Growing Pains

Upon Arrival

Jedi apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi sat on the front porch of the Udoni homesteaders' simple pre-fab dwelling, and did not sulk.

Jedi apprentices do not sulk, ever. And so he did not resent the noonday sun beating upon the parched earth a mere half-meter from his feet, which were tucked up under his body as he hunched beneath the insufficient shade of the overhang, cloak bunched beneath him as protection from the scalding metal panels beneath his rump. He did not mentally complain about the sticky perspiration rolling down his back and the insides of his trouser legs, or the itching burn on his fair skin where the sun's merciless beating had already scorched him in the course of the short hike here. He did not succumb to the insistent whining of his empty stomach or the sour taste in his mouth, which was cottony and dry with thirst. And he especially did not indulge in any dark thoughts or wounded feelings at being told to wait here while the 'grown-ups' conducted their business inside.

He squinted hard, eyes roving across the wasted plains, searching for any sign of life, whether vegetable or animal. How purported farmers could make a living off nothing as far as the eye could see was a mystery beyond his ken. Heaving a sigh – just a deep breath, not a sign of frustration, he cast his gaze down again, tracing over and over the scuffed and scratched hilt of his training saber, the weapon he bore more as symbolic emblem of his rank and Padawan learner's oath than as effective defense. Soon – he hoped – he would be permitted to build a real one – his own personal lightsaber, the Jedi Knight's only true possession and honored artifact, a thing compounded of sentient skill and the Force itself.

But for now, of course, he was stuck waiting here on some squatter family's star-forsaken porch while Master Qui-Gon farked about inside with the natives. Who, by the way, were bald-faced liars.

That was an unbecoming thought, and he shoved it away into the Force, into the hazy and wavering distance where the horizon rippled and shuddered into a dusty red line. Maybe they weren't liars, per se. Maybe they were just stupid.

Because there certainly wasn't any other Force sensitive child here at all. Nobody besides Qui-Gon and himself. What could have motivated a small family of poverty-stricken subsistence farmers to court Jedi attention by claiming to have a baby with esoteric powers of telekinesis or extra-sensory perception, he could not guess. Did they not consider the consequences of such a ruse, once it was discovered? There were no neighbors here to impress, no media to entertain, no social standing to improve… nothing.

Perhaps the heat simply drove people mad out here on this hellish moon. That might be the explanation. But then, why was his master taking so blasted long to deal with the situation? He could hear the genteel rise and fall of Qui-Gon's voice behind the thin door panel, the muted cadence and occasional pauses suggesting that the Jedi master was making a comm transmission all the way to Coruscant, using their nearby ship's system as a booster.

Maybe he was summoning reinforcements to come arrest the felonious inhabitants for wasting the Order's time. But that wouldn't be like Qui-Gon at all. He let his head fall back against the flaking protective coating of the wall behind him, wiggling in place until his short nerftail settled in a groove between two warped plastoid panels. Then he shut his eyes, exhaled long and slowly - and went back to diligently not pouting.

When all the arrangements had been made, Qui-Gon Jinn excused himself and stepped outside to check on his padawan. The air outside was perhaps a few degrees cooler than the stifling confines of the farmers' dwelling – for there was a murmur of wind, a sweltering caress of heat whispering over the baked and cracked fields. The volcanic fallout here had been devastating, reducing the land to a uniform barrenness. But he understood the family's desire to jealously guard this stake: in two or three years time, the ash would have transformed this soil to fertile abundance, especially after the biannual rains fell. Until then….

He crouched beside his young apprentice, who had fallen asleep, head drooping at an awkward angle. The boy's cheeks were flushed a brilliant crimson in contrast to his pale and sweat-sheened forehead. One hand sprawled limply at the young Jedi's side, the other still curled about his 'saber's hilt. He somehow looked much younger than his nearly fourteen years, much more delicate than Qui-Gon knew him to be. Like the dancing mirages on the horizon, the heat wove illusion even here.

He placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Obi-Wan. Wake up."

A pair of marine blue eyes squinted dully at him, arrested between the present moment and some feverish dream. The tall man reached out and shook the young Jedi's empty water canteen. His own was half-full; this he thrust into his apprentice's free hand.

"Drink."

Obi-Wan obeyed, on reflex, before he was alert enough to understand the implications. He drained the flask, gulping down the tepid and mineral laden contents without taking a breath, and then groggily handed it back.

And then he blinked fully awake. "Master! That was your water!"

Qui-Gon stood, offering his padawan a hand up. "It went to a good use."

The young Jedi frowned at the warped baseboards, guilt dragging his shoulders down a trifle. "I was fine without it."

"Hm. Are you ready? We will depart in a few minutes."

Now Obi-Wan looked out across the blazing expanse between them and the Republic shuttle, eyes squinched nearly closed against the painful influx of light. "Could we not wait until sunset, master?" He tilted his face up to address Qui-Gon, worrying slightly at his lower lip.

