“Xanatos Áediah Valdís Adi-Ai-Aiji: Former Padawan Apprentice of Qui-Gon Jinn . . . ”
Final fourth only posted here, due to the LJ's word/character limits!
Title: “Xanatos Áediah Valdís Adi-Ai-Aiji: Former Padawan Apprentice of Qui-Gon Jinn and Alleged Fallen, Dark Jedi; Current Missing Piece to a Very Important Puzzle”
Pairing: Xanatos has a child by Latura Damoriana Endmon (aka Tura Omega - mother of Granta Omega - known aliases Turla Anoukt and Tula Alvathanos, original birth name Suqella Taldolna Rishma), but she’s merely the means to an end, for him. Unknown even to the Jedi, he fathers another son by Lilura Yzabelia Tietphaea, a former princess of Emet (a neighboring system to Telos), but the relationship ends with the woman’s death and, in any case, she’s also never more than the means to an end, for him. Xanatos is in love with a man he never meets, while his (original) physical body lives, and, as he is never truly allowed to know the boy who should have been his Padawan, while his flesh yet lives, he is . . . somewhat confused as to the kind of bond he shares with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Thus, aside from the faithful devotion he bears for his family and his constantly thwarted need to be with Obi-Wan, his desires have little to do with any kind of love.
Rating: Erhm, I guess PG-13 occasionally sliding into hard R territory, probably (?) . . . Some folks might be a wee bit disturbed by some things that happen in this story (sex with a minor; a minor having children - twins - who are then contractually wed, according to the traditions of the minor’s people; murder; the mental equivalent of rape and assault so violent as to approach attempted murder; fairly blatant desire of a minor, in more than one instance, by more than one person; patricide; etc.), so it might be safer to assume that this is R-rated, for some folks!
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Star Wars, more’s the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .
Summary: This is one hundred and thirty random but chronological moments from the life of former Jedi Padawan and supposed Dark Jedi Xanatos of Telos IV. There is an actual story here - one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stretched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together - but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not precisely the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . )
Warning: This story functions as a sort of compressed codex for Xanatos’ life, as he has been written (or at least referred to) and is going to be written in my not even nearly complete AU Star Wars series You Became to Me. If anything doesn’t make sense, please, feel free to ask! There are some things I can’t elaborate on much more, for fear of at least partially spoiling some stories still in the works, but I realize that such a radical retelling of some parts of EU history could be somewhat confusing, so I invite questions from readers who’re puzzled and/or curious!
Author’s Notes: Please see the Author’s Notes included in the posting for the first fourth of this story, as they apply for the entire story!
“Xanatos Áediah Valdís Adi-Ai-Aiji: Former Padawan Apprentice of Qui-Gon Jinn and Alleged Fallen, Dark Jedi; Current Missing Piece to a Very Important Puzzle”
101.) Ghost: He knows that Obi-Wan is on Alderaan but as far as he’s aware the young man is supposed to be a visitor at the Royal Palace, as a guest of the Crown Prince, recuperating after a particularly nasty mission (one where Xanatos was forced to send agents to intervene in the unfolding of certain events, to keep things from getting even uglier), and so he nearly perishes of shock when he turns about one day in the artisans’ marketplace below the Jedi chapterhouse on the Maeramund River, outside of Aldera, to find the Padawan staring at him intently, eyes wide and face pale as though he’s seen a ghost.
102.) Glamour: His first instinct (that he should hide by throwing an elaborate glamour up over himself and then making a run for it before Obi-Wan can manage to track him down) is ruined when his companion - an aged semi-retired Jedi Master by the name of Kylea Santeri, who divides her time between watching over the younglings in the chapterhouse and working with the local artisans - calls out to Bail and Qui-Gon to come and say hello, the two of them obliging by coming up behind Obi-Wan from further back across the open square to sweep him along with them, ushering him along and forcing Xanatos to quickly improvise a plan that will hopefully allow him to retreat rapidly, before Obi-Wan can convince himself to accuse Xanatos of being who he is and (given how many allies he has on this world and based on ties to this world) before anyone can sense anything at all off about him.
103.) Familiar: He’s met Bail several times before and therefore is used to both being gazed at by the man as though Bail were desperately trying to figure out why he seems so naggingly familiar and being in possession of what amounts to an airtight alibi, in that the Crown Prince and his people know him by the name borne by this body and, having always known him as Moraios Lánatum Sitodokis and having worked with him on a couple of projects, have no real cause to suspect he’s anyone or anything other than what he appears to be, which is apparently good enough for Qui-Gon, who politely shakes hands and exchanges a bit of small talk but otherwise doesn’t even look at him twice (aside from raising an eyebrow slightly and smiling faintly at the way Bail lingers over shaking his hand, as though silently remarking to himself on the Crown Prince’s good taste, given his obvious interest); Obi-Wan, though, stares at him and stares at him and, when he shakes his hand, holds on to it as though the extra physical tactile contact can make it clear to Obi-Wan why he feels as if he knows him, automatically probing at the edges of his shields with the Force (inquisitive, desperately seeking tendrils of thought, trying to get closer, to get at the core of him, the truth of him, to reach out and find the bond that a part of him must somehow still subconsciously know is there, linking them together), and it kills him, both to have to keep his shields slammed so tightly closed that essentially nothing of himself can leak through and to have to noncommittally reply to the teen’s somewhat shaky remark that he seems incredibly familiar that there’s just something in the arrangement of his features that often seems to cause such a sense of false familiarity in individuals who have done a great deal of travel and so seen numerous different people, even as he gently rotates his wrist to disengage his hand from Obi-Wan’s increasingly possessive grip.
104.) Proud: He shamelessly distracts Obi-Wan by remarking on the number of decorations in his Padawan’s braid, pretending some knowledge of the meanings of the variously colored bands and crystal beads from his many visits to Alderaanian chapterhouse and prompting a long and surprisingly proud-sounding commentary from Qui-Gon on Obi-Wan’s many achievements and talents that so flusters and embarrasses the teenager (especially when Bail chimes in, speaking glowingly of Obi-Wan’s performance on the diplomatic missions he’s been privileged to also take part in) that he’s far too busy flushing and trying to deflect or at least tone down the praise to really do more than keep giving Xanatos that searching look.
105.) Note: A simple handwritten note is somehow waiting for him, back in his suite, in the chapterhouse’s guesting lodges, the sense and feel and physical scent of Obi-Wan clinging to it to strongly that it almost seems to glow with the same aura of blindingly pure white light that surrounds the boy, and, reaching out to it with trembling fingers and the breath caught painfully in the back of his throat, he skims fingertips across the elegant script that spells this body’s name, and, opening the precisely folded over in half piece of old-fashioned heavy parchment paper, knows he must leave immediately, before he can do anything foolish, and never return to a world where he even suspects Obi-Wan may be, unless he plans to tell him the full truth, when he reads the message: I thank you for my life, Sir, whatever your true name may be. If ever you should be in need of anything, you may call upon me for aid and I will give it gladly. This I, Obi-Wan Kenobi, swear, with the Force as my witness.
