Gray and Gold

Written by LuvEwan

PG

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.

The Battle of Naboo ends with a different casualty. On the anniversary of the terrible event, Qui-Gon Jinn is met with another twist of fate. AU.

Bold paragraph dividers will indicate flashback. I don't want to mess with italics that much!

The snow burned. The earth was still swollen from the press of ivory layers that had since shrunk to lumps and drained out into the frigid air. Somewhere under the slick freeze, fish swam in a warm, watery womb, well below the scorch of winter.

His skin resembled the trees, old and strained, his hands chapped to an aching rawness. Flexing his fingers stretched the pores, and he watched the flesh there splinter like ice.

The seasons were shifting, the natives had told him, and soon they would all see the sun. But he would be gone before then, back to his nexus of the Universe that glowed as a molten core, polished to perfection. He would see himself there, in the reflection of a buffed tile or banister, and so he would carry the dismal gray of a barren time, for the clouds were thick in his eyes.

He took a breath, and the breeze bruised his lungs. He huddled in closer, wrapping himself in the fleece-lined cloak and leaning forward, his boots settling a bit deeper in the dingy slush. It was a bitter dusk that seeped into his spine, a worse taste that came to his tongue.

He could recall the flavor of the pain that day, and how the agony billowed up from his guts, a morbid dust that floated to his throat and then his mouth. It had overtaken his mind, if only for a moment. But then, he had choked on the bile churned from something else. Fear, from the intimate places of his heart. He had been so afraid, the slowing flow of blood was forced to hurdle the course again, and he had gripped onto the floor. His fingers had slipped on the sweat. The groan emitted was a long, sharp sound, and he had imagined it was his pain being released, a willful fantasy that allowed him to pull forward when he would have slumped over and surrendered to oblivion. The weapons had been taken…and so had his apprentice.

The wound was horrendous, he had known that. Scarlet pitted his stomach, in one blink, in a single, quick penetration. And scarlet had been stained over his eyes, crossed with black in an ugly mosaic of the creature's face. A warrior of an accursed-and extinct-creed.

But it had been the hour of resurrection, to coincide with the moment of Qui-Gon Jinn's worst fall. He had been taken out of the battle. And the Sith returned with a guttural howl, a ragged victory call. The last thing he had heard, before the fog grew dense around him.

His life was spared, by damn fool luck in the form of a passing palace guard, and while the tubes were unraveled and the needles hooked, he cried out from the gaping hole left in him. He had lost the presence of his student, in mind and body.

And, precisely three years after, there were still no remains.

Unless you counted the cloak.

Half-healed, he had returned to the site, and it had appeared almost cavernous to his weathered eyes. There he found twin pools of mahogany, abandoned at the start, and forgotten in the torturous days that followed. Their robes. His robe-Obi-Wan's-untouched. The warmth had fled the fibers, of course, but the scent was there, and he had folded it in his arms as carefully as though it were the owner.

The funeral was strange. There had been no form to place on the stone bed, and he couldn't bring himself to forfeit the last vestige of his protégé. So flowers were settled over it instead, pallid blooms of such delicacy they were broken by a slight caress. They had resembled nothing of whom they were meant to honor, and Qui-Gon had been glad to witness their fiery consumption; he turned away before Yoda gathered the ash.

Life ground on, deaf to his objections.

The Temple was of light and beauty. Anakin had been enthralled by every crevice. His new Master had privately mourned for the child, that he would never know the pure effulgence of an era struck down. The Temple would never be nearly what it had once been.

And he supposed that was true of himself. The injuries sustained during the Naboo mission would never fade completely from the extensive memory of his bones, nor would his mind recover from the awful breach that ripped through its tissue that day.

His young Padawan wasn't oblivious, as much as Qui-Gon would have liked to believe. The boy knew a ghost lurked their halls, and the walls of his quarters were smudged by old fingerprints. He knew the vigil for Obi-Wan Kenobi had not ended, and was silent whenever his teacher accepted a solo assignment. Which wasn't often, really. Perhaps once a year, around the same time.

This year, he had been sent out further than previously, and for whole days he sat alone in a drafty cockpit, immersed in shadows. His task on the planet was finished without incident, and he would be returning to his ship at dawn.

Sunrise, though there would be little illumination or warmth.

He glanced down at his hands again. The color had retreated from them. Shutting his eyes, he buried them in the folds of the cloak that lay draped over his legs.

