright? If I ever truly come to believe that your loyalties have shifted to the point where you are about to deliberately change sides in this conflict, Qui-Gon Jinn, then I will not hesitate to destroy you, myself,” /Revan vows, making it clear that he will not and cannot be swayed from this decision.

Qui-Gon surprises him a little bit this time, though. Instead of responding with even more angry bluster or blind obstinacy, he simply /looks /at Revan for a few moments, silently, consideringly, before he finally quietly asks, /“Do you honestly think that anything you might or might not do would ever actually amount to anything, if Obi-Wan and Anakin were not also still here to stop Sidious from actually succeeding in carrying out any of the plans he has for his own Dark Empire? I’ve seen the possible pathways of all the probable futures. There is not a one of them in which Sidious’ plans for creating a magocracy of his own are not ultimately thwarted because of either some action that will be taken or set into motion by Obi-Wan and Anakin or else some series of events and circumstances with an eventual specific outcome that will hinge upon a critical decision that will be made by Anakin in a certain way because of Obi-Wan’s influence over him. You may be a Force spirit, Revan Maloch, and your understanding of the Force and your abilities and power in the Force may be much greater than either mine or Obi-Wan’s and Anakin’s, but even /I know enough to know that there is nothing that you, alone, could or could not do to stop Sidious that would have a snowball’s chance in a supernova of succeeding if the Chosen One and the Sith’ari were to pass out of this galaxy or pass on into death any time soon.”

Revan stares at him for a moment, shocked, before finally offering, “Just because you have not seen such a possibility among the probable futures, that does not mean that such a pathway could not be eventually blazoned by someone with enough power and experience in influencing the path of the future and sufficient will to see to it that such a pathway is laid out.”

Qui-Gon merely looks at him again, as though he could see all the way down to the core of Revan, before flatly declaring, /“You are an even more blindly arrogant fool than I could ever be, if you truly believe such a thing. And somehow I doubt that you could have gone through all that I know of what you did, while living, and become and remained a Force spirit, as you have, and yet still be capable of such hubris. Perhaps I am naive to think so. But I still do not and cannot believe that you could be so foolish or so arrogant as to assume that you could accomplish what you wish to do without Obi-Wan and Anakin remaining here, in the confines of our own galaxy, for some time yet to come. Which is precisely why I fail to understand why you are so angry with me, for trying to see to it that they do. If they’d remained on /Outbound Flight, they could have been killed by your Mitth’raw’nuruodo or – ”

“ – or/ – ” Revan interrupts, raising a hand in warning, to cut off any attempt at protest or reply, /“ – Obi-Wan might have been able to convince Lorana Jinzler of the very real threat posed to both /Outbound Flight and its mission by Jorus C’baoth and they could have neutralized that man before they got within five parsecs of Chiss space. In which case the risk of unpleasantness between any of the members of Outbound Flight and Mitth’raw’nuruodo’s fleet would have also been neutralized. In which case events would have naturally progressed much as we strove to allow them to occur, only with one major difference: the presence of Obi-Wan and Anakin with the alliance that is even now being formalized between /Outbound Flight and Mitth’raw’nuruodo’s people and allies would have had sufficient power to be able to spare the resources and time and effort necessary to track down, positively identify, and then deal with the Sith Lord Sidious, perhaps even before he could alter his plans enough to find a replacement for Anakin Skywalker in his plot to eventually lay the Jedi Order utterly to waste.”

“He had months to convince her of it, if he was going to,” is Qui-Gon’s drily amused, not quite sardonic response. “Do you honestly believe one more week would have mattered?”

“I believe/,” Revan simply replies with flat certainty, /“that you underestimate that young man’s strength /constantly because of what you did to him. I believe that Obi-Wan would have managed to persuade her of the truth far before Outbound Flight could have even made it to the Roxuli system and the jumping off point for the Unknown Regions if you hadn’t been there for most of the journey, distracting her and the other Jedi of /Outbound Flight with an inexplicable certainty that Obi-Wan and Anakin did not belong there and disturbing Anakin and Obi-Wan both with the presence of an almost palpable fear that they couldn’t quite track down to it source because you, of course, were that source, and, while they both certainly have enough strength in the Force to learn how to sense and to seek out both Force spirits and ghosts in the Force such as yourself, they are neither receptive to your presence or attempts at contact with them nor what I would call especially sensitized to the currents of the Force in which entities of the Force generally move.”

