Ok so I know I have some explaining to do regarding my rather late, no stretch that, my completely late update on my story. The thing that I can respond to that is with two reasons. One, I have recently had my uni exam for my first year so that took priority over my stories and two being that my laptop had desired to be a complete dick to me and stop working for me and go to my rival just to spite me.

DAMN YOU JIMMY MY ETERNAL RIVAL! I WILL SHOW YOU THAT MY FLAMES OF YOUTH ARE BRIGTHER THAN YOURS!

Ok so I'm obviously joking about the rival thing, but my laptop did stop working so as of the time of posting this, I am writing on my iPad for the time being.

So with that out of the way, updates should be at a more regular times since summer is setting in with both of my stories. The pattern with these updates are going to be that a chapter will be posted on one story then it's going to switch to my other story an so on and so forth. If you haven't had a read of my other story yet then please have a little read through, if you like Naruto that is.

Now on to the story, as always I don't own Star Wars at all, if I did then I would be stupidly rich and be able to do pretty much whatever I could want.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

were somehow hundreds of years old men can be more athletic then professionals in their prime...

Chapter 8: Advice from a master of loss

Qui-Gon was walking calmly along the corridors of Dooku's ship along with a darker looking Fiona after looking over another part of the ship that, like the other areas that they had searched for the mercenaries, remained fruitless. And, as it was after each empty search, Fiona's expression grew a little bit darker, her grip on her blaster grew that little bit tighter, all of which made the guards that they passed in the ship slightly more tensed.

When Qui-Gon had first made plans to help the rest of Dooku's guards to find the hired mercenaries, the most forethought that he had was to do all he could to help protect his old master for all that he had done for him back when he was a young padawan with so many challenges ahead of him. He had been his guide in both the ways of the Force and the ways of the galaxy, teaching him how important it was to still be part of the galaxy and don't just end up as another Jedi that would try and push his emotions away. And with all he had done for him, it was only right that he should try and repay that kindness and guidance with whatever help he could provide, that being protecting him while they tried to get him to Serenno.

Though there was a second thought just behind that one where it didn't concern his master at all, or Anakin who, ever since the incident that happened during the Gathering that he took part in, he had been somewhat more observant over Anakin just to make sure anything similar didn't happen again. The mere thought of Anakin being taken away by whoever had tried to take him filled him with dread, but this didn't cloud his judgement so that he would start taking completely unneeded options that would stunt his growth as a person and a Jedi, but he was more aware of when he was alone. But this wasn't a concern with how Anakin's skills were incredible for someone so young, yet he still had those flaws of youth, as well as being near Dooku that even with his age was a formidable opponent.

No, it wasn't those who he was concerned about, but it was rather the woman that was besides him. Her anger had been easy enough to see clearly on her face and in her posture, the feeling that he got from her through the Force agreed with this assessment even more so. This was, after all, to be expected when you lose someone important and from how she acted with her crew, they more than fit that description. So this anger and grief that she is feeling was natural, but what wasn't natural was to be completely consumed by those emotions until you become someone who you couldn't recognise anymore and Qui-Gon had the unfortunate experience of how that felt firsthand.

Deciding to try and help her the best way he can, he was about to speak to her when she brought up a communicator that was provided to them by Dooku's guards. "Team 1 to all teams, has the mercenaries been located yet?" She spoke with a barely contained anger spilling in her voice.

"Team 1 this is head leader back at control, there as been no sightings of them on any of the monitors and all other teams have reported back with a negative visual on any of the mercenaries seen at the docking bay." A voice replied over the speaker on the communicator with that slight hiss of static that always accompanies any transmission.

"WELL LOOK AGAIN!" Fiona snapped back in a frustrated tone.

There was a moment of silence from the communicator before a strict voice replied to her outburst. "We are well aware of how pressing this matter is Captain Polo and we are doing everything in our power to catch these low life's as quickly as possible to protect our Count. But as it stands, I am in command of this ship after the Count and his security, so do not tell me what I should and should not do Captain." He somehow made the word captain sound as if it was a degrading term rather a military rank.

