so you know that we'll bow down to no-one.

[quigonejinn]

When Obi-Wan was very young, a situation came up for Qui-Gon's judgement: a man had a quarrel with his neighbor, so he stole his neighbor's hog. In the stealing of the hog, he also killed his neighbor's young daughter. The hog was recovered in his possession; the man had apparently boasted to others about killing his neighbor's child, and all in all, it was proved, to Qui-Gon's satisfaction, that the man had been responsible for both the theft and the death of the girl.

Instead of executing the man, as would have been his right under the laws of property or branding him as a murderer under the laws of murder, Qui-Gon had him brought out to the courtyard. It was getting close to fall, so the sky was blue, and the grass that poked up between the stones was beginning to yellow. Qui-Gon had the blacksmith and Xanatos wrestle the man down onto his knees, then tie his arms to a large, flat stone that had been brought into the courtyard for this day.

Qui-Gon had in his hands not his broadsword, but the axe that they used behind on the woodpile behind the kitchen, and he used it to cut the hands off of the man.

He then remitted the taxes of the healer woman from the village for the next year if she would take care of the man until his stumps healed.

Shortly after the man left her care, the man disappeared. It was assumed that the girl's brothers and father killed him, defenseless and unable to grip a weapon as he was, and while standing in the courtyard, watching the healer woman bind the man's wrists and try to stanch the bleeding, while still hearing the echoes of the sounds the man made when he saw Qui-Gon casually strolling towards him, axe in hand, Obi-Wan had Xanatos turn to him and say, in a calm, satisfied tone, that of all crimes, the one that was most hated by their master was the murder of a child.





The idea behind all of this is that Qui-Gon saw some nasty things while he was off at the wars and may have done some shadowy horrible things, possibly involving him killing children himself. Later on, when Xanatos goes crazy-like-a-fox and goes over to whatever the stand-in for the dark side is, he exploits this deep, deep freakout point of Qui-Gon's: the plan is that Qui-Gon acknowledges that Xanatos is a grown man and becomes willing to kill his former squire or Qui-Gon refuses to acknowledge that Xanatos is a grown man, and Xanatos has an advantage and will be more likely to kill Qui-Gon.

Xanatos and Qui-Gon fell out, in part, because of Qui-Gon's refusal to see him as a grown man. Thus, either way, Xanatos wins.

Comments

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

Excuse me while I MARRY this bit of fic. I love the style and the description of the weather and the courtyard, and the very last line.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

God, this universe thing is just eating my BRAIN for snacks in between attacks on my life and sanity. I've been hungering to learn how to write narrative for a long, long, long time, and man. This might be the fic that I ends up forcing me to do it.

This Qui-Gon, man, standing in the shadows and watching a Obi-Wan and the armsmaster in that same courtyard.