"Then we would trade the discomfort of heat for the more acute danger of predators. And we have stayed long enough already; we will not impose on them further."

The boy disguised his disappointment well. "Yes, Master." Only the barest hint of sullenness underlay his tone.

Qui-Gon fixed him with a sternly appraising look. "You are not feeling ill-used, are you, Padawan mine?"

Alarmed at being caught out so easily, Obi-Wan blushed a furious shade of vermillion, sunburned cheeks darkening further with shame. "No, Master… I'm sorry."

Brows rising, the tall man privately wondered which it was, but took pity on his heat-befuddled companion. "I'll be just a moment. Wait here," he instructed, ducking back inside the house's dim and baking interior.

When he returned a few minutes later, a heavy knapsack upon his back and his cloak bundled and slung over one arm, his padawan offered no further complaint and asked no questions. They set out over the grey plain, trudging along side by side and then single file as Obi-Wan lagged behind. The Jedi master paused, held out an arm, and shepherded the boy forward with a hand on his back.

"Put your cloak on," he advised. "Better roast than suffer further sunburn."

Miserably, they shuffled across the unvarying and desolate landscape until the land dipped, revealing a small natural crater and the shuttle tucked away against one of its sloping walls. The sun hammered down upon them, setting the earth beneath their weary feet afire, and sapping their bodies of vitality. When they reached the crater's rim, Obi-Wan was wobbling on his feet.

"Easy, young one."

They slipped and slid down the crumbling slope, landing in a heap of grit and pebbles at its foot. The young Jedi all but dashed for the ramp with the heady enthusiasm of a child released to play in some wonderland; he disappeared into the relatively cool hold in a flash of cream and brown cloth.

Qui-Gon followed at a more sedate pace, carefully depositing his burden in a storage locker in the aft cabin. He tossed his cloak onto an inset bunk, beside his apprentice's hastily discarded one, and rummaged in the provisions cabinet for more water. He emptied a liter container and reached for another, then proceeded through narrow passage into the cockpit, where Obi-Wan already had all systems online and the atmospheric regulator set to an arctic chill.

"We are headed into space, Padawan," he remarked, slipping into the pilots' seat. "I do not want to hear a single word of lamentation about the cold."

"You won't, Master," the boy grimly assured him. "I promise." He accepted the bottle of water and drained half of it in one long pull.

The navcomp happily bleeped its readiness, and Qui-Gon lifted them off the ground on repulsors. "We'll head straight back to Coruscant," he informed his companion. "This course setting should get us to the Temple during morning cycle… perhaps you should prepare that diplomatics assignment after all. You can attend Master Wi-Mu's lecture before the Council report."

Objection was not an option for a Jedi apprentice, so Obi-Wan dutifully retired to the passenger compartment, leaving his mentor in to meditate upon the mission's outcome as they climbed through the smoke-ridden atmosphere and into the stars beyond.

Obi-Wan awoke from an unintentional nap he was not taking.

He scrabbled for his datapad, only to find that it had slipped to the deck, sustaining a hairline fracture in the process. "Blast it." He snapped the device to standby and shoved it into his small bag. Diplomatics was his best subject, anyway – after swordsmanship – and he really didn't need to review the material.

He sat shivering on the edge of the bunk for a moment before he realized that he was chilled to the bone. He was also forbidden to utter a single word of lamentation about being cold, so he settled for another vague and inclusive, "Blast it,"and went to see about the therm regulator instead. Only to find that Qui-Gon had already adjusted it to a proper setting, and that a warm trickle was descending steadily from the air cycling vents overhead.

He tucked his head down and pressed a finger against his exposed collarbone. When he released the pressure, a bright white patch stood out against a flaming pink background.

"Blast and confound it," he griped, for good measure. He had never been sunburned as an initiate – but life in Qui-Gon Jinn's company had provided him with more than one opportunity to expand his horizons in that regard. His heartfelt assertion that he would rather freeze his arse off on an uninhabited iceball than tramp through another desert or tropical "paradise" seemed to have no weight with either his master or the Jedi Council; he had been obliged instead to swallow his objections and simply seek out the most effective remedy as a universal precaution.

He rummaged in his pack and found the canister of bacta infused liniment at the bottom, amid a scattering of crumbs from an unwrapped protein bar, the extra power cell for his comlink, and one or two pretty rocks he had picked up in the course of their last journeys. There was also a rumpled flimsi brochure, one which proved to be – upon reinspection – the glossy publicity handbill for sky-jumping lessons on Yarbel 9, a tourist venue to which Qui-Gon had teasingly offered to take him as an early life-day gift.

Snorting, he levitated the frayed advertisement into the shipboard 'cycler's chute and popped open the jar of medicinal cream. After liberally smearing the affected areas with sticky glop, he rolled himself into his cloak and grumpily contemplated the opposite bulkhead until his flare of annoyance had died down sufficiently to let him reach into the Force's healing currents.