Qui-Gon saw her grit her teeth with a small growl in response but didn't say anything in response as the link was cut from the other end. The slight silence of the moment didn't last long however as Fiona threw the communicator against the wall with some force, her growl of frustration was easily hear in the corridor they were in, as well as her quick and heavynfootsteps as she began to move away from the discarded communicator.

Qui-Gon, as he reached down and pick up the discarded device that held a small crack on its screen, he spoke to the retreating figure of the troubled Captain in a calm voice. "What do you intend to do once the mercenaries have been found?"

That single question stopped the Captain in her tracks, causing the corridor to fall in to silence, with her just standing there facing away from the Jedi master. But the silence was broken when she turned around and looked at him with a look of indifference. "Excuse me?" She asked in an almost emotionless voice.

"I asked what do you intend to do once the mercenaries have been found?" He repeated in the same voice as before.

"Does it matter?" The captain replied in an icy tone.

"It does depending on your answer, because if you simply want them to face justice for the crimes they have committed in front of the senate, then I see no reason to discuss this further. But if you want to take their lives in exchange for those you have lost, then I will have to stop you from walking a path of vengeance. Trust me when I say this, if you do follow act on this thirst for vengeance then you will..."

"YOU HAVE NO RIGHT!" Fiona shouted out to Qui-Gon, violently cutting into his little speech. "Who gave Jedi the right to tell people how they should and shouldn't feel?! What gives you the right to tell me how I should deal with losing my family when you have never had one in your sad life because it's so unimportant?! I may haven't been related to them by blood but they were my FAMILY!" It was at this point that Qui-Gon had started to see the unshed tears in her eyes and feel the gapping hole that he could feel in her heart through the Force. "No Jedi has ever had a family so don't you dare talk like you know what's it like."

With her anger still present even after her rant, she was about to turn around and leave the Jedi master alone so that she could focus solely on making the bastards who took her family away from her pay. But then the same Jedi master that had caused her to start her anger outburst spoke 2 words that made her stop.

"Two actually."

She looked at Qui-Gon and he saw her with an obviously confused look on her fair features, her dark eyes still having her earlier anger but was hiding behind her curiosity at his response so he elaborated. "There are probably more Jedi that have had a family in the past that I am unaware of, but there have been plenty of them with some family or another. But believe it or not it was the fact that a young Jedi Knight lost his lover and turned to the dark side that caused the rule against having family connections to begin with. Though I do know of two situations where Jedi have lost a loved one in some way or another, in fact you have met them before we even started this mission."

"The first being Anakin. Now I'm sure that you have heard of how a child passed the excepted age of A youngling being allowed to become a Jedi a couple years ago yes?" After a brief moment of thought, the captain nodded as a look realisation grow on her face. "And as you have quite rightly assumed, Anakin was that child. Now tell me, did you ever hear of where he was found or the situation that he was in before hand?"

Fiona paused for a moment before answering. "... no, I... I only hear that he was found on some dust ball of a planet."

Qui-Gon nodded in response. "That much is true at least, but that planet was Tatooine and as you know living on that world with Jabba the hut as a war lord is never the best of places for any decent beings. But Anakin along with his mother didn't have much choice since they were both slaves to some small junk shop in the main city. They did not comfortably but they were surviving at least. But when I found him in that little shop and saw how powerful his connection to the Force was, I know I had to bring him to the council to be trained."

"Unfortunately I was unable to do anything for the boys mother so as far as I know she is still there as a slave. Anakin doesn't show it but he does miss he, he still wakes up in the mornings and realise that she is no where in sight, he still worries about but with the Jedi's laws against forming any sort of family connections he is forced to do nothing. I do the best that I can to help him, I am even trying to change those laws but as of yet I haven't even made a dent in those rules and he still yearns for a mother."

Qui-Gon paused for a moment to let the information sink in, but the silence didn't last long before the captain asked a question in that soft and light voice of hers. "... Who is the second?"

