Constellation (AU Obi-Wan Semi-SI)

[Sakumo]

PROLOGUE — THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

Jedi Temple in Coruscant, 32 BBY

Olana Chion:

"We are late, Master," Olana Chion clicked her tongue as Obi-Wan Kenobi strode purposefully across the Temple's Processional Way, beaming at every Jedi he encountered, stopping to trade a word or two with half of them as if the High Council's summons could simply be made to wait upon his goodwill. After a year and a half apprenticed under the man, Olana should have been used to it by now. It was practically a ritual for Kenobi to be late whenever the Council called for him — as though promptness were a virtue reserved for lesser men.

"Nonsense, young one," Obi-Wan countered, giving her a maddening, easy grin as he waved to a pair of Padawans hauling training equipment toward the sparring rings. "The Masters of the Jedi Council are the peak of our ideals. They would hardly be offended by a thing so trivial as tardiness."

They are, Olana privately thought to herself as she quickened her own pace, these little legs struggling to keep up with her mentor. It's just that, no one has the heart to criticize you.

Sometimes she thought her master's reputation objectively unfair. Most Jedi would have faced disciplinary censure for repeated offenses of this kind. Only last week, Knight Stass Allie had been reprimanded by Master Vokara Che for arriving late to a medical shift in the Halls of Healing. A Youngling clan had been sternly lectured by Master Rancisis after causing a ruckus in the Room of a Thousand Fountains — and they were children. Even the almost punishingly disciplined pairing of Master Jaro Tapal and his Padawan, Serra Keto, had once been grounded for six months over conduct unbecoming during an away mission. Master Obi-Wan, meanwhile, would simply smile at whichever unlucky Councilor had been sent to fetch him, and — Olana could always tell — the Councilor in question would leave more amused than aggrieved, privately impressed at how neatly he had wriggled free.

Well, she thought, rescuing a stranded Jedi Knight and his Padawan in Rattatak singlehandedly against a warband of Weequay raiders will certainly make you a hero of the Temple. Not to mention he protected the Duchess of Mandalore as a Padawan, has talked down or fought every manner of criminal the Outer Rim has to offer, and is a smoother tongue in the Senate rotunda than half the Senators themselves. No wonder he's the Order's shining example of what a Knight should be.

In all her time as his Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi had never once been on time to a Council summons. When matters grew truly dire, it was Grandmaster Yoda himself, or Master Windu, who was dispatched to retrieve them personally, and it was invariably Olana, not her unrepentant Master, who came away red-faced from the encounter.

"You are thinking something uncharitable about me," Obi-Wan said without turning his head, the corner of his mouth twitching. "You are thinking I am a good-for-nothing, inconsiderate, tardy excuse for a Jedi Knight who exists solely to torment my superiors."

"Not quite," she says, unable to fight the smile off her face. "But along those lines, yeah."

He placed a hand over his heart in theatrical outrage. "You may be the single most hurtful twelve-year-old I have ever had the misfortune to train, Olana Chion."

"You'd know," she said. "You trained me."

That, at least, earned a genuine laugh from him — bright, startled, entirely unguarded — and for a moment Olana felt the particular warmth that came from having actually landed a joke on a man who made his living landing them on everyone else. It didn't last. The doors of the High Council Chamber were already in sight, flanked by two silent Temple Guards in their gleaming helms, and reality reasserted itself.

"We're here, Master," she said, straightening her robes, smoothing down the padawan braid she still sometimes forgot to tuck behind her brown hair. "Please. Try not to cause a scene."

She regretted the words the instant they left her mouth, because Obi-Wan's expression shifted into something entirely too delighted, a wicked little twinkle rising in his blue-grey eyes. "Through the Force," he said solemnly, "all things are possible, my Padawan."

"That is not what that saying means and you know it."

But he was already reaching for the door.

---

"You are late again, Knight Kenobi."

Master Windu's voice rolled through the High Council Chamber like distant thunder — not raised, never raised, but carrying an authority that made the very air seem to still. Olana kept her chin dipped, eyes on the polished floor, though she risked one sidelong glance at her companion. Even Master Obi-Wan seemed faintly abashed, a telltale dusting of pink rising along his cheekbones above the beginnings of his beard.