106.) Fortune: He does keep track of his firstborn, Ousire, over the years, at least enough to make sure that the boy is safe and in no need of anything major - he’s always sent the boy’s mother a very generous monthly stipend, to see to it that they can both live quite comfortably, irregardless of whether Latura even works at all, and that does not change with his supposed death, even though he suspects that Latura is, at the very least, a liar, and may, at worst, be an agent of someone associated in some way with the Sith, either as an ally or tool of some sort: he knows his duty, as the boy’s father, and sees to it scrupulously, even though the boy will also be inheriting an immense fortune, when he reaches his majority, and should never be in need for funds ever again, afterwards, given that he’s essentially going to end up the head of Offworld Corporations and all of the wealth it’s accumulated, over the years, that Xanatos did not use for his own ends, previous to the vacating of his original body, due to an arrangement that Xanatos saw to both because it would seem to confirm his death in the eyes of the High Council and because it would draw attention away from Telos and, by extension, Emet and the home of his true family and his pupils in the Force, since the inheritance would be delivered to someone so far away - and, when some noticeable irregularities show up in the reports he’s receiving on his son’s education, is not too terribly surprised when it eventually becomes clear that the woman isn’t what she originally seemed to be and has apparently been raising the boy solely so that he will be fit to be used as a tool against the Jedi Order, though he is vaguely disappointed in himself for not suspecting her enough to follow through on those suspicions much earlier, given how oddly (determinedly even, one might say) empty-headed and single-minded in her romantic devotion to him she’d seemed, to the point where he’d deliberately limited his time with her, just to avoid having to subject himself overly much to her vacuousness.
107.) Deceit: When he finally becomes concerned enough and has time enough to have his best agents look into Latura, they uncover a trail of deceit leading back to the Senator of Eeropha and beyond, to an area of space around Qalydon, very near to the ancient area of Sith strongholds once known (on pre-Ruusan maps of the Republic and the surrounding known galaxy) as Sith Space, and it is then, when he realizes that the Sith may very well be involved, that he knows he’s going to have no choice but to have her permanently removed so that he can seize the boy, if he wants to avoid having his eldest son raised to be nothing more than a tool not just of vengeance but of vindictive, destructive Darkness.
108.) Neglect: Somehow, the witch and her accomplices have managed to hide the fact that the boy not only is no longer living in her home, on Neirport VII, but that she apparently hasn’t been using the stipend Xanatos has been sending to her for so many years for them to live on, the woman apparently turning over the money to Senator Sano Sauro (with some of those funds apparently being diverted to Senator Bog Divinian of Nuralee) instead of using it towards the general upkeep and safety and well-being of their boy, and his fury is such, on learning of her deceptions and her willful neglect of their child, that he simply goes to her and kills her himself, with no hesitation or remorse or questions asked (other than the ones he puts to her, in an attempt to get her to account for herself).
109.) Protection: It’s far worse than he expected or even feared: Latura is an agent of the Sith Master himself, chosen on behalf of his political face (the facade he uses, the false identity behind which he hides his true nature) to be sent to Senator Sauro expressly for use in the Senator’s schemes to not only attempt to turn the opinion of the galaxy against the Jedi but to also try to cultivate Force-sensitive personal allies (strong enough to have been Jedi but either not discovered and raised by the Jedi or else rejected by them), possibly for later use as assassins or fighter pilots or bodyguards if not some combination of all three, perhaps even as the core seed of an eventually unstoppable fighting force even the Jedi would be unprepared for and unable to combat, supposedly as a sign of support for such schemes but in reality apparently more because the Sith simply desired to see if the man could, with Latura’s help, secure any Dark Jedi who might be used as allies, tools, or destructive distractions to keep the Order from noticing the Sith . . . said plan evidently having altered first when the Sith became aware of Latura’s involvement with Xanatos (the Dark Lord evidently having some kind of personal interest in him), second when it became clear that, while he’d attempted to design their boy to be insensate to the Force, the child had instead been born with the unique gift of being able to unconsciously use the Force to make others insensate to him, and third when Xanatos supposedly died (a supposition that the Sith evidently bought, Latura’s shock over his claim and subsequent proof of identity entirely real . . . as was her absolute satisfaction and gloating, over her enjoyment of the thought of what her Master would do to Xanatos, to get that secret of mind/soul transference out of him, since such a trick could conceivably be used to allow one to live forever, simply by changing bodies as they wore out or became damaged) and so was assumed to be unable to interfere with a more direct approach for both turning the boy against the Jedi and putting him in a position where he’d not only be a useful tool/ally of the Sith but could also be studied for his peculiar talent, as well, meaning that while the Sith has apparently not connected Xanatos’ actions since the switch over to this new body and his growing network of contacts and allies with his former life or his true family (which in turn means that his family is likely to be and to remain safe from the notice of the Sith, since he has been very careful to keep them as separate as possible and hidden away from association to or contact with his new life and Sith are not overly equipped to understand the bonds of family, nor to think of family if it is not overtly brought to their attention), the Sith Lord is likely to want to capture him alive, if/when he twigs to the fact that Moraios Lánatum Sitodokis is Xanatos Áediah Valdís Adi-Ai-Aiji, meaning that Xanatos is going to have to undergo the rather time-consuming and draining (and somewhat painful) procedure of instigating that process by which he can provide himself and his knowledge/memories with the ultimate form of protection, by making it so that anyone trying to access them against his desire will immediately destroy them all.
110.) Technique: The technique is one that he discovered in records from the last major Jedi vs. Sith conflict, the Light and Darkness War (or so-called New Sith Wars), evidently developed to keep the enemy from casually mind-raping captured opponents and seizing sensitive information about troop and supply movements, weapons and other assets, passwords to protected bases, and so on, and, while effectively able to shield such sensitive information through the creation of an elaborate series of intricate interlocking layers of mental shields and booby traps and safe fails and redundant triggers, all tied in to a firmly impressed, unbreakable order that instantaneously forces a complete, irreversible, unalterable, irretrievable wipe of all the information protected by those shields and traps, unfortunately also requires so much time and effort to set up - and, supposedly, such a degree of mind skill and self-knowledge required for one to perform it on oneself that every few below the level of a Master capable of serving on the High Council can perform it with anything like relative ease - and results in a state so close to amnesiac mental childhood (especially if the traps and commands are set up by another individual) that the technique was never widely used or published and so was essentially forgotten, after Ruusan, and, while with his knowledge of how to perform a transference of mind, he can take extra precautions to protect the contents of his mind from the results of any attempt to attack or take the contents of his mind, he really dislikes the thought of having to resort to such a drastic measure to protect himself, even from the Sith Lord.
111.) Rescue: The boy, Ousire, doesn’t necessarily mean all that much to him - Xanatos doesn’t know the child: how could he mean much of anything to him when he knows next to nothing of him? - but he’s his child and he doesn’t deserve to be the testing subject of a Sith Lord (no one deserves that . . . well, no one, perhaps, except maybe for Qui-Gon or Yoda, whom he suspects more and more has deliberately been sabotaging or attempting to sabotage or at least curtail the careers of certain potential Jedi - including Xanatos himself and Obi-Wan Kenobi - for his own private reasons and/or amusement), and so he must at least attempt to rescue him, if he wants to be able to live with himself, even if it is extremely likely that measures will have been taken to ensure that the boy cannot be easily gotten to or moved.