“And if you had been proven mistaken?” Qui-Gon challenges, arms folding across his chest and a slight note of irritation creeping into his voice.

“Then Obi-Wan and Anakin would have been with Lorana at that table and they would have been able to properly combat C’baoth’s twisted powers without requiring a near-sacrificial distraction from among the crew,” Revan replies as calmly as he can, though he’s fairly certain that Qui-Gon can probably sense his growing exasperation.

“Ah, but Anakin Skywalker is a trusting child and Sidious has used that trust against him, establishing small but fairly deep and tending naturally towards deepening holds over the boy’s mind and his wilder and therefore darker emotions. If Anakin and Obi-Wan would have remained with /Outbound Flight/, they would have put this whole alliance with Mitth’raw’nuruodo in danger, for then Sidious would have had the means by which to track down both the Project and the Chiss Commander who has played him for a fool and failed to fall obediently into line behind him. And Sidious would stop at nothing to destroy both Mitth’raw’nuruodo and /Outbound Flight/, if only he could find them. He already wishes Obi-Wan dead for the part he played in the ruination of his plans for Naboo and the death of his former apprentice, Darth Maul. He has plans for Anakin, true enough, but do you honestly believe he would let those plans stand in his way, if he believed that the boy had become a genuine threat to him? Sidious already has plans to curtail Anakin’s powers, for when he’s managed to separate him from Obi-Wan and captured him, and also to replace him, once he’s gotten the response he wants out of the boy. Sidious could find another or even several others to fulfill the role he has in mind for Anakin, if he had to, but he wouldn’t exactly be able to amend his plans if he were being hunted down by an alliance formed between Mitth’raw’nuruodo and an /Outbound Flight with Obi-Wan and Anakin aboard it, now would he?” /Qui-Gon asks in return, raising an openly sardonic eyebrow. “Sidious is loyal only to himself, and the only thing he holds to with anything approaching sentiment is his fanatic hatred of the Jedi and of the Light. He would choose to sacrifice Anakin and the part of his plans that revolve around the boy, if faced with such a dilemma.”

“You can’t know that, Qui-Gon. And even if such a thing had come to pass, you cannot know that he would have been able to succeed in such a gambit, not with such a force allied against him.”

“Anakin is still a boy. Obi-Wan, as you’ve gone to great pains to point out to me several time before now, hasn’t ever really recovered from any of the wrongs I’ve done to him. Lorana is just beginning to grow into her own potential as a Jedi. The other Jedi aboard Outbound Flight/ are, frankly speaking, average talents lacking in sufficient power or cunning to pose a genuine threat to someone like Sidious. And while your Mitth’raw’nuruodo and his Chiss may be strong in the Force, they’ve absolutely no training in it whatsoever. Do you honestly believe they could have stood against a surprise attack that would have come within a month of the destruction of the Vagaari fleet and the deaths of Vicelord Siv Kav and Kinman Doriana?” /Qui-Gon demands, his hands slipping from his sleeves to plant themselves upon his hips as he shifts into a more obviously challenging stance, not bothering to hide his growing incredulity at Revan’s calm pronouncements

/“With us here to help them? Yes, Qui-Gon. I think they could have stood against such an attack, and I think they would have won,” /is Revan’s flatly certain response. Refusing to rise to the bait and engage in a shouting war, he then firmly but calmly and quietly adds, “And I also believe that they would have been able to backtrack from that attack to Sidious himself, and that they would have identified him, revealed his identity to the greater galaxy, and found a way to defeat him, once and for all.”