"My apologies, Master Windu." His voice was contrite, and — Olana had to grudgingly admit — entirely convincing. "I was waylaid by Master Drallig. He asked me to demonstrate Form IV to the Soaring Hawkbat creche. I promise you, Master, the younglings were most impressed."

From Master Windu's left, the bald and broad-shouldered Master Micah Giiet let out a short bark of laughter he didn't bother to hide, while beside him Master Yaddle's brow crept upward in silent, ancient skepticism. The Master of the Order did not so much as blink.

"Is that so."

"I might," Obi-Wan allowed, color deepening, "have also given a practical demonstration alongside their creche master, Bolla Ropal. And sparred with him. For perhaps fifteen minutes. Or twenty."

"Twenty-five," came a dry voice from further down the ring, belonging to the Zabrak Master Eeth Koth, who did not look up from where he sat with his fingers steepled. "I timed it. I was waiting on you as well, Knight Kenobi."

A ripple of quiet amusement passed the Chamber. Master Windu let it settle before turning the full weight of his attention on Olana, who felt her stomach drop somewhere in the vicinity of her boots.

"Is your Master telling the truth, young Padawan?"

Never — not once in her twelve years, not through the worst of what had brought her to the Order, not through eighteen months of keeping pace with a man who treated punctuality as a personal insult — had Olana Chion quailed before another living being the way she nearly did now, pinned beneath Mace Windu's dark, level gaze. She was a survivor. She was, by Master Drallig's own generous assessment, the most resourceful Shii-Cho stylist among her age cohort in the Temple. She was a trusted Padawan in her own right.

She took a breath anyway.

"Yes, Master. Master Fisto was also present. And Master Drallig, watching from the gallery."

"Do not give the girl a hard time, Mace," said Master Depa Billaba, her voice gentle but edged with the particular fondness of someone who had once stood exactly where her Master Windu now stood and had learned, over the years, precisely how to needle him. "If anyone deserves a lecture on prudence, it is Knight Kenobi, not his twelve-year-old Padawan, who at least had the sense to arrive on time."

Low laughter rippled around the circle again, and Olana felt bold enough to let a small smile through. She glanced around the ring of twelve seats — the wisest, and by most accounts the strongest, that the Order had to offer — and marveled, not for the first time, at how differently each of them wore that weight. Yoda, small and ancient and unreadable. Master Windu, immovable as durasteel. The gentle Master Yaddle, watchful. Wise Master Rancisis coiled and precise. Master Poof unreadable behind his long neck and round face. Master Even Piell sharp as a blade despite his diminutive stature and permanent scowl that made Olana think of a vicious dog. Master Tyvokka's Wookie rumble of amusement audible even in silence. Master Koth dry as desert sand. Master Giiet warm and easily delighted. Master Billaba fond and wry. And yes, even her favorite lightsaber instructor, Master Tsui Choi watching everything with the wisdom she had known him to have.

And then there was the twelfth chair, the newest of them.

"Knight Kenobi certainly displays," rumbled a deep, measured baritone, "the same youthful willfulness he did as a young man."

Qui-Gon Jinn regarded her master with an appraising, faintly amused expression that did not, to Olana's eye, extend any warmth toward its subject.

She felt it the instant it landed — a flicker across their training bond, sharp and cold, gone almost as fast as it came, but unmistakable. Irritation. More than irritation.

"I confess myself astonished you were ever elevated to this Council, Master Jinn," Master Obi-Wan said, and his voice had gone from contrite to something colder and considerably sharper, all trace of the earlier blush burned away. "I was quite certain planets would need to disintegrate, and the Hutt Cartels take up honest trade, before that particular miracle occurred."

Master Jinn stiffened in his seat, just slightly and just for a moment, before visibly forcing himself to relax. "Enough, Obi-Wan," he said, and though his tone remained even, there was iron beneath it. "Further disrespect toward this Council will result in disciplinary measures."

Olana looked from Grandmaster Yoda's carefully blank countenance to Master Windu's stony patience to Micah Giiet's wince — stern, resigned, and regretful, respectively — and understood, with the sudden clarity of a Padawan realizing she has stumbled into old, well-worn history, that this was not new. That every Master in this Chamber had watched this particular argument play out before, more than once, and had simply learned to let it run its course.