112.) Emphasis: The All Sciences Research Academy at Yerphonia seriously strikes him as primarily being a breeding ground for mad scientists - there is a preponderance of emphasis on work that could easily be turned to enormously destructive ends and really no emphasis at all on morality or personal responsibility - and he has an extremely bad feeling about the place as soon as he’s close enough to see it, especially given the possibility that apparently that crazy Force-experimenting witch Jenna Zan Arbor has ties to the place that make him suspect that she may very well have been either recruited by the Sith or else that the Sith may have at one point deliberately maneuvered her about into a position where she could be used as a suitable tool against the Jedi and the Republic and could very well be planning to facilitate her eventual escape from prison in order to continue to use her.
113.) Bad Idea: It’s a bad idea for him to be there and he knows it as soon as he gets there, but he can’t just give up on his firstborn, so . . . after considering the possibilities, he decides the best, safest course to take will be to make a recording with all the pertinent information, saved to a device keyed in such a way that it will only respond to the DNA signature of his child, and offering at the end to set up a meeting at a safe extraction point so he can go ahead and get himself and his boy the hell out of there, before the creeping, sinking sensation of imminent danger can catch up with him.
114.) Trick: When the boy shows at the designated extraction point, he is foolish enough to think that he’s avoided the danger and that things will be alright now; unfortunately, he’s fatally misjudged the amount of manipulation the boy’s already suffered and apparently been kept ignorant of at least one meeting between his child and the Sith, for no sooner has his child embraced him than a poisoned knife is slipped between his ribs and a device he recognizes from his readings as a trap for the wandering psyches of Force-sensitives is clamped tight to his forehead, the maniacal glitter of his boy’s glazed blue eyes the last thing he sees before he’s swallowed by darkness, the hissed words, “I do not believe you! This is a trick! You are not my father! Filthy Jedi, die!” echoing in his ears as he plummets down into darkness.
115.) Prize: Things are very quiet and very dark for what seems like a long time, and Xanatos is making circuits of the damned prison he’s trapped in, trying to figure out if there are any flaws or weaknesses in the pattern of interlocking wards and seals and shields that continue, nestled inside one another, all the way down to the molecular level (or, failing that, to find a way to force himself between the subatomic cracks and gaps that he intellectually knows must riddle the trap, beneath all the commands binding the whole thing together around him), waiting to be presented to the Sith Lord like a prize of battle, when it occurs to him that so much time has passed that his boy can’t have been in possession of a means to pass him off to the Sith . . . and, even better, that he can still sense (if only dimly) all those with whom he’s had functional bonds of one sort or another, in life, including Obi-Wan Kenobi.
116.) Visualize: If he’s careful to visualize the gaps in the trap that he knows, logically, have to be there at the subatomic level, beneath all the bindings holding his prison together, Xanatos can access the Force almost just as if he were still free (aside from being able to completely physically move out of the prison holding him, his ability to do so limited by the fact that apparently theoretical knowledge is not the same as physically tactile exploitable weaknesses), as long as he concentrates mightily, and it is through this method that he is able first to contact his family and let them know what happened - contacting his unofficial Padawans through their training bonds and instructing Ila and his sister to be sure to continue training the little ones and the young ones, so they’ll be able to properly protect themselves, should anything happen to make the Sith Master find them - and eventually able to figure out a way to eavesdrop on Obi-Wan through that old bond of theirs that never completely broke (not when Qui-Gon tried to rip Obi-Wan’s Force-sensitivity out or Xanatos’ original body perished and certainly not when Xanatos’ brainwashed firstborn murdered his replacement body), so that he can continue to keep watch over Obi-Wan, even while trapped.
117.) Sway: Xanatos is there with Obi-Wan through many of his missions, and so he’s able to recognize the particular hallmarks of a Sith in the circumstances surrounding the apparent death of the Weapon’s Master whilst searching for his lost Padawan; thus, for one of the first times, he exerts himself to try to sway the young man’s course, urging Obi-Wan to spend less time trying to get anything out of the residents of the underlevels and make more haste in the pursuit of the faint sense of Darsha Assant, in the Force, so that perhaps he might (if he’s very, very lucky) be able to find her before the Sith (the apprentice, he suspects. The whole things feels much too public, for the Master to be the one at work in Coruscant’s undercity) can finish the girl off, too.
118.) Witness: He’s just as shocked as anyone cognizant of what an impossibility it is would’ve been, to witness Obi-Wan somehow managing to effortlessly carry a spirit whose body renders her all but blind, deaf, and dumb to proof of the existence (much less the specific movements) of the Force with him so deeply within its currents that she all but comes face to face with the watching in dumbly stunned shock Xanatos, Xanatos managing to react only when it becomes clear that she’s going to lose herself in the Force’s deeps if someone doesn’t stop her from blindly reaching out and yearning after the beckoning brightness of its powerful flows, the feel of the young lady so extraordinary (her spirit marked by something oddly very like the kind of bond that he’s noticed will sometimes spontaneously spring into existence, both with family members strong in the Force where one is enough older - or sufficiently more responsible - than the other to feel enough of a sense of obligation/duty to the other to want to be able to keep track of that one constantly and with lovers raised outside of the strictures of the Jedi Order) that he finds himself lingering with her a time, long enough to follow her back to the source of that strange bond . . . where he meets a young woman who answers to the name of Sabé Dahn, and receives one of the greatest shocks of his life.
119.) Other: It’s not just that the young woman’s mind has so many different links that feel like some sort of training bonds (apparently tying her to a majority of the handmaidens and handmaid trainees of the Queen of Naboo, who is none other than the remarkable young woman Obi-Wan carried down within the Force) that it’s as if he’s run up against a network of ties almost like some kind of latent battle meld: no, beneath her conscious mind, lurking in the depths where there will generally be nothing but old, subconscious memories and unconscious desires, is what appears to be a completely different mind, with a whole other set of memories having nothing whatsoever to do with the girl’s life or indeed any other person’s life in recent living memory, what little he glimpses before being violently repulsed by a set of shields so subtle that he hadn’t even been able to sense them, until after he’d been thrown out, revolving around a period of time so distant that the larger galaxy apparently hadn’t even heard of the Sith, yet, the memories so clear and precise and seemingly real that he can tell that they are true memories and not simply knowledge gleaned from old holorecordings and/or other old documents, shocking him so badly with not just the sheer fact of the second mind’s existence but the vividness of the thoughts and images that he partakes of before being thrown out that he has to try half a dozen times to get past those shields again and see more before he’s finally forced to give it up as a bad job.
120.) Pull: He senses the boy through Obi-Wan like a tidal pull, even through the haze of pain clouding the young man’s senses (and Force, but he’s rarely felt so frightened in all his life, as when those droids all converged on Obi-Wan at once while he was trying to provide cover for a group of some kind of obviously sentient, swiftly retreating amphibious beings - later proven to be Gungans - and he saw that Obi-Wan was going down into the water and his lightsaber would surely short out, his panic such that the only help he could think to try to give, through the Force, was that throwing out of a wave of the Force strong enough to send the machines all tumbling out into the swampy waters themselves, breaking some of them against nearby trees and shorting a few of the others out in the water but not saving Obi-Wan entirely from their advance or their barrage of weapons’ fire), from the only mostly caught and properly safely converted energy of the blaster hits he took, recognizes at once the feel of one meant to form a bond with Obi-Wan as an apprentice to a Master, and rails so bitterly against Qui-Gon’s attempts to interfere and take the child on for himself (as if he has not already done enough harm, stealing two apprentices clearly meant for others!) that, afterwards, he fears that his bad mood and anger may have seeped slightly along the bond and inadvertently made matters somewhat worse, by influencing Obi-Wan’s attitude and actions during the mission.