Qui-Gon only snorts disdainfully at that, clearly unimpressed by Revan’s logic. /“Respectfully, I must disagree with your opinion in this matter. I think you are grossly overconfident of your own ability to influence the future to make such assumptions, Master Revan. I’ve seen the myriad possible pathways of the probable futures. And I did not see even one in which the scenario that you are describing occurred,” /is Qui-Gon’s equally flat and immovably certain response, his body shifting back into that blasted serenely inscrutable Jedi Master pose while his face once again acquires that dangerously stony, mulish expression that Revan has long since come to recognize and to almost despair of as a sign of both Qui-Gon’s unwillingness to change and his seeming inability to listen to reason or to be swayed from pursuing a chosen path once he’s gotten an idea into his head.

Thoroughly disgusted with both of these flaws (which he is seriously beginning to suspect that Qui-Gon has been deliberately cultivating in himself instead of seeking to overcome), Revan once again finds his hands twitching with the sudden need to either just reach out and strangle Qui-Gon or else to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he loses that damned smug look of self-satisfaction. “Yes, well, we’ll never have the chance to know now, will we, since you succeeded in helping Sidious to get Anakin and Obi-Wan off of /Outbound Flight before such an issue could come into play, now didn’t you?”/ he irritably snaps, only managing to avoid planting his hands combatively on his hips by an effort of pure will. /Force take it, the man is just so blasted /stubborn – !

“Are we back to arguing semantics of knowing, now?” Qui-Gon merely asks in reply with a small and clearly impatient sigh, his features arranging themselves into an expression of longsuffering forbearance.

/“Arguing – ?!” /Revan just stares at Qui-Gon for several long moments, at that, absolutely floored by both the sheer unadulterated arrogance of that question and the immaturity that it reveals in Qui-Gon’s character. Then, gritting his teeth to keep himself from shouting, he says, very carefully and very quietly, “I was under the impression that we were discussing the latest evidence of the many flaws in your character, the ways in which those flaws are keeping you from progressing in your training and becoming a true Force spirit and will inevitably doom you if you do not find a way to overcome them, and the inexcusable manner in which your indulgence of these flaws prompted you to give aid to Sidious that has placed the entirety not only of this galaxy but some if not all of its galactic neighbors as well at risk for a calamitous disaster.”

“In your opinion,” Qui-Gon merely calmly notes with a small shrug.

/“In my – ?!” /Revan forces himself to stop before his voice can grow any louder or his light-wrought semblance of a body can take that single fatal step forward, towards Qui-Gon, that would bring him within easy grabbing range. “If you are determined that you will not listen to me, then perhaps you should find a different teacher, Qui-Gon Jinn.”

“We are never/ going to agree about your caviler attitude towards the safety of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. This does not mean that I am not willing to listen to you on other matters or that you cannot still teach me many things,” /is Qui-Gon’s far too placid response.

“Perhaps I do not wish to trouble myself over a self-destructive student who is so arrogant that he believes he knows better than his teacher,” Revan snaps back, almost snarling but so offended that he’s simply not able to bring himself to try to hide his growing anger.

“If all you’d wanted was someone to follow three steps behind and to the left of you repeating ‘Yes, Master’ in an endless stream of ego-stroking acquiescence, then you never would have agreed to take me on as your student in the first place,” Qui-Gon merely tranquilly notes with another small shrug.

And that essentially stops Revan in his tracks, because of course Qui-Gon is right. Damn the man, anyway! Shaking his head, he finally declares, with a warning growl that is only half false at best, “Some day, Qui-Gon Jinn, you and I will find ourselves truly at cross-purposes, with neither hint nor hope of a compromise to be found, and, when that day comes, not even the fact that I am a glutton for punishment and tolerate not only your foolishness and rebelliousness but also your deliberate disobedience because a part of me enjoys the challenge of trying to reach such a one as you will stay my hand. You will not like what will happen next, then.”

With another, much broader shrug, Qui-Gon simply quietly but confidently notes, /“Be that as it may, that day is most certainly not today, Master Revan. So why don’t we simply do what we have always done before and agree to disagree, for the moment, while we see to more pressing and important matters? Sidious is still in the Roxuli system, you know. He might try to track down your Mitth’raw’nuruodo and /Outbound Flight before he has to leave from there, if he’s angry enough and has access to enough local resources to attempt to mount a proper search.”