It was something close to an open secret in the Jedi Temple — the kind of history whispered among older Padawans over meals, the kind Olana had heard fragments of long before she'd ever been assigned to Master Obi-Wan — that when Kenobi was a thirteen-year-old hopeful vying for a Master's attention, Qui-Gon Jinn had turned him away. Not gently. Master Jinn had looked at a frightened, furious thirteen-year-old boy and pronounced him dangerous. Aggressive. A darksider in the making, though the boy had done nothing yet to earn such a comparison beyond having the misfortune of wanting to be chosen too visibly.

Master Jinn once thought me dangerous, Obi-Wan had told her once, quietly, during her first week as his apprentice, when she'd asked why he never spoke to the tall Master with the long braid and the easy manner with the Force. Fierce. Aggressive, even. I believe he thought he was looking at his fallen student, Xanatos, come again, though I hardly deserved the comparison. I was already halfway to Bandomeer, resigned to a life in the AgriCorps, when Master Fay found me on the transport manifest and decided, against every sensible instinct, that I could be salvaged after all.

He had said it lightly. He had not looked light, saying it.

"We did not summon you here, Obi-Wan, to trade barbs with Master Jinn," Windu said, cutting through the memory and the tension both with the same flat authority, shooting stern looks at both men in turn. "The Council has agreed, by majority vote, to dispatch you as Jedi negotiator to the planet of Shili. Senator Koves of the Togruta Assembly has petitioned for Jedi intervention in an escalating conflict between rival clans in two of the outlying settlements, with a request that the matter be settled peaceably, and swiftly."

Obi-Wan stroked his beard — a habit Olana had long since learned to read as the outward sign of a mind already several steps ahead. "Forgive me, Masters, but can the Togruta Monarchy not resolve this themselves? A show of royal authority would likely settle matters faster than any outside envoy."

"Unfortunately, the Monarch's hands are presently tied, Knight Kenobi," said Master Rancisis, the serpentine Master's tail coiling with quiet precision beneath his seat as he clasped long-fingered hands before him. "The current Regasa of Shili ascended the throne quite young, and her regent has judged it wiser to focus his energies on stabilizing the capital and securing the Royal Household than on adjudicating a rural land dispute. And should the Crown pick a side in a village quarrel regardless, it would be seen — rightly or not — as favoritism, and the resentment would only deepen."

"The Togruta," Obi-Wan murmured, half to himself, "are a cunning people. Excellent hunters. Fiercely close-knit, particularly in smaller settlements, where a slight against one family is a slight against the whole clan. Left unchecked, a dispute like this could very easily spiral into open bloodshed, and innocents caught in the middle of it."

"Precisely put," Rancisis agreed, inclining his head. "And these are not minor hamlets we speak of, Knight Kenobi. The two settlements in question are among the largest on the planet outside the capital itself. Whatever begins there may not stay contained there. Neighboring villages might take notice, and they too, might escalate."

Something in Master Obi-Wan's posture shifted subtle, but Olana caught it, the way his shoulders set a fraction straighter, the last trace of humor draining fully from his face. "Am I correct in presuming, Masters, that this is not the whole of it?"

"As perceptive as ever, young Kenobi," Giiet said, pride evident in his broad smile. "Our first instinct was to send Master Shaak Ti, a Togruta herself, familiar with Shili's customs and its people. But we could not be certain she would remain impartial where her own kin were concerned, and an arbiter perceived as partial is no arbiter at all. Master Gallia and her Padawan, meanwhile, are otherwise engaged, escorting Supreme Chancellor Valorum through the trade conference on Anaxes. Even accounting for your rather more recent Knighting, you have displayed considerable aptitude as a diplomat, and, when circumstances demand it, as an investigator."

"What Master Giiet means to say," Windu continued, with the air of a man circling toward the actual point at last, "is that beyond the diplomatic mission, we wish for you to determine whether there are Force-sensitives among the Togruta of those settlements worth bringing to the Temple's attention. And given your Padawan's considerable natural gift for Farsight, her presence would serve that purpose well, while also providing her a valuable first mission beyond Coruscant."

