quigonejinn

Waves. Sunshine. The sound of water lapping at the sides of the ship, but it was only sound, and the deck was, for once, steady. A light breakfast had been set out on deck for them, and the researchers were either all down with the mechanical probe or still in their beds after a night of astronomy work, and really, Obi-Wan thought. His Master's queue was not lying down flat at all.

In fact, it wasn't even really properly on the back of his head -- Qui-Gon had made efforts, it was clear, but it actually stuck out the side of his head, somewhat behind his ear.

It was the Republic's worst Padawan braid, really.

Qui-Gon looked up from his juice. Frowned.

"Sorry." Obi-Wan gave him a vastly apologetic look and resumed trying, with all his heart, to fight the smirk off his face.

...

Qui-Gon did not braid his hair very often. It was heavy enough so that it rarely got caught in a breeze, and it was coarse enough so that it resisted humidity fairly well. Obi-Wan had actually never seen his master in a queue until this, an utterly uninhabited marine planet in Republic territory with good sun, warmish oceans, and underwater ruins that were the remnants of an extinct, highly advanced native species.

All they had to do for this mission was sit on the ship. Keep an eye out for previously unknown hostiles. Give the researchers any aid they needed, monitor the sea floor mapping droid as it sent back reports. Sleep a great deal. Rest. The droids took care of all the shipwork; some of the researchers were on their third tour here, and Qui-Gon was recovering well enough that he began to come out onto the deck to meditate. The galley was surprisingly well-stocked; bi-Wan was experimenting with some of the native wildlife that the researchers had indicated was edible.

It was, Obi-Wan supposed, the Jedi version of a vacation.

...

"I am told that there are the remnants of old weather-control satellites in the atmosphere."

"Is that why the weather is always so pleasant here?"

"It seems so." Qui-Gon made a noise in his throat, peered at the report screen for the mapping droid that was covering the sea floor underneath. Reassured himself that all was going well, that the regular little ping really did indicate good health and progress, and then he settled back in his chair.

"The mild climate is, apparently, why there are so many near-sentient species on this planet. For some reason, the evolutionary chain started with a relatively high base level of intelligence, and since the weather is so mild, there was little reason from the environment to convert more of that intelligence into weaponry.

"One of the researchers -- I think it was Sarrd'an, one of the xenospecialists -- swears that the large fish we see by the bow like to play jokes. He's been splashed out of his dinghy more than once."

Obi-Wan didn't answer for a while, and when Qui-Gon looked over, he found that his Padawan had fallen asleep, head on hands. The remains of a very large lunch were on the floor behind them; they were sitting in the pilot house of the ship, and pretending to be someone that he wasn't was always an extra strain on Obi-Wan. He did not enjoy undercover, investigatory work at all; he liked diplomacy, open negotiations. Skulking around, poking into places where he did not belong was his least favorite sort of work, in fact, and having Andrann and Threll back-to-back had been hard on him.

They were the only ones, besides the droids, left onboard, and windows in the pilot's house had been opened to let the breeze through.

Qui-Gon reached over, tucked Obi-Wan's Padawan braid back behind his right ear, then turned down the volume on the mapping droid reports.

...

Besides the near-sentient fish, there were also the birds: enormous, broad-winged creatures that had nothing in the way of landing apparatus. As Obi-Wan understood it, they never landed. They were born on the wing; when their muscles had not yet developed enough to allow them to fly, they were borne by their parents, first in a specialized bit of skin and feather underneath the belly, then on the backs of their parents.

There were plenty of smaller animal species on the planet, of course, but Obi-Wan found himself watching them drift above the ship. It was odd, really. He was not fond of animals. He did not like undeveloped worlds.

...

"How is your shoulder?"

"Improving. It doesn't hurt that much."

Obi-Wan rubbed at the place where the shrapnel had gone through his shoulder; thanks to bacta, there was only the faintest of scars, but they had run into a fog bank that afternoon, and the sudden shift in barometric pressure had made it feel odd. He looked old, too, he knew, sitting there in the chair and rubbing and making a face.

"Now I know why old Jedi don't like weather rotations at the Temple Gardens."

Normally, Qui-Gon would have laughed and touched him on the shoulder. Now, though, he laughed and reached over and touched Obi-Wan on the cheek, a little below the cheekbone.

There were bunks in their cabin, but Qui-Gon's was too small for him. He couldn't get comfortable in it, and since they were set into the wall, there was no possibility of pushing two beds together to make a larger one. Qui-Gon slept on the floor between their beds, and he told Obi-Wan that he actually preferred the hard floor to a mattress that had, in any case, been too soft for him.

Also, additionally, it got him closer to Obi-Wan at night. Before, not only had Qui-Gon been wretchedly uncomfortable squeezed into that bunk, but he'd gotten up at least three times a night to check on his Padawan's breathing. It was hard to hear it from across the room, after all, with the creaking of the boat and the sound of the waves.

...