In the darkness, he could hear the rustle of far-off wings and the wind cracking the winter. And he couldn't see the absence of sun, the strips of gloom clotting the lusterless sky. He wasn't in another graveyard, with the skeletons of proud trees and echoes of a silenced voice.

He felt he could slip away in the softness, and that little groan at the base of him would be silenced, too.

One tear fell, reaching the top of his cheek before it was halted by the chill.

"My Master taught me about the famous resolve of the Jedi. It is… peculiar to see it debunked."

Qui-Gon's eyes barreled open. When had he wandered into unconsciousness? How had he not recognized this as another teasing dream that granted him a reunion with his slain apprentice, to touch the flush of vitality on that face, only to wake to reality again?

There was no mistaking the flawless dulcet. It had been lifted from his own memory, and he had known every lilt and tremble in that tone.

But today, Qui-Gon couldn't smile. He didn't want imitations. He wanted-needed-to grieve. "Leave me," He whispered.

"I did."

Another tear became a sharp sliver on his skin. He clenched his eyes and pressed his fist between them. "I can accept my limitations. I can't take this. I know he's gone. Let him be gone from illusions. I don't want him there, to hurt me with happiness that's been so long extinguished."

Qui-Gon heard steps press through the melted snow, and he craned his neck.

Obi-Wan was standing three feet from him, a slender figure of fragility and paleness, with only battered leggings to shield him from nature. His hair was wilted around his face. His lips were parted-and blue.

Qui-Gon rose, the cloak hanging in suddenly limp fingers. It couldn't be true. Surely his mind had detached from sanity…but the shock was real, binding his lungs and prickling the hair on his arms. He waited, several minutes, for the cruel delirium to subside, for the familiar figure to meld in with the spindly branches and sullen sky.

But there wasn't a waver. That face, that had been resigned to holos and recollections, was steady. And Qui-Gon realized Obi-Wan wouldn't disperse to vapor before him…Obi-Wan was waiting for him.

No—he wouldn't believe that. How could he believe that? Obi-Wan Kenobi was dead. There were a million reminders every day. The crates of tunics, journals and medals packed away in the depths of Qui-Gon's closet. The half-eaten box of crackers that had been Obi-Wan's favorite, and though despised by the current residents of the apartment, were still in place on the shelf, coated in dust. Each time Anakin spoke his title in the Outer Rim accent, and the contrast was biting.

When his fingers fell to the scarring webbed over his abdomen, and he remembered. He would have died on that icy floor, if not for the quest that revived his failing system. It was the weight he lived with: If Obi-Wan had survived the battle, Qui-Gon would have allowed himself to succumb to the pain, to join the comfort of the Force's minstrels.

And now, he was to accept that was all needless? He was supposed to take a chisel to the name that finally, after three years, was added to the list of the Fallen? He was to abandon every nightmare that supplied description of that fatal moment in the Core?

"O-O…" He sputtered, his mouth was quivering so badly. He took a longer look at the bruised countenance and shook his head. "No…I…"

To his utter surprise, Obi-Wan moved, walking slowly forward.

Qui-Gon's feet were sunk into the mushy grit, and he couldn't take a step.

The young man stopped when there was only a breath's width between them. He smiled, and it was shattering.

The expression was Obi-Wan, genuinely, as was the soft glint of humor in his eyes. It was Obi-Wan, the stolen piece of his soul. Obi-Wan, who was forcing him to believe that the Sith's blade had not claimed as much as he envisioned it had.

He reached out with cold fingers. "O-Obi-Wan?"

"Qui-Gon."

Moisture stung his eyes, though the wind had calmed. Tentatively, he touched the rounded jaw and shuddered. "I-I thought you were…"

"I was." Obi-Wan rasped. Despite the temperature and his bare skin, he didn't shiver. "But I'm not anymore. I've been looking for you."

Qui-Gon smoothed a hand over the auburn hair. "I never…" He swallowed the anguish knotted in his throat, "I never looked for you."

"I know."

Qui-Gon shook his head and drew Obi-Wan into a frenzied embrace, pressing him close. "I would have, gods I would have done anything to find you, but I couldn't feel you in my mind. You weren't distant, or cut off. You were just gone, Obi-Wan."

He pulled back, to savor the gleam in eyes he had last seen widened in horror, behind a crackling electric red screen.