"You are lifting the standard precautions on taking Padawans into the field, then," Kenobi gathered and Olana's heart, quite without her permission, soared. Eight months. Eight months she had watched him leave the Temple alone, again and again, on Knight's business she was not yet deemed ready to share, while she drilled forms in an empty salle and told herself patience was a virtue and meant it less and less each time. Now finally it was her chance.

She already knew, of course, that her youth meant Obi-Wan would carry the true weight of the mission, that she would be watched over as much as she watched. But the chance to see something beyond the Coruscanti sky, to be trusted with a real task rather than a training exercise — that was not something she meant to let pass her by, whatever shape it came in.

"We are," Billaba confirmed, warmth returning fully to her voice. "We have watched the two of you progress as Master and apprentice for some time now, and judged the pairing more than ready. Padawan Chion's gift for Farsight will serve both tasks well: the negotiation, and whatever else you may find waiting in those villages."

Obi-Wan set a reassuring hand briefly on Olana's shoulder, and she felt the warmth of it through the fabric of her tunic. "Naturally, Master Billaba. Olana has a natural affinity for the Unifying Force that continues to elude my own understanding of it, however hard I chase it."

Her cheeks warmed at the praise, though her satisfaction was short-lived. From the center of the ring, Master Yoda hummed, low and thoughtful, and every head in the Chamber turned toward him as one.

"Careful, you must be, young Obi-Wan," the Grandmaster said, ears drooping with the particular gravity he reserved for genuine counsel rather than gentle scolding. "Wisdom, easy it is to give. Harder, far harder, to live by it yourself. The right course, a Jedi must always seek — even when convenient, the wrong one is."

Obi-Wan bowed low, lower than the moment strictly required, low enough that Olana understood without needing to be told that whatever performance he'd offered the rest of the Chamber this morning, this was not one of them. "I will hold your words close, Master Yoda."

"See that you do," Windu said, not unkindly, as the Council rose as one. "All relevant details, Senator Koves's petition, the current territorial boundaries in dispute, and what intelligence we hold on the villages in question, will be transmitted to your quarters within the hour. May the Force be with you both."

"And with all of us, Master Windu," Obi-Wan replied, soft and genuine now, all needling set aside, before turning and beckoning Olana toward the tall doors of the Chamber. She followed gladly, and did not look back at the twelfth chair.

---

The Chamber doors sealed shut behind them with a soft pneumatic hiss, and Olana let out a breath she hadn't fully realized she'd been holding.

"You could try," she said, falling into step beside him as they made their way back down the Processional Way, "not antagonizing a sitting member of the Council. Just — occasionally. As a novelty."

"I could," her Master agreed amicably. "I choose not to."

"He's going to report you eventually."

"He's been threatening since I was a boy, Olana, even when he was still a Master known for flouting the rules. I find the anticipation builds character." But some of the lightness had gone out of his voice, and after a moment he added, more quietly, "Master Jinn is not wrong to dislike me, you understand. I gave him every reason to, once. I simply object to being reminded of it by the man who put it there."

Olana considered that for a long moment, turning it over the way Master Drallig had taught her to turn over a difficult riposte before committing to a counter. "For what it's worth," she said finally, "I don't think thirteen-year-old you was dangerous. I think thirteen-year-old you was scared, and scared people are loud about the wrong things."

Obi-Wan glanced down at her, something unreadable moving behind his eyes — surprise, maybe, or the particular ache of being understood by someone he hadn't expected to understand him. "That," he said, "is an uncomfortably perceptive thing for a twelve-year-old to say to her Master."

"I had a good teacher in being perceptive. Terrible teacher in punctuality, but very good at the other thing."

That startled the laugh out of him again, and this time it lasted longer. "Duly noted," he said. "Come. If we're to make Shili with any dignity intact, we have a great deal of packing to do, and a Padawan who has never left this planet's atmosphere to prepare."

"I've been to the upper hangar levels."

"That," Obi-Wan said, "does not count, and you know it."