This was the single, longest stretch of interrupted peace that Qui-Gon had known since he became a Padawan. On Threll, as they were being airlifted on a platform out of the firefight by armored shuttle, Qui-Gon had to hold Obi-Wan to keep him from falling off. Been very careful not to move the tourniquet, jar the shredded leg more than he had to or put any pressure on the wounded shoulder. Fought down a surge of inappropriate fear when he realized that the stuff dripping onto his knee was his Padawan's blood. That it was cooling, rapidly, that the airlift might cool Obi-Wan's core temperature to the point where he would die before he reached the ship.

Obi-Wan had assumed that their stay on the ship was so that Qui-Gon could recover from the physical wounds of eight months of chancy undercover arms investigations. He had also assumed that Qui-Gon was the one who needed more recovery.

At night, Obi-Wan still muttered the names of streets from a particular planet that they had worked.

...

"One of the research scientists told me something today."

Qui-Gon stilled, turned his head a little to look at Obi-Wan. "Did you ask, or did he tell you?"

"I asked. I wanted to know what happened to the native species."

They were sitting on the floor together; Qui-Gon had his legs stretched out, and Obi-Wan was behind him. Earlier that evening, Qui-Gon brushed his hair out, and Obi-Wan now had hair looped over his fingers. A bit of twine was on the floor next to them.

Obi-Wan was planning it to do the end of Qui-Gon's queue, and there was a bit of cloth, too, from the repair kit for their robes that he was going to tie on there, too, and hide the twine. He promised that his braiding would be tight enough for Qui-Gon to sleep on, that if Qui-Gon didn't like the results, he could take the queue out, sleep on the hair, and no-one would ever know that Masters weren't supposed to have a braid that stuck out from the side of their head.

The talking, really, was to keep Qui-Gon's still while Obi-Wan finished.

"An interest in natural science is unlike you, Obi-Wan. I approve, though -- what did the researcher say?"

"Nobody knows where they went. Researchers have not seen any signs the natives discovered space travel, but they do know the natives were advanced enough to control the weather." A bit of a pause while Obi-Wan picked the twine up from the floor, wrapped it around the end of the queue.

"Some of the xenogeneticists think the fish we've been seeing and the birds are genetic relatives of the original natives. There is an uncanny degree of similarity between them. A mural in one of the cities that shows citydwellers becoming birds or growing scales. There are hints that they knew about large-scale genetic manipulation, but the accompanying texts don't say anything about that. Instead, all they talk about is."

Obi-Wan bit his lip, frowned as he pulled tight the knot on the queue.

"Transformation. Change through happiness."

...

By nightfall, the fog bank moved on, and the skies had cleared. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon went up into the observatory platform with the astronomists to see the readings; eventually a cold wind came up, and while the astronomists couldn't leave, had to stay up there to complete their readings, Qui-Gon muttered about chills.

Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows, looked at him, but went along with it. He noted the fact that Qui-Gon was solicitous of that shoulder, took the stairs slowly and looked back to make sure that Obi-Wan wasn't having difficulty with them. It was just beginning to irritate Obi-Wan when Qui-Gon stopped, halfway down the stairs.

"Naboo," Qui-Gon said, pointing out a cluster of stars, just beyond a pair of red binaries, that Obi-Wan could barely see. "There's a Federation blockade there. Our next mission is on Stral. When I spoke to them today, though, the Council suggested that we may be there before too long."

Obi-Wan looked up from rubbing his shoulder. He could barely see the stars; he could see, much more clearly, even in the dim light of the electric torches on either side of the stairs, that in the hour that he'd had it, Qui-Gon had somehow managed to get his queue off-center.

...

Naboo did not come after Stral. After Stral, there was Alderaan, and after Alderaan, there was Corsucant for a brief while before Randra, where they stayed for two months, working out a peace accord.

Naboo did come after Randra, though, and that vacation, that space of eight days, was the last time that Obi-Wan ever saw his Master with a braid.

It would have been inappropriate to put it into a queue for a formal funeral, after all, and while he was dressing Qui-Gon for the funeral service, Obi-Wan didn't have the heart to put it into a braid, even to see what it would look like. He couldn't bring himself to do it; his shoulder ached in the cold of the morgue room, and it was, in fact, a long time and ways from Naboo -- two decades, Corsucant, Malastare, another water planet where they believed in genetic modification, Mustafar -- until Obi-Wan finally learned about transformation through joy.

Through love.

Fic inspired by this beautiful official concept art that

randomalia posted of Qui-Gon in a braid. We got to talking about how he looks like a solo knight or, as

neotoma suggested, like post-Xanatos, pre-Obi-Wan. :/ He looked so sad in that picture that I wanted to write about him being happy for once :/

The Obi-Wan speaking voice is off because even after scrutinizing the goddamn TPM script, like, three hundred times, I still have no idea how he talks. Blame

stella_belli-wan for not being up at all hours of the day to do the hard work for me. :/