Normaly when a conversation turned towards this subject, a subject that has been and always will be something incredibly close to his heart, he would skim over the story as quickly as he could before moving on with the conversation. Something he did to try and avoid reliving those both the sweet memories about the woman that he had loved, and the dark days afterwards that had caused him to almost fall to his own dark side. But the woman before him needed help with her own loss and if retailing his own pain would somehow elevate hers, then he would gladly help in whatever capacity that he could.

Qui-Gon took a breathe before answering. "That second person would be me. Back in my youth as a youngling in the Jedi temple, I met a young girl with the other younglings and somehow, after we had talked to each other, something just fell into place and we became all but inseparable, even when we had our own masters we would spend our time together however and whenever we could. It was somewhere along those lines that I had fallen in love with her, in every way possible. But it was only later on in my years when I had made the rank of knight that while on a mission with her, I discovered through the Force that she felt the same for me."

He breathed out a sigh of regret that matched perfectly with the longing look in his eyes. "And to this day I still wish that I had told her, then maybe I could've had years worth of memories that could have helped me through my grief but because of the Jedi's law on forming emotional connections..., no, because of my choice, i kept my feelings to myself. It was only years later when I became a master and had Obi-Wan as my padawan, that I finally decided to tell her how I felt when she was about to leave for a mission and by some miracle we decided that we will follow our feelings then the Jedi's law. We promised each other that after she had returned from her mission that we would do everything in our powers to make up for all the lost time that we could of had."

It was at this point that Qui-Gon's feature turned to one of pain, the same sort of pain that Fiona had felt only hours ago she realised as she continued to listen to his tale. "It wasn't long after that that I felt something was wrong, so I immediately left to find her. When I did, she had already been betrayed and had been injected with a drug that was slowly killing her. I brought her back to the Jedi temple as fast as I could so that our healers could help her, but the only thing that could be done for her was for me to remain by her side until she died."

"Afterwards I was all but consumed with my grief and pain, constantly thinking that if I had only reacted faster or had joined her on her mission then maybe we could have spend many more years together being more then just friends. But as always that pain had turned to nothing but anger and rage towards the monster that had taken her from this world, something that you have no doubt felt. So in my rage I tore though system after system looking for him, it was only by pure luck that no one was killed in my crusade, something that I had unfortunately dragged my old padawan Obi-Wan in to."

"It took months until we had found him, trapping him a couple miles away from a nearby city on some dust ball of a planet. I had him defenceless before me, my lightsaber ignited and ready to plunge in to whatever excuse he had for a heart, until he told us that he had planted several bombs around the city and the only thing that was stopping them from going off was a deadman switch he had linked to his heart. If he died, he would have taken thousands of innocent lives with him in his spite."

Remorse starting to fill his voice, something that the captain besides him noticed immediately, already able to guess what had happen next in the story. "I would like to be able to say that I was stopped by that statement, trying to find a way to stop that from happening and capturing him while doing so, but to my shame, I didn't even consider it. All that mattered to me in that moment was his death at my hand, buying no mind to the costs that would have come with it. He must have seen it in my eyes because in mere moments true terror had consumed him, he looked so pathetic as he shakes in fear, my blade ready to end his life."

"I never could firgure out if what happened next was truly her contacting him through the Force or if it was merely a last attempt that my mind conjured to bring me back to sanity, but as I was ready to end his life, I heard her voice simply saying 'Qui-Gon stop', it wasn't much, but it worked. I had finally regained my senses to realise what I had been prepared to do and stopped, disabled the dead mans switch and the bombs and brought him in front of the of the senate for trial."

Finally, after what seemed like hours of listening, being captivated by his story, he finally turned towards Fiona and she saw a range of emotions in his blue eyes, ranging from his loss to his regret, but there was also a firm look of understanding in his incredible eyes. "Please understand when I say that I know what you are feeling. I know that it feels like a part of you has been torn out of your heart and that it may never be whole again, but if you let that control you, you will become someone that you and they would never be able to recognise. I am not telling you to not kill them, as there will always be a time when killing them will become the only option that you have left, but it is how you choose to do so that is important. You can choose to kill them instantly with nothing but anger and hate, let your dark side control you and lose everything that you held dear, or you can do so when it is the only option left and staying true to yourself. That is the difference between what is wrong and what is right, that is the difference between revenge and justice."