121.) Torn: Xanatos is torn between wanting to rejoice and wanting to cram Qui-Gon’s spirit right back into his body and order him to damn well make things right again, when the Sith deals him a fatal blow, but knows, from the tenor of Obi-Wan’s all but overwhelming anguish and self-blame, that he’s going to have to wait before he can give free vent to either his anger or his joyous relief, any reaction he might have so likely to effect Obi-Wan’s fragile state of mind badly that he hardly dares to allow himself to do more than to simply be there and think strong, encouraging, calming thoughts until after he can tell that Obi-Wan is determined to finalize the bond with Anakin and will refrain from trying to do anything foolish for the sake of the boy.
122.) Synchronicity: Obi-Wan and Anakin exist in an odd state of synchronicity, their psyches in such perfect balance that it is literally impossible for him to touch the bond with Obi-Wan without also being flooded with the sense of Anakin, and he learns a surprising amount about the young boy from Tatooine in a very short amount of time, simply from eavesdropping on him through his new young Master . . . so much that he heartily approves, when Obi-Wan arrives at a scheme to shelter the boy from the fearful attentions of the High Council Master (especially the extremely disapproving Yoda) by making sure he always seems less than he is, hoping that Obi-Wan’s understanding of the need to resort to such an extreme in his Padawan’s name will soon lead to a greater comprehension of the flaws riddling the Order and convince him of the need to eventually do something about it.
123.) Zealot: He watches over Obi-Wan and Anakin for nearly six years before things begin to fall apart, his firstborn having grown under the tutelage of Senator Sauro and his ilk into a fanatical zealot full of nothing but anger and hate, Ousire’s alliance with Jenna Zan Arbor so firm that Xanatos has, apparently, been made a grandfather, and so must also worry about trying to save/redeem those children, too.
124.) Sense: He can’t decide if it makes more sense for Ousire to have been damaged, somehow, by his long association with individuals close to the Sith (most likely including the Sith Master himself, though his son may not realize or been allowed to understand that) and beings like Jenna Zan Arbor (who unnerves him in a way very few other individuals ever have managed to do, before, making him give thanks to the Force with every iota of his being that she was not born Force-sensitive and is apparently just a little bit too sane to try to experiment on herself to make herself more sensitive to the Force’s flows, either of which would have and could still spell absolute unmitigated disaster for the galaxy - worse even, he suspects, than what the Sith Lord has in store, at least in the long run) - who have likely been able to do the Force alone only knows what to his poor misguided boy - or if perhaps the boy’s mother could have had some kind of serious mental and emotional imbalance that was somehow kept hidden from Xanatos, to account for Ousire’s often bizarre and maniacal mood swings and his belief that he’s doing the right thing and that nothing he does, no matter how horrible, can be held against him, because his actions are all motivated by the Jedi’s “murder” of his father; either way, though, he rather suspects that he boy is beyond saving and that the best he’ll be able to hope for, for him, is a clean and relatively swift death.
125.) Numb: The girl’s death in regrettable - he knows that Anakin and Obi-Wan are both going to end up mourning Darra Thel-Tanis for quite some time to come - but frankly he’s too relieved that no one else has been killed or seriously injured to even really be able to hold it against the one Padawan who’s at least partially to blame for it (Ferus Olin, a boy Obi-Wan apparently at once feels a great sense of responsibility for and an enormous sense of disappointment in, for reasons Xanatos really only partially follows, the boy’s bad reaction to Obi-Wan’s bonding with Anakin somewhat more understandable, in Xanatos’ opinion, than Obi-Wan seems to believe), and, by the time it’s all over with, he’s really too tired and numb for the fact that his firstborn has just committed suicide by Jedi, forcing Obi-Wan to strike him down in order to protect himself and his Padawan, rather than permit himself to be captured (with no fallback plan to let him work around the fact that his body’s perished, as Xanatos possessed when he did something similar), to really sink in all the way.
126.) Time: He knows he’s going to have very little time - the Sith Master will claim everything of Ousire’s, now that his son is dead, and that means that Xanatos’ prison is about to become the Sith’s property, after all - so he does his best to say his farewells, making his sister and Ila and the children all promise that they won’t do anything foolish to try to rescue him but that they will remain true to what they’ve learned and willingly support Obi-Wan in any and every way possible, should he ever be in a position to change the Order as it so desperately needs to be changed, and then he settles down and waits for the inevitable pain.
127.) Idiot: He feels like the galaxy’s biggest idiot, for not suspecting the man, when he finally finds out who the Sith Lord is, but in the next moment he feels incredibly smart, too, for the first thing Sidious tries to do is to get into his mind, spitting and snarling and threatening to force Xanatos into a new body just so he can rip him limb from limb, for daring to ward his mind in such a manner, alternating between incoherent ravings and extremely bloody threats, so angry that it’s almost worth it, being there, just to know he’s made the monster so thoroughly enraged.
128.) Existence: Laughing at Sidious from behind his protective shields swiftly becomes one of the few real pleasures he has left, in his existence, and so he indulges it whenever possible, even though the Sith Master loses no time in finding ways of causing him distress and so generally makes him pay dearly for his pleasure.
129.) Prison: In the end, Sidious’ prison is both far worse and yet in some small ways better than that of Oursire’s: he can get nothing more than the very faintest of senses of those on the other end of his myriad bonds (even Obi-Wan is as little more than a distant star in the night sky, sometimes shining with fierce abandon but sometimes dimmed by clouds and/or hidden away by storm) and cannot of his own power reach out to anyone else, the prison is so meticulously crafted and sealed and bound about with pain-inducing wards that cannot be won through, no matter how one might be willing to suffer for it, which is vexing and frustrating to the point of madness, almost, given that Sidious for his own evil pleasure generally deliberately rigs the prison to cause him to re-experience the very worst of all the horrors and mistakes and nightmares and failures and regrets that can be dredged up out of his trapped subconscious and the lack of escape makes tolerating the suffering much harder than it would otherwise be; yet, in his arrogance, Sidious forgot to ward the prison against those seeking to reach out to him from the outside, and eventually the presence of one or another of the experimental children the Sith and his pet mad scientists have been busy creating acts as such a source of comfort and strength and steadiness that he is quite sure he never would’ve made it, without them.
130.) Escape: He recognizes Bail the instant the Alderaanian makes contact with the cause of his imprisonment and, by touching it, shatters the seals binding Xanatos, and that is the only thing that keeps Xanatos from trying to lash out reflexively in desperation, to try to escape again, thinking that Sidious has let him part of the way out again either to torment him some more or try to have yet another go at breaking him or seducing him into giving up and sharing what he knows with the Sith Master, and that, in turn, is the only thing that saves Bail’s life . . . though his shock, at seeing the main in Jedi robes (after he’s fled along the promise of the nearest path of safety, according to the Force, and found himself being temporarily carried within Obi-Wan, his consciousness, his soul, nestled right up against Obi-Wan’s, like two seeds in a pod), might possibly have been enough to save him, in and of itself.