"I've been gone a long time, Qui-Gon."

"I know." Qui-Gon gasped, gripping the sides of the beloved face, "I know it. It's been an eternity. It's been a nightmare."

"Yes. A nightmare."

Qui-Gon hugged him again, bringing the cloak around Obi-Wan's shoulders, and could feel all the sleepless nights doze, the tears subside and the joy expand, to fill him where there had been empty shadow. When he could form words again, "Where have you been? What h-happened to you that day?"

The smile faded, and the jewels in his gaze hardened to stone. "That's why I was looking for you. I want to show you something." He rested his forehead against Qui-Gon's and closed his eyes. "I want to show you everything."

It was like instinct. Their minds interwove, as easily as if not an hour had passed since the times when they could commune without speaking a word.

And Qui-Gon could hear Obi-Wan. At last he could hear Obi-Wan, and revel in that unique light.

But then, it was different. The radiance dimmed and sour darkness soiledthe connection. They were moving, traveling over odd plains…

Until they came to the beginning of what Obi-Wan wanted his former Master to see.

He was born in pain.

He was dredged up from the ether, hands grazing his face and a horrible scream purged like blood from his throat. He could imagine his mind striated with furious red welts; every thought opened a fresh wound.

He was stricken with some sort of fever that bathed his forehead in sweat and twisted his perceptions.

He was seeing monsters. And, even with the throb of endless agony, he knew that such things were limited to dark spaces under small beds.

He couldn't be lying at the feet of a demonic beast whose body was pure, coal black and muscle, face a jagged swarm of flames. Those weren't horns jutting out from the head, coming to wicked yellow points.

He would close his eyes. Yes, he would close them and wait. He would listen to his breaths. He would breathe heavily, that's what he would do, heavy enough to muffle any other sounds he might have detected in the silence.

It was dark in his mind. The thick twilight smothered him and left him dizzy in confusion, trying to grab on to certainty. A visceral ache ran through his body, akin to a hunger ignored until it festered. What was it that he needed? Where was the equaling force that would grant him balance again?

Then, the husky scrape of breath dragged him out miserably and he grimaced, wrenching his face away from the stale warmth. Coarse fingers traced the path of his jaw down to his chin. "Your search will be fruitless. And your soul will remain unfulfilled."

Somehow, his eyes betrayed him, and they slowly opened. It was the keeper of Hell that crouched beside him, and it was Evil that wandered the path of his face. He swallowed, tasted acid. "What…What am I searching for?"

A dark hand reached behind his ear. Panic stirred sharply in his throat.

Then, the arm rose, and a thin, plaited string cut across the pall, gleaming gold. His mouth froze in its shock. "Master."

It rushed back to him. Naboo. The palace. The duel. His Master, glazed red by the sheen of the energy wall, crumpling over from a saber wound. His own scream. The wall shooting up, and any semblance of restraint fleeing along with it. He attacked with all the vicious drive of a bloodthirsty, savage animal, all the finesse of a seasoned Jedi, and all the desperation of an apprentice without his teacher. It was going to be enough. Nothing else mattered, except tearing down the creature and returning to Qui-Gon.

Qui-Gon. What else could possibly matter?

He was almost there when their blades clashed and brought them into intimate settings, the sweat and hate heavy in the air. He looked into the bleeding eyes of the beast who plunged agony into his Master—

And suddenly, his mind was crowded. He sifted through for Qui-Gon, but found nothing. It was if he didn't exist. Then he realized…it was a thousand voices of his own throat and spirit, unbound. Set wretchedly free.

The mental connection between he and his Master was gone.

It didn't require enormous effort for the Sith to take its win.

"Master." He murmured, as his eyes flooded.

"It will be fruitless." The Sith repeated, "It is fruitless to search out someone—who doesn't want to be found."

A grateful smile came and went as a spasm in his lips. "He's not-"

"No. He's home now, I imagine. The funeral ended last night."

"Funeral?"

The thin lips twisted. "He's not dead, little Jedi, but you are. They burned you last night, without a body. And before the smoke disappeared, your Master had. With his new apprentice. The Chosen One, they call him. I wonder what they will call the Master who guides such a treasure to the Order?"

"What—What proof is there, that I'm…"

The amusement drained from the Sith's eyes. "The only proof the Council needs. Your Master says the link has been destroyed. By what, he cannot name."

