your neck of the woods.

[quigonejinn]

At some point in time, this house must have been different. There were high ceilings, a flagstoned courtyard, and a great hall could have comfortably seated a hundred. Obi-Wan had seen Qui-Gon stand completely upright in the fireplace for that room -- during the winter, they stopped up the great fireplace with straw to keep the drafts from blowing into the room, and now that they were back in the great hall, chunks of half-rotten straw kept falling into the fire.

It was one of the indignities of living in an old manor, and as smoke rolled around Qui-Gon and Xanatos's shoulders (and Obi-Wan's face and over his head), he heard Qui-Gon say to Xanatos, "I told you that we should have stayed in the smaller rooms all year."

Xanatos was batting smoke away from his nose and mouth, but he stopped for a moment to look at his master. It wasn't explicit disagreement, and Xanatos wouldn't have done that in front of Obi-Wan, but from the way Qui-Gon looked away and shrugged, Obi-Wan was sure that it should have been taken as that. There had been a disagreement about this.

The next morning, while Xanatos was out with the horses, Qui-Gon brought himself out of his study, much to the sudden panic of the cook, who thought that she had lost track of time and forgotten to send his lunch in, but then Qui-Gon ordered Obi-Wan to come with him to the Great Hall so they could finish clearing out our dear friend Xanatos's obsession.




"He was a very great knight once, you know," Xanatos said to Obi-Wan. They were sitting in the spare room that served as the armory, and they polishing armor together. Obi-Wan was working on a greave while Xanatos had the chest plate turned over his knees. "The year that he took me as a senior page, he had won the summer jousting tournament."

There was a winter storm going around the walls outside, and they'd just gone through all of Qui-Gon's armor two days ago, so out of the corner of his eye, Obi-Wan could see their faces reflected back up at them. His face with brown hair and the bits sticking out around the ears.

Xanatos's black hair, pale skin, a little bit of his skin reflected in the piece that Obi-Wan was working on. Qui-Gon undoubtedly kept a mirror in his bedroom for shaving, and Xanatos probably used it with Qui-Gon's permission, but this polished armor was the closest that Obi-Wan ever got to seeing his face inside a metal mirror.

The fire behind them popped, and then Xanatos bent back down to looking down at the chestplate. "My father would not have given me to a lesser man."




Obi-Wan was supposed to wait on Xanatos and Qui-Gon after dinner in the great hall, but in all actuality, particularly in the winter months, when they lived in the smaller rooms, it meant that he would sit on a stool in the corner and listen to them talk in front of the fire. Xanatos almost always did the majority of the talking; sometimes, they would talk about administration of the holding, plans that he thought Qui-Gon should implenet. Other times, Xanatos would talk about news he had received of his father or gossip he had heard. Qui-Gon never spoke much, but on this one particulalry night, he was especially silent. He nursed his ale; Obi-Wan stepped forward to add more, and Qui-Gon waved him away.

After a while of trying to get Qui-Gon to talk, Xanatos eventually pulled out his lute. He began to tune it, humming a little under his breath, and eventually, Qui-Gon looked at him.

He then looked at Obi-Wan, his hand half-raised to send Obi-Wan away for the knight so that they could talk, but then Xanatos hit another string -- it sounded a little odd, like it was strung too loose -- and looked at Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon looked at Obi-Wan, then at Xanatos, whose expression didn't change.

He shrugged and settled back into his brooding. Obi-Wan stayed beside them at the fireplace that night until he fell asleep against the wall. They talked to each other after he was asleep, and he woke to a darkened room, shivering cold despite being tucked underneath the blanket that Qui-Gon had been using. He'd been placed in Qui-Gon's chair and even though the fire in the hearth had been long banked, Obi-Wan thought he could pick out the shape of Xanatos's lute, left on the chair opposite.




Ardell was the one almost entirely responsible for Obi-Wan's training, and Xanatos drilled him on finer points of being a page and squire -- deportment, posture, archery, riding, bits of catechism that he'd be expected to know if Qui-Gon ever took him to a tournament. He drilled Obi-Wan on the proper way to stand at attention behind a dining dignitary's chair, arranged and rearranged the length of sackcloth that they were using in place of a towel. A cracked cup was their finger bowl; in the great hall, they played at banquet with a stale loaf of bread and wooden goblets filled with water.

Xanatos was, in all truth, as bored as Obi-Wan.




Qui-Gon was an intelligent man, but he was not a brilliant one. It wasn't hard to see that Xanatos was more brilliant, more charming, and would rapidly become more accomplished if Qui-Gon would only take him to court or let him have more of an active place in political life. Qui-Gon had his stories of crusading in the Holy City and his battlefield experience, but he kept those stories to himself. Instead, it would be Xanatos at the dining table, talking of things that he had found, a bird's nest or an unusually colored stone, singing a snatch of song in a foreign language or telling of how his repairs to the west end of the house were going.

It should be no surprise that Obi-Wan idolized Xanatos instead of Qui-Gon.

Qui-Gon hunted, rode his horse, shut himself in his private study for hours. He spoke little. He was a presence in Obi-Wan's life in much the same way that clouds were -- almost always there, but far away. Drifting in another universe. Obi-Wan saw, on more than one occaision, Qui-Gon ride out to the slight cliff that lay on the east side of the house and look out on his holdings. The curve of the river. The golden fields.

He would be mounted not on his enormous grey warhorse, but instead, on Xanatos's small chestnut, and Obi-Wan would see Qui-Gon's head move as he scanned his holding, but he never seemed to be actively looking for something. He never seemed to find it, either.




"If he was such a brilliant knight, why is he living out here? Why aren't we ever called into service?"

They were kneading bread for Cook, and Obi-Wan and Xanatos were both covered up to the elbow in flour.

Xanatos looked at Obi-Wan, pressed his lips together, then went back to kneading. He said nothing.

Comments

[a-blue-moon-cat.livejournal.com]

Lovely. :) I will be looking for more of this, you know? *beams* Old SCA hand, here, and sometime student of medieval and Renaissance history. I'm quite fond of knights of old and military history of those times. :) (Part of the reason that I'm such a LOTR fan, I guess.) *beams at mental visual of the Jedi Knights on horseback and living in castles*