Please note that the rest of this story is in the three previous postings, because of the LJ's word/character limits!
Title: “Xanatos Áediah Valdís Adi-Ai-Aiji: Former Padawan Apprentice of Qui-Gon Jinn and Alleged Fallen, Dark Jedi; Current Missing Piece to a Very Important Puzzle”
Pairing: Xanatos has a child by Latura Damoriana Endmon (aka Tura Omega - mother of Granta Omega - known aliases Turla Anoukt and Tula Alvathanos, original birth name Suqella Taldolna Rishma), but she’s merely the means to an end, for him. Unknown even to the Jedi, he fathers another son by Lilura Yzabelia Tietphaea, a former princess of Emet (a neighboring system to Telos), but the relationship ends with the woman’s death and, in any case, she’s also never more than the means to an end, for him. Xanatos is in love with a man he never meets, while his (original) physical body lives, and, as he is never truly allowed to know the boy who should have been his Padawan, while his flesh yet lives, he is . . . somewhat confused as to the kind of bond he shares with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Thus, aside from the faithful devotion he bears for his family and his constantly thwarted need to be with Obi-Wan, his desires have little to do with any kind of love.
Rating: Erhm, I guess PG-13 occasionally sliding into hard R territory, probably (?) . . . Some folks might be a wee bit disturbed by some things that happen in this story (sex with a minor; a minor having children - twins - who are then contractually wed, according to the traditions of the minor’s people; murder; the mental equivalent of rape and assault so violent as to approach attempted murder; fairly blatant desire of a minor, in more than one instance, by more than one person; patricide; etc.), so it might be safer to assume that this is R-rated, for some folks!
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Star Wars, more’s the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .
Summary: This is one hundred and thirty random but chronological moments from the life of former Jedi Padawan and supposed Dark Jedi Xanatos of Telos IV. There is an actual story here - one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stretched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together - but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not precisely the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . )
Warning: This story functions as a sort of compressed codex for Xanatos’ life, as he has been written (or at least referred to) and is going to be written in my not even nearly complete AU Star Wars series You Became to Me. If anything doesn’t make sense, please, feel free to ask! There are some things I can’t elaborate on much more, for fear of at least partially spoiling some stories still in the works, but I realize that such a radical retelling of some parts of EU history could be somewhat confusing, so I invite questions from readers who’re puzzled and/or curious!
Author’s Notes: Please see the Author’s Notes included in the posting for the first fourth of this story, as they apply for the entire story!
“Xanatos Áediah Valdís Adi-Ai-Aiji: Former Padawan Apprentice of Qui-Gon Jinn and Alleged Fallen, Dark Jedi; Current Missing Piece to a Very Important Puzzle”
101.) Ghost: He knows that Obi-Wan is on Alderaan but as far as he’s aware the young man is supposed to be a visitor at the Royal Palace, as a guest of the Crown Prince, recuperating after a particularly nasty mission (one where Xanatos was forced to send agents to intervene in the unfolding of certain events, to keep things from getting even uglier), and so he nearly perishes of shock when he turns about one day in the artisans’ marketplace below the Jedi chapterhouse on the Maeramund River, outside of Aldera, to find the Padawan staring at him intently, eyes wide and face pale as though he’s seen a ghost.
102.) Glamour: His first instinct (that he should hide by throwing an elaborate glamour up over himself and then making a run for it before Obi-Wan can manage to track him down) is ruined when his companion - an aged semi-retired Jedi Master by the name of Kylea Santeri, who divides her time between watching over the younglings in the chapterhouse and working with the local artisans - calls out to Bail and Qui-Gon to come and say hello, the two of them obliging by coming up behind Obi-Wan from further back across the open square to sweep him along with them, ushering him along and forcing Xanatos to quickly improvise a plan that will hopefully allow him to retreat rapidly, before Obi-Wan can convince himself to accuse Xanatos of being who he is and (given how many allies he has on this world and based on ties to this world) before anyone can sense anything at all off about him.
103.) Familiar: He’s met Bail several times before and therefore is used to both being gazed at by the man as though Bail were desperately trying to figure out why he seems so naggingly familiar and being in possession of what amounts to an airtight alibi, in that the Crown Prince and his people know him by the name borne by this body and, having always known him as Moraios Lánatum Sitodokis and having worked with him on a couple of projects, have no real cause to suspect he’s anyone or anything other than what he appears to be, which is apparently good enough for Qui-Gon, who politely shakes hands and exchanges a bit of small talk but otherwise doesn’t even look at him twice (aside from raising an eyebrow slightly and smiling faintly at the way Bail lingers over shaking his hand, as though silently remarking to himself on the Crown Prince’s good taste, given his obvious interest); Obi-Wan, though, stares at him and stares at him and, when he shakes his hand, holds on to it as though the extra physical tactile contact can make it clear to Obi-Wan why he feels as if he knows him, automatically probing at the edges of his shields with the Force (inquisitive, desperately seeking tendrils of thought, trying to get closer, to get at the core of him, the truth of him, to reach out and find the bond that a part of him must somehow still subconsciously know is there, linking them together), and it kills him, both to have to keep his shields slammed so tightly closed that essentially nothing of himself can leak through and to have to noncommittally reply to the teen’s somewhat shaky remark that he seems incredibly familiar that there’s just something in the arrangement of his features that often seems to cause such a sense of false familiarity in individuals who have done a great deal of travel and so seen numerous different people, even as he gently rotates his wrist to disengage his hand from Obi-Wan’s increasingly possessive grip.
104.) Proud: He shamelessly distracts Obi-Wan by remarking on the number of decorations in his Padawan’s braid, pretending some knowledge of the meanings of the variously colored bands and crystal beads from his many visits to Alderaanian chapterhouse and prompting a long and surprisingly proud-sounding commentary from Qui-Gon on Obi-Wan’s many achievements and talents that so flusters and embarrasses the teenager (especially when Bail chimes in, speaking glowingly of Obi-Wan’s performance on the diplomatic missions he’s been privileged to also take part in) that he’s far too busy flushing and trying to deflect or at least tone down the praise to really do more than keep giving Xanatos that searching look.
105.) Note: A simple handwritten note is somehow waiting for him, back in his suite, in the chapterhouse’s guesting lodges, the sense and feel and physical scent of Obi-Wan clinging to it to strongly that it almost seems to glow with the same aura of blindingly pure white light that surrounds the boy, and, reaching out to it with trembling fingers and the breath caught painfully in the back of his throat, he skims fingertips across the elegant script that spells this body’s name, and, opening the precisely folded over in half piece of old-fashioned heavy parchment paper, knows he must leave immediately, before he can do anything foolish, and never return to a world where he even suspects Obi-Wan may be, unless he plans to tell him the full truth, when he reads the message: I thank you for my life, Sir, whatever your true name may be. If ever you should be in need of anything, you may call upon me for aid and I will give it gladly. This I, Obi-Wan Kenobi, swear, with the Force as my witness.
