quigonejinn

Using ideas suggested by

neotoma

1.

Obi-Wan came to the Order in the way that infants were supposed to come to the Order: his parents were grain farmers on Darshall. They had traveled to the medical center at the nearest supply depot town, and they had done because this was her first child. By the time that they left the hospital, though, they had already decided to give him up to the Jedi.

Their boy was phenomenally gifted, it seemed.

It would be several months before someone could be spared to take him to the Temple. Instead to giving him to one of the droids in the long-term nursery center as they might have, however, they chose to keep him until a Knight came. Through Force-aided meditation, Obi-Wan later found memories of golden fields, blue skies, and a smell that, upon investigation in the archives, turned out to be the smell of Darshall cooking. Baking. Bread. The taste of non-vitaminized water drawn straight from planetary aquifers, hands that were callused from housework and droid operation rather than a lightsaber, stroking his hair and touching his cheek. The sound of household conversation while he went to sleep.

His parents never named him. He was known simply as the baby; the name Obi-Wan was entirely a Jedi invention, and when Shan Tekran came for him, his parents brought him out in their bare arms and watched as Tekran rewrapped the baby in one of his spare Jedi robes.

Instead of crying, Obi-Wan giggled happily, squealed when Tekran picked him up, and held onto a lightsaber-callused finger. His mother had tears in her eyes.

"He recognizes me in the Force," Tekran said, by way of explanation.

Obi-Wan was asleep by the time the ship left orbit.

2.

The child was a year old, still small, stick-thin, and faintly yellow. Many Shadan children were born slightly yellow from a maternal pregnancy metabolism that used tryptonarin as an oxygen carrier, but it usually faded after a few months of breathing and regular iron consumption. This one was still a little yellow, though. It would have been jaundice in most other near-human species, a sign of poverty, but Shadan aristocracy prided themselves on the fact that their children stayed yellow so long. It was a sign that their children were still tied to the womb, bound to their clans.

A child who showed signs of his origin would bring honor to his family. Prestige. Fame. Renown. The only things still worth pursuing in a culture as old and universally rich as the Shadan aristocracy. Their origin rivaled the Republic's in age, and now, a droid gave him to his mother.

She held him awkwardly, perhaps because of the ceremonial jewelry she wore, perhaps because a droid had, indeed, likely handled him since the baby left her body. The duties of a Republic diplomat left little time for child-raising.

Two of the triardium bracelets on her wrists clinked as she bent and put the baby into Odan-Kirr's arms. She was taller than he was since the Shadan aristocracy had bred for height and good looks for a millennia. When they discovered genetic technologies, the greatest of the clans had begun to engineer their children, too, for leadership and charisma.

"I remind you of the terms upon which we give him to you," his mother said to Odan-Kirr. "We have been promised that no less than Master Yoda will train him. He will keep his name; he will know the faces and symbols of his family. He will learn his ancestral language of High Shadan, and if he should ever desire to, he will be allowed to leave the Order unmolested."

Odan-Kirr bowed as deeply as tradition required, and he held the child to his chest, tightly, so that it would not slip out of his arms and fall onto the polished floor. He doubted that its mother would have even noticed, though.

During the two hour air-taxi ride to the Temple, Dooku neither cried nor made a single sound of distress. The Shadan had bred those things out of their children, too.

3.

Qui-Gon's side ached. Bacta did miracles for reknitting tissue, but even renewed tissue suffered pain, and he refused to take the painkillers -- at least not until he had concluded this matter. It would be wrong to take a numbing agent when the boy's parents were, themselves, so torn.

The mother was, in fact, sobbing. Her eyes were red already from weeping, and she burst into a fresh round of tears while she kissed her boy's cheeks, forehead, and eyes. She held him tightly, and the boy clung to her, too. Refused to be lifted from her lap until his father tugged at him. Apparently, she had raised him herself rather than let the droids take him, as was more customary on this planet.

"I had heard stories of how powerful the Jedi were, but I had not believed it until I saw you. I do not think they could have prevailed against you if they'd had a hundred of those assasin droids."

Qui-Gon said nothing and kept his eyes on the boy, who had been distracted from his weeping mother by some of the shiny buttons on his father's formal jacket. He was playing with them; Qui-Gon could, however, still hear the miserable woman sniffling and trying to put on a dignified face so that she wouldn't completely embarass her husband in front of the Jedi. He looked thunderous enough.