His chest tightened, and he could hear the next words like thunderclap.

"That seems odd. I would think he'd know his own name well enough."

He snapped. "NO. He wouldn't." The outrage and fear welled incredibly within him. "He wouldn't desert me. We-We settled everything. He wouldn't."

"Then where is he?" The Sith asked in a whisper, features swathed in shadow, "Why isn't he searching for you, as you are for him?" The creature leaned in closer, "Why did he permit a funeral mere days after you were determined missing?"

He shut his eyes to block further emotion from seeping through.

"The truth comes without garnishment or elaborate explanation, little Jedi. It can only be what it is. Your Master found a way to attain exactly what he wanted. And no one can blame him." A small laugh, "They pity him. They mourn with him. And with him, they will forget.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi is a mist of ash on the Naboo sea. Far from Coruscant. Far from the Jedi Temple. A ghost can haunt, elicit a shiver. But in the end, it is transparent. Memory. Nothing more."

He was sinking into himself, and thus sinking into the murk of the words. His Master had been an honorable man, but he wasn't without sin. He had thrown Obi-Wan away, as an initiate, as a newly-braided Padawan…as a senior Padawan, without warning. The link was demolished, and he could think of no one else capable of carrying that out.

He gulped, and evaded the whimper that strained at the fringes of his throat. "How can I be sure of what you say? I watched you slide your blade into his belly, and now you think you will command my trust?" It had been a brave, and very likely stupid, thing to say, but he was without an anchor, and floundering in his liberation. The refinement and education of his past was replaced by something more basic. He was going on sheer human instinct, and wasn't sure he could trust himself, for everything he was was rooted in the Jedi. And Qui-Gon Jinn.

"I could have killed you." The Sith answered bluntly. "You were writhing on the ground, out of reality, out of your mind." His head tilted, "But I didn't. You remain alive, despite the carelessness of your instructor.

"But you're also weak. Your mind has been severed. And there is no gentle Temple healer to repair it. You are half of what you were." A yellowed smile, "Without an anchor."

He gasped, grasping his temple as though he would find blood there. "You—How—"

"The strings are there. Step out of your fear and convoluted ideals, and you'll feel them. You've been searching for a Master, but you've been following the wrong trails."

He struggled to sit upright. "You should have killed me then. I'd rather be a ghost than a demon."

"I'm a demon?" The Sith drawled, "Though the Sith ancestry lies within the Jedi Order itself. Though I wield the same weapon and have mastered the same Force." He curved his fingertip along a cheekbone piteously, "Perhaps the Sith are only Jedi, in different trappings."

An explosive rage was building in him, but his mouth was sealed by a palm.

"The road of a Jedi has been fruitless for you. What can you claim in this life? An Order that laid you to rest without a body. A Master, that designed your passing to suit his own dreams?

"You have nothing, except what I have given you, what is buried in your mind and waits to be uncovered. There is a Master that would still stand beside you, that would see that your life and training won't be wasted. A Master who would restore the strength you lost, in that moment of betrayal."

He stared into those eyes that had overseen gore and slaughter, that worshipped the corruption of those he had made his home with. There was ever only one answer. "Never."

But in the end, the strings were there, and he was without the power to wilt them.

He was born anew, in pain, believing, knowing that both his teachers were traitors.

And now, he would be one.

The fight within his consciousness had tore things down and removed obstacles that would have made the transformation more difficult. The trauma shut him down, saving him from feeling the full flourish of Darkness as it overtook him.

When he woke, he was without a name or identity outside of his Master. The very structure of his life was collapsed, to be rebuilt by new hands.

And at the base of that regeneration was the knowledge. The name Qui-Gon Jinn.

He knew it when he didn't know his own.

There were countless more images that assaulted Qui-Gon in random bursts. Training and trials and the gradual degradation of the man he once knew. The Sith had spoke of strings, but it was all an unraveling, done with the cruelest tools.

Lies. Obi-Wan had been force-fed lies until it was an unwilling addiction. Deception had left him pale as the fading snow. Misery had taken the mirth and radiance from him. The Sith pressed a beautiful kind of passion in his fist, and crushed it.

The fragments were there, in the glint of multi-hued eyes. But no…there was only gray now.