106.) Fortune: He does keep track of his firstborn, Ousire, over the years, at least enough to make sure that the boy is safe and in no need of anything major - he’s always sent the boy’s mother a very generous monthly stipend, to see to it that they can both live quite comfortably, irregardless of whether Latura even works at all, and that does not change with his supposed death, even though he suspects that Latura is, at the very least, a liar, and may, at worst, be an agent of someone associated in some way with the Sith, either as an ally or tool of some sort: he knows his duty, as the boy’s father, and sees to it scrupulously, even though the boy will also be inheriting an immense fortune, when he reaches his majority, and should never be in need for funds ever again, afterwards, given that he’s essentially going to end up the head of Offworld Corporations and all of the wealth it’s accumulated, over the years, that Xanatos did not use for his own ends, previous to the vacating of his original body, due to an arrangement that Xanatos saw to both because it would seem to confirm his death in the eyes of the High Council and because it would draw attention away from Telos and, by extension, Emet and the home of his true family and his pupils in the Force, since the inheritance would be delivered to someone so far away - and, when some noticeable irregularities show up in the reports he’s receiving on his son’s education, is not too terribly surprised when it eventually becomes clear that the woman isn’t what she originally seemed to be and has apparently been raising the boy solely so that he will be fit to be used as a tool against the Jedi Order, though he is vaguely disappointed in himself for not suspecting her enough to follow through on those suspicions much earlier, given how oddly (determinedly even, one might say) empty-headed and single-minded in her romantic devotion to him she’d seemed, to the point where he’d deliberately limited his time with her, just to avoid having to subject himself overly much to her vacuousness.
107.) Deceit: When he finally becomes concerned enough and has time enough to have his best agents look into Latura, they uncover a trail of deceit leading back to the Senator of Eeropha and beyond, to an area of space around Qalydon, very near to the ancient area of Sith strongholds once known (on pre-Ruusan maps of the Republic and the surrounding known galaxy) as Sith Space, and it is then, when he realizes that the Sith may very well be involved, that he knows he’s going to have no choice but to have her permanently removed so that he can seize the boy, if he wants to avoid having his eldest son raised to be nothing more than a tool not just of vengeance but of vindictive, destructive Darkness.
108.) Neglect: Somehow, the witch and her accomplices have managed to hide the fact that the boy not only is no longer living in her home, on Neirport VII, but that she apparently hasn’t been using the stipend Xanatos has been sending to her for so many years for them to live on, the woman apparently turning over the money to Senator Sano Sauro (with some of those funds apparently being diverted to Senator Bog Divinian of Nuralee) instead of using it towards the general upkeep and safety and well-being of their boy, and his fury is such, on learning of her deceptions and her willful neglect of their child, that he simply goes to her and kills her himself, with no hesitation or remorse or questions asked (other than the ones he puts to her, in an attempt to get her to account for herself).
109.) Protection: It’s far worse than he expected or even feared: Latura is an agent of the Sith Master himself, chosen on behalf of his political face (the facade he uses, the false identity behind which he hides his true nature) to be sent to Senator Sauro expressly for use in the Senator’s schemes to not only attempt to turn the opinion of the galaxy against the Jedi but to also try to cultivate Force-sensitive personal allies (strong enough to have been Jedi but either not discovered and raised by the Jedi or else rejected by them), possibly for later use as assassins or fighter pilots or bodyguards if not some combination of all three, perhaps even as the core seed of an eventually unstoppable fighting force even the Jedi would be unprepared for and unable to combat, supposedly as a sign of support for such schemes but in reality apparently more because the Sith simply desired to see if the man could, with Latura’s help, secure any Dark Jedi who might be used as allies, tools, or destructive distractions to keep the Order from noticing the Sith . . . said plan evidently having altered first when the Sith became aware of Latura’s involvement with Xanatos (the Dark Lord evidently having some kind of personal interest in him), second when it became clear that, while he’d attempted to design their boy to be insensate to the Force, the child had instead been born with the unique gift of being able to unconsciously use the Force to make others insensate to him, and third when Xanatos supposedly died (a supposition that the Sith evidently bought, Latura’s shock over his claim and subsequent proof of identity entirely real . . . as was her absolute satisfaction and gloating, over her enjoyment of the thought of what her Master would do to Xanatos, to get that secret of mind/soul transference out of him, since such a trick could conceivably be used to allow one to live forever, simply by changing bodies as they wore out or became damaged) and so was assumed to be unable to interfere with a more direct approach for both turning the boy against the Jedi and putting him in a position where he’d not only be a useful tool/ally of the Sith but could also be studied for his peculiar talent, as well, meaning that while the Sith has apparently not connected Xanatos’ actions since the switch over to this new body and his growing network of contacts and allies with his former life or his true family (which in turn means that his family is likely to be and to remain safe from the notice of the Sith, since he has been very careful to keep them as separate as possible and hidden away from association to or contact with his new life and Sith are not overly equipped to understand the bonds of family, nor to think of family if it is not overtly brought to their attention), the Sith Lord is likely to want to capture him alive, if/when he twigs to the fact that Moraios Lánatum Sitodokis is Xanatos Áediah Valdís Adi-Ai-Aiji, meaning that Xanatos is going to have to undergo the rather time-consuming and draining (and somewhat painful) procedure of instigating that process by which he can provide himself and his knowledge/memories with the ultimate form of protection, by making it so that anyone trying to access them against his desire will immediately destroy them all.
110.) Technique: The technique is one that he discovered in records from the last major Jedi vs. Sith conflict, the Light and Darkness War (or so-called New Sith Wars), evidently developed to keep the enemy from casually mind-raping captured opponents and seizing sensitive information about troop and supply movements, weapons and other assets, passwords to protected bases, and so on, and, while effectively able to shield such sensitive information through the creation of an elaborate series of intricate interlocking layers of mental shields and booby traps and safe fails and redundant triggers, all tied in to a firmly impressed, unbreakable order that instantaneously forces a complete, irreversible, unalterable, irretrievable wipe of all the information protected by those shields and traps, unfortunately also requires so much time and effort to set up - and, supposedly, such a degree of mind skill and self-knowledge required for one to perform it on oneself that every few below the level of a Master capable of serving on the High Council can perform it with anything like relative ease - and results in a state so close to amnesiac mental childhood (especially if the traps and commands are set up by another individual) that the technique was never widely used or published and so was essentially forgotten, after Ruusan, and, while with his knowledge of how to perform a transference of mind, he can take extra precautions to protect the contents of his mind from the results of any attempt to attack or take the contents of his mind, he really dislikes the thought of having to resort to such a drastic measure to protect himself, even from the Sith Lord.
111.) Rescue: The boy, Ousire, doesn’t necessarily mean all that much to him - Xanatos doesn’t know the child: how could he mean much of anything to him when he knows next to nothing of him? - but he’s his child and he doesn’t deserve to be the testing subject of a Sith Lord (no one deserves that . . . well, no one, perhaps, except maybe for Qui-Gon or Yoda, whom he suspects more and more has deliberately been sabotaging or attempting to sabotage or at least curtail the careers of certain potential Jedi - including Xanatos himself and Obi-Wan Kenobi - for his own private reasons and/or amusement), and so he must at least attempt to rescue him, if he wants to be able to live with himself, even if it is extremely likely that measures will have been taken to ensure that the boy cannot be easily gotten to or moved.