There wasn't any of the father's dark temperament in the boy, though. When his father held him out for Qui-Gon to take, the boy hesitated for a moment, then stretched his arms out for Qui-Gon and smiled.

He was lighter than Qui-Gon thought he would be. They studied each other for a moment, and then the boy laughed, reached up and tugged on the beginnings of what Qui-Gon hoped would someday be reasonable-looking head of Knight-length hair.

The boy giggled at the face that Qui-Gon made at him.

The father cleared his throat. The mother stopped sniffling for a few moments.

"His name is Xanatos," Crion said, stepping closer, keeping his eyes on Qui-Gon and not on his son. "I would like for him to keep it, but that is not all that important. What is important is that I want him to be as powerful as you are. I want him to be a powerful Jedi."

Xanatos made a grab for Qui-Gon's beard, but Qui-Gon made a show of jerking his chin away, and the boy giggled some more.

4.

"Sleep," Dooku whispered, and the child slept. Its eyelids began to flicker, though, as it moved into a dream state; it thrashed a little, whimpered that the fire was hot, and after a while, Dooku put his hand on its shoulder.

"Forget, my boy. If only for a little while."

The boy stilled, and as the ship continued to leave planetary orbit, Dooku went on dabbing at the boy's cheek with a bit of dampened cloth, picking the charcoal out of his hair as best he could.

When they arrived at Corsucant, Dooku fought the Council until they permitted the boy to be trained as Jedi. His midichlorian count was borderline for a sensitive; he was old to begin with, and he had already suffered extensive trauma that might prevent him from successfully receiving training.

In the end, Dooku had to use his trump card and remind the Council members that, if he left, there was a planet and a high clan of Shandan that would welcome him. Unlike most Jedi, he had a place outside the Order. His mother was now a Republic Senator; his blood-brother was the right-hand man of another and controlled, through him, a hundred and eighteen votes in the Senate. The Chancellor was already asking for Dooku by name, and Dooku's family had always made it clear that if he wanted to take the family duties, he had only to ask. They would welcome him back to the family.

If the Council wanted to be rid of the boy that Dooku had brought back, they would be rid of Dooku, too.

He also reminded the Council that the boy had caused his parents' death precisely because he had been untrained. Whatever his midichlorian count was, he had demonstrated an uncanny gift for the Living Force. He was dangerous; he had been capable of routinely levitating small objects at the age of a year. He had used the mindtrick on his father, unaware that a mental imperative to give him affection was incompatible with safe flying of an air-car. That had led to the crash that claimed his parents and elder sister.

The entire Council went quiet when Dooku reminded them of these two things. His old master had been unable to look him in the eye, and when they finally gave in, Dooku personally went to the record-keepers and had them enter the child as an Initiate. There would be no trickery or sleight of hand; he had to leave the planet on a mission for Chancellor Armin. The boy was in no state to follow him, but Dooku did make sure that the Council would not accidentally misplacethe boy onto, say, an outwards-bound shuttle transport.

Dooku also had the recordkeepers enter a new name: Qui-Gon. In High Shadan, it meant miracle, and it was true. Qui-Gon was Dooku's miracle. He was convinced, for years, that Qui-Gon was the Chosen One who would bring balance to the Force.

The Jinn part came later, later, when Qui-Gon was fifteen and was, for the first time, permitted to look at his memories without a Force-block on certain parts.

In his native language, it meant demon; it had been what the screaming native mob that had gathered around the smoking shuttlecraft had called him before Dooku forced his way through them and found the four year old boy lying in the wreckage, curled in the charred lap of his mother, who still strapped to her seat. Qui-Gon was sobbing in terror; he had felt each of them die in the Force, and when Dooku came on him, Qui-Gon was desperately trying to use his grasp of the Living Force to mindtrick his mother back into life. He was convinced that he could somehow will her back into living in much the same way as he had willed her out of trying to put him in bed when he did not want to sleep.

Qui-Gon Jinn.

Every time that someone spoke his name, it was a reminder of both wonder and the danger of being a Jedi.

It was a reminder of how he had both come to and come to be Jedi.