Their quarters, when they reached them, were modest by any standard beyond the Temple's own — a shared common room with two narrow sleeping alcoves, a meditation nook barely large enough for one, and a single window that looked out over the endless grey-gold sprawl of the Coruscanti skyline, ships threading between towers like schools of luminous fish. Olana had lived in grander places, once, in a life she tried not to dwell on too often. She had also lived in far worse ones. This place, small as it was, had never once felt like either.

She knelt beside her travel pack and began the careful, familiar ritual of deciding what a Jedi actually needed on a mission and what was simply comfort dressed up as necessity. Two changes of robes. Her lightsaber. A Jedi belt. And an energy slingshot that Master Obi-Wan had built for her after she completed the Engineering Course that the Jedi Temple had offered to Padawans.

"You're quiet," Obi-Wan observed from across the room, not looking up from where he was methodically checking the charge on his comlink on one hand, and patting the head of his droid, R4-M17 with another.

"I'm thinking."

"Dangerous habit. I'd stop, if I were you."

"Master Rancisis said it. About the villages being large, and close-knit, and prone to bloodshed if this isn't handled carefully." She folded a robe with more precision than it strictly required. "What happens if we can't fix it? If it's already too far gone by the time we land?"

Obi-Wan set the comlink down and turned to face her fully, and whatever wry armor he'd worn through the Council Chamber and the walk back had quieted, leaving something plainer and more honest in its place. "Then we do what Jedi have always done, Olana. We do the next right thing in front of us, and the thing after that, and we trust that the Force brought us to Shili for a reason even if we can't yet see the whole of it." A pause, and the ghost of his earlier grin returned, softer now. "And if all else fails, I distract everyone by being extravagantly, catastrophically late to something. It's worked for me so far."

Olana huffed something that was not quite a laugh, but close enough that he seemed satisfied with it. "That's not actually reassuring, Master."

"No," he agreed. "But it made you smile, which was the point." He rose, crossing to the window, silhouetted against the last amber light of the Coruscanti afternoon. "For what it's worth — I meant what I told the Council. You have a gift for the Unifying Force that I will likely spend the rest of my life admiring and never quite matching. Whatever waits for us on Shili, clan dispute or Force-sensitive child or something else the Council hasn't thought to warn us about, I trust your instincts as much as my own. More, on your better days."

"You're just saying that so I don't panic on the transport."

"I am saying it," Obi-Wan said, "because it happens to be true, and because you are entirely too young to be as competent as you are, and someone ought to tell you so before you start believing otherwise."

Olana ducked her head, ostensibly to finish sealing her pack, and said nothing at all, because there was, for once, nothing clever left to say.

​

---

They left the following morning before the sun of Coruscant's orbital mirrors had finished their slow climb over the skyline, boarding a modest Republic Consular-class cruiser requisitioned from the Temple's diplomatic pool. Olana pressed her palm briefly to the transparisteel viewport as the great spires of the Temple fell away beneath them, then the endless city beneath that, then the planet itself, until Coruscant was nothing more than a bright coin swallowed by the dark.

"First time," Obi-Wan said from the pilot's seat, not quite a question.

"First time," she confirmed.

"It doesn't get any less strange. Just less frightening." He guided the transport into the swirling non-place of hyperspace with the easy competence of a man who had made this exact maneuver a hundred times before, and the stars outside smeared into long, silent streaks of light. "Get some rest if you can. Shili is a fair distance, and the files tell me the villages we're headed toward keep to old customs — sunrise greetings, formal introductions, the works. We'll want to arrive looking like Jedi, not like we crawled out of a cargo hold. By the way, Master Fay sends her regards."

"Really? What did she say?"

"See for yourself, my dear Padawan." Her Master then gave her a holorecording of his youthful former master, who still looks like a woman in her thirties rather than a centuries-old Jedi.

'Greetings Obi-Wan, and of course you, Padawan Olana. I have been in contact with the Jedi Temple in Coruscant, mainly at the insistence of Obi-Wan of course," the recording said, shooting her Master a chiding look that felt like Master Fay was lecturing Kenobi in real time. "Master Yoda had told me that you would be taking part in a diplomatic mission, a wise calling for a Jedi. Be vigilant, and consider your words first before speaking, that goes for the both of you. And keep an open mind in all things."

The recording then smiled as she uttered, "May the Force be with you."