112.) Emphasis: The All Sciences Research Academy at Yerphonia seriously strikes him as primarily being a breeding ground for mad scientists - there is a preponderance of emphasis on work that could easily be turned to enormously destructive ends and really no emphasis at all on morality or personal responsibility - and he has an extremely bad feeling about the place as soon as he’s close enough to see it, especially given the possibility that apparently that crazy Force-experimenting witch Jenna Zan Arbor has ties to the place that make him suspect that she may very well have been either recruited by the Sith or else that the Sith may have at one point deliberately maneuvered her about into a position where she could be used as a suitable tool against the Jedi and the Republic and could very well be planning to facilitate her eventual escape from prison in order to continue to use her.
113.) Bad Idea: It’s a bad idea for him to be there and he knows it as soon as he gets there, but he can’t just give up on his firstborn, so . . . after considering the possibilities, he decides the best, safest course to take will be to make a recording with all the pertinent information, saved to a device keyed in such a way that it will only respond to the DNA signature of his child, and offering at the end to set up a meeting at a safe extraction point so he can go ahead and get himself and his boy the hell out of there, before the creeping, sinking sensation of imminent danger can catch up with him.
114.) Trick: When the boy shows at the designated extraction point, he is foolish enough to think that he’s avoided the danger and that things will be alright now; unfortunately, he’s fatally misjudged the amount of manipulation the boy’s already suffered and apparently been kept ignorant of at least one meeting between his child and the Sith, for no sooner has his child embraced him than a poisoned knife is slipped between his ribs and a device he recognizes from his readings as a trap for the wandering psyches of Force-sensitives is clamped tight to his forehead, the maniacal glitter of his boy’s glazed blue eyes the last thing he sees before he’s swallowed by darkness, the hissed words, “I do not believe you! This is a trick! You are not my father! Filthy Jedi, die!” echoing in his ears as he plummets down into darkness.
115.) Prize: Things are very quiet and very dark for what seems like a long time, and Xanatos is making circuits of the damned prison he’s trapped in, trying to figure out if there are any flaws or weaknesses in the pattern of interlocking wards and seals and shields that continue, nestled inside one another, all the way down to the molecular level (or, failing that, to find a way to force himself between the subatomic cracks and gaps that he intellectually knows must riddle the trap, beneath all the commands binding the whole thing together around him), waiting to be presented to the Sith Lord like a prize of battle, when it occurs to him that so much time has passed that his boy can’t have been in possession of a means to pass him off to the Sith . . . and, even better, that he can still sense (if only dimly) all those with whom he’s had functional bonds of one sort or another, in life, including Obi-Wan Kenobi.
116.) Visualize: If he’s careful to visualize the gaps in the trap that he knows, logically, have to be there at the subatomic level, beneath all the bindings holding his prison together, Xanatos can access the Force almost just as if he were still free (aside from being able to completely physically move out of the prison holding him, his ability to do so limited by the fact that apparently theoretical knowledge is not the same as physically tactile exploitable weaknesses), as long as he concentrates mightily, and it is through this method that he is able first to contact his family and let them know what happened - contacting his unofficial Padawans through their training bonds and instructing Ila and his sister to be sure to continue training the little ones and the young ones, so they’ll be able to properly protect themselves, should anything happen to make the Sith Master find them - and eventually able to figure out a way to eavesdrop on Obi-Wan through that old bond of theirs that never completely broke (not when Qui-Gon tried to rip Obi-Wan’s Force-sensitivity out or Xanatos’ original body perished and certainly not when Xanatos’ brainwashed firstborn murdered his replacement body), so that he can continue to keep watch over Obi-Wan, even while trapped.
117.) Sway: Xanatos is there with Obi-Wan through many of his missions, and so he’s able to recognize the particular hallmarks of a Sith in the circumstances surrounding the apparent death of the Weapon’s Master whilst searching for his lost Padawan; thus, for one of the first times, he exerts himself to try to sway the young man’s course, urging Obi-Wan to spend less time trying to get anything out of the residents of the underlevels and make more haste in the pursuit of the faint sense of Darsha Assant, in the Force, so that perhaps he might (if he’s very, very lucky) be able to find her before the Sith (the apprentice, he suspects. The whole things feels much too public, for the Master to be the one at work in Coruscant’s undercity) can finish the girl off, too.
118.) Witness: He’s just as shocked as anyone cognizant of what an impossibility it is would’ve been, to witness Obi-Wan somehow managing to effortlessly carry a spirit whose body renders her all but blind, deaf, and dumb to proof of the existence (much less the specific movements) of the Force with him so deeply within its currents that she all but comes face to face with the watching in dumbly stunned shock Xanatos, Xanatos managing to react only when it becomes clear that she’s going to lose herself in the Force’s deeps if someone doesn’t stop her from blindly reaching out and yearning after the beckoning brightness of its powerful flows, the feel of the young lady so extraordinary (her spirit marked by something oddly very like the kind of bond that he’s noticed will sometimes spontaneously spring into existence, both with family members strong in the Force where one is enough older - or sufficiently more responsible - than the other to feel enough of a sense of obligation/duty to the other to want to be able to keep track of that one constantly and with lovers raised outside of the strictures of the Jedi Order) that he finds himself lingering with her a time, long enough to follow her back to the source of that strange bond . . . where he meets a young woman who answers to the name of Sabé Dahn, and receives one of the greatest shocks of his life.
119.) Other: It’s not just that the young woman’s mind has so many different links that feel like some sort of training bonds (apparently tying her to a majority of the handmaidens and handmaid trainees of the Queen of Naboo, who is none other than the remarkable young woman Obi-Wan carried down within the Force) that it’s as if he’s run up against a network of ties almost like some kind of latent battle meld: no, beneath her conscious mind, lurking in the depths where there will generally be nothing but old, subconscious memories and unconscious desires, is what appears to be a completely different mind, with a whole other set of memories having nothing whatsoever to do with the girl’s life or indeed any other person’s life in recent living memory, what little he glimpses before being violently repulsed by a set of shields so subtle that he hadn’t even been able to sense them, until after he’d been thrown out, revolving around a period of time so distant that the larger galaxy apparently hadn’t even heard of the Sith, yet, the memories so clear and precise and seemingly real that he can tell that they are true memories and not simply knowledge gleaned from old holorecordings and/or other old documents, shocking him so badly with not just the sheer fact of the second mind’s existence but the vividness of the thoughts and images that he partakes of before being thrown out that he has to try half a dozen times to get past those shields again and see more before he’s finally forced to give it up as a bad job.
120.) Pull: He senses the boy through Obi-Wan like a tidal pull, even through the haze of pain clouding the young man’s senses (and Force, but he’s rarely felt so frightened in all his life, as when those droids all converged on Obi-Wan at once while he was trying to provide cover for a group of some kind of obviously sentient, swiftly retreating amphibious beings - later proven to be Gungans - and he saw that Obi-Wan was going down into the water and his lightsaber would surely short out, his panic such that the only help he could think to try to give, through the Force, was that throwing out of a wave of the Force strong enough to send the machines all tumbling out into the swampy waters themselves, breaking some of them against nearby trees and shorting a few of the others out in the water but not saving Obi-Wan entirely from their advance or their barrage of weapons’ fire), from the only mostly caught and properly safely converted energy of the blaster hits he took, recognizes at once the feel of one meant to form a bond with Obi-Wan as an apprentice to a Master, and rails so bitterly against Qui-Gon’s attempts to interfere and take the child on for himself (as if he has not already done enough harm, stealing two apprentices clearly meant for others!) that, afterwards, he fears that his bad mood and anger may have seeped slightly along the bond and inadvertently made matters somewhat worse, by influencing Obi-Wan’s attitude and actions during the mission.