If he had been allowed to sulk, he would have blamed the long vigil on the settlers' front porch. Deprived of this obvious source of consolation, he was obliged to attribute his present discomfort to the will of the Force… a notion that invited uncomfortable speculation about what he had done to deserve such treatment at its hands.

He decided to go back to his unintentional nap instead.

They had just reverted from hyperspace and entered Coruscant's star system on sublights when Qui-Gon felt the cockpit hatch slide open behind him.

He glanced sideways as his apprentice inserted himself in the co-pilot's chair and peered through the viewport at the tiny glittering orb ahead. "Did you put something on that sunburn?" he inquired.

"Yes, Master." An aggrieved sigh. The boy obviously felt the burn was his master's fault, but had the sense not to voice this irrational sentiment.

Recent events had put Qui-Gon in a slightly maudlin mood, or he would not have tolerated the unspoken complaint. Now, he merely offered a rueful smile and a mild retort.. "I do not choose these assignments, Obi-Wan. A Jedi goes where he is needed."

A soft snort. "We were hardly needed there," Obi-Wan griped.

Ah…. he had not anticipated such a misunderstanding. It made sense, of course – he had left the padawan outside while the stricken farmsteaders made their tragic revelation to him in privacy – but it was not fitting for a Jedi, even a young one in training, to jump to such irritable conclusions. "What makes you think that?" he replied, levelly.

Already his apprentice knew this leading question to be a warning of some pitfall to come, but he answered anyway, possibly craving a confrontation. Obi-Wan was patient and intelligent – especially for his age – but he would seldom back down from an argument, certainly never on account of intimidation.

And he was true to form now. "My thinker," he blandly replied, brows lifting into a sarcastic arch.

"I wonder that agile faculty of yours did not caution you against impertinence," the tall man smoothly countered. "Perhaps you should ask whether the sun exposure has been detrimental to its functioning."

Obi-Wan directed his answering scowl at the console, rather than his master, proof that wisdom had not entirely fled his grasp. His arms crossed over one another in a familiar posture of vexation. "I thought it," he grudgingly explained, "because we were sent there to collect a Force-sensitive child they claimed to have, and when we arrive there was no such person there. They were… mistaken. Or deceiving us."

Qui-Gon leaned back, switching the helm controls to automatic as they cruised toward the planet at an economical speed. "There is another type of fool besides the liar and the idiot," he told his young charge. "And I assure you our hosts were neither."

"Then what were they?"

The Jedi master sighed. "People," he answered tightly.

A pause, in which the drives idled on active standby, and the Force thrummed with unresolved tension. The tall man stood. "The third kind of fool is one who lets personal annoyance blind him to possibilities."

The words hurt. Obi-Wan stood, eyes sparking with wounded feelings.

"Come this way," the tall man ordered. They passed into the passenger compartment. "What did you feel in the Force when we arrived at the homestead?"

The padawan sighed. "Nothing. I didn't feel anyone – that's how I knew the mission was a waste of time. If there had been a youngling there like they said, I would have-"

Qui-Gon's look silenced him. "The Udoni have an innate capacity to shield their emotions. You would not have felt anything. But that was not reason to conclude they were telling a falsehood."

They passed into the aft hold. Obi-Wan looked up at his master, visibly piqued. "Then why don't we have a youngling with us?" he demanded, a trickle of anxiety making itself felt in the Force as he picked up ….something across their shared bond.

The Jedi master exhaled slowly. "We do." He opened the storage locker, and then the flap of his heavy pack. A shape swathed in linen strips and wrapped in a simple embroidered cloth was nestled within. He took his apprentice's hand and gently set it upon the curve of this small object, his own fingers spread atop the young Jedi's.

A moment, in which the Force spoke invisibly, physical contact giving the realization the power of a kick in the gut. Obi-Wan's face came round, eyes wide now with terrible knowledge. "Oh."

Qui-Gon let him go, and gravely closed the locker again.

His companion was staring at the deck, silent. He tipped the boy's chin upward with one hand, watching the tears softly well and fall.

"I'm sorry… I'm sorry," Obi-Wan hoarsely said. "I was arrogant, Master."

"Yes." There was no point denying a truth that would leave a salutary lesson in the wake of its initial painful discovery. "But you are also compassionate. I'm sorry their social customs forbade you entrance; they do not permit any child to see the corpse of another." He wiped away a trailing bead of moisture.

"The volcanic eruption, and the toxic gases, and the heat," Obi-Wan succinctly concluded.

Qui-Gon nodded heavily. "They requested that the Order still take the child …. The Council have agreed to funeral rites in the Temple." He rested a hand upon the boy's shoulder. "And you will not be expected to wait outside during the ceremony, Padawan."

"Yes, Master." Obi-Wan took a tentative step closer, a tiny request for forgiveness, one granted with a brief smile of encouragement and an affectionate tug upon his braid.