Qui-Gon looked at Obi-Wan, who stood before him, the robe fallen around his ankles. The wind was picking up, whipping hair in violent strikes across their faces. "It wasn't your fault, Obi-Wan." He shook his head. "That…monster has locked you away in fabrication. You must know I would never cut you off from me so brutally. I," He almost lost his voice and had to begin again, "I would have died in that palace, except that I couldn't feel you. I crawled through the halls with a hole in the middle of me." He rested his hand against the ashen face and was surprised not to be pushed away, "The hole was from you. I've been incomplete without you, Obi-Wan."

Obi-Wan regarded him stoically, his face rigid against the chilled fingers. "I was that way, once. Now I am fulfilled. I will not be discarded, in favor of a worthless slave. I won't be restricted by an Order that burns me out of their memory.

"The Dark is my anchor. It's been my teacher. My companion. It's all I need."

Qui-Gon brought up his other hand, to frame Obi-Wan's face in a vehement grip, "This isn't you," He hissed, "The Sith used his power to detach us from each other. I was injured. You were angry and distracted. He knew there had to be a link between us.

"You were angry over my loss in the battle. The Sith saw that anger. He knew what it could do, if honed. He took you from me, Obi-Wan. Because you were strong and vulnerable. He's using you, as the Dark uses him." His focus bore deep into Obi-Wan, trying to locate something of him untainted, a light kindled in the enveloping shadows. "Yoda would say this is a test for you. To pit you against the Darkness to discover the purity of your heart. Your ability to overcome."

Obi-Wan smiled, and it was the smile of five, ten years before, when there was no question of his purity, so much smaller things to overcome. It was the smile that had beckoned Qui-Gon from sleep and death, that reassured him on unsteady spindles. The smile he still looked to when rain beat at his shoulders.

But then he blinked, and it was replaced by the truth.

Without garnishment or elaborate explanation.

The person standing before him had no name, and no real smile, but a blank expression, emotionless.

He wanted to believe this was Obi-Wan, beneath the thick skin of a Sith. He would believe it. "I'm not going to walk away from you. I didn't before and I won't now. You can come back to the Temple, Obi-Wan. There won't be accusations. We can go inside right now, and sit by the fire. You can tell me everything and it won't change my mind about you. You're still my apprentice. I thought you were gone, but you're not. I won't let that miracle slip between my fingers. I won't leave you in the Dark."

Obi-Wan's fingers hovered an inch from Qui-Gon's face. "You were right about one thing. This is my trial. I've been promised a name upon its completion. I was the trial of my Master. And you're mine." His hand fell.

"But the task is the same." He took a step backward. "To become a Sith, fully and truly, you must kill a Jedi."

There were no weapons. It was a bare fight, hands and legs, wrestling on the ice.

For Qui-Gon, it was the last chance he had to salvage Obi-Wan. If he could use his size and strength, he would be able to ground the smaller man under him, and end the terrible thing. He would get him back to Coruscant, to healers and the Temple and the memories that would soothe him from the edge. Eventually, he would be Knighted, and be stronger for the ordeal he survived.

They would look back over the chasm that had stretched in those three awful years, safe on solid earth.

He did not anticipate the huge power the Dark would give his estranged student, power enough to slam his head against the frozen ledge of the lake.

Qui-Gon didn't gasp as he slumped against a cold lump of molding snow. With glossed eyes he looked up to see Obi-Wan, alive and triumphant, above him.

The figure dominated his blurring vision, until at long last, warmth crept into the Jedi Master's bones. Slowly, his eyes fluttered shut. And he could see the sun.

Maul appeared behind the other Sith and surveyed the results of the monumental encounter. He smiled. "I'm proud of you, my apprentice. I admit, my faith in you had begun to waver."

The young man turned to him, and a single set of tears were marbled in his eyes. "Your lies have become my truth. How can I thank you for that?"

His gratitude was delivered in a silent twinge of Force fingers that sealed off the murderous creature's lungs.

He watched Maul flail on the ground, and in the end, it wasn't the winter that splotched his lips brilliant blue.

He waited only seconds for the last to approach him, and he wrapped himself in an offered robe of velvet black, given by bleached, liver-spotted hands.

"You have proved yourself beyond compare." Sidious croaked from beneath the flooding shade of his cowl. "And so the Dark will give you your name."

He stood motionless while his newest Master disposed of Maul's odious corpse.

But when Sidious targeted Jinn, the man that had been Obi-Wan Kenobi, and was currently without a name, turned away.