121.) Torn: Xanatos is torn between wanting to rejoice and wanting to cram Qui-Gon’s spirit right back into his body and order him to damn well make things right again, when the Sith deals him a fatal blow, but knows, from the tenor of Obi-Wan’s all but overwhelming anguish and self-blame, that he’s going to have to wait before he can give free vent to either his anger or his joyous relief, any reaction he might have so likely to effect Obi-Wan’s fragile state of mind badly that he hardly dares to allow himself to do more than to simply be there and think strong, encouraging, calming thoughts until after he can tell that Obi-Wan is determined to finalize the bond with Anakin and will refrain from trying to do anything foolish for the sake of the boy.
122.) Synchronicity: Obi-Wan and Anakin exist in an odd state of synchronicity, their psyches in such perfect balance that it is literally impossible for him to touch the bond with Obi-Wan without also being flooded with the sense of Anakin, and he learns a surprising amount about the young boy from Tatooine in a very short amount of time, simply from eavesdropping on him through his new young Master . . . so much that he heartily approves, when Obi-Wan arrives at a scheme to shelter the boy from the fearful attentions of the High Council Master (especially the extremely disapproving Yoda) by making sure he always seems less than he is, hoping that Obi-Wan’s understanding of the need to resort to such an extreme in his Padawan’s name will soon lead to a greater comprehension of the flaws riddling the Order and convince him of the need to eventually do something about it.
123.) Zealot: He watches over Obi-Wan and Anakin for nearly six years before things begin to fall apart, his firstborn having grown under the tutelage of Senator Sauro and his ilk into a fanatical zealot full of nothing but anger and hate, Ousire’s alliance with Jenna Zan Arbor so firm that Xanatos has, apparently, been made a grandfather, and so must also worry about trying to save/redeem those children, too.
124.) Sense: He can’t decide if it makes more sense for Ousire to have been damaged, somehow, by his long association with individuals close to the Sith (most likely including the Sith Master himself, though his son may not realize or been allowed to understand that) and beings like Jenna Zan Arbor (who unnerves him in a way very few other individuals ever have managed to do, before, making him give thanks to the Force with every iota of his being that she was not born Force-sensitive and is apparently just a little bit too sane to try to experiment on herself to make herself more sensitive to the Force’s flows, either of which would have and could still spell absolute unmitigated disaster for the galaxy - worse even, he suspects, than what the Sith Lord has in store, at least in the long run) - who have likely been able to do the Force alone only knows what to his poor misguided boy - or if perhaps the boy’s mother could have had some kind of serious mental and emotional imbalance that was somehow kept hidden from Xanatos, to account for Ousire’s often bizarre and maniacal mood swings and his belief that he’s doing the right thing and that nothing he does, no matter how horrible, can be held against him, because his actions are all motivated by the Jedi’s “murder” of his father; either way, though, he rather suspects that he boy is beyond saving and that the best he’ll be able to hope for, for him, is a clean and relatively swift death.
125.) Numb: The girl’s death in regrettable - he knows that Anakin and Obi-Wan are both going to end up mourning Darra Thel-Tanis for quite some time to come - but frankly he’s too relieved that no one else has been killed or seriously injured to even really be able to hold it against the one Padawan who’s at least partially to blame for it (Ferus Olin, a boy Obi-Wan apparently at once feels a great sense of responsibility for and an enormous sense of disappointment in, for reasons Xanatos really only partially follows, the boy’s bad reaction to Obi-Wan’s bonding with Anakin somewhat more understandable, in Xanatos’ opinion, than Obi-Wan seems to believe), and, by the time it’s all over with, he’s really too tired and numb for the fact that his firstborn has just committed suicide by Jedi, forcing Obi-Wan to strike him down in order to protect himself and his Padawan, rather than permit himself to be captured (with no fallback plan to let him work around the fact that his body’s perished, as Xanatos possessed when he did something similar), to really sink in all the way.
126.) Time: He knows he’s going to have very little time - the Sith Master will claim everything of Ousire’s, now that his son is dead, and that means that Xanatos’ prison is about to become the Sith’s property, after all - so he does his best to say his farewells, making his sister and Ila and the children all promise that they won’t do anything foolish to try to rescue him but that they will remain true to what they’ve learned and willingly support Obi-Wan in any and every way possible, should he ever be in a position to change the Order as it so desperately needs to be changed, and then he settles down and waits for the inevitable pain.
127.) Idiot: He feels like the galaxy’s biggest idiot, for not suspecting the man, when he finally finds out who the Sith Lord is, but in the next moment he feels incredibly smart, too, for the first thing Sidious tries to do is to get into his mind, spitting and snarling and threatening to force Xanatos into a new body just so he can rip him limb from limb, for daring to ward his mind in such a manner, alternating between incoherent ravings and extremely bloody threats, so angry that it’s almost worth it, being there, just to know he’s made the monster so thoroughly enraged.
128.) Existence: Laughing at Sidious from behind his protective shields swiftly becomes one of the few real pleasures he has left, in his existence, and so he indulges it whenever possible, even though the Sith Master loses no time in finding ways of causing him distress and so generally makes him pay dearly for his pleasure.
129.) Prison: In the end, Sidious’ prison is both far worse and yet in some small ways better than that of Oursire’s: he can get nothing more than the very faintest of senses of those on the other end of his myriad bonds (even Obi-Wan is as little more than a distant star in the night sky, sometimes shining with fierce abandon but sometimes dimmed by clouds and/or hidden away by storm) and cannot of his own power reach out to anyone else, the prison is so meticulously crafted and sealed and bound about with pain-inducing wards that cannot be won through, no matter how one might be willing to suffer for it, which is vexing and frustrating to the point of madness, almost, given that Sidious for his own evil pleasure generally deliberately rigs the prison to cause him to re-experience the very worst of all the horrors and mistakes and nightmares and failures and regrets that can be dredged up out of his trapped subconscious and the lack of escape makes tolerating the suffering much harder than it would otherwise be; yet, in his arrogance, Sidious forgot to ward the prison against those seeking to reach out to him from the outside, and eventually the presence of one or another of the experimental children the Sith and his pet mad scientists have been busy creating acts as such a source of comfort and strength and steadiness that he is quite sure he never would’ve made it, without them.
130.) Escape: He recognizes Bail the instant the Alderaanian makes contact with the cause of his imprisonment and, by touching it, shatters the seals binding Xanatos, and that is the only thing that keeps Xanatos from trying to lash out reflexively in desperation, to try to escape again, thinking that Sidious has let him part of the way out again either to torment him some more or try to have yet another go at breaking him or seducing him into giving up and sharing what he knows with the Sith Master, and that, in turn, is the only thing that saves Bail’s life . . . though his shock, at seeing the main in Jedi robes (after he’s fled along the promise of the nearest path of safety, according to the Force, and found himself being temporarily carried within Obi-Wan, his consciousness, his soul, nestled right up against Obi-Wan’s, like two seeds in a pod), might possibly have been enough to save him, in and of itself.
Please note that the rest of this story is in the three previous postings, because of the LJ's word/character limits!