The silence that followed was almost palpable, but that never registered within Fiona's mind as she was mostly focusing on the Jedi masters tale and about her recently lost crew. She remembered the first day when she was assigned her crew after she had become a Captain for the Republic, she remembered how at first the were all but strangers who at times couldn't stand the other. But as time went on, they had started to get used to each other, slowly changing from co-workers to friends and then finally friends to a small family that looked out for each other, something that had helped her to forget about her past troubles that had been in her life.

But this happiness and joy in her life had been ripped from her, all because some low life mercenaries just wanted some credits for killing someone and didn't care who got in their way. That cold hearted nature of the worst scum of the galaxy was something that she hated with a passion, the fact that they had taken her family away from her had only added fuel to that hatred. This added with the gaping hole in her heart called out to her to take vengeance against those who had hurt her, who had taken her family away from her with no remorse or mercy, making sure that each one felt the pain that her crew would have felt, and then some.

Yet here was a man that had felt the same pain that she had, had the same burning desire and passion to find the monster that had taken away the person that he loved, practically tearing the galaxy apart to find this man from the sounds of it. A man who didn't even care that if he did kill this monster that he would have taken thousands of innocent lives with the mans death, something that was only stopped by either pure luck or intervention from beyond the grave. But the thing that truly captured her attention and scared her, was the fact that in that moment he didn't care about the thousands of lives that he would have sacrificed to get his revenge.

Could..., could I end up doing that? She thought to herself with some fear. She tried to imagine herself in that sort of situation herself, where she was given the opportunity to take her vengeance against those mercenaries but at the cost of thousands of lives. She told herself that of course she wouldn't, she wasn't a monster like those men..., but then neither was the Jedi master that was before from what she heard, so that question was still nagging at her conscience, causing a mass of conflicting thoughts on what she would do. Some of those thoughts she realised weren't exactly good thought regarding on what she should do to those monsters.

"You don't have to think about it right now." Qui-Gon's voice spoke, cutting through the captains thoughts and bringing her back to the here and now. Seeing the confused look on her face, he continued. "I admit that this is something that you need to decide on, but it is something that must be thought about clearly first. If you just rush into this without any consideration, well you have heard of what I almost did. So take some time to think about this, after all it is your decision to make and you will have to live with the consequences of whatever you choose. I only ask that you try not to become what I almost became, something that I regret ever ending up in that situation in the first place."

She was silent for a moment before she replied in a somewhat quiet voice. "... I'm sorry. I shouldn't of snap at you like that."

Qui-Gon simply waved the apology away. "You have every right to be angry Captain, just as anyone else in your position would be so there is nothing to apologise for. The only that you shouldn't do is let that angry be your only focus and let it control you, that path is a steep and slippery one to follow and next to impossible to leave."

Fiona gave a weak smile in reply. "... Thank you. For telling me I mean, it must have been painfull to even mention it."

"Unfortunately it does, but I found that it gets easier the more you tell it to someone who just listens. Something that I wish to extend to you if you ever need someone to talk to Captain." He replied kindly.

Immediately after that sentence was uttered, the slightly cracked communicator came to life with a blaring voice. "All teams this is team 7 in the lower storage deck, we think we may have found how our pest problem had gotten on the ship."

"Copy team 7, head leader to all teams and Jedi converge on team 7's position for investigation."

Qui-Gon brought the comm device to his lips before speaking into it. "Copy head leader, team 1 is one its way." After responding to the command he placed the comm in the pocket of his robes before turning towards his companion. "I believe that we have some matters to attend to Captain."

She spent one or two moments looking towards the Jedi master before replying with a slight smile. "Fiona. I like my friends to call me Fiona Master Jinn."

It took him a moment to realise the offered friendship from the blonde Captain before him before he smiled warmly. "Then I must insist that you call me Qui-Gon rather than my rank Fiona."