“He is not my/ Mitth’raw’nuruodo, apprentice, as you very well know!” Revan snaps testily in return, entirely too frustrated with the whole situation and too displeased and disappointed with Qui-Gon to be too impressed with the apparent truce offering that Qui-Gon is making. /“And if /Outbound Flight /is to be assigned to anyone, then surely you would be a more appropriate candidate than I, considering how much time and effort you’ve lavished upon it and its passengers in lieu of attending to either your lessons or the will of the Force!”

But, “Alright then,” /Qui-Gon merely patiently allows, shrugging in lieu of rolling his eyes and, at this point, clearly only humoring Revan. /“Mitth’raw’nuruodo, who is no being’s but his own, and /Outbound Flight/, which belongs solely to its colonists and crew. They could still be in danger from Sidious now, irregardless of what I or anyone else call them, Master.”

Through tightly shut and gritted teeth, Revan makes himself explain that, /“He’ll be far too busy with the emergency he concocted at Roxuli to get Obi-Wan and Anakin off of /Outbound Flight to be able to do much of anything, now that his pet henchman is gone. Covering up for Doriana and finding a way to explain his sudden disappearance is going to take precedence over any rash attempt at blind vengeance.”

“You’ve seen this in all of the many different possible pathways of the probable futures?” Qui-Gon immediately asks, raising a politely inquisitive eyebrow.

/“You doubt me, Qui-Gon?” /Revan instantly shoots back, raising a mirroring eyebrow.

/“No, Master. Just trying to get a better sense of what we might or might not be up against,” /is Qui-Gon’s far too unperturbed response, considering the dangerously low growl that has entered Revan’s voice.

“If you want to know what we are up against, child,” Revan acidly responds, /“then I suggest you start paying more attention to me when I tell you of such things as the risk of an alliance between Sidious and the True Sith. Such an alliance is far more likely to occur than it is for Sidious to come up with and then seek to execute any half-baked, harebrained scheme for immediate revenge against Mitth’raw’nuruodo and /Outbound Flight.”

“As you will, Master.”

Half a dozen increasingly sarcastic and openly angry possible replies flit through Revan’s mind in the space of about half a heartbeat, but he determinedly rejects them all. With a small sigh of his own, he simply quietly notes, “If things were as I willed them to be, such a being as Sidious would have never been allowed to come into existence in the first place, child. But then, I am a Force spirit, not the Force itself and most certainly not a god, and all I am trying to do is share with you the truth of what I have seen and what I know.”

Qui-Gon’s shoulders twitch slightly, as if he were tempted to shrug carelessly in response yet again, but instead, with a surprisingly amount quiet earnestness, he declares, /“I’ve seen what you’re capable of, when you decide that you want a thing to happen. I think Mitth’raw’nuruodo and /Outbound Flight will be safe enough, with you to watch over them.”

“You’d best hope they will be, child. If the Jedi Order continues along the pathway it is taking and the Republic falls to Sidious, this alliance between Mitth’raw’nuruodo and his people and Outbound Flight will be the last line of defense standing against the encroaching night, and, if that happens, I fear that the Far Outsiders will be the very least of their worries.”

“Then let us help to strengthen them while we may,” is Qui-Gon’s surprisingly sensible and almost solemnly earnest reply. “These Chiss could prove a truly formidable defense, with a bit of training in the Force . . . if, of course, they can be convinced to seek it and the Jedi can be convinced to offer it.”

“Agreed,” Revan nods briskly, seeking to put an end to the discussion before it can erupt into yet another argument and another uneasy contest of wills that will only end with them circling around the same things that they always seem to end arguing over with neither one of them ever able to sway the other. “Come along, young one. With a thousand years of Jedi tradition and more against us, we’ll have our work cut out for us, on that particular score.”

With a snort of brief but genuine laughter, Qui-Gon shakes his head, spreads his hands wide, and asks, “Is it ever any other way?”