Olana returned the recording. "It's nice that she knows me, Master.

"What do you think of me, Olana? A neglectful Master?"

She did not deign to reply to that accusation as she pivoted to other matters. "Is it true there's a beast?"

Master Obi-Wan glanced back at her, one eyebrow arched. "Where did you hear that?"

"I read the briefing packet, Master. Same as you." A beat. "There's a footnote. Village elders report something living in the high canyons near the second settlement. Big. Something that hunts at night and doesn't show up on any survey the Republic's ever run of the planet."

"Ah." he turned back to the console, and if Olana hadn't known him quite so well by now, she might have missed the small, thoughtful frown that crossed his face before he smoothed it away. "Well. I suppose we'll simply have to go and see for ourselves, won't we."

Olana meant to answer him but the words never made it past her teeth, because the Force chose that exact moment to show her something she hadn't asked to see.

It came the way Farsight always came for her: sideways, uninvited, more felt than seen, like catching a reflection in water a half-second before the water stilled. A canyon, red-walled, lit gold with a sun that wasn't Coruscant's. A child — Togruta, small enough that she could only just be walking on her own, montrals barely more than nubs beneath twin tresses — stumbling backward across bare rock with her arms flung wide for balance.

And something enormous unfolding itself from the canyon shadow above her.

Olana knew what it was before the shape of it had even fully resolved, the way you know a word before you finish reading it — sabertooth, the old Temple bestiary chip come unbidden to mind, apex predator, indigenous, height at the shoulder easily twice a grown man, jaws built to close around something considerably larger than one small child. It moved like the canyon itself was exhaling it. The toddler did not run. Small hands curled instead, and for one flickering, impossible instant Olana felt something enormous and gentle and terrifyingly bright answer that curling of hands from somewhere deep inside the child, something that didn't belong in a body that young—

The vision let her go all at once, the way Farsight always did, without ceremony, without mercy, dropping her back into the recycled air of the transport and the low hum of the hyperdrive and Master Obi-Wan's face, half-turned from the console, already frowning.

"Olana?"

Her hands had gone very still around the strap of her pack. She made them move again.

"Olana," he said again, quieter now, the teasing entirely gone out of his voice, "what did you see?"

"Nothing." The lie came easier than she expected, and worse, easier than it should have. She smoothed the strap flat beneath her palm, kept her eyes on the streaking dark beyond the viewport rather than on him, because she had never yet managed to lie to Obi-Wan Kenobi's face and succeed. "Just the transport shuddering. It startled me. That's all."

He held her gaze a moment longer than comfort allowed, blue-grey eyes doing the thing they did when he was deciding whether to press. Whatever he saw — or didn't — he let it go, though not without a faint line staying between his brows as he turned back to the console.

"Get some rest," he said again, softer this time.

In response to her outburst, Arfour bleeped something in Binary, but considering its feminine tone of optimism, Olana thought that the droid was as idiosyncratic as her Master was. Perhaps it was to be expected when you've been in the care of Obi-Wan Kenobi for a certain period of time.

Outside the viewport, hyperspace blurred on, indifferent, carrying them both toward Shili, and toward a mission that Olana felt would prove to be considerably larger than a border dispute between two villages.

The more things change, Olana thought, watching her Master's reflection in the dark glass, half-amused and half-uncertain in equal measure.

The more they somehow, impossibly, stay the same.

---

Appendix:

Jedi High Council as of 32 B.B.Y.

Grandmaster/Grand Master: Yoda [lifetime member] — voiced by Andy Serkis

Master of the Order: Mace Windu [lifetime member] — played by Morris Chestnut

Members:

• Yaddle [lifetime member]

• Even Piell [lifetime-term member]

• Oppo Rancisis [lifetime member]

• Tyvokka [long-term member]

• Yarael Poof [long-term member]

• Micah Giiet [long-term member]

• Eeth Koth [long-term member]

• Depa Billaba [limited-term member]

• Tsui Choi [limited-term member]

• Qui-Gon Jinn [limited-term member]

Fay's Lineage

• Fay [Jedi Master]

• Obi-Wan Kenobi [Jedi Knight]

• Olana Chion [Jedi Padawan]