Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
EAST VISITORS' LANDING BAY, JEDI TEMPLE, CORUSCANT, 32BBY
WHEN OBI-WAN HEARS HIS MASTER approaching with soft footsteps on the durasteel floor from where he's standing, staring out over Coruscant's skyline from the landing bay, he immediately tenses. He's not interested in being a pawnin his Master's games of pity and guilt tonight. Not after Qui-Gon's little spectacle earlier in the Council Chamber.
Rumors had followed him all the way down through the Temple after Qui-Gon's outburst—cruel and pitiful whispers of poor boy, poor Padawan, abandoned by his Master, and did you hear how he tried to win his Master's favor so hard in the first place, there's something not right with him, Dark Sider, so Obi-Wan presses his hands into fists so hard that his nails cut into the palm and hurries past the gossipers.
They're due to leave for Naboo in the next hour or so. Obi-Wan had needed peace and quiet, so he'd taken up solace in the empty visitors' landing bay, where no one had cause to bother him. Or so he'd thought.
"Obi-Wan, please," Qui-Gon says now as Obi-Wan turns to go, voice pleading. Obi-Wan stops in his tracks, still with his back to his Master, and scoffs. The sound rings out in the cavernous room, empty and all-at-once too full. Obi-Wan needs to get away, far away, from Qui-Gon before he says something he deeply regrets.
"Don't Obi-Wan me," he says, sounding calm and controlled despite the volatile words. He wants to throw something, or punch Qui-Gon Jinn in his stupid, serene face. Neither of those will help him now, though, so he pushes down the spike of red-hot anger that threatens to overwhelm him. "What do you want?"
He hears, rather than sees, Qui-Gon stop walking towards him. "Obi-Wan," the older man says again, needlessly. He sounds bereft in the huge space. "I—Force, I had no intention of offending you. In any way. You must understand—"
"Understand what?" Obi-Wan bites back, a little more forcefully than he'd meant to. He finally twists his neck around sharply to meet Qui-Gon's gaze head-on, cheeks burning. "That you intend to replace me with a barely-trained boy?"
Qui-Gon winces at the vitriol in Obi-Wan's words. "I wouldn't—I wouldn't put it that way—"
"How would you put it, then?" Obi-Wan challenges. He crosses his arms over his chest for lack of anything better to do with them, feeling awkward and ungainly next to the tall grace of the man in front of him. He straightens his shoulders. "Casting me aside? Disobeying the Council? Endangering the entire Jedi Order—"
"I would call it no such thing," Qui-Gon snaps back, and for a moment, Obi-Wan savors the pleasure of getting quiet, composed, ever-graceful Qui-Gon Jinn to snap. "He needs a teacher. The boy is powerful."