Surprised into a small smile of his own, Revan tilts his head to one side, pretending to consider the question. /“Hmm. Well, now that you mention it . . . no, I don’t believe it ever is. But then, if we weren’t horribly outnumbered and essentially trying to thwart the successful climaxing of over twenty-five thousand years of malicious planning against the Jedi and the Light with little more than our wits and our hope to give us strength, I rather doubt either one of us would know what to do with ourselves. We’re nothing if we are not both gluttons for punishment, in that we both enjoy the challenge of knowing that it is us alone against the rest of the galaxy as well as it being up to us to save the galaxy, in the long run,” /he adds with a rueful little chuckle.

/“As I have been warned many times against arrogance, I believe I should try to avoid ever assuming that I alone have the power to save the galaxy, Master,” /is Qui-Gon’s half teasing and half chiding response. But before Revan can say anything, he then swiftly adds, his voice suddenly deadly serious, “Personally, I’d be perfectly happy if I could somehow protect and help save Obi-Wan and Anakin from Sidious once and for all, but for the moment, in more realistic terms, I would be quite pleased to help protect and save this particular alliance from anyone and anything foolish enough to try to come after it and tear it apart. Will that suffice?”

“For the moment? Yes,” Revan allows with a nod. But then, voice hardening, he adds, /“But only for the moment, Qui-Gon. We /will have this out, eventually, one way or another. You may think you know what you’re doing and that you don’t need to listen to me or take my advice now, but the simple fact is that your continued survival depends upon your ability to grow beyond what you are and what you have always believed. Nothing can change that. I am only trying to help you, young one.”

With a shrug, Qui-Gon merely asserts, “The moment is all that really matters, Master. We live in the moment, remember? If the Force wills, then tomorrow will take care of itself.”

“If the Force wills that you change, will you do so?” Revan finally simply comes out and demands, quite suddenly completely tired of this foolish and pointless game of matching wills.

Another shrug, this time accompanied by a mirthless bark of laughter, and Qui-Gon notes, “If the Force wills it, it will happen whether I want it to or not.”

“Qui-Gon – ” Revan begins warningly.

He doesn’t get any further than that, though. Qui-Gon, who has shut his eyes tight, as though pained by the sight of Revan’s coldly determined face, sighs explosively, shoulders drooping with defeat, and then cuts his off by admitting, “If the Force wills, then I will obey. Does that satisfy?”

“It is a start.”

“Good. Then let’s start by sharing our plans for this alliance,” Qui-Gon briskly replies, his gaze sliding past Revan towards the reunion that’s still taking place on the bridge. “We don’t want to end up at cross-purposes over these people. The Unknown Regions are dangerous enough, even without the threat of extragalactic invasion or vengeful Sith. I have a feeling that, with the kind of split missions they seem determined to take on – with some of them remaining behind to set up a real base of operations while others of them go in search of additional allies, by backtracking along the path of the Vagaari – it will take the both of us working together just to keep everyone safe long enough for an actual line of defense to have time to form up and solidify.”

“True enough and a good place to start from. I have a feeling that the moments as well as the morrows are all going to be very full for us, for some time to come.”

“I had a feeling you were going to say that . . . ” Qui-Gon half laughs and half groans.

Determinedly putting aside both his increasing concern and growing frustration with his stubborn and seemingly disaster-bound apprentice, Revan just shakes his head, smiles widely, and starts to detail his plans regarding which of the many different possible pathways he would prefer to see become the actual future for this alliance. Mitth’raw’nuruodo and Outbound Flight he can help. Qui-Gon, on the other hand, he can help only if his apprentice proves willing first to help himself. And, as Qui-Gon himself has pointed out, if the Force wills it to be so, then things will work out, irregardless of Qui-Gon’s foolishly persistent hard-headed refusal to change. He cannot force the change, as much as he might like to. His part is only to wait, and trust in the Force, and offer his assistance when and if and how it is needed.

And hope, of course. Hope beyond hope that it will be enough to save them all.

Force will